Easy Does It, Rubber Monkey

I have forgotten, I shall feed you a little. I'm sorry if I've forgotten how to cook.

2011-01-11T22:25:00.002Z

They were angry - the sky had changed colour when no one had asked it to.

They didn't like it as much as they had in their past lives. They had invented their past lives. I pointed this out to them. They sneered at me.

They told me that I had got it all wrong.

They didn't remember things the way that I did.

By the time they had finished talking at me, the sky had changed colour again.

When they noticed that, they got angry with each other and refused to speak.

I left them to it and carried on my way to get the paper.

please ignore this

Marbles Came Out Instead of Words

2010-10-07T20:17:00.000+01:00

I was sitting by the duck pond. I watched the ducks sticking their bums in the air as they searched for food. Some fully immersed themselves and I would try to guess where they were going to surface. One appeared to be fighting itself. A couple of swans drifted on the periphery, looking unimpressed.

A man sat next to me on the concrete step, a little closer than I was comfortable with. He looked distressed. His forehead was creased and his skin was pale, shining slightly as if covered with a thin transparent outer layer.

‘Are you ok, mate?’ I asked.

He turned to me and opened his mouth.

Marbles came out instead of words. One or two at first. They hit hard on the concrete and bounced three or four times into the water with a plop. More marbles came bouncing down. They didn’t stop coming. They built into a steady stream that stretched the edges of his mouth wide until a discordant waterfall was flowing from his distended features. The duck that had been fighting itself stopped to watch.

I’m not sure how long it went on for, but at some point it finished. The ducks came over to see what the fuss was all about - maybe it was the entertainment before their dinner time.

The man coughed into his hands a few times. He let out a laugh, which turned into another cough as a final marble popped out and bounced down and plopped into the water

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘I feel much better.’

His voice was thick and dented, a marble possibly still stuck in his throat. I wasn’t surprised. He got up, patted me on the shoulder and left.

The ducks looked at me expectantly. I’m pretty sure they knew I had the last of an almost stale loaf in my bag. As I pulled it out, I could see the swans take note and start making their way over for a piece of the action.

Mountain Man

2010-07-20T21:43:00.001+01:00

They called him Mountain Man. There wasn’t any reason that they called him that past the fact that he lived on a mountain. Right now he was flying a plane. They would never have thought that Mountain Man was able to fly a plane. He wouldn’t have either. But he was up there all the same. No lessons, no reading up on it, no co-pilot; just him guessing. He was doing ok. He was doing pretty well. He just wasn’t sure how to bring it back down, or how much fuel was left.

He looked down at the fields around him. He was far from the mountain now. Looking at the fields he found himself thinking about tea on Sunday evenings, watching the Antiques Roadshow. Crumpets saturated with butter, cheese and crackers, crisps, fruit and Battenberg. He wondered why he had loved Ballykissangel so much as a kid. He thought about Dervla Kirwin. I wonder what she’s doing right now, he thought as the sea came into sight on the horizon.

He flew out over the sea and started to drift out of conscious. The land receded behind him. As he leant back into sleep he pulled back the joystick and the plane angled up towards the sun.

Seeing the Mountains from the Train Window, I Forget

2010-07-05T21:25:00.001+01:00

The brown paint on the wood of the decking is chipped. Weathered grain shows through in patches. It is hot to the touch as I feel the contours on bare skin. I pick at a piece of the paint before I slip into the water. I let my body sink a moment, bubbles rising up my leg. I kick to the surface, back to the sound of the wind in the trees above.

I’m in the flat again. Dry and clothed. I expected you home, but I’m glad you’re not. Your washing up has been left on the side. You did not rinse the bowl and there are bits of tomato and green drying against its sides in the sun coming in from the window.

I put the radio on and dance momentarily to the song that’s playing. I make coffee. I was meaning to write or to read, but I cannot concentrate. I cannot order my thoughts, so I leave them alone and sit in the sun on the balcony and do not think much of anything.

The Spreadeagle Rests the Noise

2010-05-25T19:55:00.003+01:00

She closed her eyes and listened to the clatter and tumult of the bar. The pint she held was halfway down and still cold.

She waited as she had been for a half hour or so. She didn’t mind. She had been early. But there was no rush.

She opened her eyes and saw a solitary man sitting on the corner of a table that he was sharing with strangers. The man had a plastic bag on his lap, which he was reaching into and pulling out a variety of pebbles. He arranged them in front of him. The strangers glanced at the pebbles that were gradually filling the table, but carried on their conversations without commenting. Eventually the plastic bag was empty. The man scrunched it up in his hand, got up and left the pub. The pebbles remained on the table.

The conversation had dried up between the table's inhabitants. They sat in silence and contemplated the pattern laid out before them.

The Briefcase

2010-05-03T13:21:00.000+01:00

The mariachi band had left a briefcase in his bar. They had slept on the stage after the gig and left early in the morning, packing everything away except the briefcase. He put it behind the bar and got on with things, thinking they’d come back for it or call. It troubled him. It was a pretty ordinary suitcase. And very light - almost as if it didn’t have anything inside it. He tried the catches on it, but it was locked shut.

As the day went on and turned into evening, he realised he kept touching the briefcase absentmindedly as he served customers. He nudged it with his knees, stroked a hand across it when he bent down to pick up glasses. When he finally locked up the bar shortly before dawn, he decided to take the briefcase home with him. It didn’t want to be left alone, he felt. When he was home, he placed the briefcase in the middle of the bedroom floor, so that he could see it from his bed, which he climbed into and fell fast asleep. When he woke up he discovered he was holding the case in a tight embrace against his chest.

This was odd, he thought. Not too healthy. He decided to track the mariachi band down and return it, rather than wait for them to come back for it. He tried calling the number he had booked them through, but the line was dead. He got in his car and travelled to the small town they had said they would be playing next. He went to all of the bars in the town and asked if the mariachi band had played there. Eventually he found the one that they had played at. The owner told him where they had been going next. He got back in his car and travelled to the next town they had been going to. Again, he did the rounds around the bars until he got the information he needed.

He ended up driving up and down the country, trying to catch up with the mariachi band, but never quite managing it. He slept on the back seat of his car, clutching the briefcase for fear of losing it. He carried on looking for the mariachi band, but found himself taking it slowly, not really wanting to find them so much anymore. His thoughts became less coherent. His beard grew long and his armpits grew smelly. Eventually, as he drove across the desert, his car ran out of petrol. There was nothing for miles around. He would never get anywhere on foot.

He took the briefcase and sat down on the ground a short way from the car. He decided to see what was actually in the briefcase, if anything. He took a rock from the ground and spent a while trying to break open the catches. After a while he gave up and decided to rest. He woke up a few hours later, very red faced and burnt. He would have cursed his stupidity, but his mind was still too drawn to the briefcase. He tried the catches again. To his surprise, they opened without fuss, as if they had never been locked.

He opened the briefcase wide. Neatly lined up inside were stacks of waffles covered in Nutella, melting in the heat. One by one he picked out the waffles and slowly ate them, not pausing until every last one had gone. He sat there in the sun, face smeared with chocolate, smiling a very large smile.

I Rubbed the Surface of the Pebble in My Pocket

2010-05-03T12:06:00.000+01:00

As I stood surveying the calm sea, thinking how nice it was not being able to see any signs of civilisation, I noticed something rising in the water. It was a black dot around fifty metres away. My first thought was that it might be a seal, but as it moved towards land I could see that it looked more like a bowler hat. Rather than float as you would expect, bobbing on the waves, it moved steadily in a purposeful straight line. Where the water started to become more shallow, the bowler hat rose and revealed a head underneath it. A smartly dressed business man gradually emerged from the water. He was very dignified, despite his sopping wet clothes and the water leaking out of his briefcase. As he passed me he lifted his hat slightly and bid me good day. I turned to watch as he disappeared amongst the sand dunes.

Another Letter to the Broken Pavement

2010-04-07T20:34:00.003+01:00

He sat down in the soggy pile of leaves and pulled them round him. He hadn't meant to. He had been on his way to the shops and had seen the leaves piled next to the park railings. There was a memory somewhere telling him to do so, but he couldn't remember what. He didn't care. The feel of the wet leaves on his cheeks was delightful.

Some Kind of Spirit

2010-03-30T19:19:00.001+01:00

Some kind of spirit rose from the river and spoke to him. He didn’t understand it. They were both frustrated. The spirit was reluctant to go without having successfully conveyed its message, but it eventually had to give in. He felt bad, as if he had failed the spirit. He wondered what it had been trying to say. He knew it wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t understand, but that didn’t stop a cloudy feeling of guilt lurking behind him for the rest of his walk.

The weather kept changing abruptly. This didn’t help. It had been sunny in the morning, now cloudy. The sun kept coming and going as it pleased. If he went home it would come out, he was sure.

Later, he was still walking despite the sun having decided it really wasn’t in the mood for being out any more. He had got lost in a thought which had meandered into another and it had been a long time since he’d paid much attention to where he was and what he was doing. He was walking by the road now. His attention was hooked and dragged back into reality by a passing scooter. Another two passed soon after. Must be friends, he thought. A few more passed. Then more. Must be some sort of scooter society.

There weren’t any more for a couple of minutes, just cars, a few vans, a couple of buses. Then there was a another scooter. And another. A long unbroken line of scooters passed by. He wondered whether it would end. It didn’t seem like it. He got lost in another side-thought and when something wrestled his attention back to his surroundings, he discovered there were no more scooters.

How dull and ordinary they had looked under the grey sky. How much more glorious they would have looked if the sun had been shining.

Ants

2010-03-24T19:08:00.001Z

He sat cross legged on the patio. It was hot and he could feel the sun on his back through his shirt. He held a magnifying glass, which he was angling carefully, trapping ants within the heat of the magnified light, burning them and making their insides bubble. He was mesmerised.

He hadn’t done this since he was a child. He hadn’t even thought about it. There had been something about the light of this bright day, the way the garden had looked from his study window that stirred the memory from wherever it had been sleeping.

As a child he had purely been fascinated at the power of the sun and the way that he could borrow it. Now he felt guilt too. The ants weren’t causing him much trouble. Not enough to deserve being burnt alive. He still carried on, however. And the ants kept coming from between the sandy cracks in the pavement. They were unaware of the fate of their friends.

The sun soon took its toll upon his head. It felt as if someone had been holding a magnifying glass above him, as he had above the ants. He stood up too quickly, almost blacking out. He had to wait for the dizziness to pass. When he had recovered he went back indoors. Instead of returning to the study he went to the kitchen. There he placed the magnifying glass on the side and took a can of beer from the fridge. He took it into the living room, where he sat on the sofa. He opened the beer and gulped it down. He soon drifted off into a light doze, the sort he’d wake up from in half an hour or so with a bit of a headache and a dry mouth. Outside, the sun kept shining on the little dark specks that were once ants, their corpses dotted across the patio.

Sandwiches

2010-03-11T19:01:00.003Z

I met the Beatles on the boat to Hades. They wanted sandwiches. They were sitting on a bench on the top deck, all squashed together. They looked pretty ill. Their skin was pale and yellowing. It hung saggy from their bones. The bags under their eyes had long forgotten sleep.

I greeted them.

“Have you got any sandwiches?” said Ringo.

I apologised and said that I didn’t.

“Not any cheese and pickle?”

I shook my head.

I asked them how they came to be on the boat to Hades.

“Got any sandwiches?” said John, raising his voice as if I were hard of hearing.

Again I said that I didn’t. The Beatles exchanged glances and rolled their eyes.

It was funny, I said, all four of them here at once.

Paul leaned forward and said slowly, “Do… you… have… any… sandwiches?”

I said that I hadn’t bothered packing any sandwiches.

I looked away and out over the grey sea. There was no sound at all. After a while I looked back at them.

“You don’t, by any chance, have any sandwiches, do you?” said George.

Instead of responding I walked further along the deck. When I was fifty or so paces away, I looked back. The Beatles sat there together staring out to sea, motionless.

Parcel

2010-03-03T18:35:00.001Z

The first parcel arrived on a day in May. It was a medium sized cardboard box. About the size of a fat curled up cat. Very light. The writing on the top was neat. Curious, I opened the package. There was nothing in it. Just air.

Following this I would receive a parcel every week or so afterwards. They were always the same - same size, same weight. Same nothing inside them. Never a return address.

They were an oddity, but I got used to them. There were no messages, nothing horrible inside. Just nothing.

So I carried on as normal, quietly getting on with it. Going to my job, eating, sleeping and so on.

Jelly Sweets

2010-02-17T18:52:00.000Z

I took the top of my skull apart in sections. It was dark, the room lit only by the desk light. I carefully placed the parts of skull on the bedside table. They made me think of an Easter egg, broken into and waiting to be eaten. That would make my brain the jelly sweets.

Once I had removed the last piece, I sat down on the bed. I kept my back straight and placed my hands on my lap. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. Soon my brain rose gently out from the cavity left in my head and disconnected from me. It floated towards the open window. It was some time after dawn when I opened my eyes and started thinking again.

Brain nestled back in place, I replaced the top of my skull, making sure I put the pieces in the right place and got ready to start the day. I often questioned my brain as to where it went at night, but it would never tell me.

Levitating

2010-01-31T18:41:00.000Z

Bees swarm out of the night-sick mind and into the day, where they return to being harmless eccentric flying machines. One by one I tie strings to each bee and tie the other ends to strands of my hair. By the end of the day I am levitating. Old people point and laugh. I don’t care.

Singing in the woods, bleeping in the kitchen...

2010-01-31T11:30:00.002Z

Everywhere I turn from Paul Higginson on Vimeo.

John Lawrence being all lovely in the woods. While his old bandmate Euros is having fun in the kitchen...

Gravity Gives Up

2010-01-17T17:10:00.001Z

Finally, after so many occasional daydreams of gravity giving up and everything floating away, it actually did. He was out walking when everything not attached to the ground drifted off in different directions. Cars lifted up, bobbing like boats left to their own devices. A confused cat passed him a chest level. His legs lifted behind him until he was horizontal. As his body ascended towards the sky, he couldn’t think of anything to say. He just took everything in; the scenery, the streets he’d never contemplated from this angle, the bodies of others gently rising amongst all the other bits and pieces and animals saying goodbye to the Earth. It was beautiful. Nothing had ever absorbed him so much. He didn’t mind what happened next.

onetwoonewo

2010-01-14T19:07:00.000Z

Turn key in lock. He enters house. Post underfoot. Bills. Sighs. Remaining sunlight half lights room. Decides not to turn lights on. Beer from fridge. Sit on sofa. Cold on throat. Close eyes. Chilled brain. Work has softened spirit. Cannot get energy. Finishes beer. Thinks. Eyes still closed. Time passes. Gets up. Makes small supper. Eats. Chews well. Washes up with care. Drying last dish decides on walk. Get out of house. Unfinished thoughts. Cannot be brought into house. Puts on coat. Keys in pocket. Leaves.

Sun near horizon. Breeze small. Foot here. There. One Two. One. Two. He takes pleasure in his body’s propulsion. The air is mild. For the first time that day he remembers to give thanks. Stops on street corner. Stares at sky. Lifts arms. Wonders.

Satsuma

2009-12-22T20:51:00.000Z

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

2009-12-16T18:50:00.001Z

Superhero

2009-12-11T18:25:00.001Z

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

2009-11-05T20:18:00.000Z

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

2009-10-28T22:43:00.007Z

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

2009-10-25T11:30:00.000Z

:)

2009-10-20T19:14:00.000+01:00

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

Out in the Sea.

2009-10-18T20:01:00.004+01:00

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

2009-09-20T16:35:00.005+01:00

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'

2009-09-19T16:14:00.002+01:00

A letter I never sent

2009-09-16T21:46:00.002+01:00

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.

2009-09-16T20:28:00.002+01:00

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

2009-09-07T18:28:00.001+01:00

St. Vincent

2009-08-31T12:37:00.001+01:00

Love an Iceberg, Hate a Sack

2009-08-21T20:57:00.005+01:00

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

2009-08-21T18:31:00.005+01:00

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

2009-08-16T19:44:00.001+01:00

Another moving picture I have created.

Would you rather be a castle or a cat?

2009-08-16T14:10:00.000+01:00

Cat.

molecules

2009-08-12T18:54:00.000+01:00

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

2009-08-08T10:34:00.000+01:00

It's Not Always Like This

2009-08-05T21:14:00.003+01:00

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

2009-08-05T20:23:00.000+01:00

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

2009-08-01T17:46:00.002+01:00

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

2009-07-29T21:03:00.002+01:00

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

2009-07-25T00:20:00.001+01:00

That and old Throwing Muses vids. Not much else.

There is tiger breath on the back of my neck.

2009-07-21T21:37:00.001+01:00

It is hot and smells like tea.

No.

2009-07-02T20:36:00.001+01:00

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks

2009-06-28T18:59:00.003+01:00

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

Mania

2009-06-21T11:36:00.001+01:00

~

2009-06-15T20:10:00.000+01:00

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

2009-06-13T21:12:00.000+01:00

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

2009-06-10T21:11:00.001+01:00

An enchanted moving picture, conjured by yours truly.

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

2009-06-08T20:51:00.001+01:00

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

2009-06-06T13:01:00.000+01:00

Sitting in the Sun

2009-05-31T17:16:00.001+01:00

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

2009-05-30T01:14:00.000+01:00

Bag of Bones

2009-05-27T21:12:00.000+01:00

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.

2009-04-29T21:51:00.000+01:00

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

2009-03-23T20:07:00.000Z

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.

2009-03-17T21:14:00.001Z

It must be. Look at it.

The IBM man has dyed his hair.

2009-03-12T20:36:00.001Z

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

2009-03-04T20:17:00.000Z

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

2009-03-03T19:43:00.000Z

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.

2009-02-26T21:15:00.000Z

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

2009-02-25T20:00:00.000Z

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.