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You can find my climate posts under this index: https://cliscep.com/author/jitthacker/

I sometimes write about the process of writing at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8012377.J_I_Thacker

Perhaps I could echo those posts here, but I don't think anyone will see them. If you are reading this, congratulations on finding your way here. Your dedication will not go unrewarded.

The Kid Borrows A Book

 This short story took the prize at the 2017 Lowestoft Literary Festival. The prize was a £15 book token, which I spent on some poetry by one of the speakers (George Szirtes, an all-around nice guy). The challenge was to write a story about "The Best of Lowestoft". Well, perhaps there was a tad of sycophancy involved (the festival took place at the Library) but everything here is true. It's been shortened to fit the word limit.

==

The kid stood for a time on a rotten jetty and stared down at the ruin of a sunken boat. The boat, and the jetty, and the grey mud, the herring gull watching him haughtily from the end of the jetty where only a fool would walk... all these things made the kid feel alone, an insignificant speck, the last comprehending being in the world. Even the hammering in a nearby boatyard might have been the death throes of an abandoned machine.

Beyond the boatyards was the bridge over the railway. The kid stopped half-way across, adjusted his spectacles (there was tape on one of the arms: a dreamer, he had walked into a lamp post), and sat down facing the west with his legs dangling over the side. When he played this game with mates they would stand on the bridge watching out for an oncoming train: then all would sit down, dangling their legs over the edge. Their feet were probably well clear of the hurtling machine – but it always felt as if the yellow-painted train roof was grazing his heels as he screamed inwardly but not aloud, never aloud.

The kid loved the turquoise and yellow of the trains. He loved the guard, and the massive sliding door that stayed open on the hottest days, the scenery flashing past, three shades brighter than when seen through the grimy old train windows. He had once tried to jump from the guard's van when he and Stoppy had missed their station. But the guard grabbed their scruffs and held them until the train was going so fast that the leap looked suicidal.

He waited on the bridge for ten minutes and eventually gave up. He didn't know what times the trains were supposed to pass, and anyway he didn't have a watch. So he moved on, down the steps on the other side of the line.

Now the path went close to the Ham, a small area of swamp with a tiny island at its heart. Thinking of it gave the kid a shiver even on this warm June day.

He remembered wading out to the island the previous summer. In his mind's eye he saw his shoes, and his mates' shoes, all lined up neatly as if they were about to do gym class at school. The water was shallow and warm, a thin oily layer above a much thicker seam of gelatinous, stinking black mud. Sulphurous bubbles rose as they walked. The kid's chief terror was of pike nibbling his toes. He had seen pike four feet long washed up in the marshes, and in the stirred-up mud they could not have seen such a monster stalking them. Now, a year older and wiser, he understood that his principal fear should have been of stepping on broken glass from beer bottles casually tossed into the water.

The care with which they placed their soft, pale feet!

And then the island itself, a narrow strip of scrubby land with a single near-choked path leading to a single tiny clearing –

And in the clearing, the incongruous sight of an old wing-backed armchair.

And even more incongruous, the man who called out to the three kids: “Well, what do we have here?”

The contrast between the way they crossed the swamp going out and coming back could not have been greater. Their flight was headlong; they splashed and gasped and screamed and did not halt until, back on the shore, they looked back and saw that the man was not following.

They walked up past the tennis courts, carrying their shoes, looking back suspiciously and wishing that they could afford an ice cream. The man was a child molester, that much the three boys agreed upon. His greeting to them became their catchphrase, just for the kid, Jonesy and Howie: “Well, what do we have here?” could crack them all up whenever it was said, leaving other boys bemused at their hilarity, which only added to it.

Once past the Ham, he was into the town's outskirts and onto Denmark Road, which as everyone knew did not lead to Denmark. There were disused railway buildings on his right and ranks of terraced houses on his left. Rising above the terraces was Lowestoft's only tower block, St Peter's, where the kid and his mates occasionally went to ride the elevator when they could think of nothing better to do. His mates thought of the kid as the brains of the gang: he was not athletic, nor strong, nor decisive, but a weedy short-sighted asthmatic.

The kid turned up Clapham Road. On his left was the Social, where you could turn up and take a ticket to be spoken to from behind what looked like bulletproof glass. There was another DSS building ahead, on the right, one where you couldn't just walk in. The kid had been there a few times for appointments with his social worker, Geoff, who sometimes took him to a playpark for some man talk. He remembered walking into the children's department, to be greeted like a returning hero, by what felt like the entire department.

Beyond the second DSS building was Gordon Road and the bus station, and further along a bakery that sold the most exquisite slabs of cake, brick-like things of an unknown brown substance, sweet and delicious – topped by pink icing and bottomed by a layer of pastry.

But today the kid and his 50p were headed not to the bakery but to the library. The library was the building before the DSS. He'd been in there a few times before with mates. They raced each other, some going up in the lift, others sprinting up the stairs. The stair-runners always won, and one or more librarians sooner or later darted out to shout them from the building.

The kid ran up the few steps to the front doors, trying to look more confident than he felt. He was here to join the library.

The tiny middle school library was full of Enid Blyton, a smattering of Willard Price and a handful of Doctor Whos that he'd already read. He read a lot, an awful lot. He had read everything on the small bookshelf of his foster parents, even adult books like Jaws and Ice Station Zebra. Once when laid up with tonsilitis he had read a dictionary from aardvark to zygote. There was a school book club: the kid had saved up for a copy of Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster, but it had cost him a quid. His incessant requests for more books to borrow had led the school librarian to suggest that he try the central library. And so here he was.

The children's library was at the back. He crept past the adult library, assuming that children were banned from the mysterious collection within.

There was only one person within: a librarian, a woman with dark brown hair and a black crocheted top through which another layer of clothes could be seen.

The kid crept towards her over the thin carpet. The door swung shut behind him.

The librarian smiled at him, either trying to reassure him or finding something amusing about his diffident approach.

“Are you here to join the library?” she asked, and smiled again.

The kid listened carefully to his instructions. He was allowed to borrow up to six books for up to three weeks. He must be careful not to lose his library card because there was a fee for a replacement.

The librarian established his interest in science fiction and pointed him towards the shelves where such books were to be found. The kid's jaw dropped: there were hundreds of them. There were books by Clifford D Simak, Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton, Isaac Azimov, Arthur C Clarke, Ray Bradbury and P K Dick. Best of all there were what looked like a hundred Doctor Whos.

The kid chose carefully: Doctor Who and the Ark in Space by Ian Marter. He had never read a Doctor Who by Ian Marter: most seemed to be by Terrence Dicks.

He approached the counter nervously, his hot fifty-pence piece in one hand, his book in the other.

“You can borrow up to six,” the librarian said, seeing him coming.

I know, the kid thought, but...

The librarian opened the book and (with a glorious thudding sound) stamped the card within, which she transferred to a metal filing cabinet behind her. Then she stamped the book and pushed it back across the counter to him: 12 JUL 1981.

The librarian saw him fiddling with his 50p, and said: “There's no charge, if that's what you're thinking. It's free. Unless you return it late.”

The kid, trying to breathe normally, said: “I might borrow a few more.” He put the 50p back in his pocket and returned to the shelves.

The librarian smiled.

Denierland Data

 Spreadsheet is here.

Goldsmith Street: an Environmental Beacon of Hope?

Yesterday came the news that a social housing development in Norwich had won the prestigious RIBA Stirling prize. Goldsmith Street is a mix of 105 dwellings from 1-bed flats to 4-bed flats built to the iconic “Passivhaus” standard.

 The BBC website described it thus:

Riba said the estate's environmental credentials made it a "beacon of hope" and highly unusual for a mass housing development.

However, there is more to “environmental credentials” than heating energy required. There is also ecology. I noted in the background of photos accompanying the BBC article what looked like American paper birches, Betula papyrifera. B. papyrifera is a stock tree for developers, and a species that causes ecologists to grind their teeth. Unlike the native silver birch Betula pendula, B. papyrifera has essentially zero ecological value. This is because native aphids do not colonise it, which in turn eliminates an important source of food for urban birds like blue tits. You might as well (and I am almost serious) plant a plastic tree instead. 

Moribund paper birch at Goldsmith St

I walked over to have a look yesterday to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough, there are plenty of paper birches around, particularly in the central communal area described by the chair of the prize judges as “lushly-planted.” (Quoted in the EDP). I would instead describe it as a monosward of rye grass, apparently moribund trees of zero ecological value, and a token flower bed (I did see a honey bee visiting a ?Heuchera? – that was the only non-human animal life I saw on my visit). Elsewhere there were field maples, which do have a good ecological value. It is notable that the original ecological appraisal for the development (Wild Frontier Ecology 2014; available after much digging on the Norwich City Council planning portal, case 15/00272/F) nowhere invites the use of B. papyrifera.

The same article in the EDP gives the cost of the development at £17 million, for 45 1-bed flats, 40 2-bed houses, three 2-bed flats and five 4-bed flats, for a cost of about £112 grand per bedroom. (Apparently adding up to 103, not 105.) At such cost, there ought to be a few quid spare for wildlife.

Final observation, not ecological: I could not help but notice that, a day after taking the prize, the mortar was already crumbling out of several of the windows. Mix too sandy perhaps? Who knows. Such trifles obviously don’t concern the wise minds at RIBA.

Mortal mortar

Norfolk Big Fields 1

The first in a (hopefully) occasional series.

Question: how many metres of hedgerow were lost in the making of this nearly 100-acre field?

Bonus question: how many trees were lost in the process?

Whenever you see odd-shaped fields, there is a good chance you are looking at what was once several smaller fields. Thankfully with the excellent resource at Norfolk County Council's mapexplorer it is possible to warp back in time to see whether your suspicions are correct. Here's the first edition OS map (1879-1886):

You can see the outline of the modern field easily enough, & a quick count shows that it was originally 12 fields. Actually if you go back to the 1840 Tithe map you can see a further 5 field divisions (not shown here, but drawn in later...). Fast forward to 1945:

 

The field boundaries are the same as in the OS1 map: usefully, individual trees are also visible. But by 1988, the hedgerows and trees have been removed:

 

In the following map I've drawn the lost hedgerows back in. (Note: some of these may have been banks only. It's hard to be sure. The shadows on the RAF photograph are a useful clue.)

The hedgerows marked in blue were removed between 1840 and OS 1st edition in 1879-1886. The pink hedgerows were removed between 1945 and 1988. The yellow hedgerow was added between 1840 and 1879-1886, but was removed between 1945 and 1988.

Finally, the trees visible on the 1945 RAF aerial have been drawn in too. These were probably mature oaks.

And so it is now possible to tally everything up. Between 1840 and OS 1st edition, 950 m of hedgerows were lost, with 150 m gained, for a net loss of 800 m. From 1945 to 1988, 3070 m of hedgerows were lost. The total over the mapped period lost was 3870 m, not including the 150 m added and subsequently removed.

Bonus answer: the number of trees, probably all oaks, lost was, by my count, 26.

The Undiscovered Country

[The following short was written for the Friends of Lowestoft Library's literature festival competition 2016. The prize on offer was a book token of uncertain value (anyway, I was going to decline in the event that I won - long story). The brief was to write a story under 1500 words on the theme of "To be or not to be..." I called it "The Undiscovered Country" (see what I did there) and for extra brownie points, I set it in an anonymous seaside town that could very well have been Lowestoft itself. Caveat 1: the story is written in present tense, and gawd, I hate present tense (very hard to pull off; lazy writer's quick steroid injection to beef up naff work). For some reason I was feeling "present" for this one. Caveat 2: the story was banged out and not edited (deadline was short). The bounders extended the deadline after I'd rushed to get it in. So there are undoubtedly bits that would benefit from a bit of emery cloth.

Either way, the judges were not impressed! Enjoy, or not, as the case may be.]
===

The Undiscovered Country

At about three-thirty, unable to sleep, I finally go to confront him.

What do I have to fear now? Nothing. But I stand at the door in the dim corridor with my fist raised to knock as if time has frozen.

The sounds in room 121 go on. There is more than a door between me and the sounds: there is a world.

I stare at the numbers on the door and do not knock. Instead, at three-thirty on a winter morning, I first return to my room and pace like an impotent; then I go outside. In the hall at the foot of the carpeted stairs, the lone overhead light is buzzing on and off.

To be on, or to be off.

To live on.

To die.

To fight on, to cling to the ever-shrinking handfuls of light between the enveloping arms of darkness. Why does it buzz on futilely? A moth soughs and flutters against a window, trapped in sight of a goal it can never reach.

At the bottom of the stairs the bar is empty, silent. The only light, shining through the glass door, is the garish kaleidoscopic flickering of a gambling machine. I think of the empty chairs and the stained tables. I remember the barman, pouring my order the moment I walked into the bar for the second time. I remember the bar's carpet: matted into a beery, tacky, colourless film.

I turn away to the door that leads outside, into the bitterness of a February night. The strip is deserted, still lit by hopeful orange lights. The waves are unseen, their sound a dead mechanical rumble, the murmur of an eternal machine. In this machine the pointless waves forever throw themselves against the land and fall back, spent, beaten. Then they gather themselves and try again and again fail.

There are lights out there on the oil-black sea, buoys, rigs, windmills, a passing vessel.

A door behind me slams open and closed.

I look reflexively.

The man has come from room 121. He looks at me with a swagger, a challenge: what am I going to do about it?

The answer: nothing. It's an answer I always give.

He drives off, back to a world he can pretend does not impinge upon this time, this place. Until he grows a baser fruit that needs plucking.

The door opens again before the echoes of the departing car have gone. The woman is black-eyed, unbeaten; under the streetlights her skin is translucent, like waxed paper wrapping a bruise. She is aged, but not old; aetiolated, starved, wretched – but upright, unafraid, level. She has sung her song until the words have become meaningless.

I shudder. A momentary instinctive revulsion rises up in me, as if the ill-use, the dark times in dirty square rooms, the fond grip of merciless laughter, might exist as a real thing, a scum, a miasma, a crumb of dirt, a contagion that might rub off. It makes my involuntary first step a backwards one, not a forwards one.

“Sorry about the noise,” she says, in an even tone. She meets my eye for a second.

“I was awake anyway.”

“So you heard everything,” she says, and turns away to look up and down the deserted seafront. “Sorry about that.”

“No. It wasn't that bad,” I say. I think of the way I stood in front of her door but did not knock.

She looks at me again, measuring me. “What are you doing in this hellhole?”

“Holiday,” I say. The word sounds hollow. Pleased to meet you, and by the way, I'm a liar.

“No-one comes here for a holiday. Not at this Godforsaken time of year.” She says this without rebuke.

“I was just thinking about the waves,” I blurt. “About how pointless they are, doing the same thing over and over again, failing and trying, trying and failing.”

“But each wave is new. Each only exists for a moment. They do not fail; their lives end in defeat, as all lives do. But they throw themselves into the fight without regret. Their defeat is their victory. Their pride, their glory; their magnificence.”

I don't know what to say to that. I remember something long forgotten: an old vagrant, sitting on the station steps in a puddle of his own making, reciting Shakespeare. He looked up as I approached and addressed a few lines to me:

“...Who would fardels bear

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?”

I walked by him, stepping over the tiny rivulet. I said nothing. I did nothing. I gave my usual answer. The old man carried on his speech until I could hear him no more. The Shakespearean philosopher was right to fear death; but for the materialist there is only permanent nothing. The old vagrant Hamlet had a beginning, and must after these intervening years have had an end. As do we all.

“I can't stand too close to you,” the woman says, and begins to walk away. “It's business.”

Whatever chance I had, I missed it. I look up and down the strip; it is deserted. Even the paired red lights of the departing car have vanished from view. We two are the only souls left. She is a lost soul, but so am I. One lost soul cannot guide another. But they draw one another, like flotsam rolled together in a restless sea, soon parted by chance eddies.

“You could leave,” I call out. “Get on a bus and go.”

She looks back, already far away. “So could you.”

I watch as she moves away. The February wind is bitingly cold.

After a time, shivering, I go inside.

*

When I awake, it is dark again. The days are devilishly short at this time of year, the nights nightmarishly long.

The whisky and the pills stand untouched on the counter, just as they have done these past fourteen days.

I am not ready, and may never be ready to live again. But I am not yet ready to die.

*

I stand outside her door, and this time I knock. I cannot just leave. We shared only a few short moments, a few words. I don't know her name. But I cannot just leave. For a long time I think she isn't coming, but finally the door opens.

“What do you want?” she asks coldly.

“I'm going back,” I say. Now, suddenly, I wonder why she should be interested to hear that.

“Good for you,” she says, but she doesn't mean it. She doesn't care either way.

I want to tell her that I watched the flowers wither. I want to say that I hid from the knocking at the door, and in the end the knocking stopped. But I do not. I cannot. Instead, hopelessly, I hand her the whisky and the pills. “One at a time,” I say, in case she sees an implication in my gift that isn't there.

A smile. Not at the gift, but at the caveat. “We're all just crossing the river,” she says, and takes both gifts, “one stone at a time.”

“I'll come back,” I say.

“Why?” she asks.

I want to explain that lost souls cannot save one another; they need an anchor, a grounding, something to pull against to haul themselves to shore. But I can't find the words. Instead, I say: “To save you.”

She looks downcast for a moment. Then she shapes a bitter smile. “Men,” she says, “are all the same.”

She closes the door, quietly but firmly, in my face.

THE END

Rules for Private Investigators

[This tad of micro-fiction was entered into this year's Noirwich competition. It didn't make the shortlist. To be fair the notes I made for it were longer than the word allowance (500), and it was hard to trim. Enjoy, or not, apparently.]

Nothing. Then:

Tat tat tat.

Tat tat tat.

The cold light of a Mousehold dawn.

Thin dew on the windscreen.

Tat tat tat.

Callum Daly, still in his pyjamas.

I wound down the window and saw that the kid had brought me a mug of coffee. I could already taste it: bitter, with the high cloying notes of cheap instant.

“Mum says you're not to come around here,” Callum said, handing me the mug.

“Morning Callum.”

“Morning Mrs Chandler.”

“Ms. You want me to give up?”

“He won't come back this way again,” the boy said. He tried to smile.

Rule one: never give up.

I left the empty mug on the Dalys' doorstep and drove south.

Riverside Road, not far past dawn: river cruisers moored to my right, their occupants' uncompleted sleep windowed by late night noise and inadequate curtains.

There was only one pedestrian: a girl, eighteen, twenty, returning from an all-nighter and looking rather worse for wear. Golden light suffused her golden hair; she'd run her fingers through it recently, but not a brush.

A white van pulled up. There were two men inside.

I pulled over too. Good Samaritans, or...?

The girl had lost her shoes. A hell of a night.

The van's passenger emerged. The girl didn't seem to notice him.

“Heavy night?” he asked; as she made to pass him, he grabbed her.

I'd seen enough.

I keep my girl's best friend in the glovebox. Nothing fancy. Anodised titanium.

I got out of the car. The man was manoeuvring the girl towards the van's side door. She resisted. A little bit.

I crossed the road. Only now did the man see me. “Get lost,” I told him, and put my left arm between them.

He hadn't seen what I was holding in my right hand.

“Mind your own, cow. We're just giving her a lift home.”

The driver's door opened.

Rule two: either hit someone or don't.

I hit him.

He reeled away, clutching his face. Blood welled up between his fingers. He let go of the girl.

The van roared off a moment later. “I'll have the law on you,” the passenger shouted.

“Join the queue,” I said softly.

The girl had a neck wound: two punctures, like a vampyre bite. Cute.

“What are you on?” I snapped my fingers in front of her eyes.

There was no comprehension there.

“Whoever did this... I can see them jailed.” Or hurt. Her choice.

A head shake. No.

“You sure?”

She nodded.

I pressed my card into her hand. She looked down long enough to read it:

Ruth Chandler

Private Investigator

Norwich

“If you change your mind...”

Nothing.

“Can I drive you home?”

She shook her head.

I watched her shuffle away towards the station. My card fluttered to the ground like a dead butterfly.

Rule three: you can't save everyone.

I shrugged and drove south.