'TWO DUCKS GO PLACIDLY ABOUT THEIR BUSINESS.'

NEW WRITING EXTRACT FROM NEAL DARKEN TRELLIS

‘Pigeons are flocking to France. They can’t get their beaks around the sort of bread they can get there..’

These are the opening lines of my first novel, about a time in my life I don’t resonate with now – a time when I would drive to an automatic car wash and as the rollers smeared my windows with foam I would seek refuge from the awfulness of my existence – the man who kept talking to me in a coffee shop I frequented as if we’d known each other years yet never told me his name – the trainspotter who continually left messages on my landline with details of trains he’d spotted and the type of sandwich he’d had that day – which was always the same sandwich, bought from the station café and eaten on the platform because the risk of missing a single train gave him ‘low level anxiety’ – I still don’t know how he got my number – I don’t recall giving him my name – perhaps he flipped through the phone book and thought he’d got lucky – he never left a number to call back.

Almost in direct response I would do different things each time in the car wash – lying on the backseat naked – tombola-ing myself until I became too dizzy to drive – filling my mouth with crisps and screaming – imagining the arguments I would have presented to Emperor Charles V at The Diet of Worms in 1521 – all these things provided a distraction that could only ever be temporary, which is why I want you all to feel sorry for me and deeply, deeply sad. And if you can feel something of the cavernous depths of my long suppressed passions, maybe we could fly to France together, like two pigeons seeking bread. And my healing will have begun.."

Neal Darken Trellis 

[extract from 'NEW WRITING' by Neal Darken Trellis - available soon in LA. Tanned people only.]

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