Skip to main content

Interior Life of an Estate Agent - part 17

Good Evening Mr Bond

There are two couples to take round a little house on a new estate on the edge of town and I have strict instructions to make sure that the cat must not get out. I’m dreading this because I imagine a swift little beast slipping through our legs as soon as we open the front door. There’s no sign of it though and we all squeeze in, afraid to open the door wider than our sideways body widths, and close it with relief.

Monsieur Chat peeps seductively round a door frame leading into the living room, delicately places a furry paw onto the hall carpet and sways towards us, allowing his body to brush lingeringly against the paintwork.

Truly, this is Blofeldt’s cat. Condemned to a life indoors, his only pleasures are sensory. He is brushed, smoothed, fondled, and caressed. The world beyond the window; a world of territorial disputes, raking claws and screams in the night, is unknown to him.

He slinks towards me, arching his back with pleasure and kinking his tail in an attitude of camp affectation.

I bend down to make false friends, and stroke his marvellously fluffy coat, recoiling slightly at his face which appears scrunched right up as though he’s anticipating a sudden impact. He unsqueezes his face and gazes up into mine. As I peer into his, the full hideousness of his visage is revealed. His eyes have a look of pure evil.

Lock him up. Run away, run away.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

OLD JOY. Dir Kelly Reichardt. 2005

Dropout Kurt arrives in town and calls up his old friend, earnest father-to-be Mark to suggest a camping trip out in the forest, away from the city. They haven’t seen each other for some time and the film suggests a desire for intimacy as well as a quest for peace. Something of a lost soul, Kurt is emotional and, at times, to be pitied. He lives outside society, in a world of new age type retreats and travels, which seem to have left him out on the margins. In contrast, Mark has a home and a pregnant partner, and tunes his car radio in to phone-ins with much loud chat about the state of society in America but he seems only half alive. They drive out of town, with the camera as passenger, which gazes out of the car window while a gorgeous soundtrack by Yo La Tengo sets a mellow mood. The use of extended silence makes me a little uneasy; it’s hard to get away from memories of Deliverance, and a sense of apprehension. In the city, the glass of the car windows insulates us...

Interior Life of an Estate Agent - part 18

You're not from round 'ere then? I am surrounded by delightful young families, happily retired couples, or contented empty nesters, enjoying their return to pre-children companionship and some freedom from parental responsibility, as well as a large number of women who have escaped their marriages and bought a dog, preferring long walks and book clubs. One of the imbalanced things about living in the west country, as with living in the farther reaches of Scotland, is that there is a surfeit of single women and a dearth of suitable single men. The men are wage slaves, and to be found in the south-east whereas women, on the whole, like a bit of a view. This must be the centrifugal effect, as though single women have been flung out from the frenzied middle of a dance, and have landed, like so many wallflowers on the hard chairs all around the dance hall. I can tell you; those chairs are hard; and sitting on them makes you invisible; not, however, to the sort of man who has an ...

Ian McEwan. Amsterdam. London: QPD, 1998

McEwan’s novel about ambition, personal betrayal and revenge features Clive, a modern composer trying to complete a major orchestral work, his friend Vernon, an editor trying to save his ailing newspaper, and Garmony, an unscrupulous right-wing politician on the rise. In common, all three have, in previous years, been lovers of recently dead Molly. They meet at her funeral and the story follows the next few weeks of the men’s lives. Vernon and Clive act as one another’s conscience, each infuriating the other. Which is more important, honesty, friendship and trust or Vernon’s newspaper and Clive’s symphony? The novel presents the difficulties of balancing personal and public morality, the importance of private shame and public reputation, the conflict between taking a moral decision for the greater good, or putting first ones own desires. Not just a simple exposé of a politician with a vulnerable side, Amsterdam is full of double standards and surprises, and takes a long, cynical look a...