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MIKE FRANK
I am 39, single, white, male, and heterosexual. I live in a house, as a lodger/housesharer in Plaistow. I began writing a novel when I moved to Plaistow from West London 3 years ago. I am looking for work in music or computing. I am studying information technology part-time, and I build computers. I play saxophone and I joined Newham Writers Workshop in September 1996 to help me start again. It worked and I've now written quite a few chapters. My novel is set in Brixton in 1977, in a squat.
ROD MAKES COFFEE
Rod walked into the kitchen or that is to say he sort of slouched into the kitchen, he wasn't really walking, there wasn't really far enough to walk, the kitchen wasn't very long, it was about ten foot. If he'd really been walking he would have been walking a hundred yards, not even yards, he would have been walking metres. He would have been walking round a track, he would have been seeing trees, he would have been looking up at the sky occasionally. But he wasn't. He was looking up at the cracks in the plaster in the old ceiling. He didn't know how old it was, he just knew it wasn't that new... he wasn't really walking, he knew it wasn't really worth getting into a sort of stride. Not indoors, it definitely wasn't. I mean he didn't come downstairs that would have been even worse, he had been on a level, on the same level, on the basement level. Basement or sub-basement. I suppose it was a basement really. Or was it a sub-basement? It was a sub-basement. It wasn't really a basement because it wasn't that far down - it was a place you could take a few steps down to and then you'd be in it...and that was it, that was his living quarters, that was the bit of the house he occupied. Occupied? Very static sort of word, that; he did move around but he didn't really walk, he didn't really march, he wasn't militaristic, there was no reason why he should be, he went to a private school, maybe you call it a public school. It was a special school, not special in the sense that he was educationally sub-normal, he wasn't, but then how do you measure intelligence, how do you really know? But he walked, in a sense he walked, but it was indoor walking... he was walking, he was not going from A to B, but whereas actually he was more walking from one part of A to another part of A because he wasn't really going anywhere. I mean he wasn't really at one place, then he was arriving at another place, he was really still 'at home', if it was home, I don't know if you'd really call it home.
Home... I mean home is where you feel at home, he wasn't really sure if he felt at home. He knew he wasn't really walking and he didn't really feel at home and he was really moving from one part of this inner world, this inner sanctum, which, I suppose you could say he felt as 'at home' at, as he had felt 'at home' in the dormitory, if that's what they were at the public, or private, or special, or whatever you call it, school, because that's the only thing he could compare it with. Or his parent's place of course.
His parents were very difficult. But he couldn't really remember why. He just knew they were. They were meant to be. Everyone said they were. They were a concept really and...he... well he was taking drugs, let's be honest and concepts and logic and they weren't really the way he was going at things, he was just here, he was in the kitchen, he was entering it. In the way he entered, you know, 'entered' is probably a bit too vague really but he was going to do something, he was doing something in a sense, he was not, he was waking up, in one way, and in another way, he was... he was... preparing to do something, he wasn't really awake, he was sort of in between awake and asleep. Obviously he was moving, and he didn't usually walk in his sleep or anything like that so he was, he knew he was into some kind of reality, he was in a sort of indoor reality, but indoor/outdoor, you know, awake/asleep, he was outdoors compared to what he was before because he'd been asleep, he'd been lying in his bed, and now he was in the kitchen.
So he was almost walking, he was er getting, he was going across the floor, and the floor... The floor! What was the floor like? He looked down at it... what was the floor like? I mean why was he thinking about the floor? Well he was walking on it ... What was the floor? What was it really like? I mean it was...it sort of had a nice low sort of almost damp, tiley, Victorian sort of, deep concretey sort of.... the cracks... but gritty... slightly gritty not brand new and tiled, not modern. None of that. No. He didn't sweep it much, or mop it or scour it or er... put lino on top of it or even put carpet on it. He'd seen people put carpets in their kitchen, those people didn't really know what it was all about. They were sort of asleep in a way, with you know modern life, just kind of demanded wipe-free surfaces I mean and this kitchen had stuff like that, I mean that was what had attracted it to him because I mean the greens on the walls and a wet background and green tiles green. He wasn't a William Morris freak, he wasn't a nostalgist. I mean he did appreciate modern things, modern furniture... he wasn't really sure, but you know a lot of these old kitchens they had very good tiles he'd heard on the radio. A sort of D.I.Y. show. They're very good tiles, some of them sort of earthenware Victorian. That seemed to sum up a long period of time but it fitted in a way and er... he was making a sort of noise as he walked across the kitchen and then he knew what he was doing, he definitely, well he sort of planned what he was doing. He was gonna make coffee. He was gonna have breakfast . He was gonna make coffee first, because well it seemed to work. I mean he tried giving up coffee but it definitely seemed to work somehow and you know it doesn't matter - if it doesn't work don't fix it... don't bother. It was one of the structures he'd learnt when he was eleven... His father ... had sort of let him drink coffee... and with milk... his mother made it in the kitchen and he'd been helping his dad doing something with screws ... unscrewing or looking for a screwdriver ... clearing out the shed and er... it had been a cold autumn and er he'd sort of been longing secretly in his bored way for this moment when he was allowed to drink coffee, and er... he was given coffee in school which was weird ... from plastic cups, little plastic cups in cup-holders, that was like coffee and milk and warm. His mother had a special way of making coffee. It was very milky and of course he rebelled against all that and what he was gonna do was make the strongest cup of coffee ever made.
I mean he didn't really make coffee that was the strongest coffee in the world. It was just good, it was just beans, it was that he'd bought the beans, put the beans in a jar, one of those glass jars with a little rubber stopper. Sort of again, here we go it was sort of old-fashioned, let's face it, it worked though, it sealed the air out or in and well if you filled it up there would be no air at all but he didn't totally fill it up, I mean it was continually getting empty, he'd have to keep the beans then somewhere else he'd have to wrap them up and then everyday he'd have to transfer. I think the Japanese ... he'd heard the Japanese had a way of doing that with tea. They had these containers and you'd press the thing and, he didn't know if it was airtight anyway, the little sort of lever that would press down, it was circular and keep, you know, no air in the tin, or less air in... the sort of space, I mean it would be less stale but it would. Put it in the fridge anyway... so he, he thought he'd better open the fridge door. That was the fridge. That was modern. I mean fridges are so modern they didn't really fit in with the rest of the kitchen... at all, it was, it was a bit sad. But he was a realist, he was always being a realist and he continued and it seemed to work, you know with his daily routine. ...the coffee, the strong coffee, it was not, you know strength was not the thing. He was not trying to be clever, he was not trying to be strong, he was not on that kind of a trip. What he was doing was he was keeping the beans fresh... he was not being absurd. No. So he took the beans out of the fridge. The glass jar... it all made noises... which was quite funny , you know. Not that much... not that much noise but he was aware that it wasn't quiet. I mean. He suddenly thought, you know, it had been very quiet... and it was quiet... it was a quiet house. The air, you know, all seemed very quiet.
He liked that, that was nice. He liked music, he had Talking Heads, he had a hi-fi, he had Iggy Pop, he went to the library to get Iggy Pop, it was amazing, they had Iggy Pop in the library, I mean, is that Brixton, is that special to Brixton? I mean, how did they get Iggy Pop so quickly, and how did he know about Iggy Pop, anyway? But it worked, anyway, The Idiot, Lust for Life, pumping out of the stereo, I mean, what could be better? But you do need that sort of peacefulness, it definitely works because it lets you hear yourself when you bring out the jar and you put it down on the counter. I mean the counter's hard. All these things work, the hygienic things, they're all hard. You can't have a soft spongy kitchen counter because you don't want one, you want things to be very solid, but not too brutal. I think they've possibly gone too far now, with the clarity and the cleanliness and the severity of the line. And of course they get noisy and they've got all these bright, well they have the grouting and I don't know if tiles are getting bigger or smaller but they're about six inches I would guess, six inches across and you know maybe yellow and they're bright and they're shiny. People put them in not just little areas that they have to keep clean, it's like a toilet now, when you go into a kitchen and you have maybe a hundred square feet of shiny almost metallic tile and the sound is... I suppose if you want to do some recording... I suppose it's fine but he didn't normally, he wasn't really musical, but he was into sound enough to appreciate it... anyway... he liked the spongy way that the washer, the rubber washer with the little lip actually ejected the er...the rubber, the rubber? The rubber lid. It wasn't a rubber lid, it was a glass lid, it was all glass... glass, metal and rubber... Lovely and round. Anyway, for God's sake... the coffee...
Now he had a lovely cast iron black...
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