Harrison Abbott

Writer

[harrison-abbott]

I dreamed that my old border collie dog Bell was still alive. She’d been brought back to life and she was sleeping in a blue blanket and still breathing and her ears winked and it didn’t seem odd in the dream that she was resurrected. The dream happened about a year after her death. And when I woke up there was a blunt brutality to the fact that I’ll never see my old dog again.

[harrison-abbott]

I had a really weird Saturday a fortnight back. It was after I’d gotten back from Liverpool, and my sleeping pattern was in disarray. I’d made it into work on the Friday and gone through a ten hour shift. Then I went home and chilled out. I normally head to sleep at 2 a.m. But that night I stayed up until four. And … then I just couldn’t shut off. My mind was whirling. I lay in bed for a couple of hours without success. So I got up and did some reading to try and subdue myself. Did that for an hour, and tried again. And by this point it was already light outside. As in, a sunny day. And I had to get up and go to work in a few hours. So I was scared that I wouldn’t get any rest in before the upcoming ten hour shift. And petrified that I would have to operate on over 30 hours of being awake. Then, as I lay there, the fear worsened. I got it into my head that I would never get to sleep again. This was me, stuck with insomnia, for the rest of my days. It was an almost childlike fantasy. But that can happen when you’re alone and trying to sleep. The mind can get fantastical, bizarre. Anyway. I did fall asleep. The sleep lasted about two hours. Except it was staccato, and involved three insane nightmares. Which I won’t recant here. They were nuts. But I awoke for work surprisingly in healthy spirits. Despite that a.m. stretch being so odd.

[harrison-abbott]

You seemed to go through phases of intense dreaming. These dreams that you can’t interpret after waking. So bizarre you can’t comprehend the meaning of, if indeed they have any. And after ten days of those, there follows a spell of blankness. No dreams whatsoever. Only black sleep. Where the subconscious is shut off. Or perhaps it’s only stifled altogether from your memory. And it can be quite disconcerting … because you fret for when the crazy dreams will return, whilst stuck in the limbo of black dreamland.

[harrison-abbott]

The lull of warmth in the sky had that dreamy midsummer quality that, though past the solstice, the season was in mature strength, and would not be lessening in heat for some time.

[harrison-abbott]

I had another of those scammer emails from people ‘interested’ in one of my books earlier. And I was almost fooled.

This time it was from a man claiming to come from an agency in New York. And the email body itself seemed legit. I.e., like the person was frank. I then looked up this agency to see if it was indeed legitimate. And then sought out on the website whether there was a man by this name who worked there.

And there was. I was considering responding to the email. Because it looked like a ‘top’ company.

But ... then I saw on the agency’s real website, a warning that scammers had been impersonating their agents. And ripping people off, basically. Sometimes even speaking to them on the phone.

As well as being thieves, or attempted thieves – these people tend to get your hopes up.

Writers are especially lonesome. And glimmers of ‘success’ are rare. You might get published. But that’s seldom. Brilliant when it happens, but after a publication you can go for months without another one. Or you might have books out, but barely anybody seems interested in them.

It can be hard to keep encouraging yourself to keep going. When nobody is properly listening. And then this person pretends to be intrigued in your work, and you get thrilled at the prospects of popularity, of loads of folks reading your material, etc etc.

Then it turns out that it’s some criminal who is only interested in conning you for money.

What can you do about it?

Well, I just reported the email address for phishing. And so Microsoft are now onto them. As well as blocking them, so won’t be hearing from them again.

And I have no intention of quitting writing. Why would I? Scammers can make you feel low. But, they’re only that. Writers represent the opposite of criminality. Will stay on this side. Thanks.

[harrison-abbott]

Earlier on I cut my middle finger at work. And it’s amazing how something as trivial as one of your fingers being off limits can hamper your tasks. So it was on my right hand which is my strong hand; and it spurted with blood right after the cut which is always alarming because you don’t know how serious the wound is; and then you have to cover the cut, so you can’t use your right hand properly, with a hunk of tissue paper around it. So you must use your weak hand. And the end of the night is the busiest point at work. You don’t want to tell the colleagues that you have a cut, because they have to make a record of it. So you’re trying to hide the bloody wad of tissue from them. And you hope that it will stop bleeding but each time you go to the sink, it still is. Ai ai aiee. But the most jarring thing is just how easily you forget how interconnected your body works. You wouldn’t think one downed finger would affect a whole series of other things. It influences how you hold things, the physical tasks that you do. And you didn’t think about that before when you had a workable middle finger on your right hand. Jeepers. This is why we should appreciate the body. What if something way, way worse than a cut finger happens one day? Should be wary.  

[harrison-abbott]

An old song came on the playlist and the instant you heard it a fleet of memories came back from a particular window in your life, so long ago. Almost as if you could see yourself in that room where you used to life. When you often listened to this same song. And how different things were in the present. It was crazy how a single offering of music could have such connotational strands.

[harrison-abbott]

Newscap 11th July 2026

An ex UK politician has been murdered.

Yesterday they told us she’d died but today it was upgraded to murder and there are smudged images of police cars and taped off roads in the countryside somewhere.

Another murder suspect has been caught in South Africa.

Something about Prince Harry and him battling the media.

The latest World Cup score.

A new type of dinosaur has been discovered in south east Asia and apparently it used to have an insanely long neck.

The Russian miliary are bombing schools, workplaces and transport in a Ukrainian town.

There’s a new Prime Minister coming into the UK soon and apparently he could abolish stamp duty!

On top of the heatwave, there’s a ‘wild’ fire in Spain that has killed a dozen people and it doesn’t look good for the 23 missing.

And there’s been another plan to attack the White House grounds but the police have foiled it.

The UK leaders of the main parties are all super sad that this ex politician has been killed. Their faces are super pensive and you can watch a video of them saying their bit, if you wish.

Under that there is a fat allocation for World Cup 2026. Men hugging each other in snaps. Why is it that men are more likely to touch each other heartily when it comes to soccer?

Albeit under this there is some advice from NHS paramedics in how to cope with a heat wave.

When we get to Europe news there is a surreal story of a man who was almost sucked out of a Ryanair plane window mid flight. His wife had to hold onto his legs, with his head and shoulders out in the air at that colossal a distance from the ground. Fucking crazy, and you are glad that the man survived.

There has been a Legionnaires disease outbreak in New York City, USA, of all plush places.

The Brit guy (who was born in France) lost in the Semi Final at Wimbledon.

And then there’s a grid of iPlayer at the bottom. Alan Partridge. Graham Norton. Some doc about one of the new tennis superstars. Just to round off a rollicking day of fucked up worldwide news.

[harrison-abbott]

The mist sank down on the city and it cut off the famous skyline and the monster volcano and when you walked through the streets the traffic lights dreamed in neon with the swirling mist and you might’ve been anywhere on the planet – you couldn’t see a quarter mile ahead of you.

[harrison-abbott]

You wondered whether the men indeed saw the situation as a game. As if they were holding bats at a ping pong table. Or holding a controller with colourful buttons. Conflict really was that easy for them. As in a videogame, they couldn’t care less about the consequences … only the tick tock of gambit and fun.

[harrison-abbott]

The heat embalmed the house despite it being pure dark outside and the with the windows all open. Such saturation meddled with your mind. Changed the way you did things. Altered the way you dreamed.

[harrison-abbott]

That was a gruelling day of anxiety. Imagination is a good thing. It’s not so friendly when it comes to fearful thinking. Because your mind spirals down all these worrisome plot lines. None of them of which ever end up happening. But they seem realistic in your thinking. It’s just what some people are like. They panic. And invent doomed consequences under the smog of fear. It can be mighty hard to break out of the gloom.

[harrison-abbott]

World Cup 2026: Uefa claim 'integrity of the game is at stake' over Fifa's Folarin Balogun decision

Uefa says Fifa's decision not to uphold Folarin Balogun's immediate ban at the World Cup is "unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiab

this is exactly why i have boycotted the world cup. haven't watched a single game. horrible

[harrison-abbott]

Somebody sped their car at 01:30

in the suburbs and this was a dead

end road and you wondered what

kind of murky things they were up to.

[harrison-abbott]

Ian Lancaster

We used to have a regular called Ian Lancaster who chewed his food whenever he spoke to you.

I wasn’t front of house staff. Worked in the kitchen as the KP. But it was my duty to go out to the public floor a lot. And I would see Ian Lancaster sitting with his wife and two kids. And he would stop me when I passed.

First time I saw him he waved me over and said to me:

“I know you’re only the chef. But could we get some mustard?” And he was chewing on food when he spoke.

“We can get you some mustard, sir,” I replied to him. “I’ll just ask one of the waitresses to bring some over.

So I went and spoke to Cara the waitress colleague.

When Ian Lancaster couldn’t see us. She said:

“He’s been so rude to me all night. Always talks with his mouth full.”

It wasn’t that sole time with this man.

There was a new girl that started in the summer. Nice girl. She was shy and clever. And hadn’t been in the job long. She was working a Sunday shift once (the busiest day of the week) and Ian Lancaster shouted at her over some trivial thing. It was some shit about his meat being cold. And he yelled at the waitress.

She came into the kitchen with the returned plate with the ‘cold’ meat and the chefs said they would replace it. The girl was crying. But trying not to cry because she didn’t want to be upset in front of us. The chefs wouldn’t look at her. I wanted to go and tell her it was okay and that we could get somebody else to deal with obnoxious Ian Lancaster. But I was over at the other end of the room, with the dishes. And all that happened was that the girl had to return to Lancaster’s table with his new plate of food.

He also didn’t have to pay for that meal. If somebody complained about the food then the staff usually wiped the bill and gave them another plate. Which was complete madness.

We were quite a plush joint. And almost every week there would be people who just absconded without paying for their food. Our front of house staff were made up of pretty ladies and they knew that it was best for business to be pleasant to the customers. Because the management team had to think about reviews and repute. There was a statistical concentration on online presence. What people said about the workplace.

And to be fair, most customers were nice. They left tips. You were supposed to ‘declare’ with the government how much you earned from tips. But, think about how hard it is to work a minimum wage job in this kind of pumping environment … Nine hour shifts. Sometimes twelve hour shifts, sometimes longer. The heat and the stress. Often you didn’t get a break because it was worse to lose the twenty minutes off your workload.

Ian Lancaster never left a tip in his entire tenure of coming in for food. He came here fore about six months. I remember the colleagues speaking about him, after the latest incident of rudeness with him. They would say:

“He’s never left a tip for his food. Or said thanks for his meal.”

Could I understand it from Lancaster’s perspective?

Perhaps he was trying to be superior in front of his family. Whenever I noticed him, he never spoke to his kids or his woman; they seemed afraid, almost, as is worried about how to behave. Registered bullies often enjoy being bullies.

It was very unlikely that he’d ever had to work in a crap job. The meals that he did pay for were extravagant. And he chose the upper regions of alcohol when he came in. Most expensive bottles. So if he was fine financially then he couldn’t understand what it was like for people who weren’t.

In the same way that many of us bypass beggars when we see them on the street, without knowing a jot about their history, and we call them beggars rather than by their names, which we don’t even know.

There was one particular Sunday when I was working at the restaurant. When Lancaster came in with his family.

So I knew that he was here. I hoped that there would be no incident with him.

Then one of the waiters ran into the kitchen with a red face. That was Daniel. He burst into the kitchen and came up to me and he said:

“You know First Aid?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You definitely know the First Aid procedures?”

“Yeah.”

“Somebody is in trouble on the floor. Can you come and help?”

I followed Daniel out to the floor. Yes, I was one of the certified staff who was the port of call if anybody needed medical assistance. I knew this stuff. And presumably Daniel had come to me because our general manager wasn’t in.

When I arrived on the scene I wasn’t expecting that it would be Ian Lancaster in trouble.

He was doubled up on the floor. With a face far more crimson than Daniel’s. And struggling to breathe.

Despite all of the hurt this man had done to me I really needed to help him not suffocate. He was choking on food.

Everybody else in the restaurant had stilled and were watching.

I bent down to Ian.

“Can you breathe?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“Can you cough?”

He tried. But couldn’t.

“Okay. You need to stand up with me. And I have to hit your back. But it’s necessary. You get me?”

He got up with me. And I turned him around.

I still remember everybody else in the restaurant – so, a room of about 100 people – watching me and Ian Lancaster. Without knowing the history of him, and this restaurant. Whilst this man was choking to death.

In order to dislodge blocked food from the throat you must strike the person on the back, between their shoulder blades. This will cause a jolt reflex which will hopefully cause the patient to throw up.

So I began thumping Ian Lancaster on the back.

I had wanted to smack this man so many times in my subconscious, for need of vengeance. Now I was doing it to help him.

My fists are pretty small. I’m not that good a puncher. So I punched him with a fist several times, but it didn’t work. Ian was still choking. I turned to using my forearm to smack him. For harder force. This was no use either.

So next I had to try the Heimlich manoeuvre.

Where you pressurise the abdomen from behind the patient using your arms.  

Ian was fat and it really wasn’t pleasant to spread my arms around him and then tug at his tubby stomach.

I tried once. A thrust. Twice.

Then Ian Lancaster threw up all over the floor.

You should have seen the scale of vomit. All the gravy and chicken and peas and champagne that he sicked up onto the carpet.

It didn’t seem like a success. When he got up, and began to breathe again. When he was lying next to a pool of his own vomit.

“Are you able to breathe now sir?” I said.

“Yes thank you.”

“You want to stand up and come and sit down for a bit?”

“Okay.”

I offered a hand and he took it and I pulled him up and helped him back to his table.

His wife and children came over to him and hugged him.

Somebody else in the restaurant started clapping. As if to initiate a collective applause. But nobody else joined in with the claps and so they just stopped.

What happened next was beneficial for the Sunday. Because many of the people who were eating were put off by the incident. They went home.

That pile of puke in the centre of the floor was no attraction. [I volunteered to scoop and mop it up with my colleague later that afternoon, when many of the customers had died away.]

Ian Lancaster never came back to dine in our workplace. He never returned with his family. Or chewed food at us again. Though I do remember the last time I ever saw him. It was after that day when he was last in. He left through the front doors with his family and his whole body was shuddering.

He didn’t look like Ian Lancaster when he was leaving with a shaky waving hand. And he looked at me too and his eyes quivered in a way I hadn’t seen before.

That was the last of him. We didn’t have to put up with his aggression anymore. I would be embarrassed if I had gone into a restaurant and ended up spewing all over the floor.

But despite everything with this man I was still glad that I’d saved his life.

Even though he couldn’t thank the kitchen porter for doing that.

[harrison-abbott]

The Sadism of It

I

Nathan retired from soccer at 36 with three trophies and a certain national fame and then he found he didn’t know what to do with himself on weekends.

Or on week days for that matter. That’s when he used to head to training. Now there wasn’t any need to do that. He thought he would take some time out of football. Nathan had finance. He wasn’t needing to work. There were no plans. And suddenly on a Monday morning he could perhaps walk to the local park, solely for exercise.

So he did that, the Monday after the retirement. Was a cheerful day, how the sun played on the grass and it was odd to walk on the strands without any boots on. Nathan passed a man around his age, who had a kid with him. And the kid pointed at Nathan.

“Excuse me, sir,” the man said, “are you Nathan Shields?”

“Yes. That’s me.”

“We’re big fans of you! Loved your goal against Rovers last season.”

“Thanks mate.”

“Could you do us a favour?”

“Sure?”

“Can you take a photo with us?”

“Yes, okay.”

Nathan knew that this man would sure the photo on social media. And he didn’t really want that. But the man and the kid seemed nice enough. So he smiled as best as he could, hoping the grin didn’t seem plastic.

“You’re the best, sir,” the man said. “Thanks for the photo.”

“No problem. Have a nice day.”

The man and boy watched after Nathan for a while as if expecting him to do something else. He walked out of the park and he headed along the next main street. Nathan hadn’t been to this area of the city before. He simply hadn’t been in this part in the past.

Here, there were high school kids walking around. In buzzing packs. They were on the lunch break presumably. Most of the kids were divided by sex. The girls were insanely thin and hung out in twos or threes. The boys were bigger in groups and they moved more immaturely than the girls.

One of these groups of boys spotted Nathan. And they all went silent and stared at him.

“Is that Shields?”

“I think that’s Nathan Shields!”

“That’s definitely him.”

Nathan grew coy. Schoolboys can actually be quite intimidating when they’re in mass. He was keen to walk past them without any exchange. But then one of them came up to him.

“You’re Nathan Shields, right? The footballer. Ex footballer. You just retired.”

He smiled and nodded at the boy and this time his smile must’ve been severe plastic.

All of the boys started laughing. The way that girls giggle when they fancy somebody.

“Can I get your autograph?” the boy asked him.

“Yeah, lad. No worries.”

The boy unzipped his bag and he took out a jotter and fumbled about for a pen. All of the boys hustled around Nathan Shields. Watching as he wrote his name.

“Would you other lads like one too?” he said to them.

Yes please they all said all around. And so he signed through the pages his name.

“Thanks Shields. We’ll keep these,” the original boy said. He left them down the street and they called a few things after him but with the cars he didn’t hear the words.

II

Nathan reached the end of the main street and he crossed many other kids who ogled him but there were no further words.

The schoolkids spooled away … and he came into a district of terraced housing. Tiny spaces for people to live in. And by and by, Nathan began to see Rovers flags in bedroom windows; inside peoples’ vans.

Nathan figured he shouldn’t really have come here. He’d been walking for some time and had perhaps strayed too far. So he looked on Google Maps to see the quickest route back home. And he found a bus stop five minutes to the west. He could wait there for a bus homeward.

When he got to the bus stop it was right next to a pub. Where there were several men drinking and smoking outside.

Bald heads gory in the sun. Fuzzed up with stout. The blinked at Nathan.

He tucked into the bus shelter and looked up at the sign and it told him his bus was coming in three minutes. Nathan could feel the eyeballs of the men on him. He thought he would play it suave. Sit on the banister and not say anything, or look back at them.

And he thought he was doing well … until,

SMASH at his feet. A bolt of glass under him.

He looked over at the men and they were all laughing. They’d made him flinch. Whichever man had thrown the glad hadn’t bothered to down his Guiness, for some reason. The stick stout had gone over Nathan’s jeans. He blushed. And glanced over at the men. There were four of them. Nathan might have just retired but he was not out of shape, as all of them were, and, maybe he could go up and sock one of them in the chin?

No, no.

20 years in professionally sport: a lot of it is about being wound up by opponents.

Nathan’s bus was in one minute now. It was more likely that the men would come in to the shelter and beat him up if he tried anything.

He shouldn’t have been naïve in thinking that entering the public would be so easy.

His bus came and he got onto it. And he went up to the back seats and looked out of the windows and that clique of bald drunk men were all giving their middle fingers to him. One of them made the sideways chugging motion, suggesting that Nathan was a masturbator.

The bus took him away from them and then he was going home.

A few seats away there was an old lady who was on her own too. And she hadn’t noticed the jeering men. Or Nathan when he stepped on board. She had no clue who he was.

III

When he was back in his flat, Nathan thought about his career.

Yes, he did score that goal against Rovers last season. It was a cracker. Hmm, but that was the only goal he had all season. A single goal in a whole campaign?

Nathan went into his living room and he took off his jeans with the Guiness stains on them.

What did ordinary people do with their days? He wasn’t keen on heading out in public again. What could he do with himself?

Back before soccer in his teens he played the guitar a little. And he still had it – the instrument – in the hallway cupboard. He went and sought the thing out. And found it impressively clad in dust. Nathan wet some tissue and wiped the thing down. Then plucked some of the strings. It sounded pretty medieval.

He tuned it up with the help of his phone. He went through the strings doing the standard E tuning. And then got to the last string, the high E, and it was way down … so he began turning it up, closer to the note from his phone.

And he went too fast with it. The string snapped. With an impressive pack sound. And the little string hung off there in the air like some clumsy murder, never to be used again.

Nathan returned the guitar to its cupboard.

He went into the bathroom and shaved. And with the razor he managed to nick his chin. Then next 20 minutes was spent holding a tissue to the cut and it amazed him how much a face could bleed. Then he caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked worse than his pathetic guitar.

What about a TV show? Or a film?

Nathan switched his laptop on and sought out what was on Netflix.

There were some documentaries, which he didn’t really fancy. And some comedies. He was in a more savoury mood though so he browsed some crime genre films. He’d seen many of them in the past. So he browsed on.

And came to the Sports section. Where there was a real life documentary about the national football team. The Euros campaign. Which the team had just missed out on, in an unfair away. They were beaten in the final but everybody agreed they should have won.

Nathan had never played for his country.

The colours of the strips and the emblem of the badge. He dreamed as a boy that he’d play for the national team one day. And after his initial years of success at club level he’d dreamed and expected a call up. Which never came. The managers chose other players. Nathan was never deemed good enough. And this had bothered Nathan for 36 years. He cut the computer off.

What could he do this afternoon that had nothing to do with football?

He went into his bedroom and he did some push ups. He aimed to do 50. And reached that mark, and kept going until his muscles weren’t able anymore. And fell over with a wet forehead. Nathan lay looking up at the ceiling with his temples pumping and the plaster was a dull white that was some kind of nothingness that he needed.

IV

Nathan remembered playing an away game at Rovers. It was 1 – 1. And in minute 80. He was up to take a corner at the far end. A night game. Both sides weren’t doing particularly well in the league. Shields went to the corner flag and next to him were the seething Rovers supporters. They cursed and spat.

Then he felt a ping on his forehead. Then his eye went all gooey. He rubbed his eye and when he looked at his hand it was filled with blood.

A copper coin lay on the grass near his boots.

And the whole crowd erupted as if Rovers had scored.

The referee blew the whistle to stop the game. And Nathan held his head to stop the bleeding. He had to go off field so the medic could look at his wound.

And the thing that Nathan most remembers is not the coining or the crowd jubilation. It was when the medic was treating him on the sideline. And Nathan was all geared up to go back on. Of course the coining had offended him. He was hurt. But he could go back on and play with a plastered head.

But then his manager substituted him.

Nathan didn’t even know until he saw his number displayed. Another boy coming on to replace him.

He had assumed that the manager would want to get him back onto the field to come and play. But he took him off instead. Just because there was a cut on his head.

And the next day the media was filled with photos of Nathan’s bleeding head. They enjoyed the spectacle.

The game itself finished 1 – 1.

Nathan had come back to this moment so many times in his head. He could have done things differently. Instead of staying with the medic he could have ran across to his manager and told him that he was fine, that he could still play.

He had thought about that night every day since it happened. That was when Nathan was 20. So it’d been sixteen years he’d been thinking about that.

Sometimes he dreamed that the manager had put him on; and he took the corner and his teammate headed it in.

As for the violence? Nathan was never asked whether he was okay. In a public street in a town, if somebody threw a coin at you and bloodied your head, would there not be collective concern, and a hunt to find the coin thrower?

But because the incident happened in a football stadium it was acceptable violence. There must’ve been about 50 people who knew who threw the coin in the Rovers end, but they never turned him in. Because Nathan had the jersey from the other team this made him somebody to legitimately attack.

“And now I’m lying here on the floor,” Nathan whispered to himself, “looking up at the ceiling and still remembering that. Why did the spectators get such enjoyment out of me being struck with the coin? I was a 20 year old boy. Couldn’t they see that in me? Of me.

“I won’t be a soccer player ever again.

“And it’s me that must live with the memories.

“You got physically assaulted in mass public and not only did nobody care, they liked the sadism of it. Was that what soccer was for? And if so, why did I spend my whole career in it?”

Nobody answered his questions in the room.

He got up off the floor and stood up. And the blood roved up from his legs and into his head and the whoosh of the liquid dizzied him. But his head wasn’t bleeding.

Inside his head, sure, there was live blood. Outside of it, no. There were no active cuts.

[harrison-abbott]

First of July and the air out the window is gluey, thick with night and no sound whatsoever and you are totally alone. There’s a sublime thing about solitude. How you often crave to be alone and away from the mayhem of the planet. And when you most need somebody to speak to, there’s nobody there.

And so what do you do about it? Well, you can write out on your keypad; post on your blog; keep reading the books. Because you can still influence other people when or if they mind to read.

Okay to be lonely. Not everybody needs to be stuck to others all of the time.

Some of us thrive in the night. Wherein we can explore language. Some of us aren’t meant to sleep so well; to be people people. This doesn’t make you a bad person. And so just embrace the night. Fill the silence with the pattering of the keys to splay out some words, even if nobody will ever read them.