Beast of Burden

The nickname I was given as a child has stuck. Those in the know call me by a compact monosyllable: Jug. I was teased at school, of course, yet when I was six, my parents made things worse by revealing that the chain-smoking midwife who presided at my birth couldn’t resist commenting on my outsized ears as I lay on my mother’s breast. Why did they tell me this? It has only compounded my complex.
I didn’t excel academically. ‘Average student’ describes me best. After my GCSE’s, I drifted in and out of temporary employment and spent a few months as a house painter in Amsterdam. That’s where I bought my bike, a 1950’s model, custard yellow with a curved frame. It made me think of paper boys in the American suburbs. It had a name too: “Don Quixote”.
I am sober, perhaps over-serious. Not once during my stay in Amsterdam did I sit in a group in a canal-side cafe and cheerfully take stock of the city’s mild hedonism. I never got drunk or stoned or visited prostitutes. Rather, I tried to adopt a work ethic and live a clean, ordered life. Eventually, I returned to London, where I ended up working as a bike courier. That was three years ago. The riders worked out of a small depot in Clerkenwell. It was close to both the City and the West End and we could hardly keep up with the orders. Perhaps that’s why they kept me on; they just had too much work.
The other guys had beat-up mountain bikes, covered in grime. They’d all been in accidents and fights. It was because they rushed and were as aggressive as the motorists. Reluctant to damage my bike, I abstained from running red lights, yelling at truck drivers or cycling on the pavement. I chose instead to make it my business to know the A to Z inside out. So what I lost in speed, I made up for in short cuts.
The nickname stung me still but it was handy at work. You need a convenient tag in such a hectic environment. One of the guys even said he liked my moniker. Said it was cool. I wasn’t convinced but at least they didn’t rib me too much.
Two years into the job, I had my first crash. I was on my way to the Swedenborg Society Bookshop, an address in Bloomsbury. It was a sunny day and as I passed Holborn Underground Station, I lost control of my bike. I don’t remember what caused me to swerve. Maybe a glint of reflected sunlight. I went into a parked car and fell to the ground. I was concussed for a while and when I came to, the sun was dazzling me. I averted my gaze and caught sight of the package I was to deliver. It had been spilled from my shoulder bag and lay to my left, close enough for me observe the creases on the brown paper. I shut out the commotion around me and concentrated on the postage stamp.
It showed a tableau of Joseph, Mary and newborn Jesus. In the background was a mountain valley with forests and a gushing waterfall. In the foreground, mother and child sat on a weary-looking donkey with dark slits for eyes. I picked out more details: Joseph’s ornate curly beard, the baby’s chubby rubicund cheeks, the donkey’s ears.
I laughed until tears came, joyful, merciful tears.

It gives me great pleasure to present to you the adventures of the legendary Chris Adventure

There are more than 20 extant tales featuring Chris, one of whose primary influences is dance.
Here is one, entitled Kaiser Bun

Kaiser Bun

We are not the agents of our own birth. Chris pondered this sentence, the opening line of an essay by Challey Lukkena, mystic and inventor who lived one floor above Chris. He had seen her at various society functions and read about her in the papers. Having always admired Dr Lukkena, he was delighted that she had come to live in his building. He was so honoured by her presence that he turned a blind eye to the rather suspicious goings on at Flat 16b. Chris had heard noises late at night, a dull drone like a vacuum cleaner but lower in pitch and what sounded like a heavy objects being pushed or rolled back and forth across the floor. Through the peep hole in his door, he had observed groups of people dressed in surgeon’s robes going up and down the stairs in the early hours of the morning.
One Monday, he bumped into Dr Lukkena in the baker’s. She was wearing a loose-fitting black suit, somewhat faded, over a leopard-print blouse. She had beads in her hair and an amber amulet around her neck. Lukkena gave him a haughty stare through huge tinted glasses, a faint smile playing around her thin lips. Chris was at a loss what to say. He knew she wasn’t one for small talk so he bowed, left the shop without buying any bread and went and sat on an iron bench in the park. After a minute or so, he became aware of a bulge in his overcoat pocket and fished out a paper bag. It contained a Kaiser bun, a German style hard bread roll.
Later that afternoon, he took one of her books from his bookcase. Its title had intrigued him over the years, but he had never got beyond the first two pages. “Appropriate Animals — The Banquet of Midwives” was written in opaque prose and the first page alone contained fourteen footnotes. The book describes experiments carried out in the seventeenth century in which transcendental states were used to summon the ghosts of dead nocturnal animals. These were said to be “appropriate” because they were an embodiment, albeit in the form of an apparition, of human civilisation in a repressive era.
He took a walk around the city walls after supper in order to clear his mind. It was said that counting telegraph poles was a soothing exercise for a troubled soul and Chris resolved to tot up the number of poles between the south and north gates on the eastern stretch of the wall. He had counted fifteen when he felt a slight chill on his neck and experienced an uneasy sensation as if he was being watched. Turning around he saw a barn owl on the lowest branch of a large chestnut tree. He took the Kaiser bun out of his pocket and hurled it at the bird.