Tom Fogg's Ecce 5: 'Harmony Reclines in the Room'

You find me in a basement in Camden town. There is a smell of decay, of sweat, of many things unwashed of the grease of hopelessness. And there is an atmosphere so sour you could squeeze enough out to pickle a hundred weight of gherkins a day.

Just a moment ago it was six pm (by the sun's arc) and I was lying on a beach watching the waves leap and tussle in play. Only a moment ago.... 

I won't explain how I came to be here. Let me just say that 'The decision' arrived one afternoon and by his straight-to-business demeanor I suspected that we ought at once to take a stroll into the town square for a drink, to discuss terms. I remember the sun was quite rude that day but that it was comfortable in the shade of the cafe's awning. I remember thinking that there might still be some way out of this as a good breeze began to dry the shirt off my back. When I learnt of 'The Decision's' terms I was not sad but now I am. I miss my beach. I miss my motorbike. The decision was smartly dressed and convinced me with practised suggestiveness. I felt like I'd just been sold acres of worthless off-plan real estate. His suit, I think that's what confused me. But then that was also what, one might cruelly suggest, enticed me.

Now is our summer of discontent made good by......... a cool, sunlit room of diverse but spare decoration. I can hear the gulls barking outside. I imagine one on a chimney stack. Its great white chest stuck out above those preposterous legs that seem stuck on by a child's hand. When my gull barks it sounds for a moment like a mule tied forgotten to a post in the midday heat but then that perfect white neck stretches further, that blooded beak opens wider and the call of the sea is hacked out over again like a threat. I am happy here. I dined well last night and there is a stash of hashish so abundant that it seems to grow, no matter how hard I can convince it otherwise.

I am happy also because Harmony reclines in the room. When I interrogate a rocking chair or a hanging carpet or an oriental wooden birdcage, there is no jealous squabble and no word out of line for each piece allows the other space to tell its own story. And some tell very old stories, from distant places with long-dead rulers, but always with each piece granting equal respect to its neighbour, to tell it well once again, so that they all might grow happily older together.

Perhaps you might not like it. I know that my perspective, ardent but desperately independent, is biased in this case. Back through my years I have seen this room, wherever it may be, change like light through a wood. But even now that there are two sets of eyes that have become one, the room could only ever feel like this. The room has patience and but one set of clothes, kept clean by salt spray and bleached by the sun. The room has a clear mind and asked that I join it for an hour or two of peaceful education and pleasure.

I must go and walk down by the water. I may even swim while the gulls swoop and cackle up on the cliff. Histories can wait awhile, restaurants for longer.

Tom