Milton had lived his life a safe distance from History.
He’d never been to war, never been in an attack, never been
in an invasion never gone to sea and never held a frontier. He’d avoided the
army, the scouts and the cub scouts, his name had never appeared on a roll
call.
He’d never been struck by lightening, been in a storm at
sea, a hurricane, a famine or a flood. He had never been on the news, the local
news or in the school newsletter.
He’d only watched sports finals and charity concerts and New
Years Eve celebrations and demonstrations and riots from the comfort of his own
home.
Milton had lived his life a safe distance from History.
History had not acknowledged him, and Milton had never seen fit to make his
presence felt.
However, at the age of twenty-six, Milton began worry that
his life was unremarkable. Not because he wanted to make his mark, but because
even he could barely remember the details. So, in order to aid his embarrassing
short term memory loss, Milton started taking tiny photographs of his life four
or five times an hour, every hour, and putting them up on his wall.
He did this for thirty-five years. He photographed his
breakfast, his clothes for the day, his journey to work, his workspace, his
morning coffee, his meetings, his lunch break, his meetings, his workspace, his
journey home, his evenings in, his evenings out and his sleeping place. For
thirty-five years. The house was covered in photographs.
If you asked Milton what he was doing in June fifteen years
ago he would know – he would know that June fifteen years ago was a third of
the way down the stairs just beneath the landing window ledge – and he would go
there and tell you exactly what he was doing, what he was wearing and who he
was with.
During all of this time he got married (To Marjory, April 23rd
twenty eight years ago, just to the left of the bathroom light switch) raised a
family, (Tom, spare room right of the plug and Emily, Spare room centre above
curtain rail), then saw them leave home and make their own lives. (One either
side of the front door. Suitably enough.) They preferred plain walls.
Five photos times twelve hours times seven days times fifty
two weeks times thirty five years, over seven hundred and sixty four thousand
tiny pictures all over the walls of Milton’s house.
He had started in his bedroom, tight up against the door,
and gone round in a clockwise direction. It had taken him nearly three and a
half years to get out onto the landing, around the narrow strip before the back
bedroom, which again took nearly three and a half years to get round. Six years
in he met Marjory and a year later they got married (he was in the bathroom by
then - and he had to laminate the photos
in strips because of the water). Not long into the spare bedroom and Tom was
born, Emily eighteen months later and so it went on.
The day he reached the fruit bowl in the front room, the
best room, Marjory died.
Her last picture nestled behind the clear crystal. It was
the way she would have wanted it. She always liked fruit. Marjory had loved
Milton, and had always accepted his little hobby, but maintained that the front
room, the best room, should be the last room to succumb.
After the cremation Milton came home and added the funeral
photos to the collection. From a step or two back they looked like a semi
colon.
At times like this we reflect, and Milton’s eyes wandered
from the pale face of Marjory to the life preceding. But his life had gone.
Despite all his meticulous efforts over the years to preserve his every move his
existence was nowhere to be seen. He ran to the front room first, then into the
back room, the hallway and kitchen, and then he rushed up the stairs but there
didn’t seem to be any sign of his life at all, just a monotonous, regular,
unchanging pattern. A cheap wallpaper like that which you could by at any
basement DIY store.
When he pressed his face against the walls the detail became
clear – a shot of an evening here, a meal there, but standing back all he could
see was the same repeating pattern over and over and over again. His life. A
continual reminder of the utterly forgettable.
His first thought was to try and jazz it all up a bit – add
a little glamour. He gathered together a collection of old magazines featuring
the rich and beautiful enjoying exotic holidays and whirlwind affairs. With a
pot of glue and a pair of scissors Milton began to change his history. Marjory
was replaced by a series of very sensual ladies, pouting, laughing and clinging
onto Milton’s arm in all those places they had been to together. Except they’d
never been there together, lots of more famous and glamorous people had been
there with other more glamorous and famous people. Together. Tom and Emily no
longer played with home made toys sat in the back room, but rather sat by their
own pool, with a nanny and a circle of adoring friends.
Milton changed the detail of his life to one of a man not
just touching history, but creating it.
He worked in a complete frenzy for seven straight days and
nights, cutting, pasting , re-colouring and re-working each day and every
detail of his life until it was something other, something else, something
desirable.
Then he stepped back.
He didn’t like it. Despite the glitz and the effervescence
you only had to go back a short distance and it was exactly the same. A
pattern.
So he tried again – this time he used a few historical
almanacs and philosophy periodicals. His boozy nights became debates, his
holidays became retreats, and his floosies became his intellectual equals with whom
he shared an ideological and physical parity. The children were prodigies, his
office a foundation, his workspace his mind.
Then he stepped back.
He still didn’t like it.
Despite the intellect and the respect and the volumes and
the lectures when you stood a step or two away there was still a pattern,
repetitive and ultimately dull.
Over the next couple of years he tried many different lives.
Film star, sports hero, explorer, banker, artist, bull fighter, on and on and
on. No matter how many times he tried to change the past it didn’t make the
present feel any better. He worked faster and longer, later and more quickly
desperately searching for something that might resemble the life everybody else
seemed to have lived. Something memorable. The stress brought on a heart attack
of massive proportions.
After six months of rest and recuperation they wheeled him
back into his home, through the hallway, past the fruit bowl in the living room
and left him with his back to the fireplace. And that’s when he realised.
He started taking the photos again. He didn’t change
anything else.
He still had one wall left.
