A short story - The sense of trees in the mist

If I could live off of all the white wine and canapes, I would never have to buy food again. Similarly, as a well loved national treasure, if fame and adulation paid the rent, then I would be a rich man indeed. As it is there are always the commissions for articles, or conference appearances, and they pay well enough, but I have never produced a work that is a set text in a million schools, so I bumble on, almost a household name, but too poor to run a car.

And so I found myself, on the train, sitting opposite this adoring student, young enough to be my daughter. My year long stint as a University composer in residence had come to an end. It paid okay, and it raised eyebrows and attracted welcome column inches when I had stayed at student digs to save a bit more of my money. In amongst the students I felt like Methusalah, but we all need to challenge ourselves. 

She wore a woollen hat that looked vaguely peruvian, on someone else it might have looked affected, but to be fair she carried it off well. Her coat was a rough felted material and her eyes glittered with the joy of youth, when there are so many wonderful things still to be found and the idea of a familiar routine seems remarkably far distant. She had a small black rectangle, probably a phone that buzzed and vibrated, but she ignored it lapping up the fact that she was sitting opposite a national treasure. 

I was still trying to make some progress on my latest composition, “A sense of trees in the still of the mist”. 

The University had made quite a fuss over my posting, so at least in that University town I was very nearly a household name. The student opposite was certainly awestruck and gushy. She asked me about what I was doing, as I scribbled my musical notes on the blank manuscript paper with a Staedtler mars lumograph HB. I have a felt wrap of such pencils, all sharpened to a ridiculously long point with my Mitsubishi KH-20 desk sharpener. The tip of the pencil scrapes along the paper with a satisfying friction. Unfortunately the notes in my head falter and repeat themselves, but with far less conviction.

I talked her through how I like to compose, creating fragments on individual sheets, then collating the sheets to form an initial structure, then going back and amending the individual fragments that I had started with. A huge amount of hard work goes into writing something that sounds effortless. 

She asked about the title of the work, and I explained that it was about knowing that something was there when you could not really see it, about how you can be close to something really solid and important but only just be aware of it. Truth be told the title was a bit unwieldy so I was still not firmly wedded to it yet. 

As a National Treasure I am forever meeting people, so I have a store of amusing stories and observations that I can charmingly deploy. But I was getting tired and I don't like travel and travel does not like me. So silently I wished that I could tell her that being a National Treasure is a rotten plinth to be placed on, and anyone sensible would be far happier being an accountant with a pension and children, but instead I told her all my ideas to improve the world,
Mens black shoes with a dark purple metallic sheen
Restaurants where the staff divide up the bill for all the different members of a party
And a myriad of other ideas, 

She wrote them all down diligently in one of her spiral ring university jotters, though if there was any way to make a penny out of any of these ideas then it would take a smarter, or at least more practical man than me. 

She left a couple of stations before me, so I stood up to shake her hand, and she leant forward enthusiastically to give me a hug and a gentle kiss on the cheek. I watched her little knitted bobble hat vanish into distance, and thought that if I had had a daughter, then I would have been very happy with one just like her. 

Two stops later, I gathered up my ancient barbour jacket and various canvas bags and rucksacks, full of my assorted paraphernalia, my moleskin trousers, woollen jumpers, brogues and undergarments. My sister was at the station to greet me, her car was blue last time, but this time it was an unpleasant green colour. I don’t really know much about cars, it looked pretty much like all the others, towards the estate size, though they don’t seem to look quite that boxy nowadays. 

My sister was always the practical one, the sensible oldest child, always keeping a watching eye on me. For all her good sense, she had a dismal choice in men. Her husband was a sullen lump with no sense of humour and a permanent scowl. He always seemed to be heading out to the pub whenever I arrived, and seldom had much to say. I suspect that he resented having anyone else in the house, which although understandable enough is rather petulant in a grown up. From time to time she had black eyes and a tooth had vanished one Christmas, but she never said anything, for good or ill about him. Perhaps he was one of her fixer up projects. She was forever taking on old properties and doing them up, or renovating a beat up arm chair, unlike her choice in men, her taste in material things seemed to be immaculate. She could spot the potential in anything and had the rare knack of turning a profit while remaining true to the spirit of a thing. She could take something covered in pigeon poo and rust, and turn it into something you would quite happily pay a fortune for. I hoped that her husband was out. There was a good chance, he roamed the country doing jobs, I was never sure what, reappearing unexpectedly. 

She drove me up the country roads, grinding the gear stick like a farmer with a Landrover, a green tunnel of hedge piping us through tumbling fields and rambling copses. The road dipped down, as if readying itself for what it knew was to come, and the car reared up, tackling the steep incline to her cottage. For an instant we held our breaths as the car ascended, and then resumed chatting in hushed tones. She was happier than I remembered her being of late. I think that she had hoped that I would make a bit more of myself, although there was clearly considerable kudos to be had being related to a national hero, she knew me well enough to know that it was a precarious existence. 

We dined well, her husband was away, she did not say any more. She untied her hair, flinging back her head laughing at some old stories that we had told each other a hundred times. She seemed more carefree than I remembered of late. It suited her, she deserved to be happy. I nagged her at the lack of foraged foods from her cooking. Living out in the country she could have dined well on what could be gathered from hedgerows and fields. The autumn was upon us and the brambles were bursting on the vine. 

I crawled off to bed with a pleasantly warm feeling and curled up in an enormous feathery duvet that seemed to stretch like an ocean around me. Together, the duvet and me, curled up like two cats in a basket and I dreamt of dark trees shrouded in a still mist. 

The morning is always better in the country, the light is better the air is crisper. I made a pot of coffee and shrugged on my heavy moleskin trousers and a checked shirt. I left the manuscript paper on the kitchen table with a pencil and headed out. I had looked for a trug for gathering mushrooms in but had to settle for an old biscuit tin. I left the lid behind and headed out with it. My feet followed the path that felt most familiar, like the sheep cut a track across the hills, our feet follow each other, even across the different times. The path was metalled with worn smooth pebbles, with low clumps of pineappleweed. They are supposed to give off a delicate fruited scent, and thrive on being trodden on. They seemed to me to be an appropriate emblem for a small country, pervasive and unnoticed. The lowering hedgerows separated out and a small field lay before me. 

A patch of ground looked pretty much like any other, but a rim of redshank flowers, tiny pink towers caught my eye. The redshank appears on broken soil and vanishes the next year. 

There was a cluster of wavering little peaks, difficult to tell but they looked like the scarlet caterpillar fungus, no use to me, a poisonous fungus that can kill. Like the north American hebeloma syriense it would grow where corpses are. Its mycelium stretching like an underground empire gathering up its resources, only being glimpsed as the mushroom raises itself from the ground.

I stood silently, and my eye traced an outline, roughly the height of a man, and slightly wider than a man, some disturbed soil around the periphery as if a turf had been cut and reinstated, surrounding somewhere that a poisonous fungus had chosen to grow. 

The dew on the ground was still heavy, and there were bound to be better mushrooms to be found, sure enough before long I found some chanterelles at the edge of the field, just past a pile of soil, that was slowly being overgrown by grass and weeds. The tump of soil was about the volume that a man would be, a man like my sister’s husband. 

I gathered up the chanterelles in the biscuit tin and headed back up the path to her cottage. As I went I tried to remember the latin names for the trees, shrubs and flowers I saw. For some reason today felt like a good day, of course I was not going to say anything to my sister, but my little wander and forage had done wonders, I rushed back to pick up one of the pencils with the long tapered point to jot down the musical notes, one after another, for my latest piece of music. Music can be so eloquent, while holding it true meaning close. For once the notes seemed to be flowing like they had never flowed before, and I could tell that this would be something very good indeed.  

I felt sure that my sister would not mind using the chanterelles in our meal or if we opened an extra bottle of wine that night with dinner.   

secure email options

Following on from recent leaks and media coverage, there has been a lot of hipster geek interest in encrypted emails and services offering more privacy than Google. Initially Lavabit looked like the answer, Edward Snowden used it, and if anyone knows about secure email it is likely to be him. Well Lavabit closed down, and now no one trusts any of the US or Canadian email providers. 

Looking around there seem to be numerous alternatives, the following seem to have a good few favourable mentions, 

Neomailbox 

http://www.neomailbox.net

$49.95 per annum, based in Switzerland. Looks to offer what you would expect it to, as well as an anonymous surfing service that will mask you IP address for the same amount again.

Countermail 

https://countermail.com

$59 per annum, based in Sweden, has the coolest gizmo of the lot, you can have a USB stick for when you need to access your account. This does look hardcore, for people who are really serious about their encryption. 

Mykolab

https://mykolab.com

$64.92, or thereabouts, the pricing is complex. Based in Switzerland, Mykolab recently offered a lite version to attract those looking for a Lavabit alternative. The main focus seems to be calendar and contacts management for businesses, with the encryption as part of the overall package. Interestingly one of their FAQs, is 

“I heard Swiss internet is routed via the UK. Isn't that worse than the US?”

Swissmail

https://secure.swissmail.org/generalmail/swissmail/info/en/email_service.asp

$35 per annum, unsurprisingly based in Switzerland. The service seems pretty basic, with a website that looks like something from the dawn of the internet. It does not offer anything special for encryption, but is easy enough to get set up. 

Most of these will offer a free trial, to see whether they work for you before you shell out any actual money. 

As far as I can recall, the most expensive Lavabit account was $16 per annum, so none of these would have been plausible contenders while Lavabit was about. 

Also worth keeping an eye on is the Wuala (pronounced like the french voila) by the French firm LaCie, which offers encrypted cloud storage. There is not much point in encrypting all your email if you are just backing up all your data to some US based servers, like Evernote, Dropbox, Apple iCloud, etc. There does seem to be a real opportunity here for canny European firms, or anywhere else that can convincingly claim to protect your privacy.