The Fading twlight years of Archibald Cannon

[Imgormiel]

The fading twilight years of Archibald Cannon​

I protest! I protest, that I can scream into a milk bottle. That seems to be what my words are now. All empty and nothing. I...I...I feel like that I am in that milk bottle, swimming amongst the dregs of what is left of the milk. Looking above at the silver bottle top that I will never be able to reach.

My marriage to Sophia Harper, or should I excuse myself and say Sophia Cannon as I raise an eyebrow. Dissolved, some ten years ago. I should blame myself for what happened. I had a slight gambling and drinking problem you see. And, she wasn’t privy much at all to all the goings on around the house. Not working, lots for drinking with the old boys from school, discussing mad hair brained schemes and plots for a future, better life. The newspapers, betting slips on the horses and bottles of brown ale didn’t help much either. Oh, what a colourful life I have had...

I...I...I...I fondly think of those days. I can remember how beautiful she looked on the day that we got married. I was a successful stockbroker working in the city and she was to be my pretty-little-housewife. No need to worry about money I remember telling her. I was an artful dodger back then before the recession.

She always liked the bad boy in me. She said she always had a gut feeling about men who were bad. Somehow, she once said, she would make bad boys good. It is just a pity, she meant ‘all’ bad boys. Particularly with the milkman who lived at number seven across the street. I tried to ignore it but she said that I had become a nuisance or a distraction as she put it - to our children. That, I had to go and find somewhere else to live. She had grown tired of me. Perhaps, because I was no longer bad and that being good was a little, boring.

But it’s funny how things just, fall apart. We are all like, little eggshells just waiting to be burst open with a spoon. Where what spews out after the top breaks, is just a seeping decline into old age. One slap on the top and it has all gone.

My life consists now of waking spontaneously at any time of the day. Living in fear of the demons that skulk outside. Filling in application forms for employment. Daydreaming of a man that has a black box waiting for me with a ticket to paradise as I slip out of this world and into, the next. Still, I think about cigarettes and alcohol; and the odd flutter on the horses too on the rare occasions I think I have money to spend.

The room in which I live now is just a small bedsit apothecary of nightmares and memories. Little mementos of the past. Where the silence of an empty echo resides with me as my friend. My landlord is also the shadow of a former friend that I left in the past. He seems, somewhat strange to me now. As does the street where I now live. The trees lining the pavement seem all rickety and forbidding – Like the people that live in that odd house at number forty-one. The police visit there a lot as the residents often seem to shout and appear rather disjointed - A bit like my torn and battered feelings...

I do go out to town now and then in some vain hope of striking up meaningful conversation. Looking for divorcees like myself and perhaps, filling what is now the empty void that is my life. The pubs around here and town seem nice and cosy on the inside, but somehow, sanitation seems to have gotten the better of the atmosphere and indeed the people.

Chat, never seems to go beyond ‘all white Archie’ in that monotone voice and how are you and that sort of thing. Reaching out to the ladies seems, rather futile too. My hair is now going un-decidedly white, my face travelling to all wrinkly and my clothes, are not the sort that I am accustomed to wearing. I, I struggle some times to find anything of interest to talk about that may bring them to like me. I heard once that lines add character. Well, I guess there is plenty and none of that attribute left in me at aged forty-seven. By the end of the night, after spending a couple of hours drinking alone. I usually have nothing more to look forward to but my walking paces that lead to my abode. It all seems, quite shallow and empty as an experience.

Yesterday, I found myself thinking of the future and the fear that it might bring. I went to the window of my flat and saw the sky was all grey with the wind blowing wildly. I spent hours looking for silver linings among them, but found only spots of that colour. It appeared all vague with no configuration of any sort.

When my legs grew tired. I sat down on the sofa with a cup of tea and a biscuit. It was then I realised that which each day that I fight time. The years are flying past me faster than I can think. I am becoming nothing more than a fading photograph. I have become a broken man. I am indeed a broken man.