Things get sticky

It’s becoming a matter of urgency. To answer the question: is there such a thing as objective reality, or do I spin my own reality, my own world, each day, like the spider spins its web? You may think that is an easy question to answer; it isn’t. It has occupied the minds of philosophers over the ages.

Amanda has broken her silence. At 10am this morning, I was escorted to her office by Bernie.
‘George, these journals…’ she had a couple of them on the desk in front of her and as she spoke she sort of pushed at them with the backs of her long fingers – as if trying to brush away something contaminated. ‘I think we need to talk about them.’
‘Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?’
She waved me, tiredly to the chair opposite. She was looking paler than ever, and the circles under her eyes were tinged with violet. The colour of a fading bruise. God she is so beautiful.
‘Well, I am a captive audience – the operative word being ‘captive’.
She sighed and reached for a cigarette.
‘Have you read what it says on the packet?’ I intoned, in my most solemn voice. In answer, she blew smoke across the desk, and I made an elaborate show of wafting it away.
‘George, this stuff you write in here – it’s pure fantasy, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean’
‘I think you do’ She opened the topmost journal, seemingly at random. It was strange to be looking at my upside down writing. I could see from the particular handwriting style I had employed that it was recent. My handwriting styles are as many and varied as my moods. This was in italic script. Only last week I purchased a ‘calligraphy’ fibre tip pen in an attempt at some sort of standardisation.
‘Just let me read this to you, she continued, dropping ash onto my beautiful italic letters.
‘Haven’t you got an astray?’ I asked, as sarcastically as possible.
She lifted my journal and blew a small cloud of ash and smoke in my direction. Putting it back down, she began to read.

PERCY THE PAEDOPHILE

We give him a wide berth. Well we don’t want to be tainted ‘by association’ do we! We’re not nasty to him. After all he is a human being – we just ignore him. Yesterday he offered me his copy of ‘The Times’ after he had read it. I said ‘No thank you’. I mean, I don’t suppose you can catch anything off a newspaper, but I was taking no chances.
Anyway, he shouldn’t have been put in here – along with normal folk. He’s supposed to be in for ‘assessment’, but the truth is they don’t know what to do with him. By ‘they’ I mean officialdom: the police, the courts, social services - not since his house was torched by the neighbours, in an act of community solidarity. Actually they got the wrong house on the first go – same street, wrong number - but a bunch of crack-heads were living there so you could say they killed two birds with one stone – or one can of petrol.
Old Percy doesn’t look like a paedophile – I mean his eyes are not close together, and he doesn’t smell. In fact he looks so ordinary. But that’s the thing isn’t it – that’s how they get away with it: by looking ordinary.
Clive wanted to get up a petition to present to Freddie, but I pointed out that it would not look very official, written in coloured crayon. He went away in a sulk. But he came back in a few minutes with this:

“Stand up and keep your childishness,
Read all the pedants’ screeds and strictures,
But don’t believe in anything
That can’t be told in coloured pictures.”

I heartily agree with you, Clive (and G K Chesterton). Ok. A petition it is.

I don’t actually know what he did – Percy, I mean – not Clive. But I guess it must have been something pretty disgusting. What with terrorists, Al Quaeda (have I spelled it right?), illegal immigrants and bird flu, this is a petty dangerous society we live in.
Probably here is the safest place to be.


Amanda closed the journal, stubbed out her cigarette and looked at me. ‘Percy… Clive… they don’t exist, do they?’
I held her gaze. ‘And what about you, Amanda? Do YOU exist?’