BERNIE THE BOLLARD PART 5

BERNIE THE BOLLARD PART 5

THE BROKEN HEARTED BOLLARD

Hi, sob, Bernie the broken hearted bollard here. Yes, I’ve been dumped. Now I know that most humans believe that bollards don’t have any feelings but what do they know? For thousands of years they accepted the sun was a golden chariot pulled by horses. They spent millennia reckoning the world was flat. Most humans still think that there are only three dimensions – up/down, across and sort of back. It was only when a man stubbed his toe on a bollard that he realised time was a dimension too. Even now, the cleverest human being is convinced that there are only eleven dimensions. How long will it take for them to realise that there is an infinity of dimensions. There, I’ve let it slip out and now some human will get all the science prizes. Just watch Mr Smith Nobel Prize winner; it won’t be Bernie.

Dumped; it physically hurts, you know. It’s a bit like dull indigestion linked with depression. I know what you're going to say: ‘Be a Bollard’ – ‘Plenty more bollards on the bank’ but I really thought this was it, my one and only romance. Bella was the first girl I asked to go out with me, first one to hold hands with, to kiss, to fumble. It's something you remember all your life, that first romance. It is easy to forget the emotion as you grow old and cynical.


Bella sent a message round with her best friend, a shopping trolley. One of those thin spidery cold shopping trolleys you see dumped around the canals. ‘Now it's your turn to be dumped’ she spat. ‘Is your name Bernie?’ she demanded ‘Well, you're dumped’. Got herself pushed up to Tesco Five Ways. The supermarket that David thinks is the worst in the world. The premises scruffy, the staff surly, the trollies absent taking messages. David won’t go there anymore, sends Brenda. That trolley girl left me with tears running down my sides.

I know who's got Bella’s heart. I’ve been hanging around the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham where she sleeps. I got Grant and John on Aquarius to drop me off Aquarius the BW tug. I spied on her. Shouldn’t have done it, spying on her but what can you do? You need to know. She’s meeting a tall, silver security bollard called Steven, who lives with his sister, Sylvia outside a jewellery shop in Birmingham City Centre. He’s younger than me, he can pop up and down – which I can’t do. I’m more steady. It won’t last long with silvery Steven, sliding Steven, slippery Steven; it's just a passing metal attraction. I bet she will be going out with a string of bollards next, when we could have settled down on a nice stretch of banking. The next thing you know she will be in Broad Street, the club capital of the Midlands. Bollards to Broad Street I say. Better to stay home with the one you love, Bella.


It's lonely now, even though I’ve only just been dumped. Life seems empty, just like those bollards with nothing inside. I now know what a mooring ring feels like. There’s no one to wait for, no surge of elation when you spot them coming, no lifting of the senses, no joy of anticipation. There’s nothing to get spruced up for, no point in attempting to glow at night nor shine in the morning. This was really going to be my great romance Napoleon and Josephine; Duke and Duchess of Windsor; David and Brenda. You think this is just a load of bollards, but it’s a crux point in my life, all my plans and dreams smashed like a broken bollard. I’m smashed inside.

Apart from me being dumped, there is little news on the Birmingham canals. I watched coal being delivered by working boat to the boaters at Gas Street Basin. Ironic I thought, I’m in that sort of mood. Ironic that years ago there were 60 coal merchants around the wharves in Birmingham and now the boaters have to have coal delivered. Coals to Gas Street. It made me think, did you know that people have been living on boats in Gas Street Basin since 1794, and the community is still there hanging on. Pressure from BW to turn the basin commercial and pollution noise from the bars crowded around, but they hang on. One thing made me smile – well, grin. I’m not smiling for a while. As soon as John Jackson had delivered the coal, 10 bags to each boat, BW decided they would pressure wash the pontoons. All coal to be moved onto the boats. Great timing.


So what now for me, I think that I might travel, get out of Birmingham, move on. Don’t expect there will ever be another Bella, she’s not the same sweet young bollardy Bella I knew. Can’t be, having been in the company of Snaky Steven. So I’m going to hitch a lift with that Mr David. Serves him right he pulled me out of the ground and got me on the move. Think I’ll get him to take me to London. Had always planned to take Bella, nice spot by a posh hotel, moored lawns, flowery beds, watching the toffs. Just Bella and me. Bollards heh.

Being depressed has turned me into a songwriter. If that bollard sitter John can do it so can I.

No joy, no hope, no consolation
My life is nought but desolation
You took away your love, your charm
And tried to do me no hard

How could you be so blind
As to choose one of his kind

I still recall the tears
And the wasted years and years
I thought we’d found a love to last
To give us a future not a past

How could you be so blind
As to choose one of his kind

My mind seeks only down to kill
That part of my heart that can’t
Forget the girl it held so tight.
No other girl this emptiness can fill

Bella Bella.