Satsuma

As he ate the Satsuma, he didn’t notice the discarded peel on the floor start to move. He was too busy savouring the juicy sweetness as he popped each segment into his eager mouth. With each piece that disappeared past his lips, the peel got closer to him. When he was down to the last segment, he looked down to find the peel clinging to his chest.

He tried pulling it off, but it had fused with his skin. As he struggled with it, it grew. It grew rapidly and clung tightly to his body. His efforts were of no use. It was soon wrapped around his arms and legs. It climbed his neck and he gave a strangled cry as it covered his mouth. His terrified eyes were swiftly covered from view. He was covered in the satsuma peel, as if it had always been his skin.

His body stayed upright for a moment, swaying slightly, before falling swiftly to the floor. It lay there unmoving until discovered by his mother, who had been coming into his room to see if he wanted a cup of tea. She promptly screamed.

Father Christmas Nose Calamaty

Superhero

The coffee from the vending machine - the filthy free stuff made of caffeine and grit - had, after months of building up, made his brain so tight that it shrunk until it was out of existence. It went back through time and into another. It went through holes and loops until it returned to his skull streamlined, wiser, faster & able to pick up buildings. He quit his job and rode on buses, wondering what his superhero outfit would be.

Food

Food crumbs and tins on the kitchen floor. You look down at your feet. You revolve, clockwork body shifting your skirt. The mice scurry out, tempted to dance with you. But you are too intimidating and you have started creaking. You don’t smell the waffle burning in the toaster. I walk over and press the button to make it pop. I imagine the carbon taste on my tongue. It is a shame. I look out of the window. It is so perfect and sunny, like a trapped memory. I have to climb through the window to get to it. If I walk around to the back door and let it out of my sight, I will lose it. I walk into the grass. I am in my socks. The sun is warm on my cheeks. It is too blinding to look up. I walk to the end of the garden. I stand there for a long time. There’s no sound but for insects and a faint creaking. Eventually I walk back and climb back into the kitchen window. You are no longer there. I can hear you moving around in another room. I decide to make us some lunch.

A man trap and a crane, a mediocre magician with a broken heart

Sitting at the kitchen table, Arthur put his head in his hands. The Magic Circle had stripped him of his title. No longer was he Arthur - Man of Mighty Magic. He was just plain Arthur. He was back to being an amateur magician. Not even a particularly good one. They had never gotten to the bottom of how it was he had been accepted as a member of the Magic Circle in the first place. It was generally agreed that he must have been confused with someone else. But no one could quite remember who.

Anyway, Arthur’s head was quivering in his hand for an entirely different reason. His heart was broken in two. His girlfriend, Juno, had run away with the circus. More precisely, she had run away in the arms of Seluvio, the Snake Juggler. On returning home from his dismissal that morning he had found a note on the kitchen table. Well, it wasn’t really a note. It was a crudely drawn picture of Juno riding a snake, underneath which was written ‘Both our names end with ‘o’’. Arthur tried to curse the ‘ur’ that ended his name, but he started it with an ‘Oh’, which just started him off sobbing.

The next morning, Arthur stood up from the kitchen table. His heart was still splintered, but he decided to replace his sorrow with resolve. Rather than deal with the issues surrounding the fact that Juno had left him, it would be much easier to ignore that and concentrate on devising an elaborate plan to get her back. Not wasting any time, Arthur went directly to his Magic Workshop of Wonder at the bottom of the garden. Juno preferred to refer to it as ‘the shed’. There he spent the morning scribbling furiously until he had conjured a plan that would surely win Juno back. All he would need to do after procuring a few necessary items and making a few phone calls was to catch up with the circus.

Two days later Arthur loaded his van with the items he had gathered - a man trap, a giant inflatable hippopotamus, 10 kg of aniseed balls and a puncture repair kit. He’d phoned ahead and organised to hire a crane to be ready and waiting for him in the city the circus would be in when he caught up.

The city where Arthur’s plan would come to fruition was well chosen. He had booked the crane far enough in advance for it to already be waiting at the site when the circus arrived, so it wouldn't look as suspicious as it would if it suddenly turned up. By a stroke of luck, it was adjacent to a building site and when the circus folk arrived, they didn’t even look at the crane twice.

After a long drive across country, Arthur got to the city mid afternoon, a good few hours before that night’s show. He trembled with excitement. There was no way Juno wouldn’t come running straight back into his arms when she saw the lengths he was prepared to go to win her back.

In the back of the van he started to get everything ready. He slit open the inflatable hippo just wide enough so he could slip in the man trap. The man trap was open and primed. He had rigged it with a timer which he set just before he taped it to the bottom of the hippo. Having done this he filled the inflatable with the aniseed balls & then repaired the slit with the puncture repair kit. Finally, he inflated it with a foot pump. He got back into the front of the van tried to have snooze, but he was too wired. Maybe the Magic Circle would hear of his feat and invite him back, even if it wasn’t really a magic trick as such.

A while later, after what seemed like an eternity to the anxious Arthur, the crowds started turning up and queuing up to enter the tent. Arthur rubbed his hands together and waited for the show to begin. Juno had made him take her to every one of the five nights the circus had performed in their home town. The show was rigorously timed. He knew it would be exactly an hour until Seluvio was juggling his snakes near the event’s climax, just after the acrobatic performance of Willy Wulf and his Hundred Hounds.

After the last of the spectators had entered the tent, Arthur opened the back of the van and dragged the hippo out, attaching it to the hook of the cable that hung from the crane. Taking his time he climbed up to the cabin at the top. Once he was in there he retracted the cable to lift the hippo up and moved it so it was hovering above the circus tent.

Arthur waited some more, checking his watch every couple of minutes. When the show was fifty minutes in, he could hear the yelps and barks of the Hundred Hounds as they ran along tight ropes and jumped through burning hoops and formed canine pyramids. A short while later there was rapturous applause. Arthur gave it a few minutes more until he was sure that Seluvio had started his act, which was pretty much confirmed by the large ‘ooooh’ from the crowd. Deciding it was time, he lowered the hippo slowly into the circus tent. You might find it odd that he could get the hippo through the roof of the tent, but this particular circus tent had a detachable top, which they often left off on humid evenings like this one (convenient, I know).

Arthur stopped lowering the hippo. It would be about halfway down into the tent. Having seen Seluvio’s act five times, Arthur knew the audience would be too enrapt in the movements of the snakes being flung through the air to have noticed.

But they did soon. At precisely 8pm the man trap clamped shut and burst the hippo, showering Seluvio in aniseed balls. As planned, shortly afterwards came the sound of the Hundred Hounds going mad for the aniseed. Surely it would be chaos. Seluvio would be made to look a fool, he’d drop all his snakes for sure. What an idiot.

Arthur rushed down the crane, eager to observe the aftermath of his devious plan, nearly missing the rungs on the ladder more than once. When he was finally at the bottom he rushed into the tent’s entrance, ready to laugh his face off and have Juno run up and jump into his arms.

What he actually saw was Seluvio not only still managing to juggle his snakes, but do so while skating and pirouetting across the sea of aniseed balls and leaping over the dogs that were madly running around him. It was beautiful. Who wouldn’t love such a graceful and dynamic snake juggler? The whole audience was standing and applauding like they were competing in a world clapping championship. His eyes searched the crowd for Juno, but he couldn’t find her. It didn’t look like she was there at all

He turned away from the tent and the endless cheering and got into his van. He started the engine and drove and drove until he run out of petrol. Which was only about ten minutes away. He sat there puzzled, unable to figure out where he had gone wrong.

Cars and Parties

:)

Maurice Sendak tells parents worried by Wild Things to 'go to hell'

Out in the Sea.

I walked out into the sea ten years ago, but it didn’t work. I’m still down here. It doesn’t seem I need to breath. I just keep slowly walking. There’s choral growing out of my belly button, limpets on my nipples as if concernedly protecting my underwater modesty. Tiny crabs hide in my beard. You don’t want to know what’s going on down there. I’ve been walking for ten years
without stopping. I don’t know if I’ve walked around the earth or I’ve been going round in endless circles. I’ve stopped thinking too much.

Opening

I am an astronaut. Unofficially. An amateur, some people would say. Though I fear that makes it sound like I’m not particular good in the field of space travel and such. I consider myself the best. Not that I have a great deal of knowledge on the subject.

I have a feel for it. I just get it.

I can make a spacecraft out of almost anything. NASA insist on making huge rockets & shuttles, but that’s just for show. It’s unnecessary. I favour shopping trolleys. Shopping trolleys and dry leaves.

I have travelled far and wide across the universe, spanned galaxies, in nothing more than a rickety basket on wheels. I have journeyed to the stars in a chest freezer. I have orbited Jupiter in a wheelie bin.

I have an opening. The next trip will be in a pedalo, with room for two. There will be no tests. There will be no rigorous screening or strenuous training. You simply need to be a pleasant travelling companion. I will be bringing a portable tape player. If you so wish, please feel to make a mixtape for the journey. But be aware that you will need to submit the track listing to me beforehand for approval.

I am not able to give the precise length of time that the trip will take, but I anticipate it won’t be for more than around 28 days. We will be travelling into a black hole, the purpose being to find out if there is anything worth seeing on the other side. I imagine that it will be quite exciting.

I look forward to hearing from any potential candidates.

Unconsciously Screamin'

A letter I never sent

Look out of the window. It’s not almost that darkness, but you could imagine it to be. Autumn is starting to breath. Walking outside in the dark with your coat on, when it still feels unusual, after clinging to the summer. While the feeling climbs into you, like you’re an old familiar suit, you find old programmes in the pockets, photos, postcards, pins, other things beginning with p and conkers. Shiny new ones and dusty hollow old ones. You can imagine lying on a bed of conkers. Buried in conkers. I could make you a drawing or sing you a song. An old glimmer of something at the edge of your mind. Dirt and snow. A tree fell in the garden while I was away. There are benches where there never used to be. I never see any one sitting on them. The buses talk now. You’ll never feel alone. I saw someone today. I could have fallen back into the sea, cold in my hair, hands grabbing stones. A wind brushes by, as always, promising to bring the air this way again. I’m going indoors. I’m going to watch the glare of the television screen and not think about closing my eyes.

Iain Banks. Dead Air.

I read a Guardian review after reading this & it's too much in my head to say much about it. But I agree with it a lot. This is a very readable book. It's not a particularly good one though. Iain Banks has written some excellent books (see The Crow Road, The Wasp Factory, The Bridge) and some crap (A Song of Stone, Espedair Street). The good ones make the hurt of the bad ones a little less, but if I’d read Espedair Street before The Wasp Factory, there’s a good chance I’d not have bothered with the rest. I’m not really saying much here. Next time I’m going to try some Iain M. Banks. Or his new one that sounds like it should have an M. in his name on the cover from reading the reviews…

Like this? Then Try This

St. Vincent

Love an Iceberg, Hate a Sack

I put my shoes on. I put my shoes on and ran outside in the sunshine in the middle of the day. They were snug. I’d pulled the laces taught, but not too tight. These were not new shoes. I’d had them eight months or so. I’d worn them pretty much every day. I run and walk a lot. They’d seen a lot of wear. They had become an extension of me. They were beyond comfortable.

I didn’t think of my shoes often. Everyday shoes - you don’t really, do you? After I got home from running, I placed my shoes next to the door, as always. I decided to have a beer. I sat down on the couch and put the radio on. Before I knew it, I had drifted off.

I woke up about five o’clock, surprised. I felt groggy. I try not to sleep in the afternoons. It messes my body up.

I wanted a cup of tea, but I needed milk. I would go to the shop. I went to the door to get my shoes. They weren’t there. Now I thought about my shoes.

The door was locked. No sign that it had been tampered with. I’d owned the house for ten years. As far as I knew, no one else had a set of keys. I had changed the locks shortly after buying the house. I had one spare set, which were still in their place in the kitchen draw, as always.

This didn’t stop me from going to the shops. I own two other pairs of shoes. I went to my bedroom and put on my work shoes, went out and bought the milk.

The next day I bought some suitable replacements for the shoes that had vanished. I racked my brains for the next few weeks. What had happened to my shoes? I searched the house. There was nowhere else I would have put them except by the front door.

Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that this would be one of life’s unsolved mysteries. Although I’d been fond of the shoes, I was not sentimental. They were only shoes, and there was equally good footwear out there.

In fact, I was very pleased with the replacement shoes that I had purchased. Six or seven months down the line, they had fully adjusted themselves to accommodate my feet in a satisfying embrace. One morning, I went for a swim. It was a glorious day. The sun shone. When home, I placed my shoes by the front door, as always.

I went to my study to write some letters I had been putting off. A half hour later, I was procrastinating. I went to the kitchen to make some coffee. On the way to the kitchen, passing through the hallway, I glanced at my shoes. This had become a habit, to reassure myself that they were still there. I returned to my study to procrastinate a bit more while I waited for the coffee to go through the machine, listening to it burble and bop.

Twenty minutes later I returned to the kitchen for my coffee.

Again, in the hallway I glanced at the space by the door. There were no shoes there. Perplexed, I stood staring at the spot. I was slightly unnerved. I stood there a long while. I did not try to think of explanations - I had done this the first time. I thought about the police. It would be best not to bother them with a case of missing shoes.

I telephoned a good friend. They were sympathetic, but of course were unable to offer an explanation for the disappearance of the shoes.

So, I bought another pair. This time, I also fixed a bell to my door, to help make sure that someone was not gaining access to my house when I wasn’t looking.

A few weeks later, on another sunny day, I was in the park reading the Saturday paper. At some point, I closed my eyes and dozed off. When I woke up shortly after, I noticed my feet felt different. There was a small breeze tickling them. I was not wearing my shoes. I had certainly been wearing them before I fell asleep. I looked around. No sign of them. Not on the ground, nor other people’s feet or in their hands. I took off my socks and walked home barefoot.

This continued to happen every few months at irregular intervals. Sometimes at home, as before, but other places too. At the swimming pool I placed my shoes at the bottom of my locker. When I returned, the shoes were no longer there. Other times the shoes vanished from my feet, but not always even waiting for me to fall asleep. One time I had been on a long train journey. I had been awake the whole time. As the train pulled into the station of my destination I looked at my feet. No shoes.

I considered seeing a psychiatrist. But even if was suffering from mental problems, this would not account for the whereabouts of my shoes.

This eventually became routine in itself. The disappearance of every pair of shoes that I bought became everyday in itself. I thought nothing of it.

This continued for many years.

One day, I was on the beach. It was a sunny day. I was with a partner I’d met in the years of missing shoes. She had gone down to the waters edge for a paddle. I’d stayed with our stuff, on the blanket where we’d parked ourselves near the dunes. I watched her paddle.

As I sat there a phrase entered my mind.

Love an iceberg, hate a sack.

A flash of an image in my mind.

Love an iceberg, hate a sack.

I closed my eyes. The sun still glared after I’d shut them, fuzzing my head.

Love an iceberg, hate a sack.

I saw my shoes, all lined up in a row.

Love an iceberg, hate a sack.

All the ones that had gone missing, ones I’d forgotten, lined up in my mind. They sat there in perfect detail, as that phrase repeated itself in my mind.

Love an iceberg, hate a sack.

I didn't feel any emotion. They were just shoes.

Love an iceberg, hate a sack.

None of my shoes went missing after that.

Love an iceberg, hate a sack.

I try not to think too hard about it.

Wise Old Bird

Wise Old Bird

This is a link to a beautifully written obituary for my grandmother, who died recently. It is written by my cousin Hannah. She is a Wise and dearly missed Wise Old Bird.

Merphine

Another moving picture I have created.

Would you rather be a castle or a cat?

Cat.

molecules

round again, we spill down the walls, paint or blood, down to a droopy puddle upon the floor, to be stepped in barefoot.
wait outside, no one says.
it’s sunny, there is no furniture.
the floor is bare wood.
barefoot.
there is grass outside.
sprinklers.
molecules.

If Fingers Were Xylophones

It's Not Always Like This

Couldn’t think straight any more. Sitting on the bus with so many people relieved to be out of work, on the bus after waiting too long… the jabbering, rustling leaves prickling my brain. Sometimes I sat there with a notepad, to write the thoughts I’d saved up during the day. But when it came to it, I didn’t have any thoughts more often than not.
I’d sit with a blank page. Some times words came out here and there. Like garlic pushed through a press, most of the garlic left squashed inside, trapped in the corners.
Getting off the bus. I fell into town. I walked fast. Nobody catch me.
The man come split down from sky. In the rain,
like glass. Split. The man came down spilt.
I stood in the rain spilt.
I couldn’t think no more.
He didn’t help me, just looked.
Day to day. The rain came down, in the shower, radox in my mouth, towel on my eyes.
My friend shouted at me in my sleep for not photographing ninjas with big swords when I got the chance. I had nothing to say to that. In circles we went in the field. I thought of ice - of a snow, a field in a time in the edge of my skull
Breakfast will always be breakfast. My legs are always walking out of the door, while I float on top, not paying attention.
It’s not always like this.

Ruff Draft

No one told Daniel the danger. He hadn’t understood that part of it.

People had been standing on a plinth in town. Anyone could apply to do so. It was an art piece. People got dressed up. Some people didn’t and just stood there as if waiting for the train home. Some protested. Some shouted poetry. Some preached. Some just sat and read a book.

But no one had told Daniel of the danger.

Part of the art of the piece was that at some point it would finish without warning and whoever was standing there at the time would become one with the plinth. That is, their skin would turn to bronze; they would become a statue. No one knew when this would happen, not even the artist who had conceived the idea. This was all on the application forms, but Daniel never read these things properly, he just signed where it asked him to.

He had applied under a false identity. He applied to stand on the plinth to imagine how it would be to be a statue. Not an important one - a forgotten statue blended in with everyone’s day to day. He decided for anonymity. So he applied under the false identity, and when it came to it, he wore a mask of unremarkable features to cover his face and wore everyday clothes. He planned to appear as boring as possible so that no one would pay attention to him. And so, a few months after he had applied, Daniel was standing on the plinth in the main square of the town. He stood as still as possible, head slightly tilted so that he could see the passers by below.

At first there were a lot of people stopping to stare, waiting to see what this new arrival would be doing. As the day went on, and Daniel didn’t show any signs of doing anything entertaining, less people paid attention. Daniel started to feel the beginnings of success in his intensions. He looked at the heads of the people passing below, the buses stopping and starting at the various stops, cars shuffling around the traffic lights.

A pigeon landed on his head at one point, cooing gently. Daniel didn’t do anything to discourage the pigeon. He stopped focusing on one thing in particular, but tried to absorb everything around him. He breathed in deeply, the traffic fumes, the breath of the city, filling his nostrils. The white noise of the constant movement all around washed through him. He felt the flow of everything - the rise and fall of the rush. He was so absorbed in everything that he lost consciousness of time. He didn’t think anything of the sun going down, had no measure of time between the sky going dark and becoming light again.

It was the next morning , near the end of rush hour. No one at all looked at Daniel now. As the hubbub below began to slow a little, it suddenly occurred to Daniel that he had been standing on the plinth all night.

As his body tried to move, he felt his skin begin to harden. At first he thought it might just be the affect of having stood in the same position for so long. But looking at his hands, he saw that they had turned the colour of bronze.

Alarmed, Daniel tried to move again. His mind ran in circles. It was like his brain had forgotten how to send commands out to his body.

He strained to call out, but not only could he not open his mouth, he failed to make any sounds inside. In fact, he wasn’t even breathing.

There was nothing he could do. He wondered how long it would be before the organisers would realize and rescue him. If they could. But no one came. Well, they did, but only for journalists to take photos and point television cameras at him. After that, no one really paid him much attention. He was left with his thoughts. Which often returned to the story of the Happy Prince. But he had no gold leaf. And none of the pigeons that perched on his shoulders and did their business on him seemed to be wanting to make conversation.

After a few months, verging on insanity, he decided it would be best to just give up and absorb the general goings on around him, become one with the flow of the town, leave conscious thought as far away as he could.

So Daniel felt the wind blowing past him, the cycle of the days and sounds below becoming a song, endless variations repeated day after day after day. Time passes. A lot of it. Years. He stands on the plinth, weathered and forgotten. People sometimes stop and look up at him. They wonder who he is meant to be, this ordinary looking man. He is no one that they recognise. They shrug inwardly and slip back into the stream that surrounds them.

Harry and Sam

My friends, Harry and Sam -

They stumbled into each other as they came around the corner from opposite directions. Harry and Sam stared at each other in surprise. They looked each other up and down.

They were both covered in paint all over; on their skin, in their hair and on their clothes. Paints of all different colours.

It was the first they had seen of each other since their cat, Boomer, had died of old age. They had lived together. They had been deeply in love. But this had changed when Boomer died. They didn’t say anything about his death to each other.

Sam decided she would never go back home after work, the day the cat died. She would never go back again. She left everything behind and moved to the sea.

Harry decided he would never go back home after work, the day the cat died. He would never go back again. He left everything behind and moved to the sea.

As they stood on the corner, they both had that feeling that sometimes seizes you all the way through as you look in the mirror and don’t recognise what you see looking back at you. Everything tumbles and your spirit strains against the confines of your body.

Still standing there, Harry and Sam embraced, their cheeks sticking together from the paint.

Their hearts beat in unison and they closed their eyes and floated through everything. Their separate thoughts sat side by side, unknown. They opened their eyes. They went to the beach and had a memorial for the cat. They stayed by the sea and looked for new jobs.

Please Don’t Wake Me Up

Cuthbert had been sleeping for many years. He had decided there was little reason to leave his bed. So he pulled up his bed covers and said, “Good night world, I am going to have a long snooze now. Please don’t wake me up.”

And snooze he did. No one knows for how long. Cuthbert didn’t know, because he had been asleep at the time. And when he woke up there was no one left to tell him.

So he woke up at a point in time, if time could still be considered to exist. Which I suppose it could, as Cuthbert was there to perceive it. He stretched in his bed like a lazy cat, before jumping out. The years spent in a horizontal fashion didn’t seem to have had an adverse affect upon his body.

Cuthbert couldn’t tell if it was night or day. His heavy curtains drawn across the windows were not giving any hints.

He went to the door. He should get some fresh air, he supposed.

He opened the front door of his house. It was dark, but it wasn’t night time. There wasn’t a moon. There were no stars. There were no clouds to obscure these things. There was nothing.

Cuthbert decided to go back to bed. “Maybe there will be something when I wake up,” he said and pulled the covers back over his head.

The Internet Was Created Purely For Me To Watch This One Deerhoof Video Again and Again

That and old Throwing Muses vids. Not much else.

There is tiger breath on the back of my neck.

It is hot and smells like tea.

No.

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks

This song is great. And the video is amazing. It makes me feel slightly wrong, but I love it.

Mania

~

my head fell forward onto the computer keyboard
sleep dragged me down
& melted a hole through my desk
& then I tumbled through the office floor burning
holes
& sinking below the foundations
& further still
until
having travelled
through layers
upon layers of earth & rock
I reached the centre of the
earth
where my thoughts
were burnt
to a crisp
& I dream-swam in circles
trapped thereafter

Hang Glider

The hang glider snapped in two about ten metres above the ground. Mr Barnaby escaped without serious injury. He untangled himself from the glider and stood up, dusting himself off. He looked around to see if anyone could see him. When he was sure that there was no one to observe him, he walked away from the wreck with a guilty twinge in his stride.

Man Pukes Man Pukes Man

An enchanted moving picture, conjured by yours truly.

I know that Tetris, the Board Game is surprisingly good.

I don’t know anything. I believe some things. I believe I believe some things. But for all I know, I’m not typing my blog, but am a caveman hitting my hands blindly against a rock in some kind of hallucinogenic trance, dreaming of a distant future where I sit around typing crap on the internet, imagining I’m a caveman in the past having a hallucinogenic trance in which I am imagining myself in the future riding a dinosaur over to William Faulkner’s house for ginger beer and a game of Tetris - the Board Game. Which is a surprisingly good game. Actually, I know that and nothing else. I know that Tetris, the Board Game is surprisingly good.

I didn’t go to work today. I was snowed in again.

Just You and I

Sitting in the Sun

Jason put the quartizer back in the ulmaghyic briefcase and took care to lock it securely.

“What’s for tea, Mother?” he called out.

“Smarchungers. And some veg,” came Daniel’s reply from the other end of the flat.

Mother was Jason’s pet name for Daniel.

He took a sip of his juice and lay back in the chair. He closed his eyes against the sun, which sat high in the sky. The sea outside the flat was still. There wasn’t any breeze at all.

Jason was glad there wasn’t anything else he’d need to do that day. He couldn’t think ahead to tomorrow. He was good at not thinking about things that did not exist.

He opened his eyes and looked out at the sea. The skyhersher that had been floating near the horizon for the last few hours rose into the air slowly until it was fifty metres above sea level. A tear appeared in the air. The skyhersher rose into it and the tear repaired itself as if it had never been there.

He felt something on his arm. It was his lizard, Gelko.

“Hello,” he said to the lizard.

“Hello,” said the lizard, before settling down for a nap.

Jason closed his eyes again. He was happy with where he was.

The smell of the smarchungers drifted down from the kitchen.

Jason breathed out his last breath as a contented sigh. He didn’t think anything any more. He didn’t exist.

Karl Blau

Bag of Bones

Rollo is going to fall into Dylan’s arms

Into bits & bones

a heavy egg

he will pick up the pieces

and put them in his bag.

I’m back from dreaming.

I escaped the butler with the rotting face caked in white make-up. I’m not sure what he was after.

What do dead butlers usually want?

Margo & Ralph

Margo stood on the decking, tapping her bright red shoes towards each other and then away in a repetitive pattern. She stared at her feet as she did this. The decking was in her lovely garden outside her lovely house where she was being lovely. It was a bit overcast though.

She had been tapping her pattern out for a few minutes when her nostrils twitched. A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. A familiar smell climbed into her nasal passages. It was an odd smell to say the least. It was a bit like stilton mixed with orange juice and an undertone of garlic. It wasn’t typically the sort of smell that would make one smile. But it wasn’t a typical smell.

Margo scanned the garden expectantly until she saw one of the bushes wobble. It wobbled some more until a boy fell out.

“Ralph!” she shouted excitedly.

The boy looked at her and jumped up in joy. He ran towards the decking.

It had been so long! Their hearts skipped.

The smell became almost overpowering the closer Ralph got. He was a very smelly boy.

Ralph stopped about a metre away from Margo.

They stood staring at each other for a moment. Their smiles suddenly turned into frowns as the same memory came rushing to the front of their minds from the back of their brain pools.

In their minds they were back, years ago, standing a similar distance apart from each other in a field of long grass. It was a nice day. Ralph was on the verge of telling Margo how much he fancied her. Margo sensed this and was waiting impatiently. Ralph reached to touch Margo’s cheek when everything round them turned to flame.

They looked about themselves in shock. A shadowy figure silently appeared from within the smoke and fire.

Its features became clearer as it came towards them. It was David Bowie, dressed as the Goblin Prince. Despite being pretty amazed that David Bowie was visiting them from within a rather unexpected burning landscape, both Margo and Ralph found it hard to keep their eyes from the impressive bulge in his crotch area.

It distracted them both so much that it took both of them a little while to notice that he was cradling a small monkey in his arms, much like a baby. The monkey bared its teeth and stuck its middle finger up at them. Bowie gently put his hand over the monkey’s to stop him swearing. He kissed the monkey on it’s head before raising one long index finger towards Margo and Ralph. Silently he waved it from side to side as if to warn them. He continued to do this while he raised one eyebrow and slowly glided backwards into the flames.

Everything had returned to normal the instant Bowie was out of sight. Neither had really known what to say after that, so they had gone their separate ways.

And they hadn’t seen each other for years up until this moment in Margo’s garden. And now all they had in their mind was Bowie stroking a monkey and his mighty bulge.

They both sighed at this and turned their separate ways once again.

Margo stood staring at the deck, continuing to sigh as the rather odd smell of Ralph slowly made its way out of her nasal passages and out of the garden.

The sofa bed is almost certainly haunted.

It must be. Look at it.

The IBM man has dyed his hair.

He looked slightly more youthful. Slightly more like he could kill a robot. And quite tired. He looked like he was wanting nothing more than to run up to his wife and put his head in her lap and fall asleep. But he was shaking hands with me and bracing himself for the long drive home.

I was mainly glad it’s nearly Friday. And running home to a bake potato.

I Got the Bus This Morning

My journey to work was soundtracked by a playlist I made from all those sitting down on the left of the homepage of http://www.kelplunacy.com/

I threw in Fresher Than the Sweetness in Water by Honeybus and While You Wait for the Others by Grizzly Bear for good measure. So much good stuff in there. And the fact that, minus the latter two additions, Karl Blau has offered them to you for nowt, makes me feel a fuzzy feeling in my belly. And Slow Down, Joe is not going to leave my head in a long time.

In other news, I have become fascinated by my slightly rotund neighours. They share a ground floor flat and don't seem to have realized that if you leave your curtains open at night & keep the lights on, it's pretty much impossible to resist staring as you walk past. It's become like a five second soap as I walk up the drive in the evenings. Admittedly a pretty boring one where some one is either sprawled on the sofa with their laptop or sitting at the table with their laptop. Some days though, it gets pretty exciting. Some days you get one person doing something in the adjacent kitchen & one person in the living room... it's a sensory overload. The most pleasing fact though, is that they use an empty Roses box as a vase. This pleases me greatly.

This isn't a new video, but I've only found it recently. It makes me all kinds of happy. A creepy, slightly odd vid, tempered by the rock person thing looking like a creature from the Mighty Boosh...

The Snow Went, So I Did Too

The snow went, so I did too. I ventured south for the weekend. I stayed with my brother. He’s making hang gliders. If you’re a musician he’ll make you one for free.

I had a marvellous time. But my brain was seeping out all over my desk at work today, as it will if you take a couple of days off & remember that your job has little relevance to you, other than it provides the money for your food & shelter. Just about. It’s a damn nuisance trying to get your brain back in after it has started seeping out.

I was at a loose end yesterday morning before getting my train in the afternoon, so I took the opportunity to wander aimlessly around Tate Britain. I like Tate Modern, it’s interesting. But it’s not got the same atmosphere as Tate Britain. It’s so chilled out and has a good mix of old and new. It’s not jumping on your head and screaming for attention like a child who’s drunk too much coke, in the way that the Tate Modern does. I even like the walk from Pimlico. That area seems like a protective bubble for me to run around in.

I wandered down some old paths too, almost stumbling into nostalgia. But I think I avoided it. There were some small quiet moments.

Easy does it, rubber monkey.

I was snowed in today. I was unable to leave the house, so I made a fire and sat in the armchair reading Thomas Hardy. Perversely, the miserable bugger cheered me up.

My boss called me up about half ten to tell me she had hired a snowplough, and was going to come and get me. My heart sank at this. It’s uncommon to get a day off like this - some welcome solitude. Time to read and watch the spiders (my house is full of spiders). Luckily my boss called an hour later to say the plough had broken down. She said fair enough, I wouldn’t have to go in. Her tone of voice made me feel she really thought I should get a shovel and tunnel to work.

As it was, I got to spend the day reading Hardy by the fire, eating marmite on crumpets and listening to music. Today’s soundtrack mainly came courtesy of Akron/Family, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Tunng and some Deerhoof. It’s been a good day. The spiders have asked me to say hello. They hope you are well.

Limping

Letters are limping off my tongue.

d j o f l in
h i g me
I m k

I'm throwing them at the screen, but only a few are sticking.

I'll find a chisel to hammer them on to the screen, after I have pushed my head inside a book.