A grey and foggy day. An old man sits in an orange box of light. Behind the window he watches the television. Same programme as yesterday. Same as tomorrow. Day in. Day out. Steam billows out of the side of his house. A sign of the life inside. It dissipates out into the cold fog and becomes inseparable from the external elements.
The years trickle by. Time hasn’t been the same since Kathy left. Since the kids left. Since he retired. Just innumerable days melding into one another like chains on a bike. Sliding back and forth. Each one indistinguishable from the other.
It does occur to him to rattle this cage. To change up the formula. But how? He has a neat little budget that he keeps to. He has the recreations that works to gnaw away the corners of the hour. The television. The radio. The paper.
The only options left to him are destructive. To drink himself into a pit. To smoke out his lungs. To throw his money on horses.
Unless.
He watches the news each morning. Each day is as unsurprisingly grim as the last. Surely someone ought to do something about that? But who? An old man is not a good candidate for running around changing the country.
He thinks about the tool shed. He used to be an engineer, once. He could make something. Something that changes things. But what? A new grout applier? A self-sharpening axe? A nail bomb?
Tick, tick. The days go by. He ponders his choices. Then one day he goes into the tool shed. And he doesn’t come out until he has- well, you know what. The rest is history. We all know his name now.
Paddy Dobson
9th December 2021