I turned eight on holiday in Norway. We stayed in a wooden cabin a short walk from the forest and a large lake. It seemed like every lake in Norway had a rowboat on the shore. I struggled to push this boat out into the water. I would spend all day on the water. I made a fishing rod from a stick and a shoelace. Worms were nowhere to be found and the fish did not like blueberries which were everywhere. Twice when I was sat on the boat in the middle of the lake a noise made me look to the shore and I saw the same big black wolf. It drank from the water then looked up at me as I sat on my boat in my straw hat. It winked at me, a big wink I could see from far away and then turned and walked off. No one believed that a wolf had said hello to me. “Really Bruce, wolves just don’t say hello to strangers in a nice way and I’m not even sure wolves can wink.” said Mother. When we drove away from the cabin and the forest I saw a big truck parked by the track. It had a black carpet on the bonnet. I pressed my nose to the window. A tall bearded man stood by the truck tying the paws together. He was smiling when he looked up at me and winked.
The passage of each day is bringing me closer to forming a terrorist group of my own.
When I was but a wee young stripling of a lad I remember continually arguing with my parents after one occasion when I made the fatal mistake of being honest with them. I had just smoked my first few spliffs down the bottom of the garden and foolishly, and perhaps because I was freshly stoned, I presumed that Mum and Dad would understand my curiosity and would leave me to it. I mean, the authors I was so enamoured with at that time were all prescribing healthy doses of all sorts of pharmaceuticals; Huxley liked his mescaline, Kesey his LSD-25 and Burroughs his smack, to name but a few; and I thought that the rents would take my mild investigations into these matters with a nurturing pat on the back. This was not the case.
Hence followed two years of them shouting at me that I needed counselling and me replying in shrieks that it was them who needed help to deal with the reality that,"everyb...
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