The Everlasting Light.

They were so happy – they had just got married and had moved into their new flat. Well, it wasn't a flat so much as a bedsit, but they went round proudly telling people that it was a flat because they were so pleased with themselves. The room was in an old Victorian red brick house in an extension at the back, so it was a little newer than some of the other rooms, but that didn't make it any smarter. But who cares about shabby when you have your own little world away from the control of your parents, space to be yourselves for once.

The room was on the first floor about three quarters of the way along the back corridor; the passage contained about ten doors leading to the rooms each side. They shared one bathroom and a separate toilet each of which lacked a window and ventilation. The toilet was dirty, always stank of sour, tart shit, and had a bunch of neatly cut newspaper, each sheet pierced in the corner and strung together with some old rope which hung from a pipe above the cistern. They wondered who it was that sat there and constructed this. There was a once white old brush in a plastic holder but Sallie had never dared to look in the holder or pick the brush up. The bathroom was continually grubby; it was dirtier that the person that took a bath there and it always reeked of cheap, stale bath salts and body odour.

The room was not tiny but not large either. It had one medium window overlooking the school playground next door: they could see and hear the children playing during play breaks in the school yard. The window was grubby and was framed by some distasteful gaudy curtains and one of the first things Sophie did was to measure up and get some more acceptable modern curtains to cheer the room up. There was a side unit running underneath the window that housed a small sink with hot water provided by the Heatrae Sadia gas water heater above, and a small Baby Belling Cooker with a hot plate and a small oven under it. A double bed lay against the right hand wall, and they brought along their own pillows, sheets and continental quilt and cover. No one in their families had a continental quilt, to have one was revolutionary; theirs came from the Summer Sale at Woolworth's. They were making a statement. The electric switch was a cord hanging from the ceiling; when coming into the room during darkness it was difficult to find.

There were two old comfy armchairs between which they placed the new coffee table they had bought at Waring and Gillow's. This table was of maple, very grand and not very suitable for everyday use; it also cost a lot of money but they justified the cost to themselves that it would last a long time. At that stage neither of them had a good grasp on budgeting. There was a curtained cupboard at the end of the bed for hanging clothes and a narrow shelf on the left hand wall on which lay a fire extinguisher.

“I don't want to be looking at this all the time” he laughed.

“Neither do I, you are quite right!” she replied.

The cupboard under the sink housed an electricity meter that “sold” electricity at a much higher cost than when it entered the building. It took fifty pence pieces. In disgust Tom took down the fire extinguisher and hid it in the cupboard next to the meter.

The entrance door on the back wall was opposite the window and between the bed and the wall with the shelf. The shiny carpet was old but reasonably clean, and the room had been decorated by the landlord prior to the start of their tenancy. He had painted the woodwork and ceiling, and pasted some stripy wallpaper on top of the old stripey wallpaper so the room was reasonably fresh. He had got hold of a job lot of cheap wallpaper and was in the process of papering every room in the house with it. When they had first viewed the room, a few weeks previously to moving in, he had shown them a bigger, better room which he had already decorated using this paper and it had looked quite nice, which sort of psychologically got them in a positive judging mode before they had had the shock of seeing their current room which he had intended to let to them. The shock of the difference was perceptible but they took it anyway: the rent was cheap.

The landlord was a large Irishman with a bushy beard and rough red skin. He did everything himself, gas work, plumbing, electrical work; he was not qualified in any of these trades. When he fitted a gas oven he tested that it was not leaking gas by lighting a match and passing it over the joints: he was that sort of landlord. He drove a blue three wheeled reliant robin with dodgy brakes and the name of his property company on the side. He had called the building they were to live in “Worthington House”, and had called the adjoining building which he also owned and rented out rooms from “Guinness House”. It was rumoured that he owned houses in Dublin on the wrong side of the Liffey where he also rented out rooms.

“I want to show you round so that you know everything” he said on their first tour of inspection. “This is my office, I am usually here or if I am not here I may be somewhere near”, and they nodded in understanding and union.

“If you need anything, just let me know, I will always be around. You can have a bath any time you want to and there is no charge for the hot water, and please feel free to use the newspaper in the toilet”. He then ushered them down the corridor of room doors to the end. There was a large vertical strip light.

“This is a safety light” he explained to them. “It's always on. You don't need to worry about a thing. It's on all night and all day. It will always be lighting up the hall safely for you to walk up and down the stairs. Just be reassured that I will never turn it off. It's permanent, OK?” They both nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

“The rent will be eleven pounds a week and I will be giving you a rent book that I will fill in every time you pay. I am usually found down stairs in my office or will be some where close by. Hope you like staying here.” They gave him their thanks, shook hands and entered at last their own little room, their own little kingdom.

After the wedding they moved in permanently and started their new jobs and fell quickly into the routine of married life. Sallie found where the nearest launderette was; Tom assumed that she would be doing the shopping herself and she sort of half agreed with this, but found it a little unfair. She worked just as hard as him, they both had full-time retail jobs, and had hoped that the domestic jobs would have been shared a little more. But as he pointed out, he had to work longer hours than her that included overtime, and his higher salary and the extra money from the over time he did went towards the rent and saving for the deposit on a house. And she thought this was a fair conclusion so every lunch-hour with legs aching from her having to work continually on her feet, she used to scour the supermarkets for the cheapest food she could find, plan the menus and carry all the shopping home herself from the shop she worked in to their bedsit which was about two miles away. She never used to bus as she wanted to save the money, and besides that she had no clue which bus to use anyway and had no desire to find out.

As each night she got home about thirty minutes before Tom, she always started to cook the evening meal so that it was ready for when he got home. He was pleased with this. There was always that nagging feeling in the back of her mind that this arrangement wasn't fair and that before she got married she though things would be different and that they would have done this sort of thing more together. Because of the nature of retail work they would usually have different days off in the week and just Sunday off together. On his free day in the week he would go out and shop and cook, so there was some fairness so she accepted this but felt he was doing it as a leisure hobby rather than part of an essential daily routine as she had to. He never had to trek round a shop when his feet felt painful during the lunch hour or after work, or carry home heavy shopping bags when it felt like his arms were dropping off. But OK she thought, he was right, he earned more and the money was useful.

Another thing that niggled her was that he was spending quite a lot of money on his driving lessons. She had proposed to take them too, and he had told her, no, we need to save the money for our house deposit; and that seemed quite unfair too. Perhaps this was the way married life was supposed to be and she had chosen to enter this relationship, it hadn't been forced on her. She imagined her mother saying to her “You made your bed so you lie in it!”; and she could have never accepted the comments she predicted would be made if she had left him of “I knew it would never last, they are far too young to get married”, and then there was the matter of her giving up her skilled office job........ and taking the shop job instead........her loss of her leisure freedom......the doubts grew and grew. But she buried them deep in the back of her mind. This was a new start and a new life; and it would take time to grow into.

After a month or so the Christmas rush started and the retail world was very busy. Sallie discovered that she didn't like change and it felt like she was standing, shattered, on the edge of a cliff and couldn't decide which way to fall. Things became very black and she doubted very much whether she had done the right thing in getting married. She didn't like the room, the lack of a career or the seemingly dead end job she was in. But she kept these dark thoughts to herself and carried on with the daily routine and looked forward to Christmas. She thought about how Tom might be feeling but he seemed happy enough, was in a better career and earned more money.

One night she entered the main door of the house and climbed the stairs to find the upper hall completely black and cold. She sensed the walk down the hall from having done it so many times before and blindly searched for the lock to put the key in to let herself into the room, and felt for the light cord. It hung from the ceiling in an odd place and wasn't easy to find. As she was floundering around with her arms Tom came in behind her and started to laugh at her.

“You look so funny doing that!” he exclaimed, laughing at her, and it hurt because she was just doing her best. Her chagrin was hurt, she was doing this because of him. By luck her hand engaged with the cord and the light went on.

“I was just trying to find my way round in the dark” she responded, “Its so black in here at the moment. Do you remember the everlasting light? The one that is eternal, that never goes off? The one that will exist throughout the history of humanity? The Earth's core may crack open, the World may fall apart, the seas dry up, the volcanoes all erupt at once, the world's population die from plague and famine: but you will be sure, you can depend on it that the light in the hall will never go off; it will always burn to light your way along the hall?”

“Yes”, he said “I remember”. She fell into the armchair and started laughing so very loudly.

“It's been turned off”.

Amsterdam

De Tweede Kamer which translates as the Second Chamber is officially called the House of Representatives and is the lower house of the States General, the providers of law in the Netherlands. The higher house is the Senate which is called the Eerste Kamer (First Chamber) which controls that new laws are in agreement with other laws and European regulations. These two Chambers form The States General and are situated in The Hague.

The Tweede Kamer consists of one hundred and fifty seats which are filled by national elections run on a proportional representation basis. The seventy-five seats of the Senate are decided by the members of the twelve Provincial States and the three Carribean States of the Dutch Antilles.

The Tweede Kamer is also a cannabis coffee shop situated in Heisteeg in the middle of Amsterdam near Dam Square and the Singelgracht. I was on holiday and found myself standing outside this coffeeshop: I really did fancy going in and try some hash as this was so different to what I was used to because of living in England with it's restrictive laws on cannabis use. I couldn't smoke cigarettes. When I was a young teenager I tried to smoke to show off and look interesting to my friends, but when I did, I ended up choking, spluttering with a red face and looking ridiculous, so smoking cannabis was out of the question. So what to do? I wanted to be daring.

I became very courageous and walked through the door to the counter and explained my problem to the very nice, tall and blonde man standing behind the counter. He looked puzzled for a fraction of a second at me and then invited me to take a seat at the counter. He then placed a plain white ceramic tile in front of me and from a tin on a shelf behind the counter took out a small lump of something and weighed it. He nodded when he saw the reading on the scales. He then put the lump of something on the tile in front of me. It looked like camel dung; it was greeny brown, moist, crumbly and with a very fresh vegetable smell. He told me to take out my credit card (how much is this going to cost me? I thought to myself), then he used the card to cut into the lump, making very small pieces on the tile. He gave me the card so I could carry on doing it myself, and told me to break it up into almost a powder.

I carried on for about ten minutes while he toked on his joint and went off to do other things. He came back, nodded in satisfaction at the little pile I had made of the camel dung and got a box of ready made chocolate drink out of his his fridge with the words “Chocomel” all over it. He poured the brown contents into a mug and heated it from the coffee machine. He sprinkled the camel dung dust into the brown drink and stirred it vigorously and told me to sip it slowly. It tasted of chocolate with a green aroma. While I did this he took a few more tokes from his joint and explained that he didn't like to ingest hash as he then had no control over it, when smoking he could take a few puffs and then stop when he got a little high. When eating the stuff it was too easy to take a lot all in one go and it went down into the belly and there was no going back. I nodded in agreement: I had no idea of what I was doing. He charged me seven euros.

I took the mug of chocolate and sat at a side table where a woman was sitting.

“Do you mind me sitting here?”

“ No not all your company would be great!”

She was Dutch and could speak English perfectly with a charming accent and it wasn't as I expected. She had a huge fat trumpet on the go. Her voice was a little deep and she was quite tall and thin and then I realised that she may have changed gender. She looked at my chocolate, smelt it and exclaimed in an loud and amazed voice Hot Chocolate! How decadent, divine and bohemian! How wicked! We hit it off immediately. We shared life stories and declared life long love for each other and she was absolutely amazing. It hadn't been easy for her, she had been through so much to declare her true gender to the world and I was very impressed. She got to learn all about my troubles and why I had ended up on holiday and alone in Amsterdam.

By now the hash was starting to hit me. My mouth became very dry and I started to float. My thoughts became ethereal and slow. I wondered about the nature of the Universe and why did life exist, and where was I going and why I was going there. My eyes saw the people outside gliding slowly along the cobblestones and my companion was a beautiful extension of my own thoughts. She smiled at me and our conversation became slow and deep. I looked out at the pavement, wondering who all these people were and why they were all these people and not some other people, and where they were going and why there were going there anyway and would they ever get back? I could hear voices coming from distance spaces echoing in the room, flying round it and leaving from where they entered and I couldn't hear what they were saying. The laughter was angelic and came from heaven.

We spent a pleasant hour together slowing down and taking stock of everything, of trying to find our own direction and I became very spaced out; and very hungry. I said I was hungry and she said she knew what to do. We got up and she lead me out of the bar, along the pavements and through some alleys. It was like walking on pink marshmallow, walking very slowly almost floating on rosebuds, on feather quilts, and seeing all the people hanging in stasis on invisible stilts.

She lead me to a herring stall, stood me against a wall and handed me a dish containing a roll with slices of raw herring with chopped up mild raw onion, and it tasted delicious. It was the best food in the world. I was ravenously hungry so I had another helping. I could have eaten it all afternoon. Then I got worried about how I was going to float back to my rented room. I knew where the tram stop was and I had a weekly tram pass, but it's no joke walking over Dam Square and getting up the steps of the tram when you are high. She was so good. I had to get Tram Number Four to Fredericksplein and then walk back to Utrechtsestraat and turn off at Utrechtsedwarstraat and she went with me all the way to make sure I got safely back to my room. She was my angel and I didn't even know her name. I still wonder who she was and if I would recognise her again.

It wouldn't be the same without the onions.

Bruges

The holiday had been planned for a long time and now they were actually going. The children had been sent to a willing relative and they were actually making the journey by train from London to Bruges via Folkestone and Ostend. Their pockets were filled with Belgian francs and it was very exciting. The hotel they booked was not far from the main Market Square and they found it easily from the map and information that the travel agent supplied.

The Hotel was very impressive with steps flanked by balustrades, leading up to a grand entrance hall where large brass lamps hung from the ceiling and old paintings hung from the walls. This lead into a relaxing and individually decorated dining room which looked into the inner garden full of beautiful and unusual plants, which could be admired from the several sets of strategically placed benches. The bedroom was large and aesthetically decorated, and the attached bathroom was luxurious; everything was so perfect.

He had prepared for the trip by collecting detailed information on the styles of Belgian beer and the best bars to try them. He had carefully plotted these bars on a map and traced out walks to see the tourist attractions which took in the bars on the way. The possibilities were endless as Bruges is full of beautiful places to visit and also countless bars selling wonderful beer. He was determined to visit as many bars as possible and to try as many beers as he could.

After breakfast the next day they were in the first bar of the day. The beer came with a side dish of radishes which was a novelty. Ha ha! Then came a walk round the Halve Maan Brewery and after the tour there was a glass of Straffe Hendrick poured out and waiting for them in the bar. There was a little bowl of peanuts as well. After this they walked along the river to look at a building where nuns lived, then he got out his beer map and they were off again to find another bar which sold a tripel so good that it must not be missed. This bar had a sign in English saying only three beers per customer. I wonder what caused that, she laughed to herself. After this beer he said that there was a bar down the street selling another beer that they had to try, so OK she thought, we are only here the once. This was followed by another bar selling excellent lambic, and then another selling geuze.

It was late afternoon and she had had enough. They had not eaten anything as he didn't want to waste money on an expensive cafe. She was hungry. Her head told her to stop drinking: she had had enough, but he wanted to go to yet another bar so she sat in this one with a cola while he carried on. He finally left. They stood in a square somewhere, she didn't know where, and it was all becoming too much. A woman walked by, tall and slim wearing continental clothes and he couldn't help himself, he just ogled her. Then he told his wife that Belgian women looked beautiful, slim, well dressed, feminine and that she should look like that too.

His wife wasn't very tall, had had three children and could never or want to compete with this Belgian picture of perfect femininity that was walking by. She became very hurt and confused so blanked out her husband's comment. He then looked at her and said that it was always him that had to arrange things to do, trips, itineraries, organising tickets, why couldn't she organise things sometimes? They sat down on a bench. Why was she so useless? Why didn't she look like a Belgian woman? His eyes were turning blank and black. She was becoming very nervous. I can't help the way I am, this is me. I've always put you first and done what you asked. The beer kicked in to control their argument which became bitter about the past.

She stood up to distance herself from him but he stood up next to her and suddenly punched her side on in the stomach. The strong, painful blow sent her reeling over onto the pavement; this had come as a shock and she was down on the floor hoping that no one else had seen. They probably had, but people kept out of domestic tiffs. She steadied herself on all fours, stood up and limped back to the bench and sat there stunned. Her knee had been damaged from the fall and was hurting. She was used to this, it had happened before. He sat beside her and looked at her in disgust; there was no apology, there never was. Then she hit him back by telling him that she had many chances in the past for a career but he was always there stopping her, not supporting her. The arguments escalated into their usual rhythm and routine. This had all been done before.

By early evening they were lying on the hotel bed, each with their own private thoughts.

The same old record stuck in the same old groove.

Sleep it off Lady.