Things I hate about Christmas

Spending money on presents I know the recepient doesn't really want
Receiving presents I don't really want or need or like
Parsnips
Rubbish trains costing more than normal to take twice as long without a seat
Being away from people I love
Christmas pudding

Things I love about Christmas

Mince pies
Port
Guilt-free TV watching
Cold hands and a warm fire
Family
Cracking nuts
Sparkly lights on trees on the South Bank
Champagne
Loving people
The promise of hope in a gold package

Arrrggghhh!

Where has the time gone? It feels like the last few weeks have been swallowed up by a large whale, just like that, gallons of minutes whoosing into its open mouth. I suppose blogging is a bit like having a pet, you like looking at it but the maintenance can sometimes get a bit laborious, and before you know it people are asking why you haven't fed the screen recently. Perhaps I'll get reported to the Royal Society for the Protection of Blogs.

Asian Adventure

Well everyone, brace yourselves! I've got some news... (those who know me well should probably sit down for this next bit) I'm going to Singapore for six months in January! Soon I'll be wearing summer clothes though it's January and eating asian food outside at night... Can't wait. Please come to visit, you'd be very welcome.

Reflection

Sometimes things aren't quite what they seem. That's been true of my life recently, situations that I've made a snap judgment about have completely turned around, evolved, renewed themselves. On Wimbledon Common recently I stumbled upon this reflection in a pond at the bottom of two small inclines... The surface still as glass and the reflection an exercise in beauty.

Thanks to Sam for the photograph.

Sick

I'm a bit sick at the moment, approximately every 45 seconds a rasping sound leaves my chest, shortly followed by about ten seconds of hacking. I think this is what's known as a 'chesty cough'. It's interesting to note people's reactions. Mothers of small children in crowded tube carriages move their precious youngsters out of reach of my spluttering germs. I don't tell them that the little bundle of goodness is picking up more germs from the tube seat than from coughing commuters such as myself.

Being sick so far has changed my routine in the following ways:

• Sleep or lack of. I've kept myself awake most of the night with my incessant coughing.
• Benylin surely a class A substance?! I don't consider myself to have an addictive personality, but where treacley, sugar sweet, ethanol spiked cough syrup is concerned I don't trust myself.
• Christmas cards: when I should have been out having fun like ordinary people two weeks before Christmas, I managed to make all my cards. Writing them is another matter. Hmmm. Might email everyone instead.
• Food seems to have lost all its taste. It's seems a shame to eat it.

Anyway, when my life gets more interesting I promise to post something more exciting on this blog. Until then, excuse me while I cough my guts up.

Vision

‘without vision the people perish’

A famous person said that, so famous I can’t recollect who on earth it was. There’s truth in those five words, one syllable short of the iambic, yet perfectly balanced. True. For about a year my life has been stagnant, claustrophobic, ‘same-y’ (I discovered recently that our American friends don’t use that word, hence the quotation marks). I’ve walked down the same streets, eaten at the same restaurants, stared through the same sky in the city I love, but it’s all been largely without feeling anything much at all. Each week was just a prelude to the weekend. Each weekend a prelude to another week. Though the sun recedes and the leaves fall the feeling remained, until now. These days I’m so excited sleep alludes me, at 3am I’m thinking of a thousand things that are to come. Walking with you on Wimbledon Common I see scarlet and orange and gold and crushed poppy and pale grey and honey leaves, dappled light refracting through elegant trees, life coming up through the soft earth. I stretch out my arms and breathe in the earthy dampness. There’s a path through the trees, and my eyes are looking down it, sparkling.

Trees

I would really like a Christmas tree this year.

(Re)collection

A few years back, I found myself in a Weatherspoon’s pub at Leeds City Station. I forget what I was doing there, presumably I was about to catch a train and had some few minutes, or hours, to spare. Gorgeous Lizzy and I sat on stools, (this is hazily recollected) sharing a table with two middle-aged Yorkshire women, the path between student and local temporarily open. I had just bought a book called ‘Beyond the Binary’ and it was sitting temptingly on the shiny pub table, waiting for hungry eyes to devour words and thoughts and theory. The lady on our right noticed the book and harped up, ‘Beyond the bin – ary? What’s a bin – ary? Well I never, you young people today!’ ‘It just means opposite,’ I replied, probably a bit smug.

I probably thought I was really intellectual and informed then, now I just know I’ve got a lot to learn and theory never got anyone anywhere, apart from a mental hospital. I still have the book, I looked at it last night as I got into bed. Its blue cloth cover and gold embossed print stared across the room into tired eyes. It has lost its appeal, and I realised with amusement that the only association I have with this tome is Lizzy and I in a smoky pub in a train station, waiting to go somewhere, anywhere, nowhere…

Cinnamon honey

The sun setting gently over Paris yesterday afternoon had a hazy dusting of cinnamon and orange light, which calmly caressed clouds and long-since-painted grey buildings, narrow in their form, reaching up to the sky. For five minutes, no more, I stood on the sixth etage of the Centre Pompidou, nose to the plate glass, with my thin, papery hands blocking out the interior strip gallery lighting. Gratitude poured out – a quasi-religious experience – towards the distance. As far as I could see the nutmeg light was fading, pouring its truth and safety through smeary glass, tired eyes and shiny skin.

I’m safe here, with you.

You muppet

A phone rings. A short pause.

J: ‘Hello?’
A: ‘Hi it’s me.
J: ‘Hi, how are you? Why are you calling in the middle of the day? I’m at work.’
A: ‘I was just calling to say I’m on the train.’
J: ‘Which train?’
A: ‘The train to London.’
J: ‘Oh – why are you coming to London?’
A: ‘To see you, you muppet!’
J: ‘Oh.’
Brain audibly chugs.
J: ‘When did we arrange this?’
A (exasperated): ‘Last week.’

Sigh.

Oh dear. I used to pride myself on having a good memory. Of late, my brain has developed craters. Not just small holes through which I lose phone numbers, forget to take my lunch to work. No, these are huge gapping caverns that swallow whole conversations, situations, meetings, events. Maybe I should start doing the sudoku – isn’t that meant to prevent dementia?

Weather

Lately I’ve been wandering around wondering whether I’m becoming obsessed with the weather. Whether I’m one of those auld before their time old people who use up to a thousand words a day chatting about the heat, or lack, the rain, or lack. This weekend there was the ‘threat of snow’. Next the BBC weather site reported that the place I was heading to for the weekend had ‘driving sleet’ forecast. Neither prediction came true. It just rained a bit and was so cold my knees wouldn’t bend and my friend Alex had to help me over a fallen tree. Temperature has become a perpetual enemy. Like a temperamental gas fire that needs banging and stroking to get it working, I’m at the mercy of heat, cold hands that turn yellow and lose all feeling, lack of warm socks, too hot legs under thermals. Maybe I should live somewhere where it’s sunny all year round… but there’d be nothing to write about.

Wisdom?

Jim Carrey, in a recent interview in Playboy magazine said:

Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you're sitting on the couch and you get up and make a triple-decker sandwich. It's on the other side of that, when you don't make the sandwich. It's about sacrifice.... It's about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling. That's what I believe, anyway. I'm always asking, "What am I going to give up next?" Because I want to feel.

Decisions, decisions

Is anyone as bad at making decisions as me, I wonder? I have absolutely no faith in my own paper-thin, fickle judgement, especially this week. I’m caught in the middle of one of those ‘between times’ where I’m really not sure what to do. It’s no small matter, and whatever decision I finally come to (assuming I don’t curl up and die of cold in the indecision) will affect pretty much all of my life. I’m being pulled by a string through each ear, looping through my brain, and the pull is tugging a different way every single day. People say all kinds of things, some kind, some heartfelt, some selfish, some wise, some crap nonsense. I’m grateful for them all, but I need to make my mind up. Trouble is it just won’t stay down.

Wintering

It is winter here.

If you get the reference then you're more like me than you thought!

Guy Fawks Night

Some gorgeous photos of this year's fire and noise celebrations at Dan's house. He puts on a good bash!

Cheer up!

A friend sent me a selection of 'the worst album covers ever'. This was my personal favourite!

Belly to the moon

Did you know that tuna fish
Float up to the surface –
Belly to the moon –
Just to cool their heart down?
‘Cos it helps them just to think
About the hurtful things.
I guess it’s just one way
To get them some sedation.

Emiliana Torrini, ‘Tuna Fish’

I suppose we all need to cool our hearts down sometimes… the words floated through the centre of my skull today, between doing what felt like the sixtieth edit of a book I’ve worked on for two years… Reaching the surface must be the most incredible thing for a fish. The promise of light, huge flat rays penetrating the rippling surface and reflecting off anything in its way. The sea is full of life, ever-moving, ever-changing, evermore. There’s nothing stagnant about the ocean. Those tuna fish taking a few seconds to float under the midday sun must be the luckiest creatures in the world…

Tired :-(

Hmmm. Last night was a write-off. Normally, I’m fab at sleeping, snoozing, drowsing, napping, shutting my eyes, drifting off to wherever, whenever. It’s a rare occasion when I lie awake for longer than ten minutes before succumbing to slumber. I’m sure I’ve slept through storms, car chases, police helicopters, endless arguing neighbours. My sister is the same. We’d probably win a family sleep-off. Anyway, last night was an anomaly.

12.25 got into bed
12.35 turned off light and chucked book on floor
1am still awake
2am get up for a drink
3am read three chapters of ‘The Sea’ by John Banville (v. disappointing use of propositions)
4am still awake
4.15 flatmate gets up to go to Devon. Listen to water in shower.
4.45 think just about get to sleep
5am rudely awaken by phone call wondering if I’m a taxi firm. ‘what?’ I say, before hanging up
6am realise have been awake all night and will have rubbish day as result
6.10 drift off
6.45 alarm goes off
6.46 turn off alarm in horror
7am realise boiler man is coming any minute
7.10am get up
7.35am realise was too excited to sleep all night!
8am hope adrenalin really exists.

Yasai Itameru

Today I ate
Yasai itameru with
Green tea, delicious.

Rice noodles, spicy
Coconut, coriander
Tongue swollen, alive.

Wintering

Nothing and everything is the same. I wake from half-sleep to a cold nose and heavy limbs, sinking into the cold mattress. I’m so cold that if I even move an inch I’m afraid the steely air will reach through my thin cotton trousers and penetrate the core of my body, and if that happens my chances of getting up are zero. I press snooze several times and drowse, eventually facing the inevitable – rushing upstairs, half-blind, scratching around for a mug. Water bubbles up inside the kettle, and there’s a sharp smell as a thick slice of lemon flops onto thick wood. It’s winter here.

Leche/Latte/Milk

This year’s birthday was Lush (initial cap intended!) Much better than the Bridget Jones’ style crying-in-the-bath episode last year. I took the day off (should be a human right), and spent a luscious, indulgent afternoon on the South Bank, breathing in the air swirled around by passers-by and tall London busses on Waterloo Bridge (‘with tears in my eyes...’*). I saw the Jeff Wall photography exhibition at Tate Modern. I studied some of his stuff in American Photo-texts for my MA, and I’d forgotten how clever he is at distorting reality so intently that it comes full circle and appears real again. Take the image Milk.

At first glance it’s a shot in a lifetime, the hapless photographer happens upon a vagabond cracking open a lively carton of milk outside an anonymous looking building. That first reading/viewing is an illusion though. All of Wall’s work is set-up and directed like a movie. Even so, the message is still as strong. I kinda love this photo. I read it as a commentary on the eclectic nature of city life. The only action in the image is the milk, which we see in full flight spraying out of the carton. It’s beautiful, a white fan reaching up to the sky. Of course, a second later the liquid will stain the man’s clothes and run over the clean paving stones. We’re privileged to be caught in a moment that is not-quite, never going to reach its destination. The man is looking away from the action, and in doing so he chooses to occupy a space outside of the image. He’s every bit involved and every bit detached from his surroundings. Like so many in the city, life carries on around him, just inside his peripheral vision. Part of the action, yet completely passive, disengaged. ‘Love it!’ as my friend T would say!

* Ref to a Wendy Cope poem called 'Jenny'

Art

There's an awesome exhibition at the Hayward Gallery at the moment. It's called 'Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourists' Eye' and is an amalgamation of photography, film, installation art, sculpture and general strangenesss. They have one piece that I've seen before in many a modern art gallery in the states - it consists of a pile of sweets piled up in a corner. Visitors are invited to take a sweet and therefore actively engage with the artwork. The weight of sweets at the start of the exhibition is the weight of the artist's partner, who died of AIDS. As the shiny-wrapped candies diminish there's a continual remembrance of the diminished life of one man. It made me think of communion and thousands of people carrying around a symbol of a man's death digesting in their stomachs.

Scarfing Again

I've started to knit a scarf. I merrily chose wool in the habberdashery department of a local store on Saturday, and with a few false starts with casting on (I can never quite remember how to do it), I managed to get going. The wool is kinda tricky, it has all these little bits sticking out which require continue rescuing from the stitches, but I was determined. I spent two concentrated hours on the train to London clattering grey needles together, and having completed about six inches I was getting a bit smug. Ah, I thought, I'll be an expert! I'll knit everyone a hat for Christmas! I'll impress them with cables and pom poms! I'll get labels made and sew them onto the plethora of finished products... That was until I realised that I'd managed to get from 25 stiches to 52 in the space of about 20 rows. I think I have more practise to do. I've ripped it all out and am going to start again. Hmm.

Hooks

It was Graham Greene who wrote ‘Hate lay like boredom over the evening ahead.’ On reading those words from an earlier blog again, I’m overcome with the dreadful realisation that boredom lies like hate over my life this week, generously covering the minutes, hours, evenings, weekends, weeks ahead. I’m devoid of stimulation, creativity and newness and the old paranoia has begun to creep in. The rain is hitting the window vengefully, and the pounding and darkness sweeping through the room adds to my glum mood. I’m seldom this bored. Something, or someone usually hooks through the grey and tugs on my hair with a word, photo, story, recipe or exhibition, and my attention is turned towards iridescent light, colour, texture and gorgeous paragraphs flow through and around and into my ever-decreasing mind. I’d see the light transmigrate through the twinkling rolled-glass on the window, and my eyes would turn to see doweling shaped lines of sunlight stretching through the trees. The right corner of my mouth would turn, ever-so-slightly upwards and the stiff air retained in tight lungs would gush out, leaving a lighter, gentler being on the heavy couch.

But today there are no such distractions and I’m alone with myself, the loneliest kind of aloneness. Mindlessly, I hit ‘next blog’, and there I am. The hook curves into my mind, and for the next ten minutes I’m hooked reading about sewing and appliqué, knitting and small children. For similar creative refreshment, check out this blog, and these fantastically gorgeous little people:

More haiku

I definitely
Want to see you again – thought
I should let you know.

Turning leaves

It’s my birthday in exactly one week. In seven days time I’ll be turning twenty-six. (I wonder why we say ‘turning’ instead of ‘getting to’ or ‘becoming’. Turning reminds me of people turning in their graves.) When I was younger, well, maybe 13 or 14, I used to imagine what life would be like when I ‘grew up’, and I would visually see a kind of ladder with each year as a rung, and there would be all kinds of pictures of things sitting on the rungs. Like for 23 I’d have a cool job wearing grey pinstripes and tying my hair back in a slick professional style. On rung 25 I would imagine me being married, and at 30 there’d be like three kids and at 32 holidays in Australia and a big house. How little reality there is when you’re 13!

Anyway, the purpose of this blog was to say that if any of you gorgeous people were in any way thinking of buying me a birthday present (and I really don’t expect any at all, and if you've just clicked 'next blog' then you really won't be) then please, please, please could you either:

Give the money to the poor or
Get a book token?

I know homeless people might spend your hard-earned cash on drugs, and book tokens are boring and disappointingly difficult to wrap up nicely, but all I would like in the whole world is like half of Foyles, or Borders, or that cool bookshop called Pan on the Fulham Road that stacks its books really crazily in piles like cry out to be knocked over like dominoes. There’s a list in my head of stuff I want to read, and it’s getting longer and longer. Thanks for reading. Reading for thanks.

Gassing late at night

Tonight I got home to a house full of wood dust and cardboard and furniture in strange places (we’re getting renovations done), and after twenty minutes sitting on a dusty sofa half reading Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk and half watching The West Wing (which my flatmate is completely addicted to, she’s like hooked up with a venflon or something), I felt so filthy that I decided to have a nice warm bath. We’ve got one of those really satisfying Victorian baths that is about five and a half feet long, so I can actually lie down in it and my toes only just reach the end. It must be really dreadful for the environment when it’s full up with steaming H20, but it’s a luxury I really appreciate, honestly. As I was running the bath water I realised there wasn’t any steam and the smell of Radox muscle soak had taken on a gas like odour… It turned out that the boiler had stopped working and there was gas leaking out from the extractor pipe. Do you know what though? I used to work for British Gas and am a legend in the gas department. (Though ‘legend’ is open to interpretation, and no, I don’t do house calls.) A simple investigation found that the builders had been chucking their rubbish (wood, old carpets, smashed up kitchen tables) down the front of the house, and this plethora of scrap had blocked up the flue pipe! Ten minutes in damp air outside heaving underlay layered with grime and trying not to rip my (new and unfortunately too big) Earl jeans on numerous bits of gripper rod, and the pipe was visible once more. A quick fiddle with the pilot light and we-hey! Hot water. it was actually one of the most satisfying things I’ve done in ages and I realised there must be immense satisfaction in manual labour, fixing things. I only really fix my hair. Anyway, the moral of this story is: always hire a skip.

Sunset

My dad sent me this photo the other day. It kinda makes me smile when I get stuff from my Dad on email, because I always know it's taken him ages to send it... Anyway, it was worth it, take a look at the photo and then read the text below.



The photograph attached was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission, on a cloudless day. The picture is of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting. Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities lights. The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and that's it's still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid. The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further south, close to the farthest western point of Africa, are the Cape Verde Islands. Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during Daytime and night time. To the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

Edited

The editors were ace, even though I felt faint just as they played their opening song and had to sit at the back on a step for most of the gig. They pretty much played the album and a couple a new songs. ‘All Sparks’ was cool. From chatting to some mates I was surprised how many people haven’t heard of them, so for more info click here.

Editors

Yay! I'm off to see these guys tonight at The Astoria, pretty cool. I wonder how it'll compare to seeing them in front of about forty people in the Square Pie Tent at Glastonbury earlier this year. There we were, eating chicken pie for breakfast, well, brunch, resting our weary calf muscles from wading through knee-deep mud, when a couple of guys got up and played an acoustic set, complete with wellies. They were awesome and I was hooked.

I'm kinda chuffed about the irony of liking a band named after my profession.

Tales of Loss

This weekend, my mobile 'phone decided to take a break. Maybe it was fed up of ringing, beeping, waking me up in the morning and storing a random assortment of strange images on its memory card. For whatever reason its little screen stayed black, and it stopped working. At first, I looked at it incredulously and began a little game (often played) of turning it off and back on again. Only this time nothing happened. The black screen was still staring at me.

Never mind, I thought, it's just a 'phone and it can be fixed.

Thing is, it's not just a 'phone - it's kinda my life ... in that little silver lump of moulded plastic the size of a bar of soap lies my contact with the outside world. I couldn't go to a party because I didn't have the address, and the numbers of all those I could have called to get it were stored inside. It's weird, I feel like I've lost a friend... or I have no friends, I can't decide which. At least ten times a day I reach into my bag to check for messages and missed calls, but the handbag is devoid of items the size of a bar of soap this week. Maybe I'll get used to this and become one of those irritating people who only have a landline and are never in, those you have to arrange to meet at precise times because there's no way of texting to say you'll be ten minutes late. Hmmm. It's a thought.

Another go...

Trying to tie up
Shoelaces with cold fingers makes
My heart long for spring.

Haiku

why aren’t there more
syllables in this wretched
poetic form, I ask?

--

you can’t do much with
five, seven, five, a season -
three lines, that’s the end.

--

give me a sonnet
anyday and I’ll laugh through
couplets and rhyming.

Journeying

Familarity breeds claustrophobia, especially in the city. This weekend I had the fortune of leaving the smoke behind to cross county after county by train and car. It's a sad fact of life that I find car journeys more than a bit exciting, more than likely due to their rarity. Changing gear and sitting at trafic lights in a private metal box has long been replaced with the clatter of a tube carriage, or the hum of displaced air past cold ears as I pedal my way through grid-locked streets. On Saturday evening between 8 and 9 o'clock, I sat silently, alone in the back of a blue VW Golf streaming through Gloucestershire in the twilight. The sky played out a light show for an audience of one, wispy grey clouds and twinkly stars fixed my eyes without blinking. With the simplicity of the sky and familiar white noise, sleep came gently.

Raining Again

"I'm just kind of tired. Like a monkey in the rain."

Haruki Murakami, Norweigian Wood

Dramarama

He smiles, the taste of Colgate fresh in his mouth, and all is right in the world. Her reaction is normal, returning the favour perfectly with straight white teeth. They walk next to each other in the twilight. In thirty-seven minutes exactly, it will be dark and they’ll sit cote-a-cote on blue crushed velvet seats as a mediocre badly-adapted drama plays out before them. He booked the tickets a week ago on a friend’s recommendation. Theatre isn’t his thing, but she said once that she liked it, and he filed the thought away, just in case.

“Have you been to the Old Vic before?”
“No, I haven’t – though I’ve always wanted to…”
“Oh, you’re gonna love it. I’ve seen loads of stuff here. Kevin Spacey is the artistic director.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, did you hear about The Philadelphia Story – it was a bit of a flop in the end, all the reviews slated it. You must have heard about it?”

Drat. His ignorance is poking straight through the chest of his Ted Baker shirt, and she she’ll be faced with the naked truth that when he said he liked plays, what he actually meant was he saw Puss in Boots once when he was nine, and he’s only trying to get the girl.

Haiku

I've developed a fascination for all things Japanese, including haiku. Here's my first, precarious attempt:

Dusk falls. A blanket
Of ash. Cool shoulders desire
Thin cotton v-neck.

- Fire -

Arcade fire,
Sun rising,
Clouds disipate.
Gentle footsteps,
Warm boots,
Tired arches.

Soho

Soho. Tuesday. Autumn. 7pm.
Girls in squeaky knee-high leather boots,
Yet too-warm coats slung casually over fragile arms.
The last of the sunlight lowers behind Autumn’s curtain.
King prawns. Phad Thai noodles, eaten quickly.
Alone,By an open window.
Crisp Pinot Grigio in a bowl-shaped glass.
Tongue pulsating with chilli sauce.
Bench seating runs into fellow lone diner:
Male. 20s. Dark hair (Toni & Guy). Duck curry. Thai Calamari.
Craving newness and a way through this cavernous life, this maze of a city.
Wherever I go, you’re there. You’re eating noodles with bamboo chopsticks.
Reaching into Louis Vuitton leather for change.

Seasons

How can I feel homesick for a place I've never lived? There's something disctinctly Manhatten about London at the moment. The way the cold is beginning to wrap its fingers delicately around my waist whilst the sun strokes my face. His rays have changed. They're blinding now.

I feel cold air on my skin and am grateful for cotton, polyester, rayon. I try on a wooly hat in Urban Outfitters - to buy it would be premature, but I play with the idea. Central Park on a crisp Autumn morning, auburn leaves scrunch underfoot.

In my head the seasons jump from summer to winter overnight. I'm expectant, as if waiting for a long-awaited visitor... I have the necessary objects ready: blankets draped across the end of the bed, black opaque tights and gentle knitted jumpers. I'll push three pairs of Havianas and two sundresses to the back of the wardrobe and move from pale pink to chocolate brown in the space of 24 hours. I'll dream of New York, steam coming up from the Subway, mittens wrapped around hot coffee... winter.

Countries

The wonders of modern technology. If you have nothing to do on a Thursday evening, like me as I'm waiting for some friends to go for a drink, you can go on the web and make a map of all the countries you've visited in the world. I thought this was pretty cool, until it told me I've only been to 7% of the world... that's really pathetic! And only went to Scotland on holiday this year!

Thanks to Paul for the tip on this one!

Diary (mis)management

Today I spent a good ten minutes on the phone trying to arrange to meet a friend for a drink. Or a coffee. Or dinner. Or five minutes. Or even a longer phone call. It kinda went like this:
Hi!
Hi! It's been ages!
Yeah, we should meet up.
Definitely. How about Tuesday?
No, can't do Tuesdays.
Next Thursday's no good - work thing.
This weekend?
Hmmm, got friends coming up on Saturday.
How's a week Friday for you?
Oh, that's my friend's birthday.
Right, two weeks on Monday?
No, doing a course on Mondays now.
Ok. I've got it. 14th October? Any good?
Yep, suits me!
Bit far away.
Yeah, but best to get it in the diary.
Might have to cancel though... think I might have a launch that night.
Never mind.
Well, catch up properly then.
Yeah, really looking forward to it.
Great, take care.
You too.
Bye!

Yeah, whatever!

You guys...

I don't know if I tell you guys this enough, but I love you! I love you all - my friends that is. If you've just clicked 'next blog' and hit upon my rambling, then I probably don't love you, as I'm not that comfortable with strangers, but if I do know you I want you to know that I have some of the best friends in the world. Between you, you're wisdom personified. Thanks everyone.

Feeling faint...

Today I visited a friend who's very sick in hospital. He's on oxygen, bloody venflon protuding out of his arm, machines bleeping. The bay he's in holds five mostly unconscious looking patients, and he's the youngest by miles. Somewhere nearby a woman is crying and screaming, "I don't want to go anywhere, just let me die. Don't make me move, please. Just let me die." A white-haired corpse of an old lady next to my friend doesn't open her eyes the whole time I'm there, though a rasping cough speaks of life -just - hanging on in her veins.

I'm scared of hospitals. I find it difficult to sit in the doctors' waiting room without feeling faint. Today was a test. I just about overcame my fear with friendship. At various points myself and the other visitor are ushered out of the cubicle. We wait at the nurse's station, making small talk, and I'm overcome by a wave of nausea and have to sit down, head between my legs. It's embarassing and completely psychological. I think about leaving, getting straight into the lift and walking outside. Yet I know if I succomb I'll have angry tears cascading down hot cheeks. I feel stupid. My friend is here through no fault of his own, gasping for breath, sweating, nil by mouth, and I can't even last half an hour. The other vistor chats normally, as if we're at a cafe on a Sunday afternoon, and after a few minutes the feeilng passes and I'm ok again. We wait for the consultants to finish their ward round and then reappear at the bedside. We chat about insignificant things, my face must betray my fear. The boys chat about the cricket and I smile, I know nothing about wickets, overs and LBW. He looks better and sits up for a few minutes and starts reading a magazine. Things feel normal for half a second and I rub his feet under the scratchy hospital blanket. The conversation dries up and as if on cue his whole family turn up for visiting. It's 5pm, they must all have rushed here from work. I quickly gather up my stuff and stretch out a hand. He squeezes and our eyes lock. His say hope, and I wish mine could say the same.

All you need is Graham Greene

"Hate lay like boredom over the evening ahead. I had committed myself: without love I would have to go through the gestures of love. I felt the guilt before I had committed the crime, the crime of drawing the innocent into my own maze. [A kiss] may be nothing... but at any time it may prove to be everything."

The End of the Affair

Cranes

A lot of what I write on this blog has an underlying subconscious reference to the loneliness of this great city. A friend commented that these words and phrases, clauses and subtle gestures were a verbal commentary on Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, above. The thing is though, I love being a fly in the ointment of the city, it's the annonymity that has the intrinsic appeal. I have heaps of friends - I love you guys more than you know - yet the privacy of the crowd is a constant comfort. I can walk through Green Park alone on a Sunday afternoon and lie on cool grass whilst reading the paper without anyone bothering me. I'm part of the chattering crowd, we're the red, blue, pink, yellow paper cranes hanging from century-old branches. Eventually the rain will soften the paper, colour will drip down onto the grass, sunlight will devour the pigment and we'll fall, gracefully to our end. Trodden into the ground from whence we came.

Saturday, 5.53pm

Are you scared of dying?
I’m on the verge of a fundamental lifestyle change.
It’s 4am, we’ve just got home and it’s almost light.
Do you like these ones? Too secretary?
Did you know the tube was closed today?
This is just between ourselves.
I think you’re hot.
Ow, get off my foot!
You don’t understand.
I love you.
Do you have the Hard-Fi album?
No, I don’t eat cheese.
If you carry on doing that I’ll be really pissed off with you.
Can we go now?
It’s one-thirty already.
I’m gonna make an almond torte.
How was the wedding?
I’m going to work at 5pm.
It’s all too much.
How can one person be so ….?

Back again

Ok, I've been away for a while.
You may have noticed.
You may not have noticed.
Maybe you missed me.
Maybe you didn't notice enough
To miss me.
That's ok.
I kinda missed you,
But this thing called:
Life
Got in the way.
But I'm back again now,
And it feels good.

On the shelf

Ever thought how many people live their lives in books?

We are sailing...

So I'm all packed. Bright orange neoprene waterproofs, wellies, four jumpers, tights, long socks, a torch, three books, sunscreen, mossi guard, three woolly hats, a pair of gloves (no scarf as risk of strangulation) etc etc, and this time tomorrow I'll be sailing on the Corryvreckan off the West coast of Scotland. I'm excited, but slightly dreading it - what if I fall overboard? or have to eat squid? I'll post some pix when I'm back and you can all laugh at the tangerine package before you.

Papier Maché Life

There’s a heaviness in the air tonight. A lukewarm breeze floats through yawning sash windows, grazing soft white petunias as it comes. Our character sits on the sofa, tired but content , sated by Chinese noodle soup with salty chicken and rubbery spring onions. He thinks he’s happy, though the weight of the night air sits uneasily on his legs and there’s an ache in his head that he can’t shake. The sounds of the city drain in from outside, a microcosm of displaced life on an anonymous street. The gay Irish man next door is dining al fresco with a friend this evening. Their cutlery clatters amicably on solid plates. He envies their freshness, lounging outside in the cool night air. He wishes he could see them, but the hawthorn is prolific and sick, obscuring the view. They deserve privacy, he decides. Two ‘phone calls add to the hum of white noise, one from the friend he loves. She’s sad, contorted inside with paranoia and fear. He listens and sends clouds and petals – soft things – her way. He imagines here smiling, as he tells her for the thousandth time that it’s ok to feel down, that life is a papier maché lantern, beautiful to the eye, an iridescent glow emanating out, yet fragile as duck eggs, the delicate paper ready to ignite at any opportunity. We live between times, love, unloveliness, pain, fear, truth, beauty. They’re strangers yet they’re every bit at home on this journey of theirs through life and love. She listens graciously and agrees. They part, he bites his lip and gulps cold tea from a chipped mug. The breeze caresses his face, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand.

Saturday, 5.45pm

It's Saturday, 5.45pm. I'm indulgent, living a new kind of life. I lie under angora-soft covers and listen to the rain outside my window. It sounds like fresh peas being poured into a steel collander. Upstairs my flatmate is watching TV, ensconsed on blue sofa staring through a glass screen. For a moment our paths meet in unconscious thought, then diverge. The gentle pounding of the rain on the laurel hedge echoes a sadness feelings its way through my torso. But I love you. I love you. I don't care if you love me or not. I'll love you anyway.

Home

Late last night, in the cool familiarity of speckled London air, I dragged my weary, thinner-than-usual frame towards a silent doorway. I have never been quite so happy to be home, especially as hard purpley-blue creatures were scraping their way through cramping intestines with their rough pincers. My ride smiles and waves, so I turn and lift a yellowly hand in his direction. Keys are reunited to embrace familiar locks, two soft clicks and I'm in. The tiled hallway has an elegant quality at this hour - faint blue light accentuates 1940s charm held in crumbly walls. Three bags are half-pulled, half-carried to the top of the stairs and I slouch as the last one falls from weak shoulders. I love this house, I always have. My bed invites me in, beckoning with friendly sheets, the warm familarity of a pink herringbone coverlet. Hmmm. Sleep. A wave of increasing deadness caresses grateful limbs and I'm home. I'm home.

Friends

How did I grow up so fast? I woke up yesterday to the reality that I have among my friends:
some bankers
three youth workers
a singer
a paediatrician
six doctors
several nurses
a dentist
some lawyers
a womaniser
a musician
an ex-convict
a TV presenter
a florist
two models
and a magician.

Life was a whole lot more simple when we were all defined by the colour of our PE kit.

Honesty

We hide
Under our
Canopy of
Honesty,
Sometimes.

(A)long

Does love deplete? Like lonely eggs floating away each month? Do I love you any less today than yesterday, though we've never met? I think of you often; I see your smile on a hundred strangers. Grey-blue eyes search their faces in vain. You may not exist. You may not ever notice me, let alone love me. Time affects slow change here, and a year later I remain. Sitting, reading. Looking, being. Another year, and the first warm salt tears begin to work their way out of the corner of each eye. Seven months on, it's Christmas and the light is short and grey, the kind of light that invites sleep. It's just after two in the afternoon, and as I stir dark flakes of green tea into lukewarm water I look up from my book to see small intriguing eyes entering mine. Slowly, graciously, ordinarily, I realise you've been here all along.

Actions

This week I've been:

swimming in a lido, cold water grazing shocked skin
dancing
wearing too much lyrca
falling over
sitting with my leg up on the desk with an ice pack on my knee
enjoying the reaction of those who've never seen my hair straight before
eating lentils and raspberries
missing you
chatting with Italians
sleeping
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Will

Have you ever noticed how some people are way more stubborn than others? We wrap up this character trait in other terms - determined, driven, willful, headstrong, persevering - but they all mean the same thing. This filled my thoughts this morning, as I prised aching muscles and a fuzzy head out of bed earlier than normal. Clothes left out the night before hung on tired limbs, and the door shut behind me into blinding sunshine. An hour and a half, two bottles of water and much sweat later, I reach my destination. Cool azure water, shouting children, the Sunday paper and a good friend greet me. I'm overwhelmed - sunshine this good belongs in Italy, Greece, Spain, not in North London! I'm reminded of a cold winter's day, walking with my gorgeous sister on the heath, looking for Parliament Hill. We walked and walked, hands grew stiff and breath floated white on the air. Three hours past, yet my pleading to stop, give up already, was ignored. She was bashful, alive, determined, stubborn... Yet she was right, eventually we gradually ascended to the rounded peak. We stood, catching our breath in the cold and allowed the horizon to scan our eyes. At the bottom of the hill there was a pool, grey water lapped to the edges and the wind caressed a spiritless surface. Another day, another season. It feels like another life.

Disappointment

Man: Sorry to trouble you, but do you have a mirror I could borrow please?
Girl: A mirror, ummm, I think so, hang on [pause] It's in here somewhere...
Man: It's just that I had a tooth out yesterday and it's very sore, I'm not supposed to smoke, but I just smoked today and it's hurting.
Girl: Oh, I bet that's horrible. Here you go.
Man: Thank you. Do you mind if I take it over there, near the light?
Girl: No, that's fine, go ahead.
[a few seconds pass, the coffee machine hisses over piped music]
Man: Thank you very much. You are very beautiful, what's your name?
Girl: [hesitant] Julia.
Man: I'm Ted. Nice to meet you. I have terrible pain in my tooth. What do you do?
Girl: I work nearby, at X.
Man: Oh, yes I know it, you are very beautiful. How old are you?
Girl: Listen, I have to go. I have a meeting to get to. Nice to meet you though.
Man: Yes, nice to meet you. Thank you for the mirror.
[the door closes and clean air greets young skin]

Question

Why is it that all the guys who ask me out aren't ever the ones I actually want to have dinner with?

Anwers on a postcard.

Ballet

Next week I'm going to submit my body to a week's worth of plies, stretching, barre work, arrabesques... the arches of my feet enhanced by bloch elastosplit canvas, you can hardly call them shoes. I love ballet. I can't understand, or explain why... there's no freedom, only restriction. Muscles are forced unnaturally and feet wrecked, yet there's grace behind the pain, light creeping through the darkness. Far corners of my mind awake from years of slumber, feet and arms beat unfamiliar rhythms, sweat slides down my back, and in the corner of my eye I see someone in the mirror. She isn't me. For a flighting moment I leave myself and find newness in an assemblé.

What a difference a day makes

This weekend I've hopped on a Virgin Pedalino and leaned my way out of the city to my former life. I'm spending a few days with my family in the house I grew up in. My room is no longer my room. Each time I go back more of my hoarded belongings seem to have entered obscurity, lost forever to a charity shop. I don't really mind. Though I love the city like the paving stones are my long-lost friends, after Thursday's events I was kinda relieved to be breathing different air. London has changed. I have changed. Things will never be the same again. On the tube to Euston on Friday evening, I caught myself getting up way before my stop, so eager was I to leave the coffin underground that was choking my breath. I've never been one of those claustrophobic tube-haters, or a Ken Livingstone grumbler moaning about the price of a travelcard. I loved the tube, it was a bit exciting burrowing underground every day with thousands of others, watching strangers in stranger clothes with stranger habits, all pretending not to look at each other. I'm not sure it will ever be the same again. For now, I'm sweaty from cycling in the park with my sister, on the bikes we rode as teenagers. Now slightly less fit and more unsure of the way to the lake, we ride side-by-side reminiscing. Punctures and falling off miles from home, mum letting us swim in a lake with a red danger flag, the adrenelin of rushing down a steep incline with the wind in our air. People grow up. Bicycle chains rust. Lungs get smaller. Cities cry.

Control

Her life is out of control. She has no time. No space. No grace. Strangers grasp at her clothes as she walks past, shouting their demands and flailing in front of her dying eyes. She sees them but doesn't respond. She has no clean clothes. The fridge is bare. She hasn't called her parents for weeks. At lunch, she eats out at a scruffy Chinese cafe to save the bother of ingredients, collanders and greasy pans, an infinite choice of sauces. Once, she loved cooking - the hiss of sesame oil on a hot wok. Life has been overtaken by appointments, expectations, wrong motives, no meaning yes. She's sad and powerless. Her life is formless and empty. She begins to weep, slowly and deliberately, silent salty tears staining warm cheeks. She loves you.

city of lies

"When I lie on the floor and relax by listening to my breathing, I can hear the slower respirations of the city itself, a sound like the rumble of a surf: subway trains crowded with people who are teaching themselves how to be here."
Jonathan Franzen, 'First City' in How to Be Alone.

The city teaches us how to be, how to walk through its streets, run down train platforms, eat unfamiliar food until unfamiliarity becomes part of our familiar experience. We learn to feel at home even though we need an A-Z to find our friend's flat and Streetmap to get to a bar we never knew existed that's ten minutes walk from our front door. We live in blocks, hamster cages stacked up to the sky, our neighbours known not by name, but by irritation: the lady upstairs with the screaming baby, the family with the yapping dog, the girl who plays Xfm too loudly on Saturday mornings. We feed off the unfamiliar - it excites us to know there are infinite as yet undiscovered places within half-an-hour, yet the unfamiliar is not natural. By virtue of postmodern life we live in fear. We only buy latté from Starbucks, lest the feel of a strange cardboard cup disorientate. Lunch in a thousand cafés means a Prèt-a-Manger chicken and avocado wrap and a yoga bunny detox. I'm scared, not of the strange, or the new, but of a resignation, a subtle eroding of choice and experience that comes from living too long too fast too ugly in a city of lies.

Do you speak English?

Earlier today I stood up in front of 60-or-so people, of varying ages, heights, social classes, tastes in clothes, religious backgrounds, and talked for just less than an hour about a subject I'm more than passionate about. Ok, it was hot. Ok, it was 10am on a Saturday morning and the coffee was lukewarm. Ok, they got me and not Bono or Tony Blair... but they were so unresponsive! I couldn't believe it! I could have been demonstrating how to clean out a hamster's cage for all the interest they showed. During my talk I noticed:

1 woman asleep (later awoken by friend)
2 football-hooligan lookalikes scratching their heads repeatedly in uncomprehension
3 people leaving, 1 politely creeping out the side, two making a noisy exit
1 guy looking at his watch
my mate Phil smiling at me encouragingly.

Thank God for Phil! That's all I can say.

Uncontrollable

My life is out of control. Muzak hums constantly providing white-noise, a blanket on which I lie, powerless, as worlds, words, people, emails, voicemail rush past like gangly schoolboy legs flailing in a 100-metre sprint.

Where?

Where has all the silence gone?
Words fight through tired ears,
City-rumblings grind,
Ear-drums involuntarily vibrate.

Where has all the space gone?
People float past paranoid skin, bones,
Warm, squishy bodies dance,
A guy in a raincoat grazes an arm.

Where has all the truth gone?
Posters shout lies, half-truths
Once dismissed, now believed,
Lest we should have to think for ourselves.

You Elevate Ants

There's a bridge that
Reaches its thin finger
Over The Thames,
Graciously, selflessly,
Elevanting ants like me.
I'm alone, a speck in the eye
Of this diseased city
Breathing in quasi-fresh air
Blowing across muddy water.
I pause, turn sideways and
Lean against the silvery edge.
A sky full of promise
Of brighter times looms
Over building-block streets.
Skylight, not-quite-sunlight,
Echoes underneath pinafore-grey irises,
And for twenty-six seconds
Stillness graces my thoughts.

Subtext

Boy: That poem you wrote - it's about me, isn't it?
Girl: (distracted): What poem? Have you seen my sunglasses?
Boy: On the side. You know, that poem, the one you wrote last week...
Girl: Oh that one. I was pretty pleased with that.
Boy: Yeah... it was cool. [pause] But you didn't answer my question.
Girl: What question? We should go now, I'm meeting the others at 2.
Boy: Ok, but the poem - did you write it about me?
Girl: What's this about? What makes you think that?
Boy: I, er, um...
Girl: We're postmoderm. You can think what you like, a poem is a pile of dust. It can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Boy: Oh, just forget it. I just thought maybe... [sighs]. Anyway, let's go.
Girl: Maybe what? You're being really weird today.
Boy: Never mind. [pause] I just thought that maybe you thought about me when you wrote it, but it doesn't really matter, it's cool.
Girl: You know I think you're great, don't you... I really respect you.
Boy: Thanks, anyway, it doesn't matter. We should go.
Girl: Yeah, come on.

sorry

We are sorry to annouce that the 0h-eight-nineteen service to Clapham Junction is delayed by approximately eleven minutes. We are sorry for the delay and the inconvenience this may cause you.

We are sorry to annouce that the 0h-eight-nineteen service to Clapham Junction has been cancelled. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause you.

We are sorry to annouce that the 0h-eight-thirty-nine service to Clapham Junction is delayed by approximately seven minutes. We are sorry for the delay and the inconvenience this may cause you.

I am sorry to announce that I have been delayed by approximately twenty-seven minutes. I am not sorry for the delay and the inconvenience this may cause you.

I am sorry to announce that I am permanently delayed today on the twenty-first of June. I am not sorry for the inconvenience this is causing me because I've managed to read four chapters of South of the Border, West of the Sun by Murakami and frankly that's far more interesting.

Crowds

Cautiously
you walk
through casual crowds
towards
me.

I haven't
noticed you
yet, you smile,
thoughts full of
wrapping soft
arms around
warm skin,
conjuring away
the space
between
us.

In ten seconds
I'll be,
we'll be,
free.
Together and
free.

Tandems

I cycle through the morning sunshine, my presence displacing currents of warmth that glide past and kiss my cheeks. Twice daily I peddle this route over tarmac, gravel, cobbled mews streets, floating plastic bags. The traffic is backed up, stop, start, stop, start, engines purring and spluttering, but I don't care. My two wheels squeeze through and past and carry on up and round and down and round and past and in and out of the cars blocking the road. I'm confident and full of my own thoughts - alone underneath the snail's shell guarding my consciousness. The morning commute is my favourite part of the day. I wake slowly and generously, carefully - no sudden movements, don't panic, no sudden movements, "women - remove high-heeled shoes!" I'm less of a liability now that the days of caffeine addiction have decided to remain in the recent past, they're happy there, and I'm less edgy.
One part of the route sees tyres gliding, arse firmly on the seat - for one road only - the recently tarmaced, not-yet-speed-bumped cyclists' dream! Rubber meets seedless raspberry jam smoothness and for a moment my feet stop doing the hard work and I fly...
I do my best thinking on this road, I respect it so much. It's smooth and calm and curious and never blinks... hang on, that's a Suzanne Vegas lyric... I mean, it's smooth and solid and dependable and clean and always there and great in the rain and makes my life, well my cycle, more fun. Who knows? it maybe even contributes to my mental health! Perhaps doctors should prescribe smooth-road-cycling to the depressed folk who clutter up their waiting rooms. But hang on, I was a waiting-room-clutterer once, and I know how little motivation I had... tandems! That's it! Tandems are the way forward, all of the benefits and none of the responsibility.

Solidify

He is solid. Brooding. Deep. One of those guys who believes in other people more than he believes in himself, which, rather than making him an eternal under-achiever, merely serves to grace his outlook with a humility that’s becoming increasingly rare in the inner-city. Occasionally, he wavers between courses of actions… which compliment to give, which girl to invite to the sell-out play he was organised enough to snatch tickets for before the ink was dry on the flyers… but mostly he knows what he wants. Getting there used to be a race, he was up all night, fingers stroking keyboard like an omnichord. Things have changed now. There’s a polite dance through and in and around and behind and over those who have the fortune of being in his way. There’s a polite “excuse me, sorry”, and he’s at his destination, the burrs on worn grey trousers compliments, lessons learned, observations made. Nothing is wasted. Everything is here.

In your words, you’re awesome man.

5.47pm

It's 5.47pm and I'm a dead weight at my desk. My body has morphed into the chair, we are one and aren't gonna give each other up easily. I sigh and flick off my monitor and desk lamp for the night. The week is passing through me, wave after wave smashing over my head, the tail end of one of which I'm lingering on. It's chock-full of adrenilin and is powering me forward. All thoughts of my personal life are surpressed beneath organisation's poor cousins - Urgency and Productivity. The dryness in my eyes reminds me that I haven't slept well, and I blink and rub my eyelids with a floppy hand. Eventually the chair and I part. It's acrimonious but we've been so close these past few days that I can see the ties between us. Some distance will do us good though. Ten minutes in front of the mirror and I'm transformed. I wipe the day's grime off my forehead with a tissue and reapply much-needed colour onto a pasty face. A stranger smiles back at me. It's gonna be a good night.

Affluenza

I read today in the Observer Magazine, that despite being richer than our fellow Brits in the 1950s, we´re much more likely to be miserable, experience a major depression, have a mental illness or develop cancer. How depressing! I belong to the school of thought that believes there are a lot of unhappy folk out there, which is why I inwardly glowed on seeing the beaming smiles on a pack of Hare Krishnas in SoHo last night (to be totally correct, I heard them long before I saw them). The article quoted stats galore - Americans are more likely to be ill than those in all other developed nations in a period of 12 months (26%) - for example. "Why is this, I cried!" Why was my grandma more likely to be content with her tin bath, no inside loo and the experience of eating out limited to fish & chips every other Friday? The thing is, my grandma is an optimist, born and bred. She sees the best in every situation. She´s pleased when it rains because the geraniums were getting parched, she can make a Spam sandwich taste better than anything from Pret, she had a mastectomy and never once complained, "What do I want with breasts at my age!" she said, incredulous at the familial concern cluttering up her normally tidy living room.

You see, I think I know why this generation is miserable, we're fundamentally insecure pessimists who continually fail to see good in others or in most situations that come along in everyday life. We expect too much. My grandma was happy with a pork chop and apple sauce, a week camping in Cornwall every summer and two kids in clothes previously worn by five others on the street. We strive to buy houses we can't afford that we're too busy to enjoy because we're working overtime to pay for the mortgage. We eat at restaurants with menus we can't quite afford because we're too proud to go to the cheap Italian on the corner. We pay for things previous generations would have laughed at - cleaners*, dog-walkers*, shirt-ironing and kitsh furniture from Heals.

This week, I for one am gonna try not to live like a statistic. I'm going to sit by the river and drink cheap wine from a plastic cup, eat a jam sandwich and watch the hazy river floating by. I'm going to take my shoes off and feel the damp earthy coolness between my toes. I'll think of my grandma and I'll be smiling.

* These are examples meant solely to illustrate my story. I have neither, nor a dog for that matter. I'm more of a cat person anyway, and they can look after themselves.

Giantess

Some days I see a lot of small blokes.

Creeping up

I´m always surprised that despite being home to more than seven million people, I regularly bump into people from my past in London. I´ll be minding my own business, power-walking the Piccadilly/Jubilee line interchange at Green Park, when a familiar walk will flash past, grazing my vision, forcing me to blink with surprise. This happens maybe twice a month, and I´ll probably speak to one of those people. The conversation generally goes one of two ways. The first sees us screaming, we´ll wrap our arms around once-familiar shoulders, look closely into eyes, now wiser, and subconsciously put 110% effort in re-engaging in a relationship. Vital stats are exchanged - the whats, wheres, whos and hows of this city. Numbers are punched decisively into mobiles, and we´ll part, strides now bouncing, hair flicking, eyes shining with memories now floating up through the murky dirt of the tube platform. The second is awkward, fleeting. We feign interest in boyfriends long past, convenient flats with off-street parking, the dream job with the dragon boss, the love for the city. One of us will crack first, the phone comes out of the bag, eleven digits are begrudingly entered onto an already too-full SIM. We´ll never call each other, we both know that, but we´re British and polite, and gosh, "I´ve got a train to catch!" and she´s gone.

Southbound

A shaft of iridescent brightness
Without edges,
A spear from the sky
Reaches down through cloud and dust
To dissipate across fields
Without end,
A rare shining on this evening's commute.
The clouds have become gobos -
Electrified rims graced with powdery light.
Trees and fields and hedges
Never before or since as alive,
Roll past my eyes through smeary pains,
Clean air, green foliage and white light,
A poultice.

Growing words

If I were a gardener, would you walk through my flowerbeds looking at the arrangement of colour and texture, the use of flower and shrub? Would you see how I'd used height and depth and buried bright blooms under marram grass, trained the sick hawthorne up the trunk of an oak tree and how I'd neglected to fill the pond with any life at all apart from a gurgling fountain? No, you'd smile and say "My mate Jules loves green stuff that grows," and leave it at that. Can't you just say, "My mate Jules loves words and phrases and clauses and paragraphs and the sight of dark green ink on creamy paper..." and let that be the end of it?

She had steel eyes

I'm having lunch with a friend, perched on a stool next to one of those huge plate windows, flanking a street busy with lunchtime human traffic. We're chatting, enjoying each other's company and the sunshine pouring through the glass, drinking overpriced squished fruit (in the name of health) and munching warm panini.

A woman comes into the café and takes her place at one of the tables behind us. I'm sitting at a angle, facing towards my friend to avoid the midday sun's glare, so I notice her, just sitting there, staring into nothingness. To begin with, she looks ordinary, mundane. Her clothes are plain - white shirt under a black, slightly old-fashioned, wool coat. A handback strap crosses her chest. Her expression is deadened, flat, but I think nothing of it and return to our conversation. We're talking summer plans, diaries and lists of things to do. There's less than twenty minutes left before we'll scuttle back to our desks, hands flying across keyboards, heads full of deadlines, so our conversation steps up a gear.

In a city, any concept of ordinary is far-reaching, so diverse is the climate. But something about this woman's behaviour disturbs me. I find myself looking over my friend's shoulder to check her out every few seconds. Her behaviour is incongrous. We're in a café, a busy, high-energy, eat-and-run kinda place, not a location for lingering, nor daydreaming. I wonder if anyone else has noticed her, so busy are they with their thai noodle soup, ham and swiss baguettes, shiny black containers of sushi with a miniature fish-shaped bottle of soy sauce, single slices of dry cake shrinkwrapped many miles from here, lattés with an extra shot, waxed paper cups of green tea, miso soup, polished green apples, cans of fizzy drink, plastic pots of fruit purée, Greek yogurt and crunchy granola, thick smoothies (all tasting too much like banana, regardless of their colour)... I'm sure no one else has seen her. She hasn't bought anything, and I can feel the annoyance of customers walking up and down searching for a table. Her hair is orange, frizzy, parted down the centre, and her eyes remind me of steelys - those steel ball-bearings we used to win at marbles when I was younger. After another five minutes or so we've finished our lunch, and I see that the steel eyes are staring in our direction. She stares mercilessly, without embarassment it seems, just glaring at us. When we get up to leave these metallic eyes will follow us out of the door.

Once in the relative freedom of the street, a gust of cool air flicks my hair back from my face, and I feel the freshness of the air. "Did you see that woman?" I ask my friend, "She was staring at us the entire time!" She hasn't noticed. I know I sometimes read too much into things, so I let the thoughts go, and rush back to my desk.

---

Ten days or so later, I'm with the same friend in an entirely different part of town. We've been shopping, trying on dresses, and are excitable and expectant of a fun afternoon. We've had coffee and biscotti and flown down back streets to escape the Saturday afternoon crowds. We're almost at our last destination for the day, a shop selling smart dresses, and our feet are beginning to ache. We walk through a confetti-like crowd, and are chatting as we go. I turn my head to the right, towards the shops we're neglecting for others, when I see her. The same black woolen coat, cotton-wool ginger hair, the metal eyes. She sees me, and for a moment our eyes meet. She stares, expression blank, eyes boring through the afternoon sun, and her head follows us as we walk arm in arm past her. I realise I'm cold, and when I look down at my hand, it's screwed up into a tight fist. I fight the desire to look back that is at the front of my consciousness, and increase my pace to lose myself in the Saturday crowd.

staring at grief

At lunch I eat salad and chorizo at my desk whilst surfing the net for a play to see on Saturday night. I flick thoughts and pages between ballet, drama, opera, Shakespeare, situation comedy, and decide on a Belgian political thriller. I’m merrily squashing yellow pepper and sunflower seeds between my teeth, entering Switch details into the black hole of online data, trusting personal details to a database that no doubt has been personified by a friendly name – Ted, Bob, Dave. Footsteps on stairs tickle my eardrums and I move fifteen degrees to the right on my black swivel office chair. In that moment I see grief mixed with life, truth, anger, pain, raw pain staring me in the face. I listen as I hear of a memorial service, petals falling from shiny domed ceiling to grace broken vessels below, hurt spilling out like milk from a bottle smashed on the pavement and abandoned. Young lives cut short, those left behind crushed by loss, by the black space remaining. My stomach refuses the superfluous leaves on the plate in front of me… I’m indignant, full of something – I’m not quite sure what. Empathy speaks of old ladies with sweet tea, and that word can’t describe it what I feel. Love, humanity, fear, love, anger, love, love. Mate, I don’t know what to say.

Indignant

I’m indignant about lots of things, some of the time. I’m indignant about some things, most of the time. I’m indignant about injustice, children sleeping on streets when they should be playing tag in a park full of green trees and kind old people with miniature poodles. Some of the things I’m indignant about today include:

Jealousy.
Rain between my toes when I’m wearing flip-flops.
Lack of sleep.
My stomach hating me and refusing even the plainest food. ‘Peppermint tea!’ it exclaims, refusing brown bread with apricot jam, weetabix and soya milk, home made chocolate chip cookies, cashew nuts, bananas, chicken stir fry, lemon cake, rice.

Silence

Today I sat in relative silence in the office for three hours. The 'phone didn't ring for me, and my email was quiet - no shots through cyberspace to disrupt my morning. The coffee in the paper cup went cold. The clitter-clatter of fingers on keys and the hum of the aircon unit provided white noise, which I've grown accustomed to since birth. I ponder what true silence is, and realise that it has been replaced in my life, and maybe yours, with quiet. Silence is surely a complete lack of noise of any kind, and what I've experienced today is its poor cousin - quiet.

Weird

I've just been reading one of those little books about London that's full of useless information to impress tourists who glide into the capital to consume culture, cappuccinos and history, before getting back on aeroplanes to where they've come from and promptly forgetting everything they found so interesting the day before.

Anyway, apparently:

* The longest ever game of monopoly lasted 70 days
* In the eighteenth century you could get £4 for a dead-body, more for a 'short' ie a child
* Every year an average of 7,000 umbrellas are left on the tube.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My heart went out to you...

I had dinner with a gorgeous long-lost friend on Thursday. He's one of those people who was joyously ever available for insults, comedy nights out, serious conversation, profound religious discussion, humorous political reflection, and burritos. I say was, because a couple a years ago he moved across the pond to Illinois, by the lake to be precise (see what I did there? The irony of it - there's a plethora of lakes, I've seen them). He's still there, in cyberspace, but you can't hug an email. Anyway, imagine the thrill, he's back in town For One Week Only! So we had dinner at my favourite place (location unimportant but they do fab big chips) and for an entire evening I was back in time by two years, being insulted, laughing at his jokes, giving advice on his success with the ladies. It was swell as those American friends of ours say.

Then the subject of this blog came up. He's been reading it at work, between selling grains and luminous carbonated drinks to fatten up the US military. He observed that my blog was pretty depressing, and his heart went out to me, blood and sinew floating across the lakes and the pond, through Heathrow airport, down the tube line underground to little old me, lying in my pink bed fast asleep, tetley tea in my kitchen cupboard. I've always known that suffering breeds art, that it's so much easier to write about melancholy than joy, that a fun picnic in the park provides so much less material than a break-up or a fight with a friend, but I was sad because he had been sad when he read it. So I kinda decided to try to be more positive - you can be the judge of my resolution!

Links

Check out the new links section. I did this myself using HTML. I am very smug about it!

- End -

Eventually, I was placed
on a bed like a boat
in an empty room with sky
filled windows,
with azure blue pillows,
and leopard-like quilt.

It was English tea time
with the kind of light
that electrifies the
ordinary. It had just
stopped raining.
Beads of water on glass
glittered like secrets.

(c) Julia Darling, 1956 - 2005.
Written about her own impending death from cancer. Gorgeously full of sad hope.

Writing about oneself...

"Writing about oneself is always a conceit, but usually a harmless one, unless a writer tries to pay off grudges, as do some foolish celebrity memorialists."
Max Hastings, The Guardian, 16 April 2005.

Hmmm. On first reading I agreed wholeheartedly with Mr. Hastings, I would have been grateful to shake his hand should I have bumped into him on Regents Street, newspaper under his arm. I liked this particular quotation so much, in fact, that I went to the bother of recording it in my notebook - a process, you understand, that involves:

a) locating said notebook in cavernous bag
b) finding (in horror) sandwich crumbs, bits of ham, pieces of chewing gum, stray tissues, the odd tampon stuck inside
c) shaking notebook open to remove above items
d) searching for pen that works (at least four minutes)
e) trying to remove pen lid, one-handed, whilst not dropping notebook, decaf cappuccino and jumper
f) finding blank page (becoming increasingly difficult)
g) transcribing aforementioned quotation onto page
h) reversal of above to restore notebook to bag.

As you can see, sometimes it's the small things that cause me the most consternation. Anyway, I digress, I'm talking about MH's little opinion about writing about oneself always being "a conceit". If that's true, then surely thinking about oneself is also a conceit, as in my mind, writing is just thinking with a pen... We're all inherently selfish, me above most of you I suspect, but writers seem to be charged with the introspective crticism more than most artists. Think about it, and be conceited!

wasted

The clarity of his affection for her was wasted in the haziness of her response. He's mad on her. If he had any heels his head would have been over them weeks ago. She sits in the centre of his conscious and unconscious thought, and there she remains, waiting. There are no meaningful gestures, words spoken through dedicated promise-filled eyes. He scrambles around in the greyness of their time together, grasping for such moments, longing to record and replay them in the quasi-private space inside his head. Disappointment rolls in overhead. The greyness turns to charcoal and he stops, stock-still. Moments glide by like graceful swans. Acceptance shakes him by the hand and he sees Resignation ahead. "I love her," is the whisper from pale lips.
"I once loved her."
"Let her go."

Remember New York

Remember New York,
Last year.
Vibrant sunsets greeted us,
Rain fell mercilessly in Union Square.
Blueberry pancakes sustained us,
I forcing them down past an
Incessant lump in my throat.

You were so alive, blood-red.
That scared me.
I whose pallor spoke a thousand words

On-board thesaurus transmitting through dull eyes.
I feigned cheerfulness, enthusiasm for
Endless walking, climbing of tall buildings,
Views shielded by life in your ravenous gaze.
Your eyes held appetite enough for us both.

I tried to retain composure, to be cheery
And bright, to force unfamiliar food
Past retching intestines, cramping up with every bite.

I love you now. Months later the pain has receded and
I love you now.

birth

All words are dust. You are dust. I am dust. You see – it’s simple really, a pile of particles, nothingness. So I thought about you and these words came alive. They were birthed, some easily, naturally, some with intense pain. Some were welcomed, gladly, parties were held in their honour. Others were begrudged, I tried, guilty, to erase them, but their life was too strong and they fought their way onto the page of my book. Powerful little beggars. Once there they wouldn’t give me a damned break. They screamed at me through the green and yellow cover with the Orla Kiely print. Some were polite about it (especially the ones conceived in Café Nero on Ken High St). Others swore – filthy, abhorrent combinations of innocent letters grating through my skull. I had no choice, no option remained but to listen and ask them what to do. You see, I brought them into this book, their world, and now they were banging on about literary rights and treaties and freedom of expression and air space… I couldn’t ignore them, the cacophony was deafening, so eventually I resisted, and one by one, clause by clause, sentence by sentence, I let them out. The precious ones I allowed to be typed, finger by finger onto the screen, where white characters reverse out of black, titles in bold lime green. They are happy now, you see. Their destinies fulfilled. I’m sorry though. Had I know when I began writing about you that the words would fight their way out of the book onto the screen of public glare, I would have warned you… been more careful. But as I always say, such is life and life’s too short to invest in obscure notebooks with shiny covers.

i am sick :-(

I am stuck halfway between two foreign countries... Sickness and Health. Had I a choice, I would happily inhabit the latter, gladly hand over my passport to be stamped, allow retinas to be scanned, fingerprints recorded. Í´m almost there, had my bags checked in, boarding card issued, obligatory cup of pre-flight coffee drunk, but every time I look up the flight has been delayed... Here I remain, in no man´s land.

deadness

This dead feeling inside me feels like a fold of muscle, which has been denied oxygen, starved of life and medicine. It hurts, enough to never quite let me forget its presence. I open the fold, reach inside the grieving flesh and place a pile of the dead sinew into outstretched palms. The owner of the hands is unsure what to do with the paling matter now dripping through fingers... There's no understanding, so the palms turn away, slide the pain onto the tarmac and wipe hands on crisp azure denim. The two trunks of blueness walk away, and I remain, insides pouring out from the dead place.

Chess chastised

I’m perched at a table in a café. The location is unimportant – you can imagine the scene. You’ve probably been there. It’s one of those buildings with a mezzanine floor, half hanging off the wall, fulfilling its peculiar destiny of providing a few extra tables, and luckily for me, a perfect vantage point from which to observe the busyness beneath. As I climbed up the stairs, eyeing up a small table with two chairs near the edge of the mezzanine, I had seen two men playing chess. I’m immediately reminded of Central Park on a warm summer’s evening, where old men play giant chess making the most of the cool air and the fading evening light. It’s not that warm here yet, I’m still wearing socks in bed, (though poor circulation runs in my family).

Once I’m seated in the chair, bike helmet ensconced in my lap, I look down towards the hub of movement and laughter and see smoke floating upwards to meet my face. I study the chess players… slowly they begin to hold a quiet fascination for me. They have what appears to be a cloth board filling most of the table and real wooden pieces. They look serious, a wooden timing clock frames the edge of the table precariously resting on its edge. The guy with his back to me is holding a small wooden piece in his hands, twisting it around in concentration. They move quickly, hitting the gold buttons on the timer without moving their gaze from the game. They don’t speak, it seems, but there’s an obvious rapport – a respect perhaps – between them. One man, facing me, is old, about 70 I’d say, though these days it’s getting harder to tell. He’s completely bald and wears gold Raybans with brown tinted lenses. He wouldn’t look out of place on a used car lot in the East End. His partner is younger (I can’t tell exactly as I can’t see his face from where I’m sitting), black and well-dressed in a blue shirt and dark grey suit jacket. I wonder how they met and if they have anything in common apart from the movement of carved wood on the chequered board.
---
I return to my newspaper and read about nothingness and debt and stabbings and blandness and ranting and the foreign secretary and trade and a lowcost airline going bust and I realise I’m afraid of the game ending in case they leave. I feel safe whilst they are playing out their Friday evening in the café. As for me, there’s no game in front of me, obscuring my vision, taking my attention, just cheap paper and coloured ink.

words

Words are powerful, yet they are dust. They mean everything and nothing. Binaries pervade. Writers write what other people think. The words don’t need anything from you, not even a reaction. They aren’t me, nor are they you.

Forever - Always - Everywhere

Remember truth,
She sits quietly, forever, always, everywhere, involved.
Remember her,
Not in half-measures, stories engineered with convenient falsity.
Remember truth,
And see love, friendship, honour and trust grow.
Remember her
With words meant with love, not mere self-protection.
Remember truth,
Welcome her quietly, forever, always, everywhere, involved.

Dark green ink

The pen in my hand is my entertainment. Creamy coloured sketchbook paper and dark green ink. The pen in my hand is my entertainment, a very small window into my soul, perhaps not even a window, more like a crack of light sneaking under a door polluting the ebony night. It’s now that I leave you. It’s unfair, I know, I’ve begun a story and you’re hungry for the end, intrigue has tickled your imagination and you’re slowly falling into the letters on the page, they’ve wrapped themselves around your thoughts. I’m sorry. I can’t be your muse, not today, not here.

Untitled

A friend told me recently that he tries not to spend too much time at his parents’ house because he finds it depressing. I agreed, out of gut reaction, and for a moment we shared a thin corridor in conscious thought. There’s a pause and we move on, chit-chatting about matters more pressing. On the tube on the way home, I sieve the day’s conversation through my mind, deciding what I deem profound, or funny, or beautiful enough to retain, the rest is headed for obscurity. I ponder his earlier statement and question why I agreed so easily… I sit for two stops, newspaper in hand going unread, and let my thoughts trickle through my consciousness. My parents love each other. They have friends and dinners out. Hobbies and foreign holidays. They eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day and three bottles of red a week. They have no debts and a car each.;They love my sister and I like we’re newborn. So, I conclude at Gloucester Road, what’s so depressing about that?

Impact

You saw me,
And smiled.
I caught
Your gaze, and
Our lives
Collied -
For a moment.
Mine was moving
Faster.
The impact slammed
Into my chest.
You, stock-still
Were quieter.
Our carriages
Didn't quite
Fit together.
Not yet.
Not this time. And
We part, graciously
And smooth.
I look down and see
Flecks of your paintwork
Gracing my facade.
I raise my head, and
You are gone.
I pause, silently,
And walk on,
Into the day.

Untitled

What joy! You’re here!
Town or country,
In a park, or a lift,
On a train if I’m lucky,
In my bed, near the witching hour.
Your voice!
Always available
At the ‘press and hold’ of a button.
Your message – now old –
Speaks of arrangements, long passed.
You laugh.
I know every intonation
By heart,
But I smile nonetheless,
Waiting for the ending: your
Signature sign-off
Voice like a six-year-old boy’s
Uncertain and high-pitched
For an audience of one.
Words blend together and
Reach the one I like best:
‘Bye!’

investing in obscurity?

Life's too short to invest in obscurity - words with no meanings, actions with a plethora of possible interpretations... I posess neither the patience nor the inclination to interpret thoughts projected through confusing eyes, words half-uttered, gestures multi-layered with a thousand meanings. Tell me the truth and I'll reach into my soul and give you a slice of it. For posterity.

Tar

This morning I awoke to the (rather unfamiliar) smell of tar. Yes, tar. You read correctly. Tar is rat backwards, and to be honest I'd rather wake up to the smell of tar than to the sight of a rat. But anyway, this morning. The council have taken the charitable decision to spend our outrageously high council tax on the painfully boring task of resurfacing the road outside my flat. Ok, roads do need resurfacing ocassionally, but as I don't drive and am perfectly happy on my bike even on the bumpiest gravel track, I'm a bit put out. Humph. I'd rather have the rubbish collected more often, or the park cleared of graffiti and syringes so that local children can play without reading rude words or stabbing themselves. Maybe I'm just a romantic. For now though, the whole flat smells of tar. Lovely.

the sky tonight

It's early evening on the day before the clocks go forward and the air is warm. I'm a little too cosy in my three layers - t-shirt, jumper, cardigan - but not cosy enough to peel any of them off my weary frame. It's Good Friday and I'm exhausted, and to add to the dull confusion surrounding my skull, the sky isn't real, I mean it doesn't look real. Don't get me wrong, it's the sky alright - I'm not upside down, or looking at a pair of pale blue curtains or a movie screen instead - it just looks wrong, erroneous. The clouds seem to belong to an Italian Renaissance painting. I'm looking for cupid and smug cherubs.
This obsessing about the space above our heads began when I glimpsed a poster earlier today (not that much earlier, I only got up at 2pm). A haze of lilac (my least favourite colour), peach, white and cornflower blue disected - not quite in the middle - by three words. At least I think they're words. My eyes are tired, contact lenses suctioned onto each eyeball like it's a life raft and they're heading for some undefined rapids. Anyway, I digress. I peer closer and a small child thinks I'm staring at him, oh yeah, I've seen this before: "TURNER, WHISTLER, MONET". Hmmm. I realise that part of the image on the painting is supposed to be London sky... I don't believe it. I know there was more polution in those days, but I can't translate the dappled lilac and peach palamino pattern into the sky I see every day whilst cycling through the city. That's what got me looking today. And you know what? The sky really IS like the poster. I'm indignant. Ashamed. I've lived in this city for years and until today I never really saw the sky for what it is. I was only looking. Terrible.

Did you ever eat the marmalade?

Did you ever eat the marmalade?
A thousand pieces of my self sealed inside a recycled jar
Each sliver of zest a slice of my affection
Irrevocably preserved, pectin-set.
The jar with its red lid, given to you in faith,
A peace offering, a gift
Forever unasked for, received with an open heart.
You smiled.Bashful, amused at the apparition –
Ebony ‘80s curls, aqua MAC eyelids, and
Preserves – in one tidy package.
You couldn’t work me out.
But tell me one thing –Did you ever eat the marmalade?

you hugged me

You hugged me at the tube station, pressed your lips against my right cheek and held me there for an in-between amount of time – neither short and casual, nor lingering and profound. We part and I look into your face with my confused eyes. All at once I want to run. I want to unvelcro myself from your presence and not look back as I sprint, breathless, down the Westbound platform. All at once I need you to remain. I need to hold my gaze firmly on your face, take hold of your left hand and entwine my fingers in yours and squeeze. No dialogue. No jinxed words. Just a touch. You can say more in one hand gesture than in an entire novel. I do none of these things. Instead I bow to convention, legs and hands immobile as the Northern line. My hair lifts up from the bottom of my skull and I feel the rush of air chasing down the platform. The squeaking of mouse on metal and a rumbling. Vibration tickling my feet like a foot spa.
‘I’m going to run to get this train,’ I say.
You nod. I turn and walk towards the irony that is loneliness on an overcrowded train.
I don’t look back.
Instead I hold onto the roof strap, and bite my lip like my great aunt Maggie drinks tea, steadily.

latté

I taste the latté in the earthenware cup in front of me and realise, to my amusement, that I’ve inadvertently ordered regular instead of small. No big deal, but there will soon be two shots of espresso rushing into my bloodstream. For someone with a dairy intolerance who gave up caffeine four years ago, it’s the equivalent of Russian roulette with my insides. I try to put the thought out of my head and break off a piece of concrete biscotti. The combination of sweet almonds and bitter coffee is almost too much to take. I shouldn’t have come back here, to our café, so soon... Mario had been pleased to see me, leaning over the counter to kiss my china-doll cheek. He said I looked good, and I feigned a smile, grateful for his lie but fading under the spotlight of his attention. I wondered how he knew, perhaps one of the regulars, or Marina the Saturday girl who knows my neighbours, or he might have seen the story about the accident in the newspaper.

[this is an excerpt from a short story I'm working on about a girl whose boyfriend has died two months before - watch this space!]

can't get you out of my head

I’m listening to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, headphones clamped over my ears in defiance of the chattering worker-bees in the office. ‘I’ve had the time of my life’ is supposed to be helping me to concentrate, but have you ever tried to work when a 80s duet are declaring their undying love for each other in the centre of your skull? I can’t get you both out of my head… Maybe that’s the idea.

poetry

I think all this writing poetry might send me slightly bonkers. So I'm going to ration myself as of today...

my jigsaw-piece life [draft - to be reviewed!]

Come flirt with my jigsaw-piece life.
Ignore the ragged sides, the coffee stains
Edges soggy from a toddler’s mouth
I’ve been trodden on, lost
Down the back of a sofa,
Under a bookshelf,
Sucked down the hoover pipe – fopp!
Chewed by a dog named Charlie.

Come dance with my jigsaw-piece life.
Admire the solid board of
The flat base, smooth and steady,
It’s been relied on, found
Comforting a heartbroken friend,
Holding the fort
For many a crisis – help!
I’ll let you hide in this soft embrace.

Come fit with my jigsaw-piece life.
Match up with the soggy edges, the solid foundation,
Gaze on the mottled colours.
Slot your cardboard edges into mine –
We don’t quite match up,
But the dog and the sofa, the forts we’ve held
Have softened our edges.
We’ll match up soon enough.

Tana

Your ballerina eyes - blue
Except for a tiny horse-chestnut speck under each pupil
Speckles on a duck egg
Focus point for truth -
Meet mine.

Light emanates
From your twilight visage.
Cheeks ever-so-slightly tinged with
Russian pointe-shoe pink –
Gracing your poised exterior,
Full of beauty and truth.

Your presence a poultice, a sticking plaster for pain.
You walk through this snowy February afternoon
Unaware that as you go, you scatter warmth.
The snow melts on your cheeks.
Each flake unique as the purpose in each step.
We part,
And I turn to watch as you dart homeward,
You glance over your shoulder and your eyes are shining
Free, now.

i felt sick on the train

I felt sick on the train
Again
Today.
Nausea creeping up past my diaphragm
Choking my view of a borrowed Metro.

Why on the train?
Why
Not
While breathing, eating, sleeping, speaking
On the incessant ‘phone?

Full fathom five
My theory lies
In a suspicion (held for years)
That only when I’m truly alone –
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough” –
Does reality jolt
Squarely
Home.

reflection

A reflection,
An expression in a
Mirror of thought.

Do you ever catch your reflection in a mirror and step back, surprised by what you see? A reflection, a mirror of thought? This morning I saw myself as if for the first time: enclosed by a coat and scarf , packaged up, sealed into layers of fabric, hands wrestling with bags, books, gloves.

Is this what others see? A furtive glance, a freeze frame image?

Any kisses?

There’s a small old guy who sells the big issue at my tube station… he must be about 60, grey-ish beard, he wears a black pea coat which should belong to an eleven year-old’s school uniform. I swipe my oyster on the reader and walk through the barrier towards the darkness and silent snowfall outside. He shuffles forward slightly as I walk.

‘Biiii shooo?’ he asks, grazing my left side.

I’m nonchalant. Gutted at some news I received two hours earlier, eyes dulling as the life drains out. I know what’s coming next, it’s the same each time. The same wheezing laugh, the hand clutching mine, the child eyes sparkling….

‘A-ny kis-ses?’

I laugh – just like I’ve laughed four hundred and seventy-three times before at the same two words – but today I’m faking it.

‘Not today!’ I sing. My intonation Bridget Jones-like.

He releases my hand and his eyes turn to watch as the station turns into the pavement and I am gone.

Have you ever been to hyde park corner?

a recent text conversation:

me: what would u like2do 2mrw?
him: drink after work? I’ll come to you
me: are you sure? I can meet you halfway…
him: ok, let’s be a bit random, halfway is hyde park corner. no idea what’s there so we’ll play it by ear. outside at 6.15?
me: (carefully) have you ever been to hyde park corner?! assuming not…
him: once, to see the chillis. take your point. could be ‘interesting’. green park?
me: (relieved) fab

(dis)order

funny how (thought) life flits between diametrically opposed states:
(dis)order
(dis)content.
alone
or
crushed
head space
mind space
thoughts careering
or
merely
stock-still.
fox on frozen tarmac
red tinge at its throat.

derrida

Jacques Derrida’s influence on the world took the form of a “quasi-private conversation” in French, through a smoke-screen from behind a mahogany laid desk. His audience of lofty thinkers vomited ideas, chewed the cud of intellectualism, shared fluids – bodily and otherwise – ate Japanese food and laughed at how clever they all were, really. For all this generosity and closeness there’s no life after life after death for these guys.

His monument, his “bench by the road”, exists in cloth-bound monuments to disproved thought. Piled high in dusty stacks.

At least the monument exists.

No one can sit on it and wait for a bus though.