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Nonsense, scraps & musings

Despite responding ‘I’m a writer’ when people ask me what I do, I’ve never really been crystal clear on my calling, or known what form most suits me. 

 

Apart from this. Apart from nonsense.

 

So when people quite naturally follow up with ‘oh cool, what do you write?’, I no longer rally off genres or say something non-committal and unexciting like ‘allll sorts’ — now I just say ‘nonsense’. 

 

And, blessings be to heaven, that’s normally enough to move things swiftly on. From here, we proceed to cover vital and enduring topics such as the weather, the current political climate, the state-of-play across sports, and enjoyable music that we might well have in common. Jolly good show.

The Alternative

Couldn’t you have moored that elsewhere? 

Did you decide on the name before or after the mooring?

Am I reading far too much into this? 

What in the heavens are you talking about? 

 

Well, just across the river from the gymnasium is a placid little boat; probably room for 5-6 at a time on its upper decks, and a few less below so. It’s white and ocean blue with rear doors of wood, and a small ladder of wood, and a rear bumper or ramp of wood, and little darker blue buoys that hang from its side and sway a little if there’s a big ripple or a bigger gust. They are, quite intelligently, not made of wood. It is forever sat dormant in a spot right across from the exercise bikes upstairs, and when I sit on a bike, either before or after a row or a run, it’s normally kissing 6pm, and the sun is obviously cutting through gaps in brick to just the perfect degree, because its remarkable light falls plush on the back window of this boat, and reflects back up to me, yep, me, sat here pedalling. The blinding sun mixes with the sweat on my brow and in my eyes, and forms some sort of medley with the burn in my lungs and the stench from my pits, and just occasionally the boat sways to the point that the furnace ceases momentarily, and I can make out the name scrawled in shit little calligraphy on the bow: 

 

‘The Alternative’. 

 

Thank you very much for that.

Rabbithole

So what you’re telling me is you’ve never just stamped a word into a search engine with the word ‘definition’ next to it and subsequently ended up on a long, meandering journey of loosely associated words and synonyms? One to the next to this that and the other to oh just one more and,  by the time you get to the ‘final’ definition, you may well find it interesting but you can’t for the life of you A) remember what it was you were searching to begin with and B) understand why you just spent fifteen minutes looking at incongruous lexicon. 

 

No? Me neither.

Untitled time nonsense

“Write about time”.

 

Ask me to write about music and it not be fatuous garble. 

Ask me to dance about architecture. 

Request, if you’d be so bold, that I match the pulse of a distant star using solely the skin on my pinky. 

For that matter, throw the whole sensational smorgasbord together and scribble away.

 

Fine buildings and musical production are embedded in time, subject to it, abiding by its ceaseless course. By writing about those things you are — as a prerequisite — writing about or at least within the confines of time. Music and dance are hinged on time — they are in time, to time, occasionally (ashamed to say) off-time. Architecture is a marker of and victim of time.

 

Unless you're the proud owner of an absurd amalgamation of precise scientific equipment, a distant star is too distant to actually discern the pulse of. All this means is that you can shimmy that pinky howsoever you please and claim it’s perfectly mimicking what you’ll never know. It’s easier to do that than it is to write about time. Ah. My pinky wavers slightly as with all its characteristic, trustworthy regularity, blood is pumped into it and around it and slooshes back up to me ticker. This blood and its micronutrients and its silly little composition is the life of time and the time of life. Time is manifest in every pore and fair hair. 

 

The topic of time is represented by titillation and terror on a tandem bike, trying to tread towards triumph. Because I am an ignorant and sometimes smelly swine, I assume a certain understanding of time as linear, pressing forwards from one ungraspable instance to the next. Writing about time is fun because every typed letter serves as an indicator of a vanquished moment, every shimmy never to be repeated before looming bricks, every pinky boogie bidding adieu to a specific caprice of solar systems. YET! Architecture and music and dance and distant stars all transcend time, too, no? They resist it. They gossip and endure and fuck around with time’s path by re-appearing or re-recreating and casting new light on scenes. A building has more business snuggling up to space than it has trying to tackle time. It intersects time and, initially at least, defies time. If organised well enough; if prudent enough to push your buttons and tickle your fancy, music and sound push beyond the constraints of linear life. That’s why when a stone-cold banger comes you turn to your pal and say ‘timeless’. 

 

Why can’t I write about time? Why can’t I abide by it in every motion of my hands on this keyboard and simultaneously, against all odds, escape it for a moment, or an anti-moment? The time has come to acknowledge that sense falls by the way-side not just in the sentences prior to this but more generally in responses to time. To go and back and ameliorate the jumble, or for you, to go back and try to pluck some use from it — well, that would take...you guessed it...

Titled time nonsense

A little tipple of time came to me a day or two ago. Oh I see! A musing attributable to a certain segmentation of time. Nice. Funny how words can dally with time like that. No doubt a clarification geared towards you, reader, understanding further just how unshakeable the damn thing is. Just how steadfast we are in our perception of the phenomenon.

 

Boring. 

 

The musing was this: memory is an indelibly time-orientated mindscape. 

 

Nolan (eaaaaajjhhhh Nolan Nolan Nolan what a guy what a brain so original love him) presents objective physical spaces as manifestations and apparitions of time. The rate of the world’s technological development would likely permit what I thought up, and thus I took time out from my busy little life to explore it. So fast. So soon. Here goes. 

 

We’re in the near future, and linear life as we know it is subject to infinite disruption. Cameras — small, powerful, sustainable — are installed in contact lenses around the world. This is the pragmatic next step in a world obsessed with the recording of time. Through these lenses you’ll not only be able to record life, but let’s be frank you’ll actively opt to do so. Your life and what you do with it is very important and it’s very important to capture every very important thing you do. These lense-cameras will be surgically installed and electronically tied to your brain. Through some hardwiring that neither I nor any other living being has yet to figure out, it becomes possible to access those recordings and memories in the form of ‘Virtual Reality’. 

 

[post-note: some time after writing this stuff about time, I watched the Black Mirror episode wherein people can revisit a memory through similar lenses. A timely, tantalising reminder of just how unoriginal I am, sure, but those characters didn’t revisit and relive the recordings viscerally, they just watched them, so HA!].

 

In this world, a person can sit in a room, now, surrounded by the flickering pulse of other life, and yet be so engrossed in a certain memory that they nigh-on entirely vacate the environment they physically inhabit. They begin to exist in another time: in that memory. We peruse old photos or videos. We jump in the temporal gondola back to about two months ago and see what the story was then, yis? We reminisce and discuss and ruminate on the past. What these lenses do is push this tendency. The brain’s cortex, primarily the hippocampus, will be monitored for pangs of such memorial moments. Yada yada, your swede sends information in synapse sparks, lovely and efficient, back and forth between the lenses and the hippocampus, so that you’re then presented with the option of replaying this memory. You can choose different levels of immersion, or something? Like, a) I want to watch this only [a la Black Mirror], b) I’d like to be me again, there, but leave my peripherals alone, or c) full-blown yeah yep yes take me there. 

 

If you think in exactly the same way as me, then I can sense your thoughts already. “How disturbing. What a waste of linear progressive time.” 

 

But such time is banal. 

 

For millennia, to live in the past has gone from fanciful disposition to borderline predilection. Why not utilise that? Try to enjoy that? Another qualm is that memories from earlier life will remain inaccessible. And that’s all we’re interested in really, isn’t it? To some time prior to all this mess. Pre-lens installation perceptions will remain as we know them now — slippery, blurry conglomerations of space and time, prone to warps and selective deletions. 

 

But what possibilities such lenses hold going forth! For the pioneering, for the forgetful and for outright nostalgic. Such a creation would transcend time in a way that music and architecture could only dream of.

 

I wrote that four years ago.

Loading

Forsake me then. I was on some social media. An app, yes yes, on which you simultaneously satisfy yours and other people’s vanity with a barrage of self-presentation. I was on one of them. I’m not sure when or why, just suspend your disbelief and envisage it. It’s likely you too have engaged, or still engage, in such fantastical folly. 

 

Anywho, there was a ‘story’ I'd put on there and I could see the thumbnail (it was my face) but the loading symbol — flicking its demonic, tantalising, metallic circles round — wasn’t shifting. Quite naturally, I concluded that due to some grave fault in my current mode of living, I was not fully loading. I was as such unable to become my own face, the face in the thumbnail, and that until I had done enough and satisfied whomsoever looks after these things, I would not become my face and would not be able to watch that ‘story’. By this time I’m in some sort of perpetual vacant-stared limbo. 

 

But I have freedom, grant me that? Grant me that at least? …

 

‘If you like’.

 

Don’t interrupt me I’m trying to load.

 

‘What would a fully ‘loaded’ you look like?’

 

Similar, I’d imagine. Well, definitely similar, because I recognised the thumbnail on that app as myself. I set it! I’m not a fucking idiot. But there was just a horrid little thin grey veil over my face, unmoving behind the spinning loading sign. So, in a sense, if I am to take that little stagnant thumbnail to be…well, to be the actual me…and loading, and I’m here, me, looking down at it on my phone, on this blessed social media application, assuming that it’s me actually shielded from the open air down there in that device…shit. 

 

You know what? This is shit, what am I saying? 

This is just me being silly isn’t it. Just me. Me. 

Alright here we go again.

Last one

There is a special place reserved in the British psyche for leaving a single piece of something. The scene is staggeringly familiar, no? 

 

You’ve got a big packet of crisps. Maybe some chocolate buttons. For that matter, literally any other item of food, ‘sharer’ or otherwise, is applicable, so fill in the gaps and move on. The people around you are gleeful, greedy, grateful, gluttonous! 

 

Then, entirely miraculously, a sense of unbecoming shame peers its dirty little head out the pack and fends off fingers from any horrid soul that dare reach for the final one. Snaps at the temptation, even. It’s like a forcefield from that one last item isn’t it? Imperceptibly but ever-so-powerfully, the “don’t-you-dare-reach-for-me” fragrance exudes and fills the room around it. 

 

Enough of the personification then. It’s actually probably just good old fashioned, perpetually misguided politeness on behalf of your humble Brit. 

 

“Well then, I’ve bordered on barbaric for the last three to five minutes in my approach to this food. I’ve dug in good and proper, commenting at intervals to my peers about the quality of the food, and how good a choice it was to buy it, and thanks ever so much for purchasing it and willingly sharing it, and yes mmm another one for me, but now — shite — hang on…there’s one left. I’ll be the Good Samaritan. I’ll do the right thing and leave it because there’s someone more deprived and more deserving on the scene, no doubt about it.”

 

Except everyone’s doing it. 

So it just sits there.

There’s no time limit on it either. 

It’s almost like it never even happened; like the packet no longer exists. 

 

The people that just a short while ago felt like jovial partners in the partake are now head down, either avoiding eye contact or glancing sideways at you, and then at the packet, and then back at you, all as if to say —  are you going to be the unforgivable pig that dips in? 

 

Am I ever! I’m leaving that one for any one of you fuckers to take.

 

Ah sharing packs. BUT is this a phenomena reserved for the culinary sphere? 

 

Leaving dregs in a sauce bottle? 

Something to that as well. Bone idility, most likely.

Not exactly got the same sense of community to it, eh. 

 

Watch yourself next time you’re sharing something nice and good and swell with people you think you trust. It’ll happen.

Some fun rona commentary

What’s new?

The world is in the midst of a pandemic. It is affecting pretty much everything. I hear the word coronavirus at least 20 times a day. People are paranoid. Everything is shutting down. It’s very odd out there. Same same, sure, but different. 

 

What’s new?

The world is in a midst of a pandemic. 

The country, and so many others, are shutting down.

Biopolitics!!!!! On the largest scale imaginable. 

Ok maybe not the largest. But maybe. 


I wouldn’t want to go backwards from such cunning societal insight into the state of affairs we oft call the ‘weather’, but it really has been fittingly shambolic: there were two storms doing a wheelbarrow race and then everyone kind of stopped paying attention to how annoying the wind and sleet and hail was because they were focusing on washing their hands instead. BUT WASHING YOUR HANDS LOADS COMBINED WITH HORRID COLD AIR MAKES YOU DRYER THAN A HAIRDRYER WITH SUNSTROKE AFTER A BIG SPLIFF. And these were the early days .

 

The world is in the midst of a pandemic. 

The thing about a pandemic is that it’s pervasive, and this pandemic is the most pervasive phenomena I’ve ever known, bar time, of course, and space, and greenery, and animal life, and corporations and crisps. 

 

Something like a third of the world is in lockdown, with citizens under conditions of when and in what circumstances they can leave their residences. People are contracting it at an alarming rate, across the whole of Europe (especially Spain & Italy), the U.S., Asia, Australia. Everywhere. Honestly I think it is everywhere. People are dying in great numbers. The situation here has escalated over the course of the last month from media-disseminated mild concern to, oh, this is becoming a bit more alarming now, to the ‘suggestion’ for people to avoid public and more densely populated areas, to a firm government driven lockdown, with Boris (who of course now has the virus) telling us all we ‘must stay at home’. We can leave the house to get essential goods. We can do one bit of exercise out and about every day. When out and about, we must remain 2 metres away from anyone else we see. The idea of the current measures is to stem the growth and the spread of the virus between households.

 

The world is in the midst of a pandemic. 

When I’m not out on my one permitted walk, I’m either writing for work, writing for me, writing for no-one, or watching movies. This is reductive but so it stands. The Big Short. So as I understand it, banks started filling their mortgage bonds with sub-primes and the housing market was (is) propped up on these bad loans, and things went south pretty pronto and Christian Bale is in with a genuine shout as best actor of our generation? Actually, isn’t that Tom Hanks? Probably. Does he have coronavirus? Yes. 

 

The passing months of Covid-19 ! Its many mopings, its many turns of obstinate optimism. It has honestly been a quite remarkable period in the history of humankind has it not?

 

The world is in the midst of a pandemic. 

Had fish and chips last night.

Lockdown is unbelievably tedious. 

I can’t fully remember what life feels like.

Remember how depressed, obsessive and scared you became at times over the last year?

That was dark. 

Positive entries only!

The fish and chips I had last night were absolutely delectable and only left me feeling like one of the vital walls of my ticker might cave in at any moment. How’s that for positive news with a pungent twist?

 

The world is in the midst of a pandemic. 

You can take your lockdown and your subsequent tier systems and shove them up your hiney, good sir.

 

On Monday, restrictions eased and we were once again permitted to have a beer and a meal — albeit outside — at an establishment. Every day at like 11am the rowdy crowd at The London Inn are out there being fucking annoying, but other than that it’s quite excellent indeed to see harbourside and the city so ripe with life.

​

The world is in the midst of a pandemic. 

A week from now you’re allowed to hug your friends and family. You’re allowed! They’re letting you do it. You there, with great agency and many muscle fibres, are henceforth allowed. You’re allowed to mix with other households indoors (don’t be a dick about it though ffs), have a meal or a pint inside the walls of some such establishment, and go to the cinema to watch a fillum. The government says these things are ok in a week’s time. But you must remain cautious — for example, one must hug with one’s face away from the recipient (don’t kiss them?!). Whatever can I say other than it’s all been a bit weird hasn’t it. And that we are in the midst of a pandemic, but you already know that. 

 

The world is in the midst of a pandemic, and they’ve developed vaccinations. 

Three cheers for science and syringes and sharp little intravenous implements. 

It was my first Pfizer jab. That 15-minute period post-needle, where you sit in the open so they can make sure you don’t have an allergic response. You know it? Right. Firstly, I felt fine. There’s a degree of mild anxiety inherent to having to even sit there. Am I going to be ok during this period? Am I breathing heavily? Am I a little more tetchy than usual? No to all, really. The fellow by my side, however. He sat down about five minutes after me , and shortly after toppled over off his chair sideways, hitting his head on the floor before coming around after a few harrowing seconds. At this point, medics were on the scene to cool it all down and monitor him, whilst my heart rate was shooting up and my palms were sweating and I couldn’t be sure whether this was my own turn or just the general (and justified) unease at having seen that guy go west.

 

The world is in the midst of a pandemic, except it’s fine now because the festival is going ahead. Swathes and waves of people everywhere, flickering from A to B and onwards through the geographical alphabet of splendour, some beneath streaks of sunshine, others not so, and not once did it seem to matter, for there were collective gasps, gulps and gratitudes flung as far as the place stretched, the sort of unbounded euphoria that only those far less fortunate than all of us there with tickets can ever really have known before this pest of a pandemic. Did I mention we were in the midst of one? 

 

So, what of it? — ah yes yes yes si si yes my immunity has finally buckled. In the past week, all signs have pointed towards the invasion of Ukraine and the potential onset of Cold War II having obliterated coronavirus from existence. That and the relinquishing of the final legal restrictions in the UK. Alas, it’s still here apparently. Not that I’d know it. I had a headache on Wednesday mornin. Let me give you a couple of seconds to stop reeling from that theatre of the grotesque. For me, fortunately, Covid is like a wee cold, but not as bad as that cold I had three weeks ago when I was a grand snotty mess and I built a little stonehenge of used tissues around me. Remember that? Inevitably these will be my famous last words and my condition will deteriorate over the next 48 hours and this account of Covid will go down as one of the more ironically naive.

Personal branding

Is there anyone more infuriating — anything less emblematic of our extraordinary sapien nuance — than the idea of ‘personal branding’?

 

What the actual bag of shite are we all on about.

 

Read this. You’re a human being, most likely. Read it.

 

“Ironically, “brand” is a concept with an identity crisis. The idea of “personal brand” sounds phony because it is. Brands are carefully contrived; they are not real. Brands are flat, soulless, and artificial “personalities” designed to convince others that the brand is something it is not.”

​

I am ready to not. You know? Sometimes just to not is more than enough.

Maybe that's my core brand value. Wheeew.

Memory

SORRY BUT JUST TO CONFIRM, EVERYONE ELSE IS UTTERLY CAPTIVATED BY, DISMAYED AT, ENTHRALLED BY, IMPRESSED WITH AND CURIOUS ABOUT THE MECHANISMS OF MEMORY, RIGHT? It’s incredible. I would venture that I spend at the very least 14 or 15 hours a day awake and consciously conducting myself. Surely all of that is relevant in some way? Surely all of it in one way or another contributes to how I feel about life. Yet all I really throw about are flimsy recollections that lay at the feet of introspective observations. Actual physical occurrences and all the gorgeousness of the nothing moments fall by the wayside. How can memory work that way? How have we managed to disturb, dominate and destroy the planet and yet our brains haven’t the capacity to remember much at all?

 

I remember writing my first ever journal entry. I talked of looking out of the window to my right, down into the college square, a year of study and pseudo-independence behind me. I now have the same visual portal on the same side of me, this time to homes and an ill-kempt neighbouring garden. This is a glance I have taken many times in the past few months, — months rife with tumult (not sure if it works as a noun). Somehow each time I glance down there and see the stillness or the sway, I come to realise, re-realise, or at least acknowledge just how nostalgic I am. I remember writing my first ever journal entry. I remember repeatedly sprinting from the exit lane round to the rollercoaster entry when we were in Florida. I remember the exact day I no longer fit in the bath. I remember when I first had smoked cheese. I remember my attitude toward history. It used to be apathetic at best and malevolent at worst. But memory amounts to mankind. It is the route we all take, flicking in and out of others’ lives, carving paths, interjecting and — if we’re lucky — adding a little something here and there. Our inability to memorise or map that progress to any degree of quality brings great displeasure. 

 

How reliant scenes are on the mind that observes them. I liked the college square view because I could watch the comings and goings. I like this view because there’s people living out their own little complex numbers in the houses. I wonder if any of them take to staring out windows and letting it prompt such shoddy prose. I wonder if they too are nostalgic, and taken hostage by their own shoddy memory? 

 

Things feel like they’re moving towards me, contacting me and then passing by me. Whatever can this come down to? Must be memory. Pesky fuckin thing. For this reason, things aren’t a blur especially, but whilst I plunge myself into what I’m doing of a day, of an evening, of a capricious minute, by the time I wake up and focus on the next thing my progress seems to be forgotten.

 

I wrote a journal for a hell of a long time, until very recently I didn’t, really. At some juncture it ceased to carry out its function as catharsis, as venting and as a means of enduring, and of celebrating certain instances of elation, the flows amidst the ebbs. After non-stop weeks become non-stop months and it’s go go going, blood flowing, caution to the wind throwing goodness — well,  you half expect a sizeable breakdown in functionality, don’t you? I became concerned that I was writing down what I do all the time for absolutely no reason other than to try and offset my astonishingly decrepit memory. It was without aim or message but out of sheer mnemonic necessity. 

 

Memory becomes a bittersweet cocktail of self-celebration and self-hatred.  My head owns me and my disorganisation floats up like a discarded napkin into some sky shared everywhere. 

 

Well then, forwards. But where? 

When there is no way to know the way one might or perhaps must resort to the past. Scrolling and reminiscing on the last year, two years, 5, adolescence, early teens, youth, life, all of life, beyond the photos to my faint and hazy memories, my elusive but complete  realisation that all that’s been has been to make me me and that if a single thing had gone slightly differently, then there’d be no knowing whether I’d even be compos mentis enough to sit and write about it all. So that journal looks awfully noble now doesn’t it. 

 

I don’t know what the crux of any of this is. Memory. Something about it. Maybe I can’t remember or maybe I never knew. Maybe all those minutiae that pass me by should very well do so, because they’ve gotten me half equipped enough to handle what comes however many moons down the line. Because there will be, invariably, another set of circumstances that seem both pertinent and semi-documentable, and in turn they will wither or flourish and more will pass into the spaces.

Le Toob

There’s more than something to be said for the varied neuroses of comers and goers on the Tube. People touch their faces a lot and for different reasons. Some apply makeup in flick mirrors, some sniff their fingers whilst stifling a laugh at a podcast, or perhaps just some mid-distance memory that warms them more than the billowing air between carriages. Some wipe away a stray forelock and others ponder or scratch. These are only the face touching types. There are swathes of others, none of whom I’ll ever know; none of whom anyone will ever know. Every glance or cheek twitch or face touch is accompanied by a plethoric medley of thought, consideration, anxiety, excitement, fear, lust, growth. How has that evaded me? Solipsism. Everyone is an impossibly complex cocktail of impulsive observations, of flickering intrigue. 

 

Charting a course across Paddington, for example, takes you past a deluge of people doing just that, wielding a fierce focus, a reluctance to deviate all that much: all sweating over their own swirling lives or plotting their own poignant paths. 

 

There’s an age-old fascination in watching other people exist, in displacing some of your own angst into the mere multitudes of man, woman, of child as yet unburdened or unenlightened by that angst. We’re all mere amoeba, hurtling, anchored, on a big semi-accommodating rock through the infinite nothingness somethingness out there. And we’re all on le toob.

A penny for your thoughts on appearance

Hair and beauty. Haaaaaaiiiirrrrrr aaaand beeeaauuuty. There is the maddest inclination in this so-called developed world to jump on a big juicy bandwagon should it so establish itself, and should it so be seen as worthy. Somewhere, sometime, on the slippery garden path from the Cognitive Revolution until, what? a few hundred years ago — that thing became the promotion of ‘beauty’. And not ‘beauty’ vis à vis our being around other beings. No no no! ‘Beauty’ insofar as our faces and our skin and our nails and our ears and our hair. Beauty in so far as symmetry, staving off wrinkles, starting the day right, mopping pores and popping flaws. Beauty in so far as an unwritten standard, so that should genuinely intelligent life pop down for a visit, our collective stupidity would be neatly masked by our incredible zest and aesthetic glory. 

 

We’ve got creams and balms and treatments and oils and surgeries. We’ve got sprays and layers and masks. We’ve got bleaches, waxes, tanning agents, glow-ups, glow-downs, glow-arounds. We’ve got curlers, twirlers, straighteners, and shavers. We’ve got ourselves some sweet sweet routines!

 

At the London Science Museum there is a fascinating section called ‘face as identity’. It reinforces the importance of our first point of contact with others; of course, this caters to those with their vision and unbridled ability to perceive emotions, focusing on the complex canvas affront our swedes rather than any jingling medley of body language, attire, preconception and more. It’s fascinating nonetheless. But surely ‘face as identity’ encompasses more so our expressions and responses than the flawlessness of our skin or straightness of our teeth. Our glee or gripe, our resting growl or riled-up glow, over and above our sculpted brows? Maybe I’m wrong. I’m probably wrong. Stick to it. Buy more ointments you little oinker! Across the road from the museum, and on every third bus shelter OOH ad, is an immaculate face and a little bottle of anti-ageing cream. 

 

Blessed be. To each their radiant own.

At the barbers

See you next time. 

It’s next time. 

 

I went to get a snip and the Hungarian woman doing the deed took me from discussion of Amsterdam to prohibition of grass to the Michael Jackson documentary to Ted Bundy to inherent evil, religious justification, and, quite naturally, the fact aliens are responsible for all great infrastructural, technological developments we make as a species. From this altogether conspiratorial dialogue we shifted to one of its primary proponents — Erich von Daniken. Never heard of him. We orbited the topic of ancient architectural astronauts and other pseudo-isms — other odd sciences and (dare I say) ignorant, sweeping commentary. When I say ‘we’ I mean her. The whole time I kinda nodded and made the odd questioning comment but mostly was like mm m that is...yeah that is something. On the one hand it makes a change from discussing the English Football League, and on the other I’d quite like to just get my hair cut and not fear you’re going to inscribe backwards polemic into my shlid.

 

The next time I had a haircut it got cut short. Slightly shorter than I’d anticipated or perhaps approved of, but not so short as to leave me aggrieved. When I next penned my accounts of the weeks or days or caprices that preceded I wrote down that I’d had a haircut and that it was short. To me, this served as a gorgeous example of having very little idea re:what on earth to cover and what to omit from the weird enduring mnemonic that was my journal. I mean, it’s fair to say I could look in the mirror and know that I’ve had a damn haircut. Not that it’ll always be this length though – perhaps that’s why I got all excited and immortalised the fact anyway. Every millimetre of growth will harken back to the time that it wasn’t so long, to the time that its bristles warranted its place in my journal. Perhaps another reason for its now over-stated inclusion is this: that particular Wednesday in that indeterminable week consisted of little other than the cutting of my hair.

A corporeal note

Our shell! Our glorious robust frames and their high-functioning entrails! 

 

I do a run with my legs a few times a week but I reckon if you opened me up and had a butchers you’d think I’d been butchered and opened up. Alas, until I get to speak to someone who knows what’s good for long enough I’ll have a fair chunk of trouble understanding what’s good, and that’s no good to me really. 

 

The body is a quite magnificent thing. Should we be kind to it, things do appear very well and good and fun and funky. Should we abuse it, the results are less splendiferous. So strap in for a few lines of me berating myself and immediately alluding to doing nothing about it…

 

I dip, dive and re-ascend as per normal.

On many days I feel apathy about my physical health.

On others I feel justifiably satiated, fortunate and fit. 

Hold fast to the wind. 

 

I do not know what my body thinks, I only know what my mind thinks. In fact, it’s entirely plausible, according to humanist models, that my body does not think at all. Any conjecture on what my body is thinking is really just my mind casting its eye over my mortal vessel.

 

I guess right now (RIGHT NOW) a reasonable portion of my self-disdain stems from this sickly little fact: I spend many hours a day five days a week with a curved spine writing things that aren’t going to impact people in any real way. Daren’t you touch or influence or entertain others with your words in some small part before you shift off your mortal coil. The great drama. 

 

I am trying to check my posture before one day I actually become an office chair. It would, to my knowledge, by the first documented instance of such a corporeal transition. The mightiest equation is as such: lower back pain plus existential angst plus a side of plastic-wrapped, multi-air-mile vegetables please. Why don’t I move to Australia? Or Argentina? Or Japan?

​

“If candid is the name of the play and I am its only character actor, then I am feeling quite lethargic and morose this particular Thursday evening. It is undoubtedly all to do with my own actions and choices, which makes the play all that much harder to view, and I can’t imagine there’s a big audience but I cannae see out that far, cos all I’m focused on is my own sad, deteriorating inner workings, and the all-too-evident reasons for them.”

 

I think in some round about way I am trying to kill myself. Not sure whether to take that for what it’s worth or staunchly oppose it. Music is a lifeblood and a charge and a despair all at once. Every sinew is falling from beneath my feet, leaving me wriggling and writhing, thankless, hopeless, pathetic in my own pity and shame. 

 

Here’s some valuable insight for you. It takes the shape of a breakdown on a page. 

 

There’s the chuffing, decadent, lazy SJF who finds it easy to not do very much and then feels guilty about it vs., of course, the sporting SJF — the talker baller athlete who’s always performed semi-reasonably. These two sides to me are inextricably and agonisingly tied with giant, fisher-knotted cable. 

 

Anyway, despite becoming aware of this duality in my late teens, and after a number of years of feeling this obscure and inaccessible way about my own relationship with my body, I carried on regardless. This was really interesting to note. It was similarly fascinating to observe that once I’d entered the working world (blast!), on all too many occasions there was a perceptible, overt and painstaking internal conflict at around 6.30pm. Day in, day out. You simply have to admire the consistency vis a vis! — do I go to the gym and do some cardio and lift some weights and release a regular gaggle of endorphins and get a pump on? Orrrrrrrrrr do I go to Budget Booze, buy a bottle of wine (and some squash, to make it palatable) and some tobacco and go home and scribe and wallow for a while? Evidently the latter mostly prevailed, because that’s how you end up with a bunch of absolute tripe contained on a page. Voila!

 

The greatest jogs of my life have been those that felt simultaneously difficult and effortless. How do I describe that? It’s a flow. The sheer enjoyment of the saunter takes me deep through the Ashton Court woods, laden with crispy golden leaves on the floor, where I slow and step steady and bask in certain, fleeting, gorgeous moments as the sun breaks through the chilly branches and down to me. Amongst the finest I have felt in recent times. Just there, in those woods, without any real direction, with plenty of time, devoid of any pressing worry and feeling the rustle.

 

I loved to run. 

Maybe I love to run. 

I also wanted to start swimming, but the malevolent overseer of no things granted us merely 24 hours each day and rendered us tired should we not rest for about 6/7 of those hours and put forth a prevalent societal ideology that necessitates working for a hefty number of the other available hours so for what it’s worth, swimming can dive in at the shallow end and hit its dumb desirable head for the time being. 

 

I persist in my inclination to clog key blood vessels, surround vital organs with goop, and (oh this is absolutely my favourite) suck on death. Sure sure, I feel good at times, when the weather is just right, by which I mean temperate and windless, and I’ve tested myself and my muscles feel sore but good sore, and I’ve gone a few without a tipple, and other calculations upon the swayable pendulum of life have landed favourably. And it’s really rather nice, in these instances, all thins considered. And all things considered — to be fair — though Warburton’s would surely appreciate being sole recipient of my mulling moments. Hang on though. Hang on for just one slimy little second, you’ve guessed it! — there’ll be no more of that, for I shit on my own chances by being an akratic oaf and continuing continuing continuing. Some mornings (most mornings) now I stand side on to the bathroom mirror and lift whatever creased shirt I’ve landed on for the day and monitor the pouch on the front of me and tell myself that it perhaps isn’t so bad (it’s not) and that I shan’t let it worsen (I will).

 

And then, like a triple espresso martini at altitude, the guilt trips in with a kicker. I proceed to think that writing about it will absolve me of the pathology I’m too weak willed to swerve, and we continue on as we were. Class.

 

Normally it is after I’ve had a brief smoke that I start to think about how wonderful my life would be if I hadn’t had the brief smoke, and often this thought is more poignant after the brief smoke and it captivates me so that I pursue the brief smoke, it would seem, just to afterwards feel the rancid guilt and fevered passion to live life without the brief or elongated smoke.

 

  1. If I was in the squad of Alcoholism FC, I’d be hugging the fringes of the starting eleven. I’d be flirting with the manager every goddamn chance I had. 

  2. I don’t know if I’ll ever love anything as much as I love bread. 

  3. I’ve lambasted so many tastebuds that I’m now the sixth member of the spice girls.

  4. I got nicotine stains on my fingers.

  5. I GOT A STRONG URGE TO FLY.

 

What are you thinking right now? 

 

My old work colleagues once bought me a Hypochondriac's Guide to Ailments, or something of the sorts. There is a fault with the lower left region of my abdomen, and the garage can’t seem to locate the precise issue. Oh yea my spine and my shoulders oh yeah niiiiice. Let’s not even get started on my knees and on my shins. 

 

Ask me if despite all the goodness and warmth in my heart whether I’ve still had three large bottles of beer and half a bottle of wine on this slightly damp Sunday. Ask me if one evening later that week I spent 20 minutes quietly and very genuinely weeping in my room, a culmination of weeks and maybe months of insidious sadness. Ask me if the final prompt was looking at a photo album of my parents in their younger days, and me and my sister in our much younger days, and of those no longer with us, and the sense of time and mortality that inevitably arose from it. Ask me for some succinct account of this depression, and I’d say “we are dirt in the ground, and as of now I’m topsoil”. Class.

 

The above paragraph was written in an ebb. Can you sense it? Can you taste it on the surface? How do your tastebuds respond when you pass that gelatinous outer layer and delve into that yummy chewy core? One of my favourite pages in the cookbook: equal parts physical frailty, that feeling of being a husk, hollow, and the emotional frailty and anxiety that comes with knowing just what you’re doing to yourself.

 

I suppose all this is to say that I am smashing it. I am an accomplished decadent, a new-Roman anti-ascetic garbage can of toxic vapour, poisonous liquids and delicious foods. Let’s hear it! Thank you for coming on this journey of self-flagellation. Now, shall we go for dinner?

21st Century Fletcher

If I was an actual Fletcher in the 21st century, I would be an ‘important’ final step in the production line. Absolutely heaps of arrows would work their way to me from the woodsmiths and pointers and other bemused archaic handypeople. Arrows pointing forwards; arrows pointing upwards; more than plenty backwards. Arriving in clumps in wicker baskets or loose and languid, I’d do my part, imposing the final, fabulous flourish — the finest feathers, a smooth selection of aerodynamic apathy.

Borges and the writer

One particular story in the stunning Borges collection Labyrinths sees the author talks of fiction writers and their incapability to create characters more poignant or more visceral than themselves. The best they can do is create a quasi-figure representing themselves. He discusses the library and literature of Don Quixote, included in which is a piece of work by Cervantes, the author of the chivalric idealist himself. This particular instance presents us with a triad. You have the actual creator; the writer — Cervantes. Next, you have his most famed and esteemed creation  — the Quixote. The aforementioned idealism of Quixote can see him as a manifestation of Cervantes’ own ideals. And thirdly, Cervantes-as-author, so to say, who appears within the fictional mahogany bookcases unburdened by dust. This third figure is a physical manifestation in between bound covers and an ethereal point of inspiration. Cervantes exerts his influence on the character from within and without the literary world. Cervantes is read. But if no character can outdo his creator, then a character must be judged by the moral compass of his creator. The character is, then, the creator. Cervantes is written.

​

From Borges' labyrinthine trifecta emerges some pesky pluralism. Now, this can all seem most fragmentary and postmodern — until we consider the simpler case of the non-fiction writer.  The non-fiction writer is immune to such quandaries as he never claims to write any version of himself that is in any way ‘literary’. 

​

The marking of perceived reality on the page is not a literary endeavour. It is an act of documentation that places the author and the characters in the same sphere. If a non-fiction writer, an impartial journalist of sorts, decides to implement himself into a piece of work — do we consider him a different person to the one who penned him? By the same decree, and considering my earlier discussion of Quixote, there is a problem that arises re: the other characters. They can not be seen as manifestations of the author too, surely? They are real. They can be manipulated to sway the singular author and character, but they can not themselves be that author, for that space is taken. Fiction writers do not have that freedom to work with. 

 

Take, for example, a tall and lean young man, adopting the most repugnant posture whilst typing on his laptop whilst that laptop sits atop a Cajun drum box and music plays and the sun is trying to creep over the washing line and into the window. Consider that he ignores, in part, all these other perceptions and writes a character doing the very same, and then consider that this, by means of pure logic, means someone, the same one, has written this character writing that character. So on ad infinitum. We can only assume that the figure, his drum box somewhat unsturdy, will do the same pre-determined thing in every layer of his writerly condition.

 

Question: is the Borges mentioned at the start of this work the same Borges as the one who really wrote about authors? Or is he a different one that I’ve conjured from some false essence of understanding?

 

Question: is the young man who rectifies his poor posture and goes outside and glances at his reflection in the sun glazed window the same young man as the one who now writes this scene in the form of a question?

Differentiation

My cousin and her husband have twin boys and they’re called George and Harry. There you go, you’re all caught up. 

 

But what does this make them? George and Harry, that is. What does it make them besides two twin boys named George and Harry? My cousins once-removed? My second cousins? Many a bright chortle shared with family members over that lacked knowhow. Does anyone know? Does anyone give a single shit? Anyway a good few years ago now I wrote this down having spent a couple of days with the two of them: 

 

They’re seventeen months old, which a simpleton such as I would prefer to call a year and a half. They are starting to show differing character traits. George loves food very much, and he is quite chilled out. As a result of these two things (and most likely a remarkably complex string of circumstantial & biological nuance) he sports slightly larger cheeks than his brother. Harry is rather whingy, it’s fair to say? — he clings to his Mum (my actual cousin) pretty frequently and seems forever on the verge of the next whimsical weep. 

 

These are just kids, little beyond the age of babies, and yet the  development of inevitable, glorious distinctions in their personas is well underway. How receptive are they at this age? How interested are they in their own progress? How precisely do they detect themselves, and one another, when they come across a reflective surface? Lacan’s theory of the Mirror Stage would suggest that they clock themselves in a mirror and instinctively clock two things: 

 

  1. I am a being. That being is me. 

  2. Everything else that is nor me is something else. This is the world. 

 

But what on earth occurs when they’re side by side in front of a mirror? Enough of this. 

 

They are twins, George and Harry. Did I mention? Identical twins. I didn’t.

 

And I’ll jeopardise my nonsensical authority here because I’ll be the first to admit I’m not ultra close to my cousin and her husband. I would, however, hazard an assumption that they’ve not turned their quite delightful abode into an avant garde studio for full-time scientific experiment. It’s fair to assume then, merely by corollary, that these two boys who have precisely the same genes and precisely the same DNA, also frequent pretty much the same environment each day. You might even suggest that, at this age, they experience pretty much the same things. Methods of learning. Nutrition. Bedtime stories. Potty training. 

 

Know where I’m going with this? Exactly. 

 

How is that one of them constantly shits their pants and one of them has mastered the pull, fold, wipe of adult pooping? 

 

Just kidding. 

 

What I’d quite like to know or point to or prompt thought on is just how it is that a fundamental, existential differentiation reveals itself in a set of identical twins at such a young age. The answer is obviously incredibly complex and incredibly obvious, but it is genuinely quite cool to just sit and think about it for a short while, no? You’re not finding this genuinely quite cool? To the gallows with you. Heathen! 

 

I watch Harry and George wander around with that adorable, ever-shifting interest in just about anything perceivable by the human eye. They reach out and grab and then release again, before moving to something else, but not before their developing ability to walk fails them momentarily, and they clumsily fall to the floor. They look so similar, and their smiles multiply the happiness in the room in an instant.

A&E delirium

What breed more pallid, gaunt and altogether haunting than the nightshift cleaners of hospital wards? What single role less appreciated or acknowledged? What squiggly worms and marching playmobile — micro to the nth degree — themselves peruse the semi shiny blue floor before sleep deprived eyes? What?

 

Ticks and beeps and callouts on on on to temperate minutes and horrorshow hours, nodding into your own palms and waking up with a jolt to those playmobile, that same floor, but different cast members spattered around forging new avant garde scenarios. 

 

I feel like the host of a grand and horrid party and I’ve been able to watch all these people come and go, undergoing their own little episodes. It’s like there are small half kilo weights fastened to my eyelids and a few more still to my ticker. They jangle and jingle and bring  forth nausea, anxiety, gas, a dull ache that goes on on on and the rest. 

 

It’s an absurd Monday morning, and the healthcare service plods onwards.

What else to SAYE?

Here’s a fun one. My first job was in financial services. This is a fun one because I find financial services so insanely inane it’s almost cause for physical discomfort. At the very least a wince. I’m alright at pretending. I was. LOOK I GET IT. Finance and money and benjamins and fat stacks and shrapnel will be the pervasive tour guide to the rest of my time ‘pon planet earth (I estimate 12 years) but my concerns are as such:

 

  1. It is through the necessity of surviving as a semi-independent adult human that I must pursue financial ‘security’

  2. If it was not such a necessity I would not be here, writing all the time about finance. 

 

One can only deduce that it is a monumental waste of my disparate interests to be cooped up indoors writing technical garble about share plans. Of course, this is two parts unfounded narcissism, one part realism, and a lovely little sprinkly flourish in the form of hope, but it also prompts me to also conclude that:

 

  1. It is possible to gain ‘financial security’ without the compromise of writing about financial services

  2. To do so one must disembark the proverbial high horse, put themselves out there, and broaden their craft with great passion and persistence. 

 

Without these recurrent two-tone lists and their flimsy thinking you will likely end up being here, alluding to interest rates and added value services. And have a good festive season. 

 

Here’s the craziest and most evident thing, though…

 

This is — to my knowledge — the single little life I am likely to lead. But what bright ideas do I have? What fictions? What philosophies? Nout new. As you can very well tell there are a number of discontented little pebbles stirring and swirling upon the shore of my swede-beach (weird metaphor). Better I just pen a lament than do anything about it. 

 

***

​

HANG ABOUT! 

 

I know a good fiction. Here it is:

There’s a world that spluttered itself into existence entirely by chance, and thereafter it winged it hard, fast, and nasty. But for all the wrong turns and barbarism there was one sweet relief. In this world, everyone — that’s everyone! You, I, them over there, him on the blower, her in the tower — everyone is entirely indifferent to wealth. No-one’s tightly wound and anal about their finances. Stability and security refers to your health and your surroundings, rather than the figure in your account. Excess and avarice are fools staring eachother down across a chess board. But what’s that? The chess board is electronic and it’s programmed for both sides to lose. A ha! Anywho this vast reprogramming, this very relaxedness permits people to be goofy, ironic and splendidly cynical in their daily takings, fearing not the economic repercussions. Banks are still needed but they’re run by cool people saying cool things, and everyone who is dry and dull goes to work for entertainment companies and the world flips on its head and it’s all very confusing but hey that’s the fiction.

Velvet cushion

I walked to Lancaster Priory one afternoon to watch the sunset. From the wall atop the slope, where my legs had dangled and the palette changed hues, I could see a woman down on the bench past the cascaded paving stones. I went down and struck up a conversation with her. I looked through her binoculars at the birds on the silvergold horizon. I sat and talked to her for a while. I was interested in her — in her experience and situations, complete with recurrent care trouble and the folly of family laws. I was interested in her — in her past partners and her drug use, in her definition of a heroin high as a ‘velvet cushion that surrounds you and pushes away the undesirable things’. In the fact the NHS told her ‘you’re required to keep on using until we assess you for a detox’. Pinches of salt and pinches of pepper. There must be some failings or falsities, else someone as (seemingly) switched on and engaged with the world would be permitted visitations with their own children.

 

Beneath the darkening, pretty sky; along the shores of her short stories; down the alleyways of her anecdotes; betwixt the complex histrionics, perhaps it’s all rather simple: someone who longs to return should be afforded the opportunity. Someone who wishes to be involved and educated again should have the right to be so.

Chewin

There’s no time like the present to absolutely savage that patch of appealing skin that lives — but oh goodness me not for long — as the neighbour to one's nail. Go on, go for it. Got a doozy? Don’t settle for a slight and manageable pain. No half measures. Mild discomfort is for the weak and the puny. Drag and nibble further on that there skin, really do it no favours at all. What do you owe it? It’s only the divine design or evolutionary necessity for the containment of blood and the concealment of lower layers of flesh. When you’ve got it between your gnashers, try your utmost to wield that little strip of flesh as far down toward the knuckle as possible. The ultimate goal of this pursuit — and you’ll really be winning if you make this happen — is to make it so sore and to make it weep blood so incessantly that you wonder if any amount of tissue can stem its tide. Go on! There’s no time like the present! 

 

Sign up today for your free self-torture at www.youreasclosetoapathologiccannibalasyoucanget.co.bite 

Why did the chicken cross the road?

‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ said one socio-psychologist to the other.

 

‘I don’t know, Dirk (we’ll call him Dirk, the joke teller) — why did the chicken cross the road?’

 

‘Because that chicken was born into the trembling, continuous devolution of current day affairs, Rob — (we’ll call him Rob, the other party) — and the chicken saw the other side of the road as a real opportunity to change his circumstances, to change his scenery and his likely outcomes. Because the chicken had assumed (with a sort of semi-misguided, semi-altogether wise cluck of its little feather-coated-nug) that staying on the same side of the road would make its eventual chicks pre-destined to that side, to its prejudices, to its entitlements and pitfalls and worries. The chicken not only felt willing to navigate the tricky traffic on that there road, Rob, but it had to do so a number of times, having initially and continuously been knocked down, clipped, shouted at, snarled at and made memes out of (something post-ironic, I’ve heard, no doubt to do with the interesting trope of a chicken crossing the road).

 

‘Right on Dirk, that’s typical of you isn’t it? To pull a switcheroo like that on a classic opening line. I liked it and I think the metaphor you were driving at without subtlety is pretty suitable to your bleak demeanour, but I’ve some queries, if I may?’

 

‘Oh god yeah sure, go ahead, ask away, we’ll fracture the normal chronology of this joke thing with a healthy back-and-forth…’

 

‘Ok, so why would the chicken feel inclined to cross the road at all if it could very well see the other side? Its feather-coated-nug (the brain, I assume) being little or not, surely the chicken could quite easily equate — (assuming chickens have the visual apparatus to draw comparisons – do they? A separate point, perhaps) — equate the chaotic, troublesome scenes over there with what it was experiencing on its own side? How different could it be? Why did it allow things like storefronts or street cleanliness to sway it? Those are menial, I’d argue inconsequential things to dictate a decision. Or were there bountiful meadows over there? Then I guess I’d understand, but I can’t think of many instances where the two sides of a road differ so magically from one another to cause a complete uproot’.

 

‘Important points, Rob, thank you. Unfortunately, your take on inconsequentialism is itself inconsequential, for how would the chicken reasonably know what the other side would be like until it gets there? Aesthetics account for but a slither. It’s evident from the chicken having attempted to cross the road that it has the want and the will to do so (that is, for the sake of this concise and witty joke, that we assume it’s not a capricious decision). Sure enough, too, the hazardous terrain between its current side and its yearnings is not enough to stop it, but is rather seen as a necessary go-between — both for itself and for the liberal state it feels the other side will bestow on any offspring current or forthcoming. And sure as day, if the other side proves ripe with new light on one day and downcast / familiar the next, that chicken may well revert and tackle the deathzone once more, no?’

 

‘Wouldn’t that render the initial journey obsolete?’

 

‘No no. The things the chicken learns en route, from A to B, are the important part. The knowledge of the other side not being worth the journey, the joke-negating realisation, if you will, is enough to warrant it having taken place. The total opposite — i.e. the chicken being content on its current side, or fearing too much the consequences of the crossing, or otherwise being struck by overthinking and inertia — well, that would be harmful to the chicken and to the joke beyond acceptance.’

 

‘No Dirk, you’re right. I’ve got a joke for you as well by the way…’

 

‘Yeah? Hit me’.

 

‘A bunch of chickens walk into a financial services workshop…’

 

Hahahahahahahaha.

Moonlighting as Sinatra

​You know, my good sir, my dearest lout of the Inn, my old karaoke bandit, my old waster, there is every chance that despite you belting it out every other night in the same tone-deaf pomp, despite the guttural passion you throw to its words, you know — my old public nuisance — there’s a very good chance that you did not, in fact do it ‘your way’; or, if you did, that way is now ablaze with stark and irreversible despair, to which you’re either ignorant or apathetic, and there’s something gnawing and nibbling away at a little cluster of your brain cells  that tells you moonlighting as Sinatra on ale absolves you of your entirely horrible life.

CAPTIONS

For a few years now I’ve plodded my ungainly frame down the way to Bristol’s M Shed, where for an ecstatic, extended run the museum’s top floor lays host to Wildlife Photographer of the Year — curated and produced by London’s Natural History Museum. Oh it’s a most excellent selection of natural photography, don’t you ever dare get me wrong. During my visits I invariably find myself imagining the process not just of the photographer — a grasp of their craft so fine-tuned as to capture intimate, stunning, devastating moments, snapshots, fractions of a second so immaculately attuned to a wider sense of being — but also the life and task of whomsoever it was that received, admired and researched the photographs in order to write those lovely little placards beneath each. I’m onboard. I'm onboard with the brevity, the scintillating jingle of information and emotion, the nod to technical details as well as the subject, its implications, and what, perhaps, comes next. All in about, what — 100 words? I’m onboard. I accept your offer of employment and I yelp into my pillow like a teenage superfan.

Thierry Ennui

The rays fly off every wall and then settle. You’re awake. To stretch, to eliminate the tension of the night, to welcome the limber of the day. You’re up.  The frying pan sits on the hob, spitting with appreciation, and the clouds share the sentiment. You sit down languid and sip on something, hankering to energise yourself. You say little. There is little different to say than there was yesterday, last week, a year ago. You’re dressed the same, you’re thinking the same. Does anyone have any zeal to steal? There’s unlikely to be any issues resolved today, is that fair to say? You can crunch numbers, you can crunch words, and you can crunch that lunchtime packet of Hula Hoops — will any of it change that grand old facade often referred to as the ‘big picture’? You sit down. You work. You go for a walk. You sit down. That higher figure at that job you have comes over and pretends to know who you are. The talk is smaller than small. But at least you’re on task. Hey, at least you’re getting the job done and that’s mighty helpful to the grand collective fallacy, the pooled, powerful goal of goodness and change. You champ, you’re contributing. You’re quite content, actually. It’s been a busy day of sitting quite still and your pride gland has swollen to a level a little beyond the norm. You are nearly finished. You are focussed. Everyone around you is sitting down and contributing; they’re doing just what you’re doing. The clock is up. You shake a few clammy hands. Those hands are pioneering, surely, just like yours. The bus seat gives you backache. You labour over opening the door. The keys are flung. I think it’s time to sit down. No real time to stand up for anything today. Maybe tomorrow. No, probably not tomorrow.

A round tuit

Harken me back, good sir, to an assembly we had at St. Edward’s back in Year 8. We were at the pinnacle of middle school stardom, graduating from cross-legged floor-sitting to bench royalty. How old? 12, I think. One particular conclave one particular morning, as we looked down at the snotty little fuckers ahead of us, Ms. McAdam (gah, the rowdy French deputy and certified hardass) put on an assembly that started with an image of what looked like a a lifebuoy. A regular flotation device, all things considered. She started talking about the dinghy, the lifeline, the thrown buoy — referring to it as a ‘round tuit’. 

 

She continually stated that us here species are hardwired to shun action and opt rather to get a ‘round tuit’. Programmed to put things off, in essence. I’m sure the delivery wasn’t as slick or stimulating as the idea itself, but it must have struck some sort of juvenile nerve, given that I’m writing about it now and that it's made its way into this spectacular section of nonsense and nothingness. The point being: I am full of promise. Oh god yeah. Up to my eyeballs in aspirations. And Ms. McAdam was bloody right: I perpetually postpone. When will that no longer be the case? Ever? If you asked all hyper-conscious adults if they’re culprits of the same thing would you anticipate they’d answer to the affirmative? Ah golly, what have you done to me ye olde Ecumenical.

What now?

Glad you asked. Here’s the outlook for today:

 

  • Wake up

  • Fall back asleep

  • Wake up for a second time

  • Check my phone dreary eyed

  • Monitor the time

  • Get up

  • Pay a visit to the lavatory and brush my teeth

  • Monitor the time

  • Do the bear minimum required to ensure I have on matching socks

  • Bail on the dream and settle for one red one orange

  • This should perhaps have been written in prose so it doesn’t look the most erratic shopping list since Nam*.

  • Write some words down

  • Backspace the shit out of some of those words

  • Mope about wondering what it’s all about

  • Now what?

 

* I have no credible evidence that the Vietnam War — for that is what the turn of phrase inevitably evokes (?) — was ripe with either shopping lists or bullet points. Don’t cancel me I’m already completely irrelevant. 

Cayenne

About as much fun as rubbing cayenne pepper in my eyes, this.

About as much use to us as cayenne pepper, you.

About as enthused by this whole setup as an eye would be when encountering a big vial of cayenne pepper.

Your similes are about as good as your work ethic.

Your cayenne pepper is about as non-existent as your differentiators.

Your obsession with cayenne pepper was not apparent during your interviews.

I’m going to go now.

Lines

These don't have homes and I like them so this is their home now...

​

It's all well and good until they realise that 'Internet personality' is an oxymoron.

 

***

 

Every now and again everyone’s in a state of wonk. Rolling around on the shoulders of tipsy, making a garbled mockery of drunk, ‘wonky’ should be a certified, medically legitimate, application-form-box-ticking way to be, because it’s real and it happens.

 

***

 

Laziness is the devil moving his hand, albeit slowly and with a groan.

 

***

 

Rise and shine. Rise and quiver. Shine and quiver and rise and fall and then shower and hope that's an ample enough harbinger of energy to get you through whatever tasks you've got lined up. 

 

***

 

What else?

Words enter my eyes and register in my head and lead to links which lead to prolix words. 

What else?

Days lead to evenings which lead to early hours which lead to sleep playlists which lead to days.

What else?

I feel lonely most of the time, despite being surrounded by people I love. 

What else?

 

***

 

Helping a friend is as important as it is tough, in situations as complex as death and love.

 

***

 

Deferral is the key to my concern. It is also the result.

 

***

 

There is a special place somewhere reserved for someone who starts a sentence without realising where it's headed, so the plenary is: never throw a lucozade sport at a jellyfish.

 

***

 

The weather has been out in fine form and I am British so it is essential that I mention that first and foremost if not to contextualise all the joys that have unfolded beneath its kindness at least to be absolutely certain that we share common ground and you too experience weather.

 

***

 

I am still a tall slab of meat with a squishy thing in my head that sometimes fuels marvellous observations but for the most part is shot with worry...

 

***

 

Jesus Christ of Nazareth — our lord, founder (?), proverbial CEO, and most certainly saviour, on a bicycle...cycling around saving and finding and lording but not making it any easier for me to write summaries...so I’ve stepped out of my life and onto the page in order to re-enter my life there. 

 

***

 

Biff, Chip (for me it’s got to be genuinely crispy on the outside and ever-so-slightly but not overly fluffy on the inside, with plenty of vinegar, perhaps even outweighing the salt but not left to dwell, you understand, for long enough so that the chip gets soggy (I know people who prefer soggy chips to crispy chips, actually, and that blows my little hiney right off its hinges), but for long enough for the flavour and moisture of the vinegar to permeate, si si, ye olde pazaz), and Kipper. Wowee that must be the longest parenthesis between an initial cluster of names and the final name in the group ever to be written down in so many words and spaces in a body of unpublishable prose? Surely?

 

***

 

In the spirit of mathematical quandaries, how’s this one?
1 busy mind + 1 small dose of aimlessness + 1 sprinkling of grim entitlement + the rest of it =
????

 

***

 

Some Sundays are for all intents and purposes Saturdays because the god of finance — Mr. Bank Holiday — shines ‘pon us and grants us an extra day of fun.

 

***

 

Like a freakish bunch of famished farmers in a famine, we chowed down.

 

***

 

Today was the first day I went through in as long as I can consciously remember that I had a single knot on my shoelaces.

 

***

 

When I grow up I want to be rich, I want to be a star, I want to make movies, when I grow up, I want to manage stakeholders, build presentation slides, and format documents.

 

***

 

And backwards from there to a pool table where we cued and withdrew from the balls and they all plonked out of pockets on purpose.

 

***

 

I mean, I’m kind of tempted in my stream of consciousness to skip straight forth to the Friday just gone, but that would suggest weekdays carry no credence and that is pretty much the inevitable state of modern existence so suck it up and carry it in a sweet, sustainable tote bag straight to your bleak grave, prick.

 

***

 

Loads of walking actually. Heaps of it. Mounds upon hills upon paths of it.

 

***

 

Survive. Drive. Strive. Thrive. Do a jive. Eat chives. Save lives. Don’t aggravate hives.

 

***

 

I’m all tied up and I’ve done the knots but I forgot how to get loose.

 

***

 

This is not the sound of a new man, or a crispy realisation. 

It’s the linear recount of a life in equal parts beautiful and infuriating, directional and stagnant. It’s the ditty of a sprawling and scintillating account of life’s many vagaries.

 

***

 

Sure, elite modern sportspeople are cool and stuff but what about in 2005 when Asashōryū Akinori won all six major Sumo bashos in the year of 2005 (a record), and eighty four out of his total 90 bouts across the year (also a record). But what about that? I hear you asking it. I see you peeking over my shoulder, enquiring about lost time and total weighty prowess.

 

***

​

Onwards, which is an altogether strange direction. 

 

***

 

By the parish of grand carrots, give me light to see, recall and jot, for I can scarce remember

 

***

 

Something about the remarkable injustice in that the vast majority of us get two hands, victims of certain deformities get three hands, and all tennis players get forehands. 

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