Ben comes into the kitchen and immediately there is a relief that we are alone and a wonderful calm floats down and covers us, like a sheet of sheerest chiffon.

‘What do you want me to do then Dom?’ he asks, smiling.

I take some round golden biscuits out of the packet; each one is covered with a shower of tiny salt crystals which twinkle. He is standing next to me at the work surface, I can feel the proximity of his body and there is an intangible heat coming from it which warms me.

I place the biscuits on the work surface, take a knife from the cutlery drawer, and put that beside the biscuits, along with a block of butter which has been softening to the ambient temperature.

‘If you could just butter these, that’d be great, thanks for helping’ I say. And I try not to be seen to be watching as the shiny silver knife blade scoops up butter, as the butter is pressed onto the biscuit and smears dreamily across its crystalline surface, the salt crystals and the butter together now forming something new, delicious and glorious.

I can only glance every now and then, otherwise Ben would think I was staring and that would be rude.

I unscrew the top of the glass jar containing the artichoke hearts in olive oil, and I take out an artichoke heart.

‘Ben, have you ever had an artichoke heart in olive oil?’ I ask and turn to him and our eyes meet, and whilst we are looking into one another’s eyes he says ‘No, can’t say that I have, I’ve grown artichokes like, on me allotment, never had ‘em like that tho.’’

‘Would you like to try one? Some people don’t like them. I wouldn’t want to give you something you don’t like’ and I stab the artichoke heart with a fork and hand him the fork, as little droplets of olive oil fall to the work surface. Ben looks away from me as he puts the heart into his mouth, then as he begins chewing he looks back into my eyes and the skin at the outer corners of his eyes crinkles with joy and his face is radiant and smiling.

‘Lovely’ he says ‘Really lovely’. And I smile shyly and place another heart onto the work surface and I start slicing it with a sharp knife. The heart gives gracefully and oozes oil as it is cut. The folds of skin remind me of a vulva. Folds of skin, oily, and Ben is watching me cut the artichokes in silence.

I find out early the next year, after summer has handed her fire onto autumn and winter has passed in a ghostly whistle, that at that very moment Ben was thinking:

‘I want her. I want to fuck her. She is the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen. Fuck, she’s married. I can never have her, she belongs to someone else. Her breasts though. Don’t look at them, they’re gorgeous. Up against the work surface. Her with her back to the work surface, me in front of her, kneeling down, running my hands up her legs underneath her skirt and pushing my fingers under her knickers and then pulling them down and bending forwards and eating her pussy, gently, licking it, tasting its oil, running my tongue over those folds of pink flesh and drinking her in, all of her, standing in front of her and holding her and running my hands under her tight blue top and into her bra and feeling her breasts and her nipples, I wonder what her nipples look like, pink or brown? Gently sucking her nipples, caressing her beautiful firm, big breasts. Oh fuck I want her breasts. I want her. Then pushing my stiff cock into her pussy and fucking her against the work surface, fucking her and fucking her and…’

‘Taste this Ben’ and I put three slices of heart onto a biscuit already smeared with a rippling little ocean of butter, and I offer it to him.

Ben eats it and looks at me and smiles again ‘Fuck.’ and as he swallows the last bits of food he says ‘Fucking hell Dom they’re REYT good. I must remember that, artichoke hearts on buttered….what are they again? Oh yeah, Carrs Cheese Melts. Awesome. Shit, you wouldn’t want to get stoned and have a load of them lying around would ya?’ He chuckles and I look at him and he is so gorgeous, I feel so comfortable with him, everything feels right.

I have brought you fragments.
Do you have nimble fingers?
Are you able to use the strands
To weave a beautiful cloth?

I place the fragments before you.
Does the pattern match -
With anything you know?
Or are the fragments without form?

Seamstress, I need a new gown.
This one is old and tattered,
Fraying round the edges -
Lost its silken sheen.

Do you have nimble fingers?
Can you make the gown…
Make it for me?
Can you mend a broken dream…?

I seek the limelight, don’t you see?
But let’s keep that between you and me
I stand before this gathered crowd
In a place called ‘Words Aloud’
Seeking approval of my written word
Speaking my words so that they are heard
It upholds my flagging self esteem
To be here tonight, to be heard – and seen…
Sadness is my middle name
And so I play this rhyming game
It lifts me to a place that’s mine
A place bereft? – A place sublime…

4×4 – huh yeah!
What is it good for?
Definitely shopping…

Say it again, say it again

4×4 – huh yeah!
What is it good for?
Definitely shopping…

4×4! Yeah!
Isn’t it good for…
All your weekly shopping?

4×4, I advise
Cos it means protection
Of innocent wives
When they go on the school run

4×4, huh…
Good God, y’all:
What is it good for?
(Apart from going shopping and the school run)

4×4, woah Lord
What is it good for?
Probably off-roading
(Bit muddy for me, bit muddy for me)

4×4 ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker
Friend only to the petrolmaker

4×4’s not cheap to run
The fuel bills are quite high
But global warming means
A nicer, bluer sky!

4×4 – huh yeah!
What is it good for?
Definitely shopping…

Peace, love and understanding tell me
That when all is said and done
We pay more to tax our vehicles
But let’s buy another one!

If you park your car illegally
Police will have you towed, but
4×4’s go on the pavement
When there’s no room on the road

All together now:

4×4 – huh yeah!
What is it good for?
Definitely shopping…

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Howden House you’re a living hell to me
with your lies and lack of decency
providing daily facades as you act all fucking hard with your third Reich ideology

Howden House you just fuck with peoples’ lives your smiles provide a cover for the knives that you turn in peoples’ backs as you distort all the facts when folks are only trying to survive

Howden House your job is there to serve
don’t know where you get the fucking nerve you’re having a laugh! your signs say don’t abuse the staff but one day they’ll get what they deserve

Liberata why aren’t you liberating
too busy with your procrastinating
Why not let out a loud cough? Your balls will hopefully drop off and put an end to all your masturbating

Howden House you should really be condemned and your regime brought to a swift end I’d do it myself and blame it on my mental health but first I’ll have a word with my friend

As the time draws near we move from emailing to texing on our mobiles, although this is expensive for Joey from Saudi. A tex from Joey whilst walking up the hill to take the kids to school is enough to make the day sail away into the sunset before it’s barely begun.
I have been through the scenario of what will happen when Joey and I finally meet in real life many times.
There are various versions, each a file in the ‘Joey Z ? What Happens When We Meet’ folder in my mind. I can click on any one to open it whenever I want, and if I choose, tinker with it a bit to make it even more palatable and exciting. The possibility that things are not going to go according to one of these scenarios is very doubtful. I am supremely confident that I have nailed the result by covering every option. Well, every option which is a variation of us meeting up, falling into one another’s arms, passionately kissing and making love that is. I don’t have any files that contain other options….
I count the days and weeks until our first meeting in real life. One day I wake up and today is the day. We’ve arranged that Joey will pick me up near Endcliffe Park in his car. ‘The Meeting In The Park’ scenario goes like this:
Joey has parked his car on the main road. We are going to meet right in the middle of the park. He is approaching from the road end; I am approaching from the woods, the other end. We check by mobile where we are, and now we’re both in the park, walking towards one another. We can’t see one another yet. Then, right in the distance, I can see a figure walking towards me across the expanse of open grass. Unusually for a gloriously sunny Bank Holiday Monday, there are no families or children in the park. In fact, the park is deserted apart from Joey, me and my pounding heart as I walk towards him.
Things go into slow motion as we get nearer to one another. Now we can make out one another’s faces. We are both smiling. He is as stunningly gorgeous as in the photograph taken on his office scanner. We’re getting nearer and nearer. Once he’s about fifteen feet away, the length of your average 30’s semi lounge (going into the bay window that is), we both stop, stunned by the sight of one another. Our smiles have faded from our faces. We have manoeuvred into position, it’s the countdown before lift-off, all is quiet. Suddenly the rockets are ignited and we are propelled towards one another in a desperate roar of passion. We throw our arms around each other and bury our faces in each others’ necks, then pull away, survey the others’ face, then kiss desperately and passionately, alone in the middle of the park, nothing but the sound of quacking ducks in the distance.
Just the romance of that is enough to make me giddy every time I think about it. Yes that’s a good one, the park one.
There’s also ‘The Meeting In Joey’s Battered Old VW Beetle’ scenario. This time I’m walking through the park and Joey rings me on my mobile to tell me that he’s parked by the main road entrance. I weave my way through the Bank Holiday Frisbees, dogs fetching sticks and tots running amok through the middle of the park towards the gate. I’m out of the park now and there just down the road is a fantastic battered old VW Beetle. It must be Joey’s, it’s so stylish. He must have recognised me from my photo and be looking in his rear view mirror because an arm sticks out of the driver’s window and waves.
I approach the passenger door and peer inside. It’s Joey, his hair slightly mussed up like the naughty schoolboy I first imagined; ripped jeans, a plain white T-Shirt slightly soiled and reminiscent of Marlon Brando just after clocking off from work in ‘On The Waterfront’, and smouldering eyes. I sit down next to him, we gaze into one another’s eyes, he says ‘You’re beautiful Dominique. I never imagined you’d be this beautiful in real life.’ I sigh heavily ‘Joey, you’re gorgeous’ and we fold into one another’s arms like flour into a butter and sugar mixture so that in the end we are one soft gooey mass of sweetness.
Sigh. I’ve covered every base. Nothing can go wrong…

STARBIRTH novel MySpace:
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http://judecalverttoulmin.blogspot.com/

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http://judecalverttoulmin.deviantart.com/

Jude Calvert-Toulmin MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/judecalverttoulmin/

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American wheels, an open road
Traversing the nation, from coast to coast
From Blackpool to Skegness

This is a travelogue
A cut-price odyssey
You can turn your face away
There’s nothing for you to see

Kerouac and the Beats
Never passed through these streets
Where a 2 litre bottle of piss
Flies from the back of the Transit
Just missing the windscreen
Cracked and flecked with bird shit
Pops are out, you take the van
That’s filled with mooning football fans

This is a travelogue
A cut-price odyssey
You can turn your face away
There’s nothing for you to see

Stop off in a small grey town
South of a small grey city
Like a clagnut dangling
From the arse end of the country
Where an ageing rocker views his reflection
Rockabilly quiff, frosty dog turd complexion
A face like a damaged St George’s Flag
Blood shot eyes sat on sagging bags
Crossed with a bulbous, comic-relief nose
Says, “When the whisky hits you, that’s the way it goes?
Still in thrall to his teenage thrill
Of rock ‘n’ roll and popping pills
And hearing for the 1st time ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’
“Keep Elvis and Hendrix, Sweet Gene’s cooler?

This is a travelogue
A cut-price odyssey
You can turn your face away
There’s nothing for you to see

Reach your destination
Of seaside desolation
In the midst of a coastal winter
The winds and the words are bitter
It’s out of step with the Wii generation
Last in the queue for regeneration
Planners talk of a brave new Vegas
In God we trust, America can save us

This is a travelogue
A cut-price odyssey
You can turn your face away
There’s nothing for you to see

A karaoke
A Northern Elvis Presley
Watched over from a plate by the Queen
Hung over from the silver jubilee
As Suspicious Minds seamlessly segues
Into a broken, defeated My Way
There’s no-one listening to his croon
They’re watching the brawl in the Hawaiin room
Tears in his eyes, he falls to his knees
An impassioned cry, “Contain yourselves, gentlemen, please!?

This is a travelogue
A cut-price odyssey
You can turn your face away
There’s nothing for you to see

Leave this fractured memory
The details are hazy already
And try to walk in a straight line
Pick a fight with a road sign
No-one sees, everyone’s pissed
The lovers by the bridge, the graffiti artist
Who’s scrawling on a wall in the underpass
In thick black marker pen, “I hate our lass?

This is a travelogue
A cut-price odyssey
You can turn your face away
There’s nothing for you to see
A cut-price travel lodge
Is no place for American dreams
There’s no magic, no mystery
Everything’s just as it seems

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I slide beneath the slapping waves
to gloomed embrace of sea.
My futile fight for life is lost
and drowned, my tearful plea.

Cold penetration’s soon forgot
as bursting lungs are filled
with airless, cold and briny flow.
My hopeless struggle’s stilled.

The gentle rape is soon complete,
my fading vision clouds,
as death’s eternal blackness
my mind forever shrouds.

The ocean’s bed for me is made
and in it I must lie,
in cushioned mud and sighing sand
beneath a foam splashed sky.

The groans of the abyss do touch
my sea-invaded ears
but senseless, lifeless, dead are they
and nevermore will hear.

The taste of tears may reach grey lips,
if from the shore they drift.
From where my lover cries and weeps
her love and life bereft.

She helpless watched her true love drown,
sucked into fearful deep,
and what the sea decides to take,
the sea is wont to keep.

I drifted down on shafts of sun,
my body at rest lies,
its soft arrival keenly watched
by swivelled, stalked eyes.

The marching crabs in haste do come,
all crust and clicking claws,
to feast upon my sodden flesh
with sliding, slicing jaws.

A deadpan goat-eyed octopus
sits watching from a crack,
the seething, jointed, feeding hordes
amidst the olive wrack.

My death so pointless seemed to be
an awful, tragic waste
but brings a feast to crawling things
which gorge in greedy haste.

They pick and pull and probe and chew
this fleshy human bait,
like automata skittering
as eight-armed death awaits.

It oozes forth to make its kill
a mass of living rope,
a slime and gristle nightmare
its prey without a hope.

My bloated, ragged, rotting corpse,
all breath and beauty gone,
is feeding ocean scavengers
with meat and blood and bone.

Decaying in this gurgling grave,
this burial at sea,
the drifting sands in cold green murk
will hide me by degree.

Fish with mirrored curves gleam past
through strands of writhing weed,
while a myriad twinkling starfish
glide by on silent feet.

Cold shadow, slime and loneliness
now haunt my empty eyes.
Pelagic winds round bony limbs
in quiet swirlings sigh.

I drift upon the current’s flow,
or lie beneath the sand,
an echo of a memory
of air and love and land.

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Momento Mori by Hinchcliffe and Hodgson has been inspired by the painting, “Man with Skull” by an anonymous follower of Jose de Riberra. The picture can be seen in the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield.

Monk:
I’m the anonymous brother of an austere religious order. I have shaved my head to deprive myself of my once sensuous locks. I could be a Jesuit, Carmelite, Augustinian-Recollect or even a Saint – Ignatius or John – but most importantly I have devoted my life to our Lord Jesus Christ in the belief that the Church of Rome is the one true religion.
The back of your hard, rounded head is held tightly in my hand and I’m searching in the deep hollow recesses where your eyes used to be.

Skull:
I am only a skull held tightly in your hand, Holy brother.
What you see is trickery and deception. Created with chiaroscuro. Light (Chiara) and dark (Scuro). Painterly manipulation of pigment applied sparingly and economically in parts, generous and abundantly in other areas. A clever trick! Our painter… our creator… is a good magician. He gives the flat surface depth. He makes illusions of us and we advance and recede even though we are not here.
I have seduced you, haven’t I? Fleshless, though I am, you search inside my eyeless sockets and your eyes have the appetite to devour me… don’t they!

Monk:
I come from a strictly disciplined order of the church with shared ascetic, self denying ideals; obedience to the church without question, subservience to the Almighty through the example of his son our Lord Jesus Christ and redemption through the grace of God’s gifts in our lives. We believe in poverty, simplicity and the purification of the soul.

Skull:
Your words are not authentic. They are born out of the cultural and social conditions in which you exist. Both of us together are an image of high drama. A theatrical double page advertisement for the Catholic Church, designed to bring back the unfaithful; to strengthen; to re inspire and re direct people to your “true way”, after all the dreadful damage and doubt caused by that Martin Luther Reformation and the competition!

Monk:
This is a Counter Reformation painting about the right way to live and the right way to die.

Skull:
Ah! So you agree! We are but signs and symbols. I with my fleshless stare appear to be death and you with your rude and ruddy form appear to be life, constructed with all your desires and agonies. We’re potent but not the real thing. Not like Real radio or Real Madrid or Coca Cola – It’s the real thing! What the world wants today is the real thing.

Monk:
Don’t talk to me in riddles! My light and your darkness reveal that salvation is fraught with endless difficulties and dangers. I am moving towards my salvation if I am good enough and my damnation if I am not. I am tempted to wish it could all be different. Sometimes I wish for it to be so easy. Easy pleasure… without consequence. No guilt. But then I make soft pornography with denial. I feel its soft absence. Its rouge appetite, which is not for satisfying. Denial is in the here and now. This moment And the ever after.

Skull:
Long long ago everything I was told I believed in. I have rejected all of that now and believe in my flesh. I am a diamond-encrusted skull. Young girls wearing diamante skulls as belt buckles. Glittering jaws resting on their pubic bones. I am come to life on their t-shirts, hanging from their ear lobes and spread indelibly, tattooed across the taught skin at the base of their spines. You are right holy brother. The indulgence is for the here and the now. This moment And the ever after.

Or, you can listen to all our previous podcasts.

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