(Beginning) In the beginning there were two Atoms that should have
been drawn to each other by the very fact that there actually was
nothing else.
Chapter 1: The Path
The air was fresh and clear and the sky seemed supra-luminescent,
pouring determined beams of light down from an even more determined
sun, into the darkest recesses of every part of the wood that ran
along the side of the road. The relentless hum of speeding traffic did
nothing to deter the joggers, walkers, cyclists and that little Old
Boy on his mobility scooter, from making the best possible use of the
new running track that would take them up to the very top of the road,
to that poignantly sad place over the busy A27, only to be cut short,
mid-stride, and forced by traffic to turn and return thwarted, back
down the hill. It was clear that every one of the track’s
participants had a script running in their head, that they were
scrolling through in preparation for their day, processing and
planning or justifying their next step out into the world, all in
preparation for something, whatever was coming next. I can see those
thoughts as I pass through. That felt heavy; that felt light; that
kind of buzzed as I passed through. The vibration of life was what
really hit the spot and kept up the determined search for the next
opportunity to engage with someone or something, which frankly was
never more than a nanosecond away. Coming up behind that redhead,
with the amazingly fluid stride and diving into the fragrance of her
hair, which always sent a scintillating pheromone out that drove the
opposite sex wild, was something to be savoured. The Crow man was of
interest too, the way he remained oblivious to anyone or anything
other than the crows that he’d come out to feed and commune with, like
old friends reincarnated. If someone called his name and said a
friendly “hello”, there’d be engagement momentarily and a smile, but
nothing to take him away from his clear objective. The lack of flesh
on his poor old bones, under those ungainly but somewhat dapper
charity shop clothes, was a stark contrast to the red-head who’d just
passed him on the track in her shiny and thinly stretched Lycra. It’s
7am. What a delightful view from up here, on such a sunny morning. To
the right, the Golf course, with it’s rolling greens that seemingly
touch the brilliant blue sky from this low point on the undulating
path and to the left the glit erati of cars in the car park of the
industrial estate. Cars like jewels in the sun, shining sufficiently
to indicate their internal capacity for burning up energy, showing
their potential for it as a far-off twinkle. No doubting your impact,
my little metal friends. Moving along The Path, it’s too easy to be
distracted and attention is drawn to the tiding of 12 Magpies cartoon
bouncing about on the newly mown meadow grass to the left, just after
the wood comes to an end and attention then quickly drawn to the
right, as a gaggle of golfers wander over the perfectly manicured
curve of grass, cutting out the sunlight one by one like an
oscilloscope, with dizzying effect. Their movement rendered into
slow-motion by the flashing of dark and light, dark and light, dark
and light in starkest contrast, at least until the sun reaches
sufficient sky-height for it to stop. Here he is again, the beautiful
boy from northern Portugal, who knows that there are better places
than this to live his life, he’s tasted love and seen the beauty that
has to be seen, to bring himself truly to life and experienced hunger
and despair that rendered everything all the more poignantly
magnificent, because of the absolute contrast. Existential moments
made all the more vivid by hormones and idealism. He runs here every
day, wishing that he could keep on going, never looking back until he
reaches paradise on earth. Passing through, his yearning is very real
and the energetic motivation that is building in his every fibre is
tangible and will take him very far away, very soon, but for now, for
today, he is building tone and muscle for the journey that he’s
planning in his heart. He is strong and almost ready for the long
journey ahead. The Eco-terrorists and their Eco-dog ‘E’, who haunt
the woods, believing themselves invisible. Maybe in their own heads,
but I know what they’re planning. Nothing anyone else does will ever
be good enough for them. They think that they’re here to save The
Earth, but what they have overlooked is that The Earth doesn’t need
saving…it’s the people and the plants, the bees and the beasts that
need saving. The planet will just shrug them all off and get on with
the business of dashing across the Universe in search of tomorrow.
They seem to like disliking what others do in their endeavours to do
their bit for this small community and take pleasure in their imagined
invisibility, as they creep through the darker recesses of the wood,
undoing the good work and laughing like ungrateful Goblins on their
way home. Sometimes they walk The Path too, but only when they believe
themselves alone, as they cannot bear to share. They wait ’til dusk or
come out at dawn, hoping to keep up the myth that some unknown force
is dismantling the bee hotels that were lovingly constructed at the
bases of trees, chucking broken bricks about all over the carefully
cleared pathway that wriggles through the wood at the side of The
Path. Out again, Tall Girl, who gets taller every time she runs The
Path, because she runs every day and has decided not to nourish
herself sufficiently, so her bodily proportions are changing back to
those that she cherished as a much younger tall girl. The fat years
are behind her now and the steely determination that is tangible when
I pass through, will never leave. Thin is in. From the industrial
estate, comes a line of three, men all and focused on the end result
of being the best, better than the rest back at base and unstoppable
as they jog, jog, jog, turn the corner once, jog, jog, jog and turn
the corner twice in perfect formation, until they hit The Path and
crunching in unison on the grit, they keep up a pace that others
cannot match. One is struggling, that much is obvious as I pass
through, but he hides it well. The others will never notice, so long
as he can keep up the façade. He will keep it up because he is a real
man, not a wimp. Passing through, picking up the tension in all three,
something is about to break in their world, something that is coming
their way whether they like it or not and they somehow know that it’s
coming because they’ve been assigned a difficult duty that will test
their strength of character as much as their bodies. They are a team,
a team of three and they will stick together through thick and thin.
They will win. A distant spec is advancing, a lone jogger with
uncertain gait, he’s new to this game. Pale Physics Student, defying
convention, escaping the lab, escaping the lecture theatre and jogging
The Path, headphones in. This boy’s going somewhere and though jogging
is not his thing, his focus is clear, he wants to win the main prize.
Diving in to get a whiff of the music that a physics student might
listen to in order to relax and get away from his studies,
unexpectedly it’s not music, it’s…French “ à trois heures de
l’après-midi”, and to be an apprentice at Cern, Switzerland his
ambition. Clever boy. He’ll be jogging The Path a lot this year, his
final year, as he learns both French and German with a hunger that
will not let him down. The sun is starting to rise in the sky, leaving
behind the oscillating long shadows on the grass, that fade to nothing
as it rises further still in the sky, ready to mildly bake the users
of The Path in the autumn sun, accompanied by the relentless dull,
rattly, rhythm of the passing trucks and cars.
Chapter 2: Damp Squib
Same path, always the same path. Next day and the previous clarity
that intense sunshine brings, is gone. There is drizzly and persistent
rain. It is forming itself into waves, as if upon the shore they land,
as the gusty winds blow in from the West. The few that have braved The
Path this morning come huddled under hoods against the driving
dampness, determined not to scupper their regime, keeping an eye on
the prize: the perfect beach body for Sharm el Sheikh this Christmas,
not a repeat of the flabby spread that had shamed her two years
before; Remembering his fluffy companion whom he’d walked every day,
come rain or shine and in whose honour he’d kept up the tradition;
The promise that they’d made themselves last New Year, big sister’s
words still ringing in her ears that “you don’t have what it takes to
finish anything you’ve ever started, I’ll give it three months”, but
she’d gone three months and more, she’d done 10 months and was into
the eleventh and intended to go the whole 12, all the way to New
Year’s Eve. The energetic misery of these determined folk, like grit
in an oyster, is tangible and growing. Nothing will stop them I
determine, as I pass through. Others wish that they were on The Path
this morning, but are less determined, less driven by some inner
misery and rather better motivated by the joy that they feel stepping
out under clear blue skies, fair-weather path-dwellers, driven by more
optimistic thoughts, yet fragile in their own ways. The wetness thins
as the wind changes its energy from gusty to gentle and the raising of
the temperature by just a degree or two brings a lightness to the
wind, that separates out the larger drops into a gentle smur. Hope
hangs in this gentle dampness and other users of The Path prepare to
step out. It is a busy day of preparation. It’s difficult to miss the
constant shuffle of people and endless bits of old wood of all shapes
and sizes, being dragged hither and thither into two cairn-sized piles
in the middle of the meadow. The piles increase throughout the day as
locals gratefully bring out their dead for incineration. Broken
furniture and garden choppings and clippings that have dried
sufficiently to add fuel to the fires planned for later tonight. As I
pass through I know that the man in the old Barbour jacket is
smuggling in newly cut damp wood that he’s been paid to chop and take
away, in the hope that he can get rid of it for free. Getting it into
the pile as early as possible in the day of gathering the wood, for it
to be buried deep enough down so that nobody will notice its green
pallor before the match is struck. He thinks the rules don’t apply to
him. The smur thins and the day dries up, but a low fog lingers in
pockets on the golf course and in the lowest edge of the meadow. Who’s
this on the edge of the wood? Lingering like the remaining mists, as
the day’s light begins to fade, camera in hand, seemingly looking for
something where there is nothing of note. Looking through a lens, to
both see and capture the unseen. Watch out Eco-warriors, she’ll catch
up with you and reveal your under-cover antics, you’ll be captured
forever in her discontinued Canon PowerShot A650 IS12 mega pixel
digital…but actually they are not her intended subject, which I learn
now as I pass on through to find out why she’s here. This ritual has
happened before, in fact every year that I have witnessed and many
more that I have not. Fire is seemingly essential in these countries
of the northern hemisphere, where the cold and damp of the autumn and
winter gets deep into the joints and bones and lingers in them long
into the spring. The pyres are built, like so many others across the
country in every County; on village greens and in many private gardens
as well. There will be trouble everywhere tonight, there is tension
now, there will be a colossal wastage of fuel and an expenditure of
much energy, as nature and man and the alchemical collide, going up in
a blaze of glory, girded round by the illusory safety of woolly hats,
gloves, hot dogs, baked potatoes and chilli. The very prospect of it
all is thrilling, resonating within me and raising my internal
vibration to new and dizzying heights, but why I feel this excited is
not yet clear. But it does have the ring of destiny about it. As the
first fire is lit something starts to happen, which I witness as I
pass through. There is a buzz of excitement at all bonfire sites
across the country, an air of anticipation. Wherever the gathering,
the same thing is happening. People shuffling further forwards, or
further back, depending on how safe or unsafe they feel and some
irrational flurries of bravado run through the crowds. There is some
pushing and a general jostling for position. Pale Physics student is
here and as I pass through, I instantly know that Carbon dioxide
emissions stem from the burning of fossil fuels. It’s also produced
during the consumption of solid, liquid, and gas fuels. There will be
extra carbon emissions tonight. Maybe bonfire night is to blame for
global warming? He muses. This student has a head full of questions
and amusing facts, so I pass through again to see what else I can pick
up. You never can tell what you might find lurking in the darkest
recesses of a mind, until you plunder its depths. Fossil fuels, I
learn, are formed by natural processes such as the anaerobic
decomposition of buried dead organisms. The age of the organisms and
their resulting fossil fuel is typically millions of years and
sometimes exceeds 650 million years. They contain high percentages of
carbon and include coal, petroleum and natural gas. Other more
commonly used derivatives of fossil fuels include kerosene and
propane. There is kerosene here tonight, he’s seen the can and already
decided to move away from it, far, far away from it! Although fossil
fuels are continually being formed via natural processes, they are
generally considered to be non-renewable resources because they take
millions of years to form and the known viable reserves are being
depleted much faster than new ones are being made. I know this already
as I’ve been in the ether since the dawn of time. I have witnessed the
ravaging of resources in a rather dispassionate and unconnected
manner, but something about entering this young, energetic mind is
bringing the visions all flooding back and I have a twinge of
conscience and something else that I cannot quite put into place.
Back on through one more time I pick up on the last threads of his
thinking in this vein tonight. The use of fossil fuels raises serious
environmental concerns. Pale Physics student is momentarily concerned.
The burning of fossil fuels produces around 21.3 billion tonnes of
carbon dioxide per year, but it is estimated that natural processes
can only absorb about half of that amount. It is one of the greenhouse
gases that contributes to global warming, causing the average surface
temperature of the Earth to rise in response, which the vast majority
of climate scientists agree will cause major adverse effects. Major
adverse effects. Well, that’s nothing new. From what I have witnessed,
that’s par for the course with this lot, but somehow, passing through
has filled me with an ambivalence combining both interest and anxiety,
which is a new experience for me. I know that in reality I’ve picked
up on the energy of Pale Physics students’ own concerns. He’s still
young and although so very certain about some things, is also
genuinely frightened that he doesn’t really know so very much at all,
given the increasing enormity of the bigger picture. I leave him to
his anxiety. Men are in charge tonight, they gather at the side of
The Path, as if to protect the passing cars from what they are about
to do, like the Gunpowder plotters but rather more visible, creating a
human shield to deter the speeding passers-by from viewing the planned
evenings entertainment. They cluster and in whispers, discuss the
finer details of how best to get these fires started, as though their
audience have no clue of what is to come. I pass through and know that
Man 1 is in charge of the matches, Man 2 the fuel, Man 3 and 4 are to
herd the masses and keep them safe, while Man 5, 6, & 7 must block
access from The Path, since all of 'The Invited' live below The Path
at the side of the meadow and would therefore come in from below the
meadow side. Their other concern is to do with another team of Men,
who are in charge of the bombs. If this is the A-team, then they most
definitely are the B for bomb team! In the Police HQ and detention
centre, on the edge of the Industrial estate, a line of three entirely
Other Men sit waiting, on ready alert, a special SWAT team whose role
it is to respond as quickly as possible to the expected emergencies of
the evening. They all love and hate tonight in equal measure. I pass
through and can feel the vibration created by the latent adrenalin
already pumping through their blood. They have trained together and
are ready for 'anything'. Past experience tells them that tempers run
high on a night such as this. When men have little or no regular
opportunity to set fire to things and let off bombs in their normal
lives, they can easily get carried away and go off prematurely. They
can be frustrated even further when they find that touch papers are
dampened so that nothing goes quite to plan. The male ego is a fragile
thing and pranksters emerge when you least expect them. The B-team
have made excellent preparations, they are mostly ex-army themselves
and though civilians now, the sort of blokes you can trust. They
understand the need for accuracy, safety and communication. As I pass
through, I can tell that they all know their jobs and what has to be
done, by whom and when…all except one, whose always been a bit of a
maverick and never could do as he was told, not even as a boy. As a
man he should know better, but in truth he believes that he does know
better, better than them all and has already decided what in actual
fact he’ll be doing tonight, which bears little resemblance to their
supposedly shared vision. He is the weakest link. The B-team have
placed the explosives at the farthest end of the meadow, away from the
bonfires and in the widest part where the crowd will not go and as far
as they can tell, the wind is blowing away from the road and should
continue to do so for the rest of the evening. So long as they stick
to the plan, nothing will go wrong. But Maverick Man is on the loose
and he’s already half-inched some kerosene, with a cunning plan to
create a ring of fire atop the golf course to get their attention and
from whence he will be setting off some rather impressive bombs of his
own.
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