February 2012
9 posts
Skyliner
Leaving the party early, you mutter your goodbyes and push past shiny red faces and plastic cups to catch the last train home and spill out from the half-shuttered station doors, sober and unkempt. You left early because it’s not much of a big deal, but can’t help marvel that it is not something you would have done a year or two ago, even if the thought seized you, tonight in...
Syncn
On Non-human persons . Wonder what it must be like to be a whale. It is on the bucket list (hate that term) to behold a great blue whale, to have a full-length spectacular view of it. Have thought about it consistently such that it has almost assumed the form of a memory. The closest thing would be the model they have hung up in Natural History museums, but even then too much of a replica; too...
Rough Guide, Part 1
In a deliberate effort to organise my brain I acquired a small notebook in which to list down all the things I had to do [applications, errands etc] as well as groceries to obtain, food eaten, food craved, books read etc etc. Promptly lost it within the shiny Swedish entrails of Ikea, Tottenham Hale. Have felt compulsion to organise my life more whether deleting shit songs off itunes or even the...
Goon Gumpas
If the year is presenting itself in different colour phases currently it is oranges and blues. At the beginning of February a definite block of life folded up and now it is a different draft, confused origami crumpling and folding to the new, unsettling rhythm of things. Clementines sit patiently in the refrigerator until, un peeled, I find them drained of moisture. I force my inert self to...
Afterburner
Mittens is following me all over the house. When I go to the kitchen she comes to the kitchen and mews plaintively. When I sit in bed she also sits in bed. She is beside me now kneading my blanket, eyes half-shut, glazed in some mysterious cat-like stupor. She sounds like a small engine or an air conditioning ventilator. Maybe one day I will find out she is an alien. She has the most pathetic,...
Cut + Run
The Royal Albert Hall gives me vertigo. I have never been before. Seated on the upper decks we peer at trapeze artists and somersaulters triple-spinning in the air, as if that air is honey-thick and fluid.
“Corporate Clinginess” is a phrase that just came to mind. It doesn’t really mean anything, nor is it especially nice
Having polled people, the most popular power they would...
January 2012
15 posts
Surreal new short fiction →
Wildlife Stills
Today’s known aphorism is: YOU DON’T KNOW UNTIL YOU KNOW Because of the media and shitty tv and internet etc we are getting increasingly inured to a deluge of unnecessary information!!!! It is very easy to gain access to secondhand experience (whether through archive footage, reports, oversharing social media entries inclusive of indulgent Tumblrs etc etc etc) and as a result derive...
Aluminium
This year in London it will probably not snow. Not sure, but probably not. Supposedly it doesn’t snow too often in London but for the past 2 winters that I have been here the snow has arrived, thick and vociferous, somehow harsher than the soft soupy padding which descended over the fields at University. The W Midlands have receded from present context and now only present themselves as a...
Creative Writing →
Dysfunctional Human
Symptoms: perpetual hunger, sleep paralysis, sleep apnea, paranoia, blurred vision. Inability to perform simple mathematical calculations. conflict-magnetism. excessive ennui. vague, boring hallucinations, eau de Eeyore, regression, destruction of good things, second-degree denial, defensiveness, everlasting sinusitis, crippling love for bird insignia
Cryptograms
Email has been overtaken by spambots. Can wake up or leave the mailbox unattended for a few hours to find a grotesque bloom of new notifications, sick little mushrooms all mottled with code and alphabet. at least these ones are fairly innocent and undemanding not asking me to extend my penis or something like that they aren’t even selling anything, probably meaning to spread viruses or get...
World Sick
In the evening one gets hungry and smells steak everywhere. While full of respect for the perceived ascetism of vegetarians or vegans I imagine an elegantly pure life filtered from globs of fat and honey glazed crackling skin; an oil-free life, transparent and shorn of preservatives. Or how about the doomed fruitarians who only eat naturally falling fruit. I wonder if any of them get arrested for...
Pocket Calculator
Typing this with the text minimised to an ant-scrawl. Dislike screen being read over shoulder. The pink scarf above used to hang on the wall of the old flat on Hemingford Road. Secured by four spindly nails and right by my sister’s chipped wooden table, sage green and smothered in smoke. This year’s winter is sluggish but sudden. On Saturday we went to the Grayson Perry exhibition,...
Strange Animals
I edit the fiction section for an online arts publication. This is my favourite story so far. It’s about an axolotl.
http://www.nftu.co.uk/2012/01/12/axolotl-by-ed-price/
Read it if you are having a bad day. My blog ticker tells me I have 6 regular readers in Germany. Guten Tag!
Bright Tomorrow
[Poor to be banned from bringing spouses to the UK from overseas]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/13/home-office-proposals-family-migration
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/09/immigration-cap-resettling-skilled-workers
“Last year 84,00 skilled migrants were given the right to settle in Britain, but the immigration minister, Damian Green, said that in future only a...
Talkies
This is my new favourite actor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uggie. He won the Palme Dog, which is a Cannes award for a great canine actor. I hope they invent technology so Uggie never ages. Somewhat related the best actor alive, I think, is John Goodman. I base this on his performance in BARTON FINK, which is one of the darkest, cleverest films I have rested my eyes on. A sore throat has...
Weighs Like Mine
This year is 6 days old. Unintentional wine with my colleagues broke the no inebriation vow. Visa lotteries and leaving home, going back, applying for things, miles of chance and shitty bureaucracy, it’s too early in the day to be coherent anyway. Clattered home & cried on my cat and then quite embarrassingly all over L who is staying with us and the best person to have around. L told...
2046
Changed the banner. Today it is 2012. this year hopefully less disasters will happen, though it’s okay if dictators keep on dropping off like flies. someone will turn 14 and start wearing braces. someone else will die. someone else will get famous. someone else will invent something small and useless. someone else will get injured by an animal. someone else will fall in love on the way home...
December 2011
18 posts
Happy Christmas!
Brighter
How the sky feels, and also the name of an eighties (?) band I discovered recently. Fine in small doses, Galaxie 500 with a sugarpill, bittersweet verging on twee. It’s what I imagine precious/irritating boys in cream cable sweaters and light denim listen to as they are hanging out in their photogenically shabby rooms. Good music to listen to when daydreaming.
Done with work for the year!...
Blackout Beach
Last night was a funny one. I usually go out on fridays and had fully intended to, I was visiting the home of Dimplez and had some crisps after a visit to the catacomb like wine bar which was stuffy and medieval. And then we were going to go out to a party but I found my eyes drooping and before I know it I was stricken with the profound, mildly embarrassing narcolepsy which has afflicted me all...
Sleepwalkin'
This is an old song I used to listen to all the time. Isaac Brock with the broken voice. Night-time waiting for nails to dry, feel wrought + overwhelmed. Eyes are tired and arms are disappointed of all their hanging by my sides. We waited at the bus stop for 13 minutes after a nice but exhausting evening speaking up and down the road and then watching a play about obsessive compulsive disorder....
Some Velvet Morning
Between typing in this blinking field and falling asleep, I must choose typing here. The weather is bleak and I am banal as always. Morale is very low in my head and it shows in my face. I look crumpled up like a piece of tissue paper and my hair is sticking out all over the place like feathers on a duck’s butt, but not in a glamorous way. Look like shit. Well, sure am glad I’m no...
Watchdawdling on an application. deja vu? Made a mix that is a rough version of a mix am making for someone.
Sunday in My Room Slow Space Music
Bored Games
Dear Tumble, it is Sunday but I have been up since past seven, tired but unable to fall back asleep. It’s like having tennis balls stuck to my back, I can’t lie back down. I feel inchoate and upset. Pretty down right now, throwing my hands up in the air. It’s only been a little while. I guess this is a Blue Period, a short burst of demoralisation.
Even tired of the thoughtless...
Prelude for Time Feelers
My eyes are sore from insufficient slumber. Have you ever seen Batman Returns? The bit where Selina Kyle tumbles down into a rainy alleyway, all dead and splayed, porcelain legs and symmetrical face. The genesis of Catwoman. The feral city cats bite her to pieces, resurrect her in all her feline, malicious glory. Just remembered that scene. The only manner I can relate is having my hand nipped and...
Merriweather Post
Oh wow, the christmas party went really well and having my two poppets over went really well also. last night was so rad. It is still rad. My vision is swimming and I probably need to get to sleep now
Everything in Between
This computer is so slow I see the Beach Ball of Doom and Frustration on the screen more than I see my own face several times a day. Tonight it is the office X’mas party. Here is what to expect: a lot of standing around, letting a flute of champagne gradually cool in one’s palms, left to right hand switch, the tucking of hair behind ears, trying to sip in moderation whilst containing...
November 2011
15 posts
Maps
My sister says I should read up on History to take me out of the Present a little bit. At the time she said this I was looking at her thin wrist flicking the ash into a tea cup. It was cigarette smoke curling into the earliest hours of the morning. Or maybe I should read up on other people to stop talking about me, me, me, but then again this is my blog. Maybe I should revamp it to be about the...
Ghost Blonde
Neurosis Log! In going through my possessions I have realised the extent of my hoarding problem, and identified it as a concrete and pressing issue that needs to be resolved. This is most evidenced by the fact [aside that I’ve been sleeping practically with my face pressed against stray envelopes, old handbags, debit card bills from 2008] that I have thrown evidently not a single thing away...
Shadow
It is nearly noon, and here I am in bed listening to music on my headphones because this laptop is dying in phases. First the battery life, now the sound drifting into one ear tinny and neglected, through a soup-can from the moon. Having the luxury of friday off has made the long weekend even better and can barely tolerate the idea of going in tomorrow, it’s like a bad dream.
I guess...
Holy Other
A softened shout out to anyone reading this not even just Aaron, or my brother, or friendly ghostpals, or disappointed porn surfers, or disgruntled ex boyfriends:
The project of India Emmott http://indiasbook.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/india-emmott/ is the most intriguing and original writing prospect I’ve come across in a long time. am still trying to complete my submission and it always...
Wave Like Home
Because they existed, I have consumed, by 10am, four thick slices of shortbread and 4 milkyway snackies. I am a butter-mule, a denizen of Casa Glutton, I am so full of sugar I could puke all over my keyboard where many crumbs reside. My back aches from sleeping wrongly, somehow. In the name of heart-clog, oh energy slump, I regret it all! I want to be a celery-chomping, morning-jogging endorphin...
Incomplete Probably Never Completed Story Excerpt
My perfect year of happiness ended when I saw the carcass of a small dog on the road. I had just alighted the number 74 bus and was walking home. It was about 7:20pm, not quite dark yet. The air was humid and disappointing as always. The dog was a sad smudge on neutral concrete. Blood blotted gray fur and indistinct features. How he (for I decided it was a he) must have had a lovely, loving nose....
Drain Cosmetics
Wenny is done with her pHD! She submitted it yesterday and aced an interview. Change is good, it is probably healthy for you unless you are a small house animal. never in favour of hamsters as pets; they feel too feeble, too afraid. I’d rather pick on someone my own size, like a gruff dog or a schizophrenic cat like the one at home.
Last night I realised all the things I’d been...