Bitch Hill

Some friend of my wife has died, and she's only just found out. I think she'd been wondering what became of the guy for a long time, and what became of the guy was apparently an oxycodone overdose. Oxycodone is one of those opioids about which everyone is presently shitting themselves, which is unfortunate because I've taken it and it actually works - which is always, I would argue, a bonus where drugs are concerned. I hadn't realised that it was either addictive or even possible to overdose on oxycodone, but I guess it makes sense. My wife's friend was something of a live wire when they were all teenagers, then suffered homeless interludes and took oxycodone for a back injury, probably because, as I say, it works. The news of his passing sent my wife's thoughts back to a certain hillside where the whole gang used to hang out, watching the sun come up after nights of what was probably moderate revelry; and that's sort of why I'm up and approximately about at 5AM on a Saturday morning.

To be fair, I've spent most of my life getting up at what most consider to be an ungodly hour - for a paper round when I was at school, then twenty years as a postman with times ranging from 4.30AM at the earliest to just before six. I'm no stranger to dawn, and I've never really been a night owl, which is handy. Having turned my back on Royal Mail for a more leisurely existence of writing stuff and cleaning out an endless succession of cat litter trays, I've tended to get out of bed around seven, rarely later because it starts to feel like I'm wasting the best part of the day; but even so, 5AM is a bit of shock to the system, albeit a familiar one. Our plan is to drive across town in time to catch sunrise, which should occur around 6.45AM, and getting up at five at least means we have plenty of time.

We leave at around six. It's no longer quite dark, and stars are still visible on the western horizon. There are already more drivers out on the highway than we anticipated, but then we didn't anticipate any at all given that we're still in the middle of a pandemic and it's the weekend. We drive to a part of town called Grey Forest which feels more like hill country than any part of San Antonio. The roads tend to wind up and down through woodland comprising mostly salt cedar and the like. House are hidden and away from the road, presences indicated only by a mail box or a fence. Then we're driving up what Bess refers to as Bitch Hill, although that's not its official title. I don't know how steep it is, but it feels like 1:2 at the very least.

The top of the hill opens out and we suddenly have a panoramic view across what looks like most of San Antonio. The city fills the landscape from horizon to horizon, and ordinarily it might not be so obvious but for the fact that we can still see all of the street lights traced across the landscape. There was a time when all American movies featuring teenagers included at least one scene where they all drive up to some isolated point overlooking the city, usually for the narrative convenience of something either extraterrestrial or supernatural. Whether it's down to variations in landscape, town planning, the film industry or teenage psychology, I don't recall this scene ever having graced any English production and always assumed a large helping of artistic license had been applied; but here I am effectively in that scene or something very like it. Life in America often seems like a film from where I'm stood.

Bess and her gang used to come up here to watch the sunrise as teenagers. Sometimes they had been up all night, although neither booze nor drugs seem to have been part of the equation, meaning I suppose we can't always rely on movies, as I find myself calling them these days.

We park and get out, then stand around on what seems to be common land for about ten minutes. The light is stretched so far along the eastern horizon, all tangled up with cloud, that we can't really tell where the sun will appear. Suspecting it may be obscured by an upward swell of the hill upon which we're stood, we get back in the car and move another fifty yards on.

Now we're in some subdivision with sprawling luxurious houses, mostly single story and ranch style nestled way back from the road on either side. We stand in the road like those people in Close Encounters of the Third Kind waiting for the saucers. The city is a glittering plain spread across the darkness below. I look along the horizon trying to see the Tower of the Americas, but it's either too far away or obscured by early morning mist. We stand together in the warm air of dawn, still with that unsteady jittery feeling of having left one's bed too soon, a feeling which seems to come with an expectation of coffee close to actual physical need.

An old couple passes, out walking their dog. We say good morning, having been made comrades by our shared experience of far too early to be up and about.

Bess and I stand and talk about her friend, her own teenage years and so on. It's all sort of familiar from one angle, but from another serves to remind me that I'm in an entirely different country to the one where I grew up - which is actually a relief for some reason. Aside from my wife once having street surfed on the hood of a moving car, none of it would really make sense written down because you had to be there, even though I wasn't.

By seven, it's obvious that the sun is up, but we still have no idea where due to the bank of dramatically backlit cloud still hugging the horizon, but it doesn't seem to matter. We did what we came here to do by some definition, whatever it may have been.

The Falconer

It's about a quarter to nine in the morning and I'm sat at a bench in McAllister Park, one of those beneath a canopy designated the Al Becken Pavilion by an adjacent sign. I'm drinking iced tea from a flask. I've cycled ten miles from home, and this is my tea break before I cycle ten miles back, as I do Monday to Friday before the sun gets too hot. I'm enjoying the novelty of being able to sit here.

Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19, the Al Becken Pavilion has become home to the Workout Bears, having been driven away from their natural habitat - presumably some gymnasium or other. The Workout Bears are a couple of big, chunky, hairy young guys who have taken to working out in the park. They occupy the Al Becken pavilion with their plein air weight lifting and squat thrusts. Kettle bells and paraphernalia take up space on every available picnic table, and there's usually some shitty portable iPod blasting out the worst autotuned crap you've ever heard as a soundtrack to their grunting as they bellow encouraging clichés at one another, you got this, bro, or you can do this, buddy, or whatever. It's difficult to relax in my usual spot with the Workout Bears grunting away behind me doing something fucking stupid with lengths of rubber hose attached to one of the picnic tables; and I've been here at eight in the morning, and at eleven, and they're always here. I really hate the selfish fuckers.

However, they've been absent for the last couple of days, so hopefully their favourite gymnasium is open for business once more, or they've died or something. I have my tea break back. I can see a few parked cars, some deer, occasionally someone walking a dog or maybe a runner, but otherwise it's entirely peaceful, as it should be.

Now I see a woman with a hawk of some description, a large bird of prey sat upon her arm as she walks along, heading into the woods. Holy shit, I say to myself.

Five minutes pass before I finish my tea and get ready to leave. I decide I'll take the road back through the woodland today, because maybe I'll see the woman with the hawk.

Amazingly I do see her, just off the side of the road. A car drives slowly past and I can hear her telling the driver that she is a falconer. I cycle up as the car passes, then stop to watch, feeling a little awkward. The bird is huge and amazing and presently sat in a nearby tree.

'I hope it doesn't seem like I'm being nosy,' I say, 'but would you mind if I took a photograph?'

'I bought her down here to catch squirrels,' the woman says without looking over, then after a minute adds, 'you can take a photo, I suppose.'

Something bothers me about this exchange so I don't say anything else, just watch the bird flying back to the woman's arm, then up into another tree. I take my photograph, then cycle away.

As I cycle, I realise that the squirrels of McAllister Park probably have a tough time as it is given the size of some of the owls I've seen here, and could probably use a break. Who takes their hawk - or whatever it was - to a public park so it can hunt down a few squirrels? Would it not make more sense to go somewhere less public such as Salado Creek, which is easy enough to get to being within the city limit, and bigger and more wild than the park? I suppose it depends upon whether or not one needs an audience, which was what the woman seemed to very much project with her affected nonchalance.

Oh - it's always such a nuisance that people bother me when I bring my giant bird down here to hunt squirrels.

I am suddenly reminded of Vermin, a woman who used to post  under that name on a bulletin board for which I served as admin. Snakes were her thing, and the username was some sort of taking back the pejorative deal. She would start threads on this or that type of snake, then pick fights with anyone who responded because they didn't understand snakes. If you weren't keen on snakes, you were an arsehole. If you liked snakes, you were the sort of person who thought such and such about snakes but had it all wrong and were therefore the worst sort of arsehole because your misinformed bullshit was actually causing the death of snakes right at this very moment. This is who the falconer reminded me of.

I cycle the rest of the way home, happy that the practice of social distancing has made no difference to my daily existence.

Seaside

We're in Rockport. We've come down to the coast because the boy is back at school on Monday, and we're aware that he can't have had the greatest summer what with all of the coronavirus restrictions, so it's like a last fling before school starts up again. To be fair, school actually isn't starting up again, but as of Monday he'll be plugged into his laptop while a tutor in another part of the city attempts to teach him how to do sums over an internet connection. Anyway, the point is that he's obsessed with marine biology so we've had a day out at the aquarium in Corpus Christi. Most of it has been him bombarding us with facts and statistics about what we're looking at, which is actually a little overbearing and presupposes that neither my wife nor myself went to school; but he tends to lecture when he gets antsy, and we can't really fault his enthusiasm.

Now we're at Rockport which is about five miles further along the coast. The aquarium wasn't too full as we feared, with everyone masked and keeping their distance, so we're hoping the beach might be the same, which happily it is. We've brought swimming trunks and towels. The plan was to get the boy moving around a bit in the sea, his exercise regime having reduced to three or four daily journeys from his bedroom to the fridge in the kitchen punctuated by long periods of physical inertia with his face glued to something electronic which makes intermittent beeping noises. That was the plan but he can't be persuaded for some reason, so he hangs about on the quay looking for hermit crabs in the rock pools.

The beach isn't too crowded, thankfully, so I'm going in regardless. Last time we came to Rockport, I watched from the quay as the boy is doing now, wishing I'd brought trunks and was in the water; and on the way from Corpus Christi, it occurred to me that although I've been in the sea, mostly on either the Welsh or Cornish coast, I've never actually swum in the sea - which strikes me as odd given that I'm now in my fifties.

I've changed into trunks in the nearby public bogs, and now I'm padding down the beach with slip-ons on my feet. We've had the conversation about whether anything in the local waters is likely to bite or poison me, through which I realise I haven't even stood in the sea on this side of the Atlantic, never mind swimming. This is a first on several counts, and happily it turns out that there isn't much living along this stretch of coastline which could really do me any harm, but I wear the shoes nevertheless because I don't want to risk stepping on a sharp stone or whatever.

Now I realise that this really is my first time in these waters, because I'm up to my shins and it's actually warm. Without even meaning to, I'd braced myself for that initial shock of cold water, which of course never came. It's not even not actually cold warm. It's jacuzzi warm because of course we're not that far from the Caribbean. It's mostly sand underfoot, small stones being so few in number as to be an irrelevance, so I wade further out towards a horizon beyond which I assume must be the Yucatan and the eastern extent of Mexico. The waters are gentle, and come up to just below my shoulders after a few more minutes, requiring that I bob up and down each time a fresh wave rolls in. A grey pelican dives into the water at about a hundred yards distance from where I'm almost floating, which is dramatic and spectacular. They are enormous birds with a vaguely prehistoric look about them.

I kick my feet up from the sand and start swimming. I've only ever been able to do the breast stroke, and I'm quite frankly crap at it, but there it is. I'll never win a competition, but at least I stand a chance of not drowning. I swim back towards the beach until my flailing legs connect once again with the sand.

The boy is on the quay, pointing at things seen in rock pools.

'There's nothing stopping you coming in too,' I say, but he carries on, so we dutifully investigate his discoveries. My wife isn't swimming but is stood in the water. The boy is directing us to look at this or that, having subconsciously elected himself the tzar of the coastline. 'Did you know,' he asks in prefix to describing some aspect of marine biology, as though this is his world and we're here because he's invited us. Most of the time we do know, but as I say today he's compensating for some minor anxiety or other so he gets a pass. To be fair, I don't actually recall ever having seen a hermit crab back in England, where this beach is pretty much nothing but hermit crabs. Any shell you pick up and turn over will reveal segmented legs beating a swift retreat into the interior, so I don't actually have to feign my astonishment when the boy points them out.

I wade back out and then swim back in again a few more times. We use up about an hour.

Once we're ready to leave, I return to the land. We pass others who've come to enjoy the beach, albeit at a distance. Deck chairs and canopies are set out up along the sand dunes at the back of the road, and one family have decorated their chosen territory with flags - big life-size versions of the kind you would wave around having recaptured a hillock from the enemy, the kind which can be seen from a long way away. We have the stars and stripes, which is probably a little odd in the context but probably harmless; then we have the version featuring a single blue stripe across a black and white version of the same flag; and then we have Trump 2020 - Keep America Great. The black, white and blue version is used to show that one backs the blue, that one supports law enforcement. By strange coincidence it's quite popular with people whose love of law enforcement extends to giving cops the benefit of the doubt when they shoot unarmed black men, sometimes suggesting that those cops  are under a lot of pressure and had no way of knowing that the black man in question was unarmed - despite it quite specifically being their job to be able to make such judgments accurately so as to avoid murdering people who haven't done anything wrong.

In combination, the three flags planted here on the beach send a very clear and deliberate message, and one which, I might argue, isn't actually necessary in a free country. The guy who planted the flags isn't afraid to speak his mind, and no liberal is going to silence him, and he's proud of being able to state this. His statement is equivalent to turning up at the beach with a megaphone screaming enquiries as to whether anyone wants a fight? He's clearly a massive fucking twat, and a scared massive fucking twat.

I stare at the flags.

A fat man in a beach chair stares back at me.

I stare back at him, understanding that he's the guy, specifically he's the guy who has to make the beach, a geographical feature of the coast, all about him, and about what he believes, and what he's proud of. I keep staring and I stare hard with a big smile on my face, knowing that I make him uncomfortable, introducing a little more uncertainty into his life.

I dry out and we head into Rockport, then eventually home to San Antonio. We pass more Trump campaign material on the way back, even a Confederate flag, and a version of the Texas state flag embellished with the silhouette of an assault rifle - which is repulsive but constitutionally legal thanks to legislation passed by Democrat Senator Hugh Parmer in 2015, the irony of which will almost certainly be lost on those flying said variation of the flag.

Yet today I swam in a warm sea and it has been a good day, regardless of the shitheads.

Mystery Science Book Club 3000

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times—

Sounds like somebody was standing in line for The Phantom Menace! Am I right, guys?

—it was the age of wisdom—

Well, if you were in line for The Phantom Menace, then it must have totally been some other age! I mean seriously, you know what I'm saying?

—it was the age of foolishness—

Yeah - that would be whoever thought Jar Jar Binks was a good idea. Am I right, guys?

—it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness—

This guy needs to pick a lane.

—it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—

We were all heading home to catch DS9 before Jar Jar Binks showed up again. Am I right or am I right?

—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Is this an insurance commercial? You know what I'm saying!

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne—

Throne! Ha ha!

—of England; there were—

I don't get it.

—a king with a large—

Schlong!

—jaw and a queen with—

A great rack! Ho ho!

—a fair face, on the throne of France.

I still don't get the throne joke.

In both countries it was clearer than crystal—

Throne, like on the john, like the guy was taking a dump, you know what I'm saying?

—to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes—

Oh yeah. I get it now! Ha ha!

—that things in general were settled for ever.

You know, this was funnier when we had movies to work with.
 

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were—

I hear you. Those were some good times. Like you remember when we watched - what was it called - some deal with the Earth's Core, and anyway Peter Cushing was in it, so I made the joke that he was Grand Moff Tarkin from Star Wars?

—conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently—

Yeah, man. That was fucking hilarious, dude. That was some next level funny fucking shit right there. I've got to be honest with you, I can't see this deal with the books working out so well.

—attained her five-and-twentieth blessed—

I don't know. It could be okay. We just got to get into it.

—birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards—

Like the Imperial Guard from Star Wars! Ha ha!

—had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made—

Okay. Maybe we can do this. That was pretty fucking funny, man. Imperial Guard - that's some funny shit, let me tell you!

—for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages—

Maybe the ghost was like Eminem or Dr. Dre!

—as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere—

You're killing it, dude! You got this. This is comedy fucking gold, you know what I'm saying?

—messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

Wait? What? The guy talks to chickens?

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters—

I don't think that's what he meant, but who knows?
 

—spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident—

Hey, sounds like Aquaman just showed up!

Ha ha!