Mark Taylor

I was starting to fear I would never see you again, so I made a plan. I put on a stone, mismatched shoes, and a faintly sexist t-shirt. I carried a bag from that shop you rightly swore you’d never go back to, and another, transparent, with a tube of pile cream on display. I didn’t wash or shave. I went out on the street. Sure enough, the moment I cracked the seal on my Special Brew, you came around the corner. You waved, and smiled, and asked me to lunch.

We spent the afternoon carving stamps out of old rubbers. We had no ink pads, so we tested them with tea and soot and a jar of beetroot we found in the fridge. We decorated our exercise books, and we said we’d add a stamp to our notes to show they were authentic, like a wax seal. But you stole mine out of my pencil case and gave it to your new friend, and she rubbed out her mistakes with it until it was gone.

We watched her tip over from the window of our hotel room. She went slowly, the way a building seems to, though she was a small thing. I thought she might fall again, right off the bench. Jane went down while I rang for an ambulance, although I couldn’t tell them much from all the way up there. Once the paramedics arrived and Jane came back up, we shut the curtains. The ice in our drinks had melted.

For a while it seemed like the raft would hold together. We crashed over a few big waves and nothing split or loosened. The creaks that had us holding our breath became friendly, the sound of this thing we had built working to keep us alive. But then, with the sun high in the sky, something turned in us. We started pulling at knots and prying at cracks. We started willing the water over our open mouths.

In the job interview I built a five-storey house of cards. I juggled and I guessed what numbers the panel were thinking of. I peeled a satsuma in once continuous piece. Having disassembled the house of cards, I memorised the order of the pack. They said I was just the sort of chap they were looking for. My face would fit right in. It’s no wonder, when you are as accomplished as I am.

Does it happen this way for you? In a bookshop or a library, your eyes and fingers dance over the spines like you are blackberrying, and you are quickly laden with rich fruit. At home, surrounded by all these books you picked, it is as though they have already grown fur. There is nothing to read.

I have been writing a tiny story every day for the last six months. I’m not really sure why I started. I think I just thought it would be fun. It was not an attempt to be more disciplined or productive or consistent, which is probably why I’ve been able to keep it up.

Not long after I started, my wife asked me if it ever felt like a burden, having to do it every day. It doesn’t, because I don’t have to do it every day. I get to do it every day. I’ve given myself permission to spend a few minutes of each day on this, whatever else is going on. This is perhaps a healthier attitude to creative practice than any of my past attempts to be more disciplined, productive, or consistent.