Drunk Walk

8/14/2019 Drunk Walk

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Drunk Walk

The Constitution of Wrights & Sites insists that alcohol be

consumed during business meetings. (I dont think thatsstrictly true. This must be a reference to a secret

constitution.) It had been a meeting to lay out the basic

shape for making a generic Mis-Guide. On getting home I

realised I was in no fit state to go to bed and needed a

constitutional walk. At the bottom of Danes Road I paused

to decide which way to go I was thinking graph-like, with

the dip down into town and its granular uncertainties, theunappealing rise towards Stoke Hill and the hard-to-escape

self-parodic matrices of suburban roads. I recalled a

conversation with Stephen about the private road beyond

Taddyforde Gate and how Id never been down there. I set

off along the prison wall, the softness of the unfinished

castle on my other side. Wild voices in a nearby street

speeded my unsteady step. Stumbling past the Imperial and

Thornlea I approached the Gate under a dread tunnel of treeroof and ivy, mundane and grey when viewed from a car,

on foot this passage this night glowed green and slippery,

silvery fishes of light squirming about in it. The world was

beginning to liquefy, becoming part of my extended

organism. But I was having to keep a part of me sharp so I

didnt mesh with a car. Nothing coming and I ran across the

wet road and through the dried blood sandstone Gate inwhich it is said is buried the body of one of those

conservative Kingdons (Iron Sam, maybe) who gave

Clifford his middle name.


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There was a shapely noticeboard on the right: Our vandal

now entertains himself not by smashing the glass, but

stealing the notices. There are some sad people about.

This was the only notice. Not stolen yet. The sheet of woodto which it was attached rippled with dampness. A wave

passed through me. I stumbled down the incline. A turning

to the right and I thought I saw a kind of dread place

overgrown, at the end of a cold/cosy road among a ruin of

shrubs. A boat named Cho Cho San. A house called The

Chalet. I struggled through the clutching stems and slipped

in the mud, leaned against an ivy-scarred brick wall, like

the sucker-torn head of a Sperm Whale, the ground fallingvertically away 40 feet, a wire mesh fence wrapped

somewhere inside a low wall of vegetation, but I couldnt

quite see it, nor where exactly the ground gave way to

emptiness. Be careful On one side of me were the ruins

of garden furniture, a stock of maybe twenty long sticks

leant against an out-building, a snap of cast iron guttering.

Im on a cluttered platform, beyond the fence of furze thereare long stems with heads full of seeds, and 40 feet below

is the railway, the level crossing and the ends of the

platforms of St Davids Station; a burger van, doing quiet

trade, is suddenly surrounded by two vanloads of police in

yellow and black, fluorescent wasps clustering. Once

served, they stand, clumped, not changing their spatial

relationships, for maybe half an hour, as I watch unseen

the women with their hair pulled back hard. The state at

rest. A city acquiescent enough. Two trains cross a

sleeper and a freight train. I lean against the wall and the

dampness spins around, the seeds swirl, I finger the ivy

scars but I cant focus on them for very long. One copper


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breaks away to speak to three lads sitting on a metal crash

barrier they slope off towards Exwick, the police

pretending not to hear their impotent curses. I stumble on

something like a dog bowl. I can feel the vertigo kicking in.Sobering down a tube in the city. A pipette. Once stabbed

in the leg with one of those, the cul-de-sac scar. Now, Im

hovering on a wound, an escarpment, a diving board, a

telescope, hovering over the cops and burgers, their black

and yellow calmness, their policed hair. I came away.

Stumbled right. The tar macadam gave way to a crumbling

world behind two out-ofplace control barriers. Through agap in a wall the cross-section of a valley was waiting for

in-fill. I could see down a stepped earth descent to the level

crossing copworld and burgers. I went home. Past an

edifice of chimney, like a meaty gravestone. Past the

noticeboard, full of possibility. Back out under the Gate-

Corpse. Later I passed an ambiguous fence and looked

forward to crossing it another day.

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Drunk Walk