Saturday 12 February 2011
Saturday 18 December 2010
Monday 13 December 2010
Time-Witness
As I've had a negative experience with the last landlord I had when it
comes to getting my deposit back I want to leave an account of the
situation I found my new place in with Google, who will witness the date
for me.
Very scuffed paintwork and dirty carpets throughout
Black mould in bathroom with visible stretching down the wall therefrom
Non-fuctional heater in bathroom, although I don't know how it's meant to
work anyway, but the cord/switch has been cut short and I can't get it to
work
No key with which to open the windows, hence no opening of the windows
Don't know if the washing machine works
Noisy fridge, presumably a nascent fault
Can't get the extractor fan in the kitchen to work, but again I don't know
how it's supposed to work
Thoroughgoing damp along the side of the window in the kitchen, some
appointments to fix it missed by the landlord
comes to getting my deposit back I want to leave an account of the
situation I found my new place in with Google, who will witness the date
for me.
Very scuffed paintwork and dirty carpets throughout
Black mould in bathroom with visible stretching down the wall therefrom
Non-fuctional heater in bathroom, although I don't know how it's meant to
work anyway, but the cord/switch has been cut short and I can't get it to
work
No key with which to open the windows, hence no opening of the windows
Don't know if the washing machine works
Noisy fridge, presumably a nascent fault
Can't get the extractor fan in the kitchen to work, but again I don't know
how it's supposed to work
Thoroughgoing damp along the side of the window in the kitchen, some
appointments to fix it missed by the landlord
Tuesday 2 November 2010
A Tenant's Plaint
What an iniquitous economic order it is in which we live, in which one man may be forced from his home at the whim of another. I live in a place for years, I'm up to date with my rent, all is well. Still, I'm being ejected from my habitual abode with little notice and no reason given. I'm paying the level of rent prevalent when I moved in, which is slightly lower than the other flats in the building, so I'm not surprised to find that I'm being kicked out only when, for almost the first time that I've known, all the other flats in the building are actually occupied.
I also expect the greedy and parasitical landlord the try to retain my deposit, probably necessitating a trip to the local court should I want to recover it, which I certainly will. True, some of the paint is peeling and the settee has been heavily used, certainly a window is broken and black mould is on the ceiling of the kitchen, but all this is the landlord's responsibility. Paintwork isn't my responsibility, and the settee has merely been sat on and treated in the manner to be expected, reasonable wear and tear in a furnished premises. The mould comes from damp caused by poor insulation and overflowing gutters about which the landlord refuses to do anything. And the window was broken when I got here, as the inventory would should if I could extract one from the landlord's agent, a company seemingly bent on refusing to fulfill their legal obligations.
Also relevant are the shortcomings of the management of the property by the landlord:
that the notice posted by the agents referring to the hiring of a professional cleaner is a sham actually marking the removal of a professional cleaner and her replacement by the landlord's wife;
that the landlord has not spent a penny on the place since I moved in, even failing to replace a faulty lock, door bell and fire alarm on request;
that the landlord has consistently failed to perform such periodic maintenance required by either law or common sense as the clearing of gutters and testing of electrical equipment;
that the landlord's lackey has issued threats against tenants who have been victims of theft to the effect that taking bicycles inside where they will not be stolen is grounds for immediate eviction, which is legally untrue;
that the landlord has installed a locking gate outside the premises to prevent the vandalisation of his wheely-bins without informing the tenants of the code to open the gate, which I personally discovered only from the man installing the gate;
that the landlord has blamed tenants for problems with security when this gate has been left open although it must be left open at all times as the letter box and doorbells through which tenants receive post and notice of visitors are attached to the main wall of the building within the gate;
that the landlord and his agent, which pretends to be a reputable company have entered the premises on which I hold the tenancy without permission or notice on at least two occasions, constituting a breach of the law regarding harassment of tenants;
that the landlord has installed card meters for the electricity supply without notice or consultation;
that the landlord and his agent have profited from the inflation of bills before the aforementioned installation, in breach of the law;
that the landlord's agent has failed to respond to a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act, in breach of statutory responsibilities;
that the landlord has contacted members of my family as a continuation of their policy of harrassment in breach of the law and that the agent has breached the Data Protection Act by providing them with this information without consent;
that the landlord's agent has declined to provide an inventory as taken at the time of the commencement of the tenancy
On these grounds and others I intend to argue that the withholding of my deposit is not only theft but also a continuation of a policy of negligence and harrassment.
I also expect the greedy and parasitical landlord the try to retain my deposit, probably necessitating a trip to the local court should I want to recover it, which I certainly will. True, some of the paint is peeling and the settee has been heavily used, certainly a window is broken and black mould is on the ceiling of the kitchen, but all this is the landlord's responsibility. Paintwork isn't my responsibility, and the settee has merely been sat on and treated in the manner to be expected, reasonable wear and tear in a furnished premises. The mould comes from damp caused by poor insulation and overflowing gutters about which the landlord refuses to do anything. And the window was broken when I got here, as the inventory would should if I could extract one from the landlord's agent, a company seemingly bent on refusing to fulfill their legal obligations.
Also relevant are the shortcomings of the management of the property by the landlord:
that the notice posted by the agents referring to the hiring of a professional cleaner is a sham actually marking the removal of a professional cleaner and her replacement by the landlord's wife;
that the landlord has not spent a penny on the place since I moved in, even failing to replace a faulty lock, door bell and fire alarm on request;
that the landlord has consistently failed to perform such periodic maintenance required by either law or common sense as the clearing of gutters and testing of electrical equipment;
that the landlord's lackey has issued threats against tenants who have been victims of theft to the effect that taking bicycles inside where they will not be stolen is grounds for immediate eviction, which is legally untrue;
that the landlord has installed a locking gate outside the premises to prevent the vandalisation of his wheely-bins without informing the tenants of the code to open the gate, which I personally discovered only from the man installing the gate;
that the landlord has blamed tenants for problems with security when this gate has been left open although it must be left open at all times as the letter box and doorbells through which tenants receive post and notice of visitors are attached to the main wall of the building within the gate;
that the landlord and his agent, which pretends to be a reputable company have entered the premises on which I hold the tenancy without permission or notice on at least two occasions, constituting a breach of the law regarding harassment of tenants;
that the landlord has installed card meters for the electricity supply without notice or consultation;
that the landlord and his agent have profited from the inflation of bills before the aforementioned installation, in breach of the law;
that the landlord's agent has failed to respond to a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act, in breach of statutory responsibilities;
that the landlord has contacted members of my family as a continuation of their policy of harrassment in breach of the law and that the agent has breached the Data Protection Act by providing them with this information without consent;
that the landlord's agent has declined to provide an inventory as taken at the time of the commencement of the tenancy
On these grounds and others I intend to argue that the withholding of my deposit is not only theft but also a continuation of a policy of negligence and harrassment.
Windows on the Soul
I had a dream last night, something of a rare occurence as I rarely remember them, although presumably I have them. In this dream I was fixing computers, amongst other things, when I suddenly found myself awaking in bed, in what I believe is known as a false awakening and finding a disembodied head, apparently being used to speak the words of satan, offering me something I can't remember in exchange for my immortal soul. Well, I was in the middle of denouncing him and avowing my support for God when he fucked off without hearing the end of my speech, and I woke up. Well, I think so, at any rate if I wasn't awake then I'm also not awake now.
This brings to mind a question which I don't consider nearly often enough, which is the reason for the erosion of our civil liberties. I tend far too much to simply thing of the predators in society as a monolithic evil, driven by their very nature to prey upon others and to commit acts of evil solely for their own sake, but even for the likes of Tony Blair (back in the news due to his wife selling his autograph on ebay) this seems simplistic and characateured. Not to say that it isn't right, but it deserves more consideration. If these deviants seek wealth, is this the best way to go about it? If careerist and technocratic politicians support it, do they support it with the aim of securing greater electoral success? Of course our democratic process had been conquered by the enemy, but the forms of democracy persist without the substance. Votes may be tabulated by lean, mean, touch-screen voting machine designed to ensure an acceptable victory, like in that film with Robin Williams, but the elections continue. While our long attachment to Habeas Corpus, whose finest hour came with the Somersett case and the consequent abolition of slavery, has gone the way of the American's love of their fourth amendment no threat is ever made to the continuation of elections. Motivations elude me, if I can't understand why people I know consume intoxicants I won't be able to determine the root causes of evil.
The main thought, however, which the disembodied devil head on my dream table provoked within me is this: he was in front of the window. I don't like windows, never have. You look out of a window into outer darkness and you never know what lurks beyond the threshold. I've always heard tales of alien abductees seeing big eyed screen memories sitting on the sill, and combined with my own inclinations this gave me an aversion to darkened windows which has been with me for as long as I can remember. I generally seek darkness rather than light, but to be in the light is particularly irksome near a window, where it prevents one from seeing what lay beyond the glass. For a window is not only a way to see out but a way to see back into the lighted area. When you sit in the light and look into the darkened glass the watcher on the threshold stares back with your own face.
The mirror has always held a position of reverence and awe in the occult beliefs and superstitions of the world, whether snow white's evil step mother's magic mirror or the refractions of light in a crystal ball or the Jewish superstition of covering mirrors at funerals. The primitive belief that another world full of other beings lay beneath the reflective surface of water has now been realised with the one-way glass behind which unseen intelligences silently observe and draw their plans against us. As the ancients put their offerings into streams and threw inscribed bones into holy springs we may all now constantly leak information, that most valuable commodity, to those beyond. As king El Dorado was said to have dived into the water to converse with supernatural beings so a priveleged few of us may now commune with the gods of this world, watching through the camera concealed in the supermarket disco ball or the viewing booth behind the mirror in the ladies conveniences.
I must also, I suppose, reference the well known aversion towards mirrors felt by victims of mind control, sufferers from DID who see something other than their own face in the likeness in the mirror.
And while I've never been one for metempsychosis, the figurative windows to the soul are the eyes, cat's eyes being a recent matter for consideration for me. It must have been a decade ago when I first read about the use of cats by the CIA to spy on people. "According to Victor Marchetti the CIA first attempted this years ago. Radio implants were attached to a cat's cochlea, to facilitate the pinpointing of specific conversations, freed from extraneous surrounding noises. The cat was run over by a taxi on its first assignment. As Martin Cannon points out, though, there was nothing to stop the Agency from getting another cat, or from using a human being." When you look in the mirror you don't know what's looking back, and you don't know what's looking out from behind your eyes.
On the subject of souls and animals the Vikings believed bears to be men in disguise, not in human body, therefore they were the greatest of animals. Certainly Vojtek was like a man, a soldier enlisted in the Free Polish forces in the second world war. Carried ammunition about with the other troops. Loved baths. Warm ones. Once ferreted out a German agent hidden in the bath house.
I've seen photographs of Vojtek the soldier bear, which even if he had a soul probably didn't steal it. Nonetheless a photograph captures in a moment what the mirror captures in real time. A film, however, seems to have a life of it's own, the patterned movement symptomatic of life and intelligence, enough according to legend to convince those who first saw such things that what the saw was real. A man arrested for murder for directing a film with an SFX murder in it. People running from a theatre when a train bares down on the camera. Now, of course, we're too sophisticated for that, constantly exposed to the phenomenon of artificial animation. More than a mirror, the hypnotic light of the television screen shows us what is inside, not what is outside, it mirrors the mind of our dreams. In time our dreams have come to mirror it.
If you never see a mirror you never see yourself. Our minds have had mirrors as long as our bodies, the polished copper mirrors of the ancients finding their counterparts in the myths, legends and archetypes which propagated themselves through human populations. Now, though, stories no longer flow from man to man. Their propagation is not lateral but vertical, from the centre to the periphery. The centralised media empires find themselves, not without effort, in a position to programme the dreaming mind of man. The moving pictures so faithfully watched contain subliminal messages, not messages so fast as to escape the grasp of the conscious mind, but something else. Everything else, everything seen on the screen. The things the mind takes as background, the unspoken assumptions.
Cthulhu fhtagn.
But I don't use windows, I use Linux.
This brings to mind a question which I don't consider nearly often enough, which is the reason for the erosion of our civil liberties. I tend far too much to simply thing of the predators in society as a monolithic evil, driven by their very nature to prey upon others and to commit acts of evil solely for their own sake, but even for the likes of Tony Blair (back in the news due to his wife selling his autograph on ebay) this seems simplistic and characateured. Not to say that it isn't right, but it deserves more consideration. If these deviants seek wealth, is this the best way to go about it? If careerist and technocratic politicians support it, do they support it with the aim of securing greater electoral success? Of course our democratic process had been conquered by the enemy, but the forms of democracy persist without the substance. Votes may be tabulated by lean, mean, touch-screen voting machine designed to ensure an acceptable victory, like in that film with Robin Williams, but the elections continue. While our long attachment to Habeas Corpus, whose finest hour came with the Somersett case and the consequent abolition of slavery, has gone the way of the American's love of their fourth amendment no threat is ever made to the continuation of elections. Motivations elude me, if I can't understand why people I know consume intoxicants I won't be able to determine the root causes of evil.
The main thought, however, which the disembodied devil head on my dream table provoked within me is this: he was in front of the window. I don't like windows, never have. You look out of a window into outer darkness and you never know what lurks beyond the threshold. I've always heard tales of alien abductees seeing big eyed screen memories sitting on the sill, and combined with my own inclinations this gave me an aversion to darkened windows which has been with me for as long as I can remember. I generally seek darkness rather than light, but to be in the light is particularly irksome near a window, where it prevents one from seeing what lay beyond the glass. For a window is not only a way to see out but a way to see back into the lighted area. When you sit in the light and look into the darkened glass the watcher on the threshold stares back with your own face.
The mirror has always held a position of reverence and awe in the occult beliefs and superstitions of the world, whether snow white's evil step mother's magic mirror or the refractions of light in a crystal ball or the Jewish superstition of covering mirrors at funerals. The primitive belief that another world full of other beings lay beneath the reflective surface of water has now been realised with the one-way glass behind which unseen intelligences silently observe and draw their plans against us. As the ancients put their offerings into streams and threw inscribed bones into holy springs we may all now constantly leak information, that most valuable commodity, to those beyond. As king El Dorado was said to have dived into the water to converse with supernatural beings so a priveleged few of us may now commune with the gods of this world, watching through the camera concealed in the supermarket disco ball or the viewing booth behind the mirror in the ladies conveniences.
I must also, I suppose, reference the well known aversion towards mirrors felt by victims of mind control, sufferers from DID who see something other than their own face in the likeness in the mirror.
And while I've never been one for metempsychosis, the figurative windows to the soul are the eyes, cat's eyes being a recent matter for consideration for me. It must have been a decade ago when I first read about the use of cats by the CIA to spy on people. "According to Victor Marchetti the CIA first attempted this years ago. Radio implants were attached to a cat's cochlea, to facilitate the pinpointing of specific conversations, freed from extraneous surrounding noises. The cat was run over by a taxi on its first assignment. As Martin Cannon points out, though, there was nothing to stop the Agency from getting another cat, or from using a human being." When you look in the mirror you don't know what's looking back, and you don't know what's looking out from behind your eyes.
On the subject of souls and animals the Vikings believed bears to be men in disguise, not in human body, therefore they were the greatest of animals. Certainly Vojtek was like a man, a soldier enlisted in the Free Polish forces in the second world war. Carried ammunition about with the other troops. Loved baths. Warm ones. Once ferreted out a German agent hidden in the bath house.
I've seen photographs of Vojtek the soldier bear, which even if he had a soul probably didn't steal it. Nonetheless a photograph captures in a moment what the mirror captures in real time. A film, however, seems to have a life of it's own, the patterned movement symptomatic of life and intelligence, enough according to legend to convince those who first saw such things that what the saw was real. A man arrested for murder for directing a film with an SFX murder in it. People running from a theatre when a train bares down on the camera. Now, of course, we're too sophisticated for that, constantly exposed to the phenomenon of artificial animation. More than a mirror, the hypnotic light of the television screen shows us what is inside, not what is outside, it mirrors the mind of our dreams. In time our dreams have come to mirror it.
If you never see a mirror you never see yourself. Our minds have had mirrors as long as our bodies, the polished copper mirrors of the ancients finding their counterparts in the myths, legends and archetypes which propagated themselves through human populations. Now, though, stories no longer flow from man to man. Their propagation is not lateral but vertical, from the centre to the periphery. The centralised media empires find themselves, not without effort, in a position to programme the dreaming mind of man. The moving pictures so faithfully watched contain subliminal messages, not messages so fast as to escape the grasp of the conscious mind, but something else. Everything else, everything seen on the screen. The things the mind takes as background, the unspoken assumptions.
Cthulhu fhtagn.
But I don't use windows, I use Linux.
Monday 1 November 2010
Craig Murray's Ghost Story
I finally got around to reading the Catholic Orangemen of Togo, Craig Murray's most recent book, and came across the following, as incongruous as John Perkins, the Economic Hitman, announcing his believe in bizarre hallucinogenic lizard healing. Or E Howard Hunt writing books about the occult. Anyways, here it be:
We stayed the night in the mine’s guest house. Built in 1950’s colonial style, with Crittall aluminium windows, it was built on a steep hill so that the ground floor entrance on one side led to the first floor balcony on the next. We had eaten a roast chicken dinner and the cook had just gone home. The living room led on to the balcony and we decided to go and sit outside. I had to put my shoulder to the metal door to get it open, with great difficulty and a nasty scraping noise. The hinges appeared to have dropped and there was a gouged arc in the concrete floor of the balcony. I pushed the door back closed again to keep out the mosquitoes. We sat on the balcony to enjoy our wine in the night. Being so isolated, a dense canopy of stars spread above us with astonishing clarity. I have never known the sky look so full.
As we sat, rather awed, suddenly there was a hideous shriek from the garden. It sounded almost, but not quite, human. It sounded like some-body in extreme pain. It seemed to come from very close, from the garden just below the balcony. We both got up to look; there was a Stygian darkness down there, and no sign of movement. Then more shrieks, unnervingly close and very human. I looked at Adrienne:
“Baboons?”
“No, thank you” she replied.
Suddenly, the whole garden seemed filled with wailing, so loud we had to shout above it.
“It really does sound like a lot of... things”– I didn’t like to say people.
“And it sounds exactly as if it is coming from just down there.”
“Weird, isn’t it?” said Adrienne, “must be a trick of the hills.”
The suddenly, the noise stopped, with no prior abatement, just as if someone flicked a switch. The silence was extraordinary, and it was a good thirty seconds before the cicadas whirred into life again and the nor- mal thrum of an African evening reached our ears.
We both agreed that evidently there had been some noisy birds in the garden which had been suddenly frightened off by something. I refilled our wine glasses and we tried to get back to normal conversation, when suddenly there came an angry scream, undoubtedly a human yelling at the top of his lungs, and it came from right beside us on the balcony – but there was no-one there.
“OK, now I am scared” I said.
Adrienne just nodded, wide-eyed. Then suddenly the balcony door slammed open with a great crash.
I tried to appear calm: “That’s strange, I didn’t feel any wind.”
“That was really difficult to open earlier” said Adrienne.
“Yes, it was. Perhaps something fell back into place.”
“Can we go inside now?”
“Good idea.”
Sticking together, we walked to the door. It had opened with force and really wedged itself against the concrete at the end of its gouged arc, so as we entered the house it took both of us to wrench it back closed again. I then opened it once more to see if it could now swing freely outwards. No, it still took a great deal of effort to get it open.
“Look, don’t worry. In this climate you easily get freak gusts of wind” I said, unconvincingly.
Adrienne curled up in an armchair with a book, while I closed the balcony door again. It had a hinged metal bar as a locking device. When you swung it into position two closed metal loops, one attached to the balcony door and one to the frame, passed through a slit in the metal bar. You then passed the hasp of the padlock through both metal loops and locked it, securing the bar in position. It felt very comfortable to have that door firmly locked against whatever was outside, even if it only was unnervingly noisy birds.
I got out a book myself and took another armchair. After a few minutes Adrienne said:
“Did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Did you organise that performance to try to scare me into your bed?”
“Certainly bloody not! I’m sorry, of course I mean I’d love to have you in my bed, but I didn’t organise – whatever it was that happened. How could I? I don’t really know what happened myself.”
“Well, it nearly worked.”
Suddenly there was a metallic clang, then the balcony door flew open again with an almighty crash. Adrienne looked at me accusingly.
“I thought you locked that.”
“I did. I mean I was sure that I did.”
Now I really was feeling scared; that cold, clammy feeling when all your skin starts to sweat and the hairs stand up all over your body, and you feel uncertain if you want to go to the loo or to run. With a huge effort I stood up and walked calmly to the balcony. I looked out; there was no sign of anything or anybody. I must just have not closed the padlock properly. It was lying on the floor – I bent down and picked it up. It was firmly locked! This was impossible. The locked hasp had somehow passed through the two closed metal loops of the door and frame. I checked these and found them undamaged. What on Earth had just happened?
I was shaken and confused. Again it took a great deal of effort to scrape the door back over the floor and close it. I fetched the key of the padlock, opened it, and went through the locking process again. I could figure out nothing which I might have done the first time which could have that result. Adrienne and I, by some unspoken agreement, did not talk about it further. We both resumed reading our books, and after a little desultory conversation, went to our respective bedrooms. I lay awake for quite some time, alert to every sound and moving shadow, but eventually tiredness overtook me. The rest of the night was uneventful for both of us.
Kind friends have urged me not to publish this story. I offer no explanation, I saw the impossible. If we shy away from recording events we cannot explain for fear of ridicule, we will not help to advance the cause of human understanding.
We stayed the night in the mine’s guest house. Built in 1950’s colonial style, with Crittall aluminium windows, it was built on a steep hill so that the ground floor entrance on one side led to the first floor balcony on the next. We had eaten a roast chicken dinner and the cook had just gone home. The living room led on to the balcony and we decided to go and sit outside. I had to put my shoulder to the metal door to get it open, with great difficulty and a nasty scraping noise. The hinges appeared to have dropped and there was a gouged arc in the concrete floor of the balcony. I pushed the door back closed again to keep out the mosquitoes. We sat on the balcony to enjoy our wine in the night. Being so isolated, a dense canopy of stars spread above us with astonishing clarity. I have never known the sky look so full.
As we sat, rather awed, suddenly there was a hideous shriek from the garden. It sounded almost, but not quite, human. It sounded like some-body in extreme pain. It seemed to come from very close, from the garden just below the balcony. We both got up to look; there was a Stygian darkness down there, and no sign of movement. Then more shrieks, unnervingly close and very human. I looked at Adrienne:
“Baboons?”
“No, thank you” she replied.
Suddenly, the whole garden seemed filled with wailing, so loud we had to shout above it.
“It really does sound like a lot of... things”– I didn’t like to say people.
“And it sounds exactly as if it is coming from just down there.”
“Weird, isn’t it?” said Adrienne, “must be a trick of the hills.”
The suddenly, the noise stopped, with no prior abatement, just as if someone flicked a switch. The silence was extraordinary, and it was a good thirty seconds before the cicadas whirred into life again and the nor- mal thrum of an African evening reached our ears.
We both agreed that evidently there had been some noisy birds in the garden which had been suddenly frightened off by something. I refilled our wine glasses and we tried to get back to normal conversation, when suddenly there came an angry scream, undoubtedly a human yelling at the top of his lungs, and it came from right beside us on the balcony – but there was no-one there.
“OK, now I am scared” I said.
Adrienne just nodded, wide-eyed. Then suddenly the balcony door slammed open with a great crash.
I tried to appear calm: “That’s strange, I didn’t feel any wind.”
“That was really difficult to open earlier” said Adrienne.
“Yes, it was. Perhaps something fell back into place.”
“Can we go inside now?”
“Good idea.”
Sticking together, we walked to the door. It had opened with force and really wedged itself against the concrete at the end of its gouged arc, so as we entered the house it took both of us to wrench it back closed again. I then opened it once more to see if it could now swing freely outwards. No, it still took a great deal of effort to get it open.
“Look, don’t worry. In this climate you easily get freak gusts of wind” I said, unconvincingly.
Adrienne curled up in an armchair with a book, while I closed the balcony door again. It had a hinged metal bar as a locking device. When you swung it into position two closed metal loops, one attached to the balcony door and one to the frame, passed through a slit in the metal bar. You then passed the hasp of the padlock through both metal loops and locked it, securing the bar in position. It felt very comfortable to have that door firmly locked against whatever was outside, even if it only was unnervingly noisy birds.
I got out a book myself and took another armchair. After a few minutes Adrienne said:
“Did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Did you organise that performance to try to scare me into your bed?”
“Certainly bloody not! I’m sorry, of course I mean I’d love to have you in my bed, but I didn’t organise – whatever it was that happened. How could I? I don’t really know what happened myself.”
“Well, it nearly worked.”
Suddenly there was a metallic clang, then the balcony door flew open again with an almighty crash. Adrienne looked at me accusingly.
“I thought you locked that.”
“I did. I mean I was sure that I did.”
Now I really was feeling scared; that cold, clammy feeling when all your skin starts to sweat and the hairs stand up all over your body, and you feel uncertain if you want to go to the loo or to run. With a huge effort I stood up and walked calmly to the balcony. I looked out; there was no sign of anything or anybody. I must just have not closed the padlock properly. It was lying on the floor – I bent down and picked it up. It was firmly locked! This was impossible. The locked hasp had somehow passed through the two closed metal loops of the door and frame. I checked these and found them undamaged. What on Earth had just happened?
I was shaken and confused. Again it took a great deal of effort to scrape the door back over the floor and close it. I fetched the key of the padlock, opened it, and went through the locking process again. I could figure out nothing which I might have done the first time which could have that result. Adrienne and I, by some unspoken agreement, did not talk about it further. We both resumed reading our books, and after a little desultory conversation, went to our respective bedrooms. I lay awake for quite some time, alert to every sound and moving shadow, but eventually tiredness overtook me. The rest of the night was uneventful for both of us.
Kind friends have urged me not to publish this story. I offer no explanation, I saw the impossible. If we shy away from recording events we cannot explain for fear of ridicule, we will not help to advance the cause of human understanding.
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