The final frontier

Extra a slice of Scottish life

A bit more story...

 
Little legs downed his coffee and flicked through the pile of postcards on the table. Most were touristic views of Berlin with paragraphs of badly written and spelled messages to friends in England. One was slightly larger but had no message or address. When he had arrived at Kopi there was a letter waiting from him from Walter. It was a strange letter, euphoric in both a good and bad way. He was clearly ecstatically happy, loving both his life with Gina and Archaos with equal fervour but there was a strange manic undertone that he sensed, couldn’t quite articulate but felt wrong. He wanted to write back but he was unsure of where to send it. Also he felt he needed to say more than the usual travel platitudes but again was unsure what that would be. He ordered another coffee and stared out of the misted window at the view, the Berlin tower standing stoic in the drizzle with a few tourists mooched desultorily beneath it. A Len Deighton kind of day.
Little legs had spent it wandering Berlin visiting various Holocaust memorials in particular the Sachsenhausen memorial centre and museum, one of the first of the many concentration camps created at the time. Little leg’s dad had fought in the Second World War and like many of his generation had a strange relationship with the experience. Though unwilling to talk about it much he nevertheless took every opportunity to read every book and article and watch every programme and film however poor on the subject. Little legs was very familiar, in particular, with the series World at War, the footage of American troops entering Auschwitz and revealing the horrors within burned indelibly into his mind. He was moved and impressed by the exhibits at Sachsenhausen, a country coming to terms with its past in an open and honest way. Sitting in the cafe he mused on his own past, considering the notion of reflection as a vehicle for change and progression. He had never successfully managed to entirely embrace the idea, defaulting instead to a ‘live now pay later’ attitude that eschewed critical thought in favour of self delusion. Little legs found this hiatus in the tour schedule difficult. Pause produced time for the above, causing revelations that he was unwilling to face or act on. Result was a consciousness of failure and regret. Answer was usually alcohol or drug induced oblivion, though he was trying hard to resist that outcome, feeling a sense of responsibility and loyalty to the ragbag of new mates he had taken a massive liking too in the last week. He ordered another coffee and picked up an old National Geographic magazine lying amongst some other periodicals left to encourage customers to stay. He flicked through stopping at an amazing picture of a kingfisher leading him on to an article on animal pellets.  He read
 
“Maybe you are one of those lucky fishermen whose rod is used as a makeshift branch from which to launch the most exquisite of nature’s eliminations, the kingfisher pellet. These crystalline baubles of tiny bones and myriad scales and fin usually have a lifetime of seconds as they arc through the air maybe catching a few rainbow flecks before dissolving in their riverine destination”.
The transitory nature of these elusive and rare things gives them an element of magic and mystery. I wonder if in past times their illusory nature gave them an ancient power, maybe druidic, shamanistic. Heron, swallow or warbler pellets must have been rare as gold and just as powerful.
Could the next evolutionary step for humanity be the production of cholesterol and fat pellets? ‘No pellets’ signs would definitely have to be produced”
 
Little legs wished he could regurgitate his life in a tidy packet and start again.