In the Shadow of the Thunder God


This day trip has been in the diary for a while but to be honest I don’t really feel like going. Today I got a rejection letter from the writer’s room, not the total ‘fuck you and goodnight’ they sent me last time, which is something, but still a no. They actually looked at it this time though, someone read it and what I got back was about two pages of feedback. This time I got another step closer, the problem being that my best effort so far, still isn’t quite good enough. Last night I sat and watched the evening news. Earthquakes in Sumatra, Tsunami in Samoa… going unreported is the construction of another massive network of coal powered power stations in China and the fact that there are now two cars for every household in Mumbai, and that they sit in total gridlock for an average of three hours a day pumping out a cocktail of geotoxic gasses. Rather than put things in perspective, or even push me over the edge, this information forces a mathematical calculation in my head. Which is more likely? my making any kind of breakthrough in my life… or a total global catastrophe and the end of western civilisation. Then I realise that the real question is. Which of these things is going to happen first?

But that was last night, right now I am walking up Landsdown road with a plastic carrier bag filled with a couple of bottles of DR Pepper, some prawn cocktail shells, a Peperami and a large bag of Peanut MnM’s. Even as I was buying it I felt guilty for doing so, aware that the ratio of ecological damage to nutritional value was very, very low. But like a lot of people I am a creature of habit. I like to have snacks around me when I drive. Getting into my little grey Peugeot I place them all their correct locations: peanuts and soda to the right, Peperami and crisps to the left. God damn it; I’m going to end up as fat as Manatee.

Ali is back at the house printing off directions from the internet, she is pressing Ctrl p and hitting Enter as I start the engine, pop some gum in my mouth and make a three point turn in the street. As some kind of compromise between concerns and convenience, I put my foot on the clutch and let the car roll down Lansdowne Hill. I may have just used an unnecessary plastic bag but I’ll be damned if I am going to waste petrol driving the engine on a downhill slope.

Ali looks in the cupboard for a pair of fresh socks while the words ‘Anomalous Micro-Fissure’ crawl slowly out of the printer.

Pulling up on the other side of the road to my house, I beep the horn a couple of times. There is no response, so I call Ali on her mobile. She picks up, grabs the directions from the printer and tells me she’s on her way. My phone is also my Camera, organiser and mp3 player. There is a headphone jack in the top. While I’m waiting in the street I hook it up to start playing Tom Petty’s ‘Highway Companion’ album through the stereo, and pop it in that little hollow in front of the gear-stick next to the chewing gum. This album was written when cars symbolised the freedom and independence available in the western world. In a time when driving at 150 miles an hour across the deserts of Nevada in a bright-red convertible seemed like the peak of human evolution. The kind of thing dolphins would do, if they had the limbs for it.

Ali comes down and gets in the car. Despite having the printed-paper map we’re probably not going to use it. We just take the postcode and type that into the Sat-Nav and pull away from the kerb. My Sat-Nav can take anything from ten to twenty five minutes to find a satellite worth talking to so we’ll be most of the way to Bristol before it realises we are ignoring it. The stupid machine doesn’t know that we have to pick up Chris. It has no idea is that he is my oldest and best friend. If it did it would probably be jealous of the fact that we get to see each other. Apart from me and Ali, all it’s friends live in space. We are just outside of Keynsham when it starts telling us to ‘Do a U-turn when possible.’

I met Chris when my mum moved the family from the cold streets of St Pauls into welcoming arms of West Wales. Sometimes I feel like my turning up in Wales somehow disturbed the natural balance of things. A red ant dropped into a black nest, already beaten and bruised. Sometimes I get the niggling feeling that in moving I stole someone else’s life.

By a series of coincidences Chris now lives in the same area where I grew up, just a street away from my childhood home. He lives in the grey violent smog of the city and I am married to the comely little sister of his old best friend.

I stop the car in the middle of the road. Cars are parked on either side, leaving a single lane for traffic. I beep the horn. The cadres of local rude boys are sitting out side, they watch us with glass eyes. One of them is astride a quad bike. Apparently it is legal to ride a quad bike in the city. It has a number plate. Still it’s unnervingly out of place. It reminds me of Grand Theft Auto. Perhaps that’s why he bought it. If people are seeking to emulate that particular computer game then this whole society really is doomed.

Chris comes out, shouts something through the still open front door, lets it fall closed behind him and makes his way to the car.

He hops in the back. The sat-nav suggests for the fifteenth time that we do a u-turn. Sadly I continue to ignore it. I’m Pretty sure I know this particular area better than it does. Besides, it’s time will come. Out side of Bristol it is happy. The Sat Nav loves the simplicity of country roads. It creates a solid blue line through the green and we follow. For once it has a clear purpose in life, it knows where it’s going and how it’s going to get there, it doesn’t think for a minute that we could crash.

Ali risks car sickness to read a description of where we are going.

‘Birth of the Rookham Anomaly
The county of Somerset is mostly built on limestone, a rock made from the bodies of billions upon billions of dead sea creatures. Limestone is both porous and soluble in water. (it is dissolved limestone that means we have to put water softener into our washing machines and anti lime-scale bleach into our toilets.) It’s also why there are so many caves in the West Country. Sometimes, drawn by gravity these caves can go deep enough to touch the harder metamorphic rocks of the earth's crust. Down this deep the rock is hot. Where there are cracks in the metamorphic rock, water can trickle in and when it gets heated it expands and cause these cracks to get bigger. Over time the crust can develop networks of small cracks or ‘micro fissures’ that allow small amounts of the magma from the earth's mantel to be pushed up. The Rookham Anomaly is the high peak of one such system of micro-fissures, seams of lava come up through the same paths the water originally came down. It is this micro-fissure system that gives us the Hot Springs in Bath and the slightly cooler but still hot, hot wells of Hotwells and of course the Rookham Anomaly.’

I tell Chris that basically what we are going to see is the worlds smallest Volcano; he tells me to stop being over-dramatic. Then I tell him it’s Britain's only volcano and he tells me to shut up because it’s not even a volcano.

Although there are lots of signs to the nearby Wookie Hole, there are none to lead us to the Rookham Anomaly, in fact upon arriving at the farm in which it grew we are greeted with nothing more fancy than A carved wooden sign saying 'Derweze Farm', a rusty gate and cow shit encrusted concrete driveway. There is nothing that says ‘Home of the Micro Fissure ‘as seen on TV’ It’s so nondescript, and so like every other farm for 100 miles that I am tempted smack the Sat Nav about a bit and tell it stop dicking us around, but checking the map Ali is adamant that this farm is the right one. Chris jumps out, opens the gate. I drive along the path to the farmhouse. Beneath the tyres the cow crap makes a slick and sticky noise.

I think that Chris should be the one to knock on the door, Pointing out that 'people like Chris' because he’s tall and funny looking. Chris tells me in no uncertain terms that I am the one to do the talking. This trip was my idea. I am the Butch to his Sundance and therefore affable one, knocking on stranger’s doors and asking if we can see their volcano is my department. Ali nods in agreement. ‘Alright’ I say, ‘but if it end’s bloody don’t come running to me.’

‘You just keep thinking Butch… that’s what you’re good at.’

A woman comes to the door. ‘Hi’ My names Dann, ‘um my friends and I heard about the um… Micro-fissure and were wondering if we could take a look at it.”

She looks like the queen on her day off, green puffy body warmer over tweed. Hair tied back, Wellington boots. Luckily no shotgun.

“Are you scientists or something.”

“What no, we’re just curious… I write a blog.”

“Cuz we have them geology students on Wednesdays, but today’s Saturday”

She talks like the women that serve coffee from a hatch where I work, slow deliberate and slightly hostile to me for a reason I cannot pin down.

“right.. um we’d be happy to pay, I mean you can just point it out to us and we’ll find it ourselves.”

She looks at me through one eye.

“Two pound each and I’ll see if he has the time”

‘He’ turns out to be quite young for a farmer, His name is Rupert. Rupert is keen. ‘Come to see the bulge have you! Right this way.' The woman who took our six pounds is apparently his housekeeper. On the way he tells us the story of how he found it, he tells his story quickly, like he’s told it many times before.

'Actually my cat found it first, an big old black Tomcat called Gizmo, used to spend all his time sitting in this one particular spot. I didn’t think anything of it and then the other cat’s started to come and do the same thing. But cat’s will be cats after all and then one year it snowed I noticed that it was the one place it didn’t settle. I mean, these were just all these little things going on in one place, but eventually it was just obvious, the thing was getting bigger and bigger and you could go over and touch it and it was hot on your hand, and in the morning the due would evaporate off, all steam coming up and such, so you know, we thought it best to have someone come out and have a look at it. I think we called the Water-Bourd first, they had no idea what it was, put us on to English Heritage who told us to call the geology department of the university. They came by pretty sharpish mind. The Professor turning up in his tiny little car with his beard and everything and he seemed pretty worried. Apparently the last time one of these things popped up it was in Mexico, place called Paricutin, the damn thing grew nearly 400 meters inside a year, went AWOL and buried a whole town. But having looked at this one they think it’s pretty stable. They ran all kinds of tests. I mean they can’t be sure, but they say its better than fifty fifty it wont get much larger than a family caravan, that’s the worst it’s likely to do.’

We finally reach a section of the field that’s been cordoned off by a chain-link fence. It looks like one of those pens that they heard sheep into on one man and his dog. About thirty feet square. In the middle is what looks like a very large anthill, or a giant pitchers mound with three cats asleep around the edges.
The fence seems like overkill but according to Rupert any kind of geothermal activity has to be cordoned off in this way. Apparently the health and safety people came the day after the Professor and put this up without even asking him.

We circle the fence, staring at a patch of bare red earth, searching to see if there is some kind of emotional reaction buried deep inside that we will find if we just keep staring. To be honest, I feel no different having seen it that when I first read about it on Wikipedia.

Rupert sits cross legged in the grass and pulls up a bit of leaf and starts eat it.
‘lambs lettuce’ he says ‘They sell it in Waitrose now.’

‘I see the cat’s are still here?’

‘You try and keep them away’ says Rupert.

‘Which ones Gizmo?’ I say naively

‘Gizmo is Dead, along time ago’ says Rupert.

Chris wants’ to go inside the barbed wire. Ali doesn’t think it’s safe. I look at the innocuous mound; three cat’s happily napping away. I go back to Rupert.

‘Can we go inside the fence?’

He puts up a little resistance at first and then folds.

‘All right,’ he says, ‘but if it goes off on one then you’re on your own. If anyone asks you’ll have to say you were trespassing’

Chris approaches the fence there is no gate in the fence, stakes have simply been hammered in with the chain-link wrapped around them up to a hight of about four and half feet. Chris kind of stands there bemused for a moment, taking it in, deciding on the best plan of attack, then starts climbing.

The cats eye him nonchalantly as he climbs, looking at him without looking like they’re looking. Chris jumps into the paddock and two of the cat’s get up and move off, as if this was there plan all along and Chris’ approach had nothing to do with it.

He paces around, feeling the strange crunch of the earth. I watch him get down on all fours and feel the ground with his hands

‘You should come in here man,’ he says, ‘it’s weird.’ then he lies down as if hugging the bulge. 'It’s so warm' he says.

Rupert looks at me, almost with the same expression as the cats A part of me hesitates, a little bit of my primeval mind clocking the fact that this is unknown territory and the next thing I know, I too am climbing over the fence with Ali telling me to be careful.

Dropping inside I feel like a man at a zoo who suddenly finds himself inside one of the cages. I feel the heat rising off of the ground. Above me there are birds riding the thermal. What looks like a buzzard circling high above us. ‘Here be dragons’ my mind says.

The biggest volcano in the world is Yellowstone, if it erupted it could wipe out more species in a year than the industrial revolution has managed since it began. If Yellowstone went off, it would wipe the slate clean.

Ali decides that since both Chris and I are alive, then she too would like to step inside the fence. I catch her as she drops down. Instinctively she touches the ground. It’s like it’s magnetic, like sand in the tropics, so hot and dry. Eventually we all end up lying down, the three of us circled around the mound, feet facing outwards, heads towards the middle, holding hands. We feel the heat of earth coming up through our whole bodies. I close my eyes, feel the sun from above and the magma below. I find what I had been looking for from outside the cage. An emotional even spiritual reaction to this scientific truth. Its easy to think of the Planet as something already dead, as a ball of rock spinning around in emptiness, but right now it feels truly alive, and this heat is the heat of it’s massive body and it’s moving up into mine and for a moment I can mistake this warmth for love and I can feel like a child again, lying on the belly of my mother, before I knew that I was dyeing and the she was dyeing and that everything I was looking at would one day fade away into dust. I feel safe in way that I haven’t since I was 5 years old. I look over to Ali. I get the feeling that she’s feeling the same way. Ali starts giggling and pretty soon we are all laughing together.

As much as we might want them to, moments like this do not last forever. I roll into my back. Get up and dust off my clothes, I’m wearing a black long-sleave T but even on that, the deep red dust of the micro fissure is visible. It is so fine that rather than brushing off it seems to just penetrate the cloth deeper and stain it as if it were a liquid. My blue jeans are also covered and may never look the same again. I look down at Chris. He is wearing a white shirt. Unusually Ali is wearing a dress and the dust has managed to stain the skin on her legs a deep mocha red. The thought occurs to me that I had my face pressed to the floor. I must look like I have a horrific birthmark right now. Chris stands up. Chris’ ear is red with dust. ‘Dude, did you hear it grumbling….’

‘No but clearly you did’

I turn to Rupert.

‘Does it ever erupt?’ I ask.

‘Not what you’d call a proper eruption’ he says.

‘We get gas sometimes, that’s what did for Gizmo. There is one of these in Cartegina that erupted mud once, now the tourists pay to swim in it because they think it cures acne.’

‘This thing gives off poisonous gas?’

‘I did warn you. Once you pass the wire your on your own’

I Ali gets up off the ground, she has dust in her hair and a red patch on her forehead.

After we are out of the cage, I ask Rupert what it’s like to live in the shadow of something that could very well blow up one day and take his whole farm down with it.
He doesn’t seem to understand.

He tells me that ‘They keep a very close I on it.’ he points out a number of small boxes, that apparently contain seismographs. ‘I’m sure they’d tell us if was going to go off properly.’

I press him, ‘But this farm is your life’s work. How can he keep putting in the hours if there’s a the possibility that tomorrow the whole place could be buried under a mountain of lava.’

He laughs. And again he goes back to the science. ‘The likelihood is that its already done all it’s going to do. I mean I’m not allowed to dig a mine, but other than that I can pretty much farm around it as normal.’

I look into his eyes, searching out that glimmer of self-doubt, and I suppose that he sees more in me than I do in him.

‘This... thing isn’t different to anything else’ he say. ‘Plenty of things could come along and destroy me or my house or this farm or whatever. If I let a little thing like this stop me getting on with things, what kind of a farmer would I be?'

We get back into the car and drive home without the aid of the Sat Nav. We let it sleep, it’s had a busy day. I always find it easier to figure out the way home anyway. For one the signposts say things like Bristol and Bath rather than Nempnet Thrubwell and Barrington Gurney. And for another the roads get bigger and more rather than less familiar as I go. Towards the end even the side streets fill up with memories, the red lights remind me of conversations I’ve had in the past. Here we stopped five years ago and talked about the end of the world. BSE, The Ebola Virus, Nuclear War.

I drop off Chris in Montpelier, there is a light rain and the rude boys have gone inside although the quad bike is still there. I roll out through the Urban dystopia of Saint Paul's, the dealers hanging around outside the betting shop. These are the streets I grew up in, These are the pavements on which my child feet walked and then ran and fell flat on my face. There is where I twisted an ackles and took a heavy beating from the gang that gave chaise. Pretty soon were up on the portray heading out past the showcase cinema and the Hollywood Bowl. Here me and My dad would go to bond when, after five years of tension, my parent’s finally broke up. Me and my dad would come here and talk about aliens and UFOs, once we even chased one on the back of his motorbike, all the way to the airport. Later it turned out to be advertising blimp.

Settling into my car seat I let my subconscious take over and the car seems to drive itself to where it likes to park, and then my feet walk themselves down Landsdown Hill until I find myself back in the flat and Ali and I decide to take the evening off from all our various creative projects and ignore the news at ten and just sit down and watch a few old episodes of the IT Crowd. We get a takeaway from the Chinese place. Go to bed early and dream of tomorrow, safe in the knowledge that no one can be sure it will ever come.