the limp-winged inflatable spitfire spins

The limp-winged inflatable spitfire hung on a thread from the ceiling like a spider-sucked fly. Ian lay and watched it for a while, spinning in the fan heater's warm breath, spilling dust from it's flaccid fuselage and sagging propeller.

When he'd discovered it in the box - lying there on top of everything else like a scrunched up plastic bag - it had seemed like a good idea to hang it back up. He'd thought it might amuse Charlie and infuriate Terry. In fact, it turned out that Charlie thought it was a bit sick, mumbling something about the war and that Ian 'might just as well have put up a tattooed lampshade.' On the other hand, Terry considered the spitfire to be so totally tacky that he actually quite liked it, commenting with a wry smile that it was rather kitsch, (which apparently meant that it was indeed tasteless crap, but a certain kind of tasteless crap that it was OK to like).

When the spitfire had been cleaned and freshly inflated, it had, for a time, seemed mildly entertaining. But, as it had become increasingly saggy and dusty, Ian had begun to find it rather irritating. The spitfire was one of the last presents he'd received from Chrissy (who'd forever been buying him daft things). Putting it back up signalled, in some small way, that he d got her out of his system and didn't care what she did or who she saw.

However, although the spitfire genuinely had no sentimental impact on him hanging there, he still found it a bit perturbing. It reminded him of the other things he'd found in the box, the things he'd inadvertently found himself thinking about over the last few days, when walking home from the club or during quiet moments behind the bar; the snakeskin, the shaving mirror, those sparklers and that bubble blowing machine. All very perturbing.

No, actually, perturbing was too strong a word. It suggested being mildly disturbed, slightly distraught, a bit agitated and that wasn't the way he felt anymore. The feeling had become more diluted than that. It were more as if he'd been bitten by fleas like the ones the cats used to bring into his bed when they'd slept with him beneath the duvet. Except these fleas hadn't just got beneath the duvet they'd scuttled beneath his skull. Yes, that was it, flea bites on the brain, irritating memories that he tried to ignore but couldn't stop himself from scratching at.

Ian got out of bed and stood on tip toe in his underpants shivering as he reached up to the ceiling to prise out the drawing pin that attached the twisted nylon thread from which the spitfire hung. As Ian pulled the plane down, a layer of dust from the wings stuck to his hands. He instinctively reached down to wipe the dust on his leg of his trousers, remembered just In time that he wasn t wearing any, and instead used a nearby T-shirt, which he then threw Into the overflowing washing basket in the comer.

Kneeling on the floor, his back warmed by a welcome burst of hot air from the fan heater, Ian dragged the box out from under the bed and opened it. He removed the spitfire's stopper, which was on the underside of the plastic fuselage between the wings and the tail-fins, and squeezed the plane's various projections until it was empty and flat. He placed the crumpled plane carefully on top of the box, folding the wings in as if they were the arms of a freshly ironed shirt.

As he tucked the spitfire in, it rocked up the newspaper cutting that lined the base of the box. He pulled out the yellowed paper. It tore cutting in half the headline - Local Hero Drags Man from Crash Inferno. He stared at his photo for a while. He looked surprisingly young, the shy teenager, who foolishly (and fortunately) pulled a man from a blazing car moments before it exploded.

He smiled, remembering how for a couple of months after that complete strangers had insisted on buying him pints, shaken his hand, as he d self-consciously tried to explain that it wasn't something he'd chosen to do but had just happened, and had suggested (giving rise to much worldlY-WIse head shaking) that in that situation anyone else would have done exactly the same.

He winced as he remembered how the man's wife had hugged him in a way he was not used to being hugged. Thanked him for saving her husband's life. Had all but offered to fuck him in her gratitude.

He shook his head, smiling, read the headline for one last time, then screwed the tom paper into a tight ball and shoved it into the box beside the spitfire's scrunched up propeller.

Ian hardly passed anyone as he walked down towards the canal, just a few people walking dogs and/or clutching armfuls of newspapers and colour supplements. In many ways walking through the town early on a Sunday morning was like walking after midnight. OK, so obviously it was much lighter. But the streets were no busier and the few people he passed had that same detached, self-absorbed air of night walkers. No one who Ian passed seemed to noticed him or the box he was clutching tight to his padded, black bomber jacket.

Ian strode onward as if he were on auto-pilot. Although he knew precisely what he was doing, he felt like an android. As he followed the tow-path towards the weir, he imagined for a moment that he were looking at himself from a distance, and smiled as he pictured himself jerking mechanically along like some kind of robot with plastic skin and guts full of wires and circuit boards.

A man in a canoe splashed past. He was wearing a blue plastic cagoule with the hood up, pulled tight round his face, his paddles rhythmically hitting the cold water, constant as clockwork. Another robot, thought Ian, and smiled again, strangely happy.

When Ian arrived at the weir, he waited for a minute, shivering slightly and clutching the box with folded arms, various hard edges pressing against him through the time-softened cardboard, as he watched the whirlpools. He was just about to throw the box it into the water when a cocker spaniel appeared, closely followed by an elderly couple with green jackets and a map book. Ian patted the dog on the head and nodded politely at the people, nonchalandy weighing the box in his hand, as if about to perform a series of physical exercises with it. The couple hurried on, the lady calling out to her dog, 'come on Brandy, come on,' in an artificially posh and slightly agitated voice.

As soon as they'd gone, Ian drew back his arm (rather like a shot-putter) and prepared to heave his 'cardboard coffin' into its watery grave. At the last moment he stopped, opting for the added distance of a discus throwers fling, and hurled the box high over the water, watching it hit the surface with a satisfying splash.

For one worrying moment, Ian thought the box wasn't going to sink.

As it lingered on the surface, he guiltily looked back over his shoulder to check no one had seen what he'd just done - imagining, rather implausibly, that someone might for some reason retrieve the box and link its contents to him. However his worry was short lived, as the drifting box was swiftly swallowed up by one of the whirlpools and dragged down to the sediment at the bottom of the weir.

Even though Ian knew the canal was regularly dredged, he imagined the box staying there for centuries, becoming a fossil to be found in a million years time by visitors from another galaxy. He pictured the aliens landing on a barren, post- holocaust wasteland, digging down through the radioactive ashes to discover his box, a time capsule enshrined in stone.

Figure that one out you little green bastards, he thought, and walked slowly home through sun bathed mud and shadows that shifted where willows waved in the wind.