The Awkward Transmissions of a Twisted Posture

I knew I had always to think about things in hindsight so as to deduce exactly what had happened, even if the print is fading, and I also needed to reach the end of something to judge the implications of its beginning, give or take the odd intervention by destiny, especially with it being an old eccentric man who stirred such thoughts in me. I had cause to befriend him at the seaside by initially realising that he seemed to be in distress as he tried to walk up from the lower promenade by using the York Road steps instead of his more usual route nearby, he later told me, of the longer but gentler Queensway ZigZag slopes.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

He explained that he had suddenly felt a dizziness, not just in the head but a wrenching of his whole body, a sort of seizure that was not painful but alarming. Despite my parents telling me never to speak to strangers, I took him by the arm and led him eventually from the top of the steps to the nearest bench on the upper promenade. I noted his steep stoop, as he walked.

His immediate words other than the above mention of the ZigZag slopes that he should have used, was that he feared he might have changed the whole direction of the world by such an uncharacteristic choice of route back home. I nodded in sympathy with him as I tried to explain the Butterfly Effect or Chaos Theory, but he seemed to know about these phenomena already. He saw that, despite my being much younger than him, I was the sort of person to whom  he could talk of similar matters, and he then embarked on a description of a dream he had experienced the previous night, fully expecting me to be patient enough to listen to it.

“I was on the ZigZags at night, Miss, and the sea had a sort of blue darkness, can you imagine that?” He noticed my nod and continued. “And I remembered the pirate radio stations out there with tall masts broadcasting on the Medium Wave with enough reach to stretch as far as London. Anything was better than the dire fading-out and truncations of Radio Luxembourg. Anyway, those ships have long been gone. Listen to the slow swish of the sea. I could actually hear a similar noise within the dream itself, in fact it was the first time I have ever dreamt any sound in any dream. Have you ever dreamt sound, Miss?”

I decided I had never dreamt sound but he continued without waiting for my answer. He described to me a starless and moonless night, yet he could discern what he recognised as the dome of St. Paul’s slowly rising from the otherwise placid sea, a vision situated about what he assessed to be a hundred yards from the replenished beach beyond a fishtail groyne. It even more slowly turned on a timely axis, making the sea’s surface follow suit. He said it seemed to be a translucent structure, if there had been any light to prove that translucency was possible. Perhaps it had its own light from within, making his own earlier assessment as to its position in the now silent sea thus verified. 

It then faded beyond potential light with a silence more silent than silence itself. Or did it sink as slowly as it rose. The dream was foreshortened, and I cannot remember any more. I hope I didn’t miss anything out.