THE OTHER HALF OF EVERYTHING 

METHOD ACT 1.
  
He woke in a tiny bedsit in Reading, Berkshire England. 
An image of his son's face falling away from his eyes like 

a rainbow drifting into the filthy walls. The drumbeat rippled 

with the hum of his landlady doing her washing on a wash-

board over the bath. The tune was probably handed down 

from her mother’s mother, a tribal lady washing on stone 

by a river. In a dream state of confusion, he clambered 

into his clothes along with the three flights of stairs 

he managed to maneuver in massive strides, standing 

on the cat that scared him and jolted him closer to 

the front door. The fear of what that hologram of his 

son meant drifted through his mind. 

The Queen Lizzy pub was quiet for a change. 

The drunks and junkies were asleep or still 

locked up in the cells after the dawn raid. 

He ran to the end of the street where the kebab 

van parks and sat on the wall awaiting the girl 

to exit the phone booth. 

 

For fuck's sake hurry up he told her silently my motives 

losing momentum. He turned to the street and watched 

the creeds of the world clamber along, among them 

the lost and the lonely released into the community, 

the mad ones the real people. 

An old lady with a white-painted face 

shoved a shopping trolley along the middle 
of the road the rush hour traffic swerving 
to miss her. Elvis in a sequined waistcoat 
posing for a shout-singing Love me Tender 
across the street. A man in a long black coat 
who never spoke to anyone just walked around 

with a scrunched-up ball of paper in his hand 

wiping crayons taken from his breast pocket 

across the page. 

He remembered meeting him once in 
the Irish cafe and like a tourist, he bought 
him a cup of tea and asked can I have a look. 
Without a sound and half a smile, he handed 
his sketchpad while another appeared instantly 

from within his coat and he began drawing 

the scene outside the window. Only he could see 

what he was drawing his back was the view he 

watched him draw half a man, half a car, and half 

a street like the aftermath of a blitz. The other ones, 

with crayons, he said and he took the ball of paper 

from his pocket and rolled it across the artificial 

marble Formica-topped table. As he unfolded 

the ball of paper Monet’s, Lilies, Van Gogh’s trees, 

and Vermeer's light filled his eyes, he looked at him 

and saw in his eyes the other half of everything.

 
METHOD ACT 2.
 
He rushed past the girl and shoved the coins 
in the slot his heart beating wildly like electronic 

codes gathering in his head, a dead tone. He took 

the rejected coins and shoved them home again 

and again only to hear the same dead tones ringing 

like a thumping headache, she must have changed 

the number, he thought as he returned to his 
little room. Feeling caged like an animal trying 

so hard to concentrate on a book but it only brought 

confusion. Unable to erase the sight of the picture 

of his son appearing like that hologram 

and the worrying thoughts attached to it. 

Your conscience is the prison of the mind, he 

thought no matter how hard you try you just 

can't run from it, oh how he wished at that 

moment that he was one of the dispossessed 

shuffling through life, oblivious of any moral 

obligations. He thought of his father trying 

to run all his life from his bastard past, each 

one of 5 siblings were born in a different town 

and staying no longer than a year in each 

English town. 

Belfast during the 60s and 70s being 

the longest they stayed anywhere then 
that it was probably one of the safest places 
in the world for him, what past would want 
to find you in Belfast during the nightmare 
of the troubles. When he gave up running 
from his past, a secret family exploded after 
thirty-one years of marriage to his mother 
and showered down like emotional shrapnel, 
sending the family to the four winds to lick 
their wounds.  Killing my father and devastating 

my mother with five strokes.  He always swore 

he would never be like him and here he was in 

a fucked-uptown in England while everything 

was across the Irish Sea.
 
He discarded the book Charles Bukowski’s 
hot water music with a vengeance into 
the corner of the room left him cold 
he took his only coat from the only chair 
and left the still-ordinary madness of the room 
and joined the frantic streets. It was warm 
summer's evening, which didn't 
help much as the town's grim sights clashed 
with the elements and his void. He called 
at the Asian shop and purchased a bottle of 
overpriced wine (uncorked), without a care 
for paying over the odds, anything to sup-
press his inner lament and awaken 
his mind to simpler things. 
 
He walked south of the town intent on not 

opening the wine until he reached his destination. 

Beneath a filthy old railway bridge, he uncorked 

the wine and took a deep swig while in his mind 

he told the roaring train thundering overhead to 

fuck off. He passed the roundabout where the cars 

waited impatiently for their little piece of space 

in a mad hurry to get nowhere. Dusk fell on reaching 

his destination, his space by the river.

He went there often to clear his head of the modern filth. 

He sat by the river's edge smoking and chugging the wine. 

A warm slight breeze blew with the river flow creating 

short sharp waves that gleamed with the red dye-injected sky. 

A treat for his eyes after the usual week of air-conditioned 

factories, traffic jams everywhre the sight of built-up grey 

areas filled with drunks, , and perverts clambering the streets 

in of some temporary nirvana. 

That vexed feeling came fleeting back at the sight of the river-

boat pumping along unnaturally like filth on the river.  

It's cheap-colored lights flashed cutting the reflection of the line 

of trees from the far bank like a chainsaw. Idling towards the boat 

was a train of swans at point, a beautiful white bird followed 

by four black cygnets, guarding the rear was the majestic male. 

Pleasantly they blended with the scenery, belonging. The bright 

lights of the boat exterior and the lights within clashed creating 

silhouette shapes that pranced around out of sync with 

the nightclub's thumping beats. Man’s celebration driving like 

a nightmare on the surpassing river. 

He recalled a night he was on board that very boat, 

The Princess, a cruise or so he thought a pleasure trip. 

One of the girls in work arranged it in anticipation 

he pictured the scene, relaxing on the starboard bow 

with a beer mellowing with the sights and the natural flow 

of nature passing by. Most of the people he worked with 

were assholes their form of chilling out after work was 

glued to the box in the corner that pumped garbage 

into their minute recesses.
 
METHOD ACT 3.
 
He was excommunicated, he's an oddball, they said 

because he couldn't make a comment on the latest 

goings on in the soap operas or who scored the vital 

goal in the football or give  his opinion on the lunatic 

on the news that murdered twenty-seven men 

and women and ate their genitals He liked poetry 

and literature they can keep their electrified dementia, 

I'll stay quietly insane.
 
He got a beer and left the swarm of people within, 

He sat on the deck ready for the world's natural flow. 

The disco beat pumped decibels of thumping sounds 

through the hull, echoing tremors through the river's 

capacity. It's no wonder it's a good river for fishing they 

want to be caught and have their necks smashed on 

the nearest rock, he was so pissed off he wanted 

to catch the hook pull back on it and be hauled to freedom. 

He was starving and wanted to hear classical 

and let his mind wander off to take it in then pour this experience 

out on paper. He tried he best to relax and push those stupid 

sounds away, just when he thought he had it sorted one of his 

fellow workers broke his concentration to talk shop. He had 

riverboat sickness, leaving the deck he returned to the madness 

and sat with his fellow used and the presence of beer 

and whisky flowed. 

The booze took its toll and he was no longer in control, letting it 

flow with the jfilth of the boat on the river. As the train of swans 

met the boat two silhouette shapes stood on the deck drinking 

from glasses that flashed in the moonlight, pouring their 

substance from the glasses down on the flock, 

their strict security broke in shock. 

He yelled at the shapes, you think it's fucking funny, 

ya mindless wankers. In his rage, he didn't notice the swan 

swimming towards him bolting onto the bank honking 

and hissing wildly flapping its outstretched wings. He 

stumbled back and ran for cover behind the trees 

with the echoes of laughter from the boat. He zigzagged 

the line of trees and by the time he reached the river’s edge 

again after finishing the wine, it seemed the moon and stars 

were out for his benefit only. Mellowing in solitude pondering 

his circumstance watching the shadows from the far shore 

rippling a picture for the album of his mind, until something 

caught his eye. 

 

He turned to see the swans silently coming along 

the river's edge. He was about to get up and run 

when he told himself to stall, and relax, his heart 

beat wildly and shook with fear like the flowing river 

when the majestic bird broke the water with great 

ease onto the bank and idled towards him. 

The massive bird came strolling along the grass verge

 for a second they made eye contact before he lowered 

his head closed his eyes and braced himself. He felt 

the strength of its breast as it pressed against him, its 

cold beak brushed his forehead and flowed to the nape 

of his neck with the affection of a lover’s touch, 

and a sensation flowed through his mind and body, 

a new sensation.

Something he had only come close to experiencing seeing 

his children being born. It cleared his mind of every trivial 

thought he ever had. he opened his eyes, left the river 

and returned to the town, got his gear together from 

the corner of the filthy room 
and left.
 
 On the train, he thought maybe I should leave her alone, 

maybe they're better off without me. On the ferry crossing, 

the rough Irish Sea political parties condemned murder 

in the TV lounge. As he sipped a pint of Guinness. 

It's winter in Northern Ireland all things are dying, the rain 

and the sea spray cut with the coldness of steel but he held 

in his hands a picture of sons, the reality was pulsing with 

a rhythm he never wanted to lose. Returning to the news 

of his son being taken to hospital with a strain of meningitis.