9: Sparkwell and the handshake interupt

The doorbell of the flat must have started ringing whilst we were in the shower. Then the sound of knocking could be heard as I fixed Charlie’s squirrel. ‘Shouldn’t we do something about that?’ she asked.

‘No. I’m pretty sure Madam Concierge, ably assisted by Jim, will be escorting whoever from the building at any moment.’

Playing back the security video gave us both a good laugh. The wide-angle lens acts so well in caricaturing an individual I always think. First the ungainly walk, then the leering face led by the nose, the pacing up and down; finally Tuffy’s exultations that I was his oldest friend, that he knew I was in there, that it was an urgent life and death situation - all as he was expertly guided out of shot.

We barely had time to compose ourselves before the intercom went. ‘Calm yourself Tuffy!’ I said as I released the button.

Charlie held the door open in expectation; ‘Calm myself! How can I be expected to calm myself? First this terrible news, then being frog marched from the building. Where were you, what were you doing?’

I noticed that as he said these words he seemed to be addressing them to Charlie. Her response was to guide him to one of the straight backed chairs that always seem to be about these days. She stood behind him, gently massaging his shoulders as he expounded on the inevitable; ‘It’s over, she’s left me…’

‘Now, legs a little further apart, elbows towards the knees, now cover your eyes in the natural resting position. Ideally you should be squatting but that will do for now. Notice the breath, watch it, don’t try to control it. Breathing gently through the nose. No, mouth closed always. Now is all there is, and can ever be. The best thing about the past is that it is gone. You are safe now. Be in the moment...’

I won’t bore you with the rest, but it did remind me a little of hypnotherapy sessions I’d attended in the past, although they tended to be very wordy and of course lacked the benefit of the Sparkwell touch. After a while she bought Tuffy back to the sun on the windows, the summer sounds etc.

‘Tony old lad, do you remember Matron?’

‘Yes, Tuffy.’

‘How we used to try to find an excuse to see her, so as to listen to TMS on her radio on Test Match days.’

‘Only too well.’

‘Recently I find myself thinking more and more of those days.’

‘It’s because we’re both fast approaching fifty. Bit late for chasing after waitresses.’

Suddenly, a muffled cough; ‘Drink this if you would Mr Tufnell, you will need to re-hydrate.’

Later, after Tuffy had decided he couldn’t hang around listening to my inane chatter any longer, Charlie confided; ‘I’m a bit worried about that Jim, seeing him on screen reminded me, does he spend all his days riding the lift? I mean I know he’ll play the doormen as well as his cleaning and handyman duties…’

‘I’m sure the Dragon has him under control.’

‘And just what is their relationship?’

‘Well I’m not sure of the details, but he seems to spend nights in her rooms quite a bit. No weirder than us I guess.’

‘There was a strange incident with the lift.’

‘Go on.’

‘I was waiting with the laundry, the doors opened and he was just stood there inside, with a sort of thousand yard stare or whatever it is called, immobile. Then the doors started to close and it wasn’t till my foot triggered the doors to open again that he seemed to come back from wherever he was.’

‘Rather the opposite of Tuffy then.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well he was in a highly agitated state of consciousness, you put him into another state or trance using focus over a number of minutes, whilst Jim was in a ‘some other place’ kind of trance, but in an instant a minor shock provided the pattern break that switched him back to the present moment.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘We all go in and out of different trances or states of consciousness all the time, maybe ten times a day, what is therapeutic is your ability to do inductions and transformations.’

‘Do I? Is that what it is?’

‘Hypnosis is not what it is cracked up to be, because it is actually dead normal, that is, rapidly inducing states of deep relaxation. If you are in a so called trance, usually confused as being something special rather than just another state of consciousness, you are simply more open to others, less preoccupied with self, more open to the present and new learning...’ I stopped, now I’d shocked her, spoken aloud what she was, what she did. She went back to her mat, squatted there awhile, the palms of her hands over her eyes.

When she came back; ‘You said we were really working on the same project, I get that now, but how come you can say it, understand it, I can’t.’

‘You don’t have to, you can do it. It’s because I am a nerd, who read history and did computer science on the side, then read up on other scientific stuff.’

‘On our own we’re just us now. We should be leaving for the club soon.’

‘I say you haven’t seen Tuffy around? He’s meant to be delivering the headsets and jackets today, not to mention the master control box thingy.’

‘I doubt he’ll emerge for at least a week, probably in bed pining for his lost love.’

‘That’s all off again is it? Still he’s usually pretty fast when it comes to recovery. There is only one kind of madness and that’s the divine madness.’

‘That’s very good Cat. I didn’t realise you could do profundity.’

‘I’ll show you what else I can do - chits! Take a look at these. This, being supporting evidence for that, note to the committee.’

I laid the two pieces of paper side by side on the bar. ‘Oh I like this, I like this a lot.’ The memo stated that the flight simulator was on loan from the ‘Science Museum, Munich’. Whilst what purported to be an invoice in euros for transportation had on its masthead, ‘Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technic’.

‘Clever dodge eh?’

‘Absolutely. Now let me think this through…’

‘The name you’re really looking for old boy is, Hochschule fur angewandte Wissenschaften Munchen.'

'On the tip of my tongue. This is aeronautics, therefore this must be the work of Barmy Gruber. Some summer school research project gone horribly wrong, which fell off the back of a lorry whilst en route to its final resting place at the museum - no don't tell me, I don't wanna know.'