EDMONDO'S SIGH.

Old Edmondo was glad that winter seemed to be at its end. The months of cold and damp had got to him as never before. These days he couldn’t seem to get warm. The fire hissed at him, the reluctant logs too sappy, too wet to take up the offer at once and when the flames did lick into action beating the thick wood smoke to bring some flickering, dancing, brightness into the room, Edmondo couldn’t feel their warmth until he’d held his worn and wrinkled hands out towards them for a minute or two. Even then and almost stroking the flames, he had to rub his hands together, like dried leaves, to get the coldness out of the joints in his fingers. Those fingers that had gripped and toiled, clawed and wrung, pointed and poked and picked. Dirty broken nails and cuts and calluses from a life of manual labour, Edmondo’s hands were his tools, the tools of his trade and even more than the heavy lines on his face, his deep brow set above those watery old man’s eyes, his hands told his tale as a mountain man.

The lighter mornings meant that he’d be up, the dog fed, and chopping his kindling before seven with the first cup of sweet dark coffee and mouthful of bread by half past. It had been a long winter and the snow had covered the hill side for many months. From the back door to the wooden outhouse the ground looked surprised. Edmondo had cleared a path and even though the snow had tried to take control, the old man and his wide snow shovel had won the battle. The ground was dark, dirty and damp, like a scar, and the banked snow hung around at the margins, pock marked with cold grey ash from the fire, looking lumpy and off-white heaped there by the old man’s efforts and not by nature herself. The hillside was still muffled, blanketed in white, but Edmondo could just make out the sound of running water, the first sign of the thaw as the hidden stream took itself off down the slopes to the valley bottom. A sigh of relief from the running water that winter seemed to be at its end.

The buzzard mewed somewhere above the tree line, out of sight but up there circling slowly, hunting, looking from above at anything brave enough to break cover and dart across the white ground. A furry snack taken, stabbed to a violent death by the razor sharp swooping hooked beak and carried lifeless but still warm up the hill out of harms way for the big bird at least. Edmondo heard the call. He stopped and looked up, hugging the logs to his chest as though it was them being hunted, but he didn’t see the kill and shuffled back inside to stack the wood beside the fireplace so that it would start to understand its purpose, why it was there. He’d have that bird before spring was over. He’d have it before it could take any of the new born.

Edmondo wiped the end of his cold wet nose across the back of his cold, hard hand. The snail like trail rubbed off onto the well worn faded blue overall he wore day in day out and mixed in with the living culture that, like millions of hairy growing spores on a Petri dish, waved welcome to the new arrival. The cocktail of the grime from the mountain hut fermenting on Edmondo’s uniform was dust and grit and smoke from the fire, oil from the chain saw, grease, duck fat, sheep dip, grass, sweat, red wine, spittle, soot, blood, eau de vie, coffee, nicotine, paint, goats cheese, white spirit, creosote, diesel fuel, battery acid, urine, kerosene, candle wax, cassoulet, gun oil, dog hair, lichen, rat poison, honey, moss, WD40, saucisse, earth, cepe, tree bark, pot au feu, sawdust, butter, tobacco, salt, chocolate, semen, whiskey and shit. There was Brebis too and Edmondo cut himself a piece to go with the dry bread, already stale from yesterday’s oven. His teeth, like those of an old ram, pushed through the ewe’s cheese, broke the bread, and the Madiran, red and rough, washed round their jagged edges, a rising tide of Tannat grape juice off to meet and scuff the old pallet just like the start to most days. He spat back at the fire, a piece of reddened cheese rind, and spun another log into the big hearth. A shower of sparks stuttered upwards and disappeared around the greasy blackened roasting spit and up the dark chimney, up to the clean, fresh mountain air.

The sun came round and over the opposite peak at eleven and the shadows retreated across the hill side in a race to hide from the glare. The sun off the snow was as bright as a blast furnace. Edmondo squinted as he sat by the wooden table set up against the outside wall of the hut. The table he’d made served him well. He took his midday meal off it when he was there and not out and about on the hill side. He gutted rabbits on it. He fixed things on it, sawed wood or wired snares. Oiled his gun and drank his wine. He sat and watched as the sun crept nearer and nearer. His eyes watered, he blinked to clear them and then the rays met him, at first quite gently, and then, suddenly, full on. The warm spring sun shine, the first for months, poured into him. Edmondo felt its warmth. He closed his eyes. The sun licked its way into his old bones and he sat with his back against the hut wall, his face to the sun, his grey hair pushed back from his forehead, and he sighed. It was a big sigh, a sigh of relief that winter seemed to be at its end.

The sun kissed his closed eye lids so that he knew he was in the bright light rather than the dark interior of the mountain hut. The muscles in his face relaxed and a natural smile took shape on his cracked lips. He day dreamed and dozed and the rays wrapped him up and took him away.
He is by his fire, the centre of his life, the giver of heat and light and nourishment. Then there he stoops in the woods precariously balanced on the steep slope his chain saw shaking and cackling like a dreadful sharp toothed beast as he cuts what he chooses, slashes years of woody growth in just a few high pitched moments to give him the fuel for the hub of his life. The oil spits out off the flying chain when he guns the motor and makes its dark wet mark of warning, oil and grease, that vital cocktail for smooth running. He can smell the fat as it oozes from the duck breast cooking on the home made metal grill, the two pieces of iron work he crafted for the purpose between which he can burn his meat in the open flames of his fire. Cook his meat but not his hands. Bon appetite and then down to the penned flock and each animals submersion in the potent brew that kills everything and even gets to grown men in the end if they aren’t careful about protecting them selves. The sheep’s reward for the shocking dip, to be let out on to the grass, the mountain sward thick with a million flowers. And while the ewes settle heads down, the sweating labourer takes a sip or two of red wine from the leather gourd and spits at a job well done. The soot that marks the fleece of each and the blood from nicks when the shears have over done their cutting at the rear are washed away like the end of a good feast with strong white eau de vie, black coffee and a roll your own so strong it can strip the paint off an oak door. A wedge of goat’s cheese with the taste of her udders and dry hill side grass is cut with the Laguiole, the one with the bone handle, the one that he’s had with him all his life. The next chore to soften the round and stumpy bristles on the brush with white spirit and work in another coat of creosote to the out building’s wood. It smells strong like the diesel fuel kept in jerry cans inside the out building next to the defunct generator. It hasn’t worked for years since the battery acid had corroded the lead. He’s going to fix it one day. Perhaps. He stands and relieves himself outside before carrying in a tin of kerosene to fill the lamps. He has to light a candle to see what he is doing. The hot candle wax slides down his thumb and becomes firm like a raised white scar. It is later than he thinks and quite gloomy inside. Maybe cassoulet for supper, out of the tin or maybe the stew will stretch another day. First he’s going to clean the carbine and in doing so excite the dog, sulky for lack of gun, and jumping with false joy at the thought of the hunt at dusk. Instead he throws a stick and the hound bounds off to fetch and returns with the lichen speckled branch a testament to the pure air and the dog’s love of attention. He mustn’t get to the rat poison that killed his mother and extra care is taken with hiding the deadly bait. She’s buried up where the bees make their honey under a mossy bank with a simple stone to mark her faithfulness. As the light begins to fade the hands are cleaned with the spray from the can. WD40 smells as though it should be good and if it’s good for rust on metal it must make light work of dirty hands, no doubt about it. The lamps are lit and the saucisse taken down from the nail in the beam and sliced, thinly cut on the table top ready for the evening feed. The fire is stocked up with an earth covered log the size of a small tree, the one where the cepes grew and it won’t take without the help of the dry tree bark stacked under it to encourage the fire to life again. The pot au feu, made three days before, in its cast iron cauldron is slid onto the oven top and a handful of sawdust sprinkled into the mouth of the cooker to get the fire up and running under the big pot. There’s rancid butter with the stale bread tonight to make it less so. A cigarette is smoked almost with every mouthful and salt is plied to everything in handfuls. For afters it’s thick, dark, chocolate for the old man’s sweet tooth and out comes the dog eared girly magazine with faded photos of busty beauties with come to bed looks so that without much fuss he takes himself in hand, gives himself a little treat. Then another, longer lasting one, a glass of whiskey with no water in a strong, chunky, tumbler sipped with content and before bed, defecation.

Sitting in the mountain sunshine, warm for the first time in months, it was his time to go, a change to the routine. They found old Edmondo stiff as the boards he was leaning against.

Down in the village they say that if you’re up in the hills and you stop and listen carefully you might hear a sigh. They do say on the first day of spring you can hear Edmondo’s sigh.

MARKING THE TERRITORY.

When Dorothy bent over you could see that she wasn't wearing any knickers. It wasn't a pretty sight. It wasn't unattractive either. It was... well...a surprise. You didn't expect to see the secret kept undercover between grown girls legs. Dorothy was over eighteen so she could do pretty much what she liked. "Fan touché flashing," as she christened the act became a sport for one hot summer. Dorothy and her friend Charlotte liked to play when they were bored and the mood took them.

It was normally out shopping on warm Saturday mornings that the two girls set up the game. What had started out as a bit of fun became an art form and they took it in turns to photograph each other and their victim’s reaction to create an album. Charlotte called it our bum album. Their targets weren't random. They were in that the girls chose them from the milling crowds but each was picked in the same way a pick-pocket might select his quarry. The girls wanted to create an impression, didn’t want their efforts to go unnoticed and so choosing the right subject was every bit as important as delivering the visual display. Dorothy favoured men of a certain age, those that probably hadn't seen a “fan touché” for years. Charlotte didn't mind who saw hers. What both of them avoided was being exposed to anyone that knew them, the law or CCTV and they never performed in the same place twice.

A “bend over” that involved almost touching the toes was the easiest way to flash. It looked the most casual and innocent of the moves. It was most effective when performed inside and the simple act of bending over in a shop on the pretext of examining more closely the goods on offer could reveal the goods not on offer. It looked to the observer like an accident and on more than one occasion the victim had approached the perpetrator with almost apologetic advice along the lines of someone’s forgotten to put their underwear on. The sentence nearly always ended in “Dear” or maybe “Deary”, a condescension that certainly wasn’t applicable. The bending over display gave witness to a lot of naked bottom but if it was done with gusto and athleticism then something of the “fan touché” came into view as well. The bare rear on its own was not deemed as having gone far enough by the sporting girls. It was important to show “fan touché”. Fan touché scored points and points were prizes in the All Bar One or White Horse afterwards.

If the “bend over” was a shotgun that could sometimes reach a larger than intended audience, the “front flick” was a rifle with “in your face” precision. The more purposeful flick of the skirt or dress at the front left the onlooker with the impression that he or she had just seen something that he or she should not have. It often provoked the double take and was over in a flash so that the recipient was never sure if what had happened had happened.

Points were scored according to reaction. Those exposed to the experience were always their own living score board. The marks awarded were out of ten and to get top marks was very rare. Most were below five. Reactions ranged from nothing at all as though the recipient hadn't seen anything or, more skilfully, was pretending not to have seen anything. The marking process was conducted by the girl not "flashing the gash" as Charlotte more crudely described it. So as Dorothy lifted her denim skirt (it was blue denim that day) in front of a guy who looked about fifty-five wearing a waxed jacket and brown cords, so Charlotte observed and photographed with the long lens and marked. On this occasion the guy stopped dead in his tracks while his head swivelled so violently following the passing of Dorothy that his neck must have been stiff for a fortnight. The man stood gawping. Transfixed but gawping facing the way he'd just come from. Charlotte gave her friend a five for that. When Charlotte decided to bend over right in front of an older traffic warden the reaction was less interesting than if the uniformed guy had stumbled across an illegally parked car. Dorothy awarded one. In Curry’s a “bend over” to look at the base of a large plasma screened tele caused a ripple from three other customers and a whole new meaning to the expression “High Definition”. Dorothy got a six for that.

On some days the girls would do what they called “Fanny dress.” They’d deck their naked lower regions in fancy dress. Dorothy’s most elaborate was as a Mexican complete with mini sombrero and Charlotte got Dorothy to paint a giant colourful target on her bare bottom which of course provoked comments about scoring and the bull’s eye. Painting a fish so that its mouth looked almost life like was a favourite outing along with the speech bubble drawn on the high thigh, the talking fan touché, with the message, “Amazingly enough I don’t give a shit”.

Dorothy and Charlotte had fun. They were “good” girls from “good” homes and all they were doing was just having a bit of harmless pleasure with added adrenalin rush. They never did it when they’d had too much to drink and had they been asked to explain their actions by the local paper they would have said that they were performing street theatre or pavement art. Dorothy even thought about applying for a grant but Charlotte said she wouldn’t stand a chance and the next summer the weather was lousy and Charlotte went to the south of France anyway.

Dorothy married a barrister and became a JP. Charlotte got engaged to a land agent and had twins.

When Henry took his cock out, like a limp Conger eel, and waved it at the passing crowd before pissing into the fountain, someone told him to put it away and somebody else called the police. He told the court that he was only marking his territory but the chair of the bench told him that he’d already upset public decency and he’d have to pay a fine and that if he did it again he’d be in real trouble even though she remembered the time when she and her friend pranced the same streets on Saturday mornings that hot summer flashing at those that, mostly speaking, didn’t want to see what they weren’t supposed to. Henry hadn't done too much wrong. He'd just been caught doing it. Henry had hit the nail on the head. It was, she reflected, all about marking the territory.