stitch and bitch, baby.

In the pub toward the tail end of the summer Finch was bemoaning the fact that she had nothing to keep her occupied in the evenings. While her boyfriend went to bushcraft sessions and judo or whatever it is he does Finch found herself square-eyed at the goggle box, until the early hours. Finch has always been one for hobbies and craftwork (not Kraftwerk - her music taste to the best of my knowledge has never extended to pioneering German electronica, although it should) and so she was talking about taking up an evening class in order to make proper use of her free time. To me being in the pub was a proper use of my free time and I told her this to which Finch replied;
"Daisy, don't you want to do a bit more sometimes ?"
"Well then," I said, with barely concealed annoyance at her admittedly true comment, "why don't you get Tina to show you how to knit ? She's been doing it since she was a foetus."
Tina nodded eagerly,
"Sure. I'd be happy to."
"See ? You get to make things to wear and it's cheap." I said.
"Great !" Finch was talking over me, "We can meet every week and bring food and have a stitch and bitch. It'll be genius! Wednesday good for you Daise ?"
"What ? No, no, this is your thing, not mine."
"Ah go on go on go on go on go on." said Tina, who is Irish, although I may have made this bit up.
"Can we drink ?" me again. Finch and Tina shook their heads.
"You can't drink and knit. You balls it up, you'll be dropping stitches everywhere."With incredible restraint I smiled and said through gritted teeth,
"Sure! Sounds great ! Count me in !" Tina and Finch exchanged looks and I knew my voice had gone all squeaky.

A few weeks later we were due to meet at six-thirty which gave me time for a quick couple of pints with Odge and Sweetman. At quarter past I grudgingly got to my feet and picked up my wool and needles, muttering something about 'bastard knitting bastard club'. Odge made a noise which may have been a laugh but sounded more like a strangled curse. Sweetman requested that I knit them a roll of toilet paper which they could then wash and re-use. It was with a heavy heart that I walked out of the cosy bar into the brisk wind carrying needle sharp freezing rain.
But by the time I arrived at Tina's place she had cleared a space for us all in her lounge, put on a pot of coffee and (here is the killer part) had baked a fricking cake. She sat us down and got us started and then the conversation descended into the ribald hilarity I always find myself knee deep in when I'm with certain people and not only did I find myself enjoying it but carried on with the knitting when I got home. Then I started taking it to work, prompting people to peer at me incredulously and mutter 'loser' as they walked into my office.
Fuck them, I thought, I'm a knitter, and I'm proud.

There is no moral to this tale. Once I'd knitted myself a decent pair of arm warmers I gave up for a bit, and generally forgot all about it, except for one drunken mistake in Bristol over Christmas. But when Tina suggested earlier that we start hooking up again on Wednesdays I leapt at the chance - because it's all about the company you keep and the bind of the group that means whatever happens in knit club (still a bit too close to 'shit club' for my liking) stays in knit club. It's nothing to do with the fact that we're meeting in a pub. Oh no.

story three# meretricious mister marvellous

*i have edited this quite heavily, the original is a bit longer and will be included in some compilation or other at some point.*

It wasn't what any of them had expected, although they had talked of nothing else for weeks. In it's conception it had begun as the smallest thing, the embryo of an idea, taking shape and manifesting into cream teas and jumble, tombolas and raffles. No-one could have anticipated it. Least of all the Women of Perranarmykle, the closest thing the tiny town had to a village committee. Now they sat, the nine of them, heads lowered, wondering how to fix things. Sue spoke first, Sue, founder of the sponsored knit-a-thon and the primary school bring and buy.
"There must have been something we could have done."Margaret’s eyes had taken on a dull sheen of disbelief. A coil of hair hung, unchecked, across her lined brow.
"It's not as though we could have prepared for it."
"Perhaps," said Helen, her glasses reflecting the light, turning her eyes into blank, silver pennies, "Perhaps it'll blow over.""Blow over?" Clare's voice was guttural, she who orchestrated the Best Dressed Dog Contest.
"There's no need to shout." Sue said rudely, and took a pinch of the Finest Cake Winner.
In the village hall the light was dim and growing dimmer, the sun a dizzy red ball hanging low in the sky. Shadows slid easily down the walls as though greased, oily, slippery dark matter which congealed in corners. No-one noticed.
A small town, a nothing town, a small clench of houses surrounded by the looming spectre of a church, hedgerows trimmed within a pubic inch, manicured privet and fern. The sign which told you as you came in, ‘Welcome To Perranarmykle’, and was so scrapingly grateful as you left, ‘Thank You For Visiting Perranarmykle’, now hung, corners drooping in easy rust. The scandal of '84, when Sarah Thornbow had eloped with the Pastor Crane had sent a shudder through the village, but that, eerily like everything else, had been powdered and sugared, pinked and dusted down by the nine to nothing more then a fragrant memory. The sign in the muted church hall read "For We Alone Must Fight", but now in the dying light - the ochre and amber of a weary day - it looked like ancient parchment, something used up and dried out.
The darkness shadowed their faces further, made them look rangy, like kicked curs.
"He asked me," Helen said into the gulf of silence and heads turned, almost creaking on tired tendons.
The afternoon had begun with an un-forecast spring chill, a brisk April breeze, causing metallic clouds scutter across a drab sky. On that wind the scent of spring rain, and something darker, less fluid, the air had seemed to thicken and grew musty, like pulling canvas away from senescent, brittle furniture. Helen had been bent over the tub of money, a bright sign reading "50p All Ages" which shivered briskly in the breeze when the stranger had approached, his oilskin raincoat buttoned up to his nostrils and hanging down to his knees. He bent over, leaning in towards her and Helen instinctively drew back, recoiling so fast she stumbled back a step or two. His breath was warmed veal and low, greased spices.
"How much for a stall?" he'd asked.
"I - I -" Helen felt her hands flutter to the scrag of her throat and she forced an insipid smile "It's full. I'm afraid.""Don't be afraid." he'd said and tossed a coin into the pot. She couldn't be sure, but later, as she was counting them out, she found a coin of soft ruin, bruised and knuckled at the edges, and blamed him. It was Sandra who'd noticed the dark stall hung in fluttering canopies of greys, the colour of diseased oysters. As she watched Edward Pascoe, clutching his young daughter Posey by the hand, lifted the flap and ducked under the awning. Later, Clare said she'd touched one of the billowing dark curtains and said it felt wet, dense and moist,
"Like sealskin," she offered.
It had been a small tent, propped up on warped sticks of willow, with a clumsy entrance slit from top to bottom in jagged strokes, and a listless flag the colour of maudlin funerals. Despite it's height of merely six feet the top and edges of the flimsy roof were gilt with frost, as though at a mountain's peak. The shape was square but seemed to waver before the eye, growing and shrinking in equal measure until your perspective throbbed like a diseased tooth. Outside, no signage, just a steaming copper kettle hung over a slump of glowing coals.
It was Johannah who had noticed when the candy floss machine, unchecked, had begun to spew its cobwebby innards all across the counter and onto the grass where the wind blew it in gossamer strands across the near deserted field. In the distance the carousel ground it’s pirouetting horses to a slow, laboured halt, and the music ebbed into an uncomfortable stillness.
“There’s no-one manning the raff-” Johannah began and stopped at the flat, loose expression on Sue’s face.
She was stood three feet downwind of the black tent and as the flaps lifted daintily they caught a scent of exotic secrets, dusty spices and dark, obsidian runes. Johannah started forwards but Sue put a hand on her arm.
“Don’t.” she said firmly.
"Are they all gone ?" Marie asked listlessly, leaning forwards and scattering notes on Best Fern before her. A twitch had begun in the fleshy pouch beneath her eye, but she seemed not to notice.
The nine, adumbral in the gathering folds of the evening. Outside the hall a long stretch of silence. Even the twilight birds were still.
"All gone." chimed Alice, and turned her head to the dank orb of sun.
"They all went in. They didn't come out."