Section 2, 3

He used to live at the Storey institute. He is psychic and responds to you thinking his name. His name is Zig-zag. Stop for a moment and think of that name, Zig-zag. And if you hear a mewing sound it might be Zig-zag. If you do see Zig-zag please do not think about poetry because his owner was a sad man and used to write poetry to women then refuse to reply to these women’s notes. And these were women with good jobs, like delivering lunchtime lectures about unicorns at the Storey Institute. Maybe in some sick way this man, this Zig-zag owner thought this was funny – like it might be funny to dress as a giant eyeball and follow a woman home - but one of these women might have sent him a note as a reply, slipped it into his jacket pocket, and she might even have been married, yet still sent him this note saying how she felt, and that she felt exactly as he did, and that they should meet up, and this man, this poem-man, this poetry scribbling man just ignores her and stops coming to the lunchtime lectures like that. People like him are not worth anything. Please find Zig-zag.
THE CHILDREN ARE CRYING

(He’s got some colourful ideas about mad scientists has our Charlie. That’s his problem, locked away in his own head, who knows what goes on. Have a read here)

Section 2, 1

Yes, we’re still searching. Zig-zag was the connective tissue between me and Charlie. I remember another cat at the Storey, years ago, when I was teaching calligraphy, and it would sit on the sheet of paper, getting in the way. I didn’t know Zig-zag very well, but I’ll bet he liked to sit on paper as well.

The Bridges over the Lune show was packed, you wouldn’t be allowed to cram so many people into the gallery nowadays - the doors open inwards which makes it unsafe – but this was in the days before health and safety.

Charlie is like that. His doors open inwards and he leaves heavy things leaning against them making it impossible to get in.

I did reply to Charlie’s poem. I wrote him a note, slipped it into his jacket pocket so he’d be sure to see it. It said everything he’d hoped it would. But I don’t know what he thought about it, because there was no reply, and from that point on Charlie just seemed to drift away, and then the waiting the waiting, and then the nothing, the nothing, and then everything just crumbled like dead cake.

(I'd completely forgotten about the night Charlie dressed as a giant eyeball. Read about it on his blog here)

5

The children are crying

The last time I saw Zig-Zag was on the huge staircase that spirals through the centre of the Storey like DNA, next to a greasy streak caused by decades of kids running their fingers along the wall. I was one of those kids, I was in that grease mark, my DNA.

I can picture Zig-Zag now, his furry face stained rose and peach from the light spilling in from the stained glass window, and I don’t know if the idea of running away had entered its head, but if this story had a voice-over it would say ‘unknown to Fern and Zig-Zag this was the last time they would ever see each other…’

Fern and Zig-Zag was a long goodbye and Fern and Charlie’s goodbye was even longer, beginning fifteen years before. But the way he tells it, the poem, the absence of a reply, it’s very unfair. He should have made the running, set the pitch. He was the grammar school boy after all, with his blazer with piping and the special white cream for his pumps. It irked him that I studied here at the Storey and ended up at the university and he at the lino factory, and would brandish his fist and drawl ‘Power to the people,’ whenever I mentioned it. The 11 plus broke us all up. Two trucks rumbled up the street, one bound for the grammar school and one for the Storey Institute. I’m sure I passed the exam - girls performed better than boys so they used to fiddle the figures – but officially, I failed.

But The Storey did me proud. We got instruction in practical skills, like typing, plastering, plumbing, and the like, but we got science and philosophy and French and art as well. I remember Dave, my first boyfriend, posing for his passing out picture, holding up his plumbing piece, a Mondrian squiggle of welded pipes, like a work of sculpture.

Find Zig-Zag please.

(I like what Charlie says in his blog about the night at that art launch at the storey gallery. I remember it that way too. Have a look here.)

3

THE CHILDREN ARE CRYING

Charlie forgets in his last poster to say what Zig-Zag looks like. I mean, I didn’t either, but Charlie prides himself on accuracy. Charlie says that a strong emotional response can be achieved by an accumulation of incident, detail and fact, not flowery crap. Lean and snaky that magazine said about his poem.

I couldn’t believe Charlie didn’t do more with his poetry. It was good, went in somewhere and kind of came out again and made a difference. That’s all this Storey Institute educated girl can say, I’m sure a Grammar school boy like Charley could explain it better. He always said who’d be interested in a poem by a lino man? But I’ll tell you who - everyone is interested in being shown a new way to think.

His special poem had moved me, put a sparkle in my blood. I hadn’t seen him since we were at school together and he turned up at my unicorn lecture like that, and something went click click click, and then, there I was, reading a special poem written just for me, and getting me thinking about the days ahead, and how, in that far future, after we had kissed, we would inhabit a new planet with sounds, substances and distances beyond our imagination.

But weeks passed and nothing happened. In fact Charlie just grew more and more distant until finally he stopped coming to my lectures and I couldn’t believe it, I really didn’t know why because I thought there was a spark, and that’s what we are all searching for, the spark.

Now, fifteen years later, Charlie seems to be back at The Storey Institute, in the portico. I just wish I could be with him. But the best thing I can do is find his cat. Find Grimbles please.

THE CHILDREN ARE CRYING

You know what Charlie calls me in his blog? A Storey Institute girl. Have a look at what else he says here.

1

(Charlie has been putting up his own posters as well - and he's also got a blog. I'm surprised he knew how to plug it in. See here)

THE CHILDREN ARE CRYING

Loved, adored, cherished, Zig-Zag, former resident of the storey institute, is lost. Zig-Zag was cared for by the sensitive staff of Litfest, and it is owing to their love (I witnessed Sarah reading a short story to him once, and he was purring like a diesel engine) that Zig-Zag became a special cat, humming with creative energy and verve, but with a misty faraway look in his eyes and a kind of well-who-am-I-to-know-what’s certain-in-this-universe manner in his walk, which was most uncatlike somehow. Can cats be somewhere on the autistic spectrum? Like Charlie?

That was it about Charlie. There were vast psychological distances in him, like looking down into a deep well, and when you asked him a normal question –like have you come for the lunchtime lecture on unicorns: well: his poor, confused face contorted, his fingers scrabbled in his hair, and I imagined the question like a tiny leaf spinning and tumbling while he examined it from every angle, discovering myriad, bewildering meanings that weren’t intended. Like the way short-sighted men are attractive to the ladies, men who don’t connect with the world – those edgy, misfitty ones - exert a similar pull. Certainly they do on me. I think that Zig-Zag, our lost cat, possessed these qualities too; Zig-Zag was aware of his own mortality.

Charlie asked me to make these signs because I like calligraphy and I like cats; when I used to deliver my lunchtime lecture – DRAGONS UNICORNS AND THEIR ILK: MARVELLOUS MONSTER FROM THE MEDIEVAL BESTIARY TO THE CONTEMPORARY IMAGINATION, there was a cat at the Storey then and I always gave it a hug.

The Storey reopens soon and it wouldn’t be the same without Zig-Zag

THE CHILDREN ARE CRYING.

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