Fairytale Management

Detached a little

2012-01-24T22:00:00.002Z

It’s a sad thing but the older you get the crustier you become and the less caring you can be about what I’ve come to label “detached death”. Detached death is when someone, not in your family or immediate circle of friends passes away. Usually it’s an ex-colleague or workmate or somebody you happened to know briefly due to an artificial or transitory social situation, most likely based around your employment. You’ve probably not seen them or heard about them for while and then along comes the news, borne by someone wearing a suitably glum face that “old Bob” or “Jenny who worked the copy machine” or “Fred the truck driver” have died.

Immediately you go into respectful reflective glum mode and talk in low and serious tones. You ponder a little on your knowledge of them, try to figure out how old they were and under what terms you last saw them. You realise that you didn’t really know much about them and great swathes of their lives are imagined badly and ignorantly by you. Maybe even as a black and white movie but what else is possible, you don’t know Jack about them. Then you feign for a while. Feigning is trying to appear upset or caring when really you’re not at all affected. That person has died; you know their family will be feeling bad, all the usual things will be happening and that’s pretty terrible for them but you know that had you never seen or heard of that person ever again you wouldn’t really care. They are of course more than a face and a name or a staff number, they’re precious human beings, but they really don’t mean anything to you. Particularly now that they don’t work here, or you don’t have deal with them or worse put up with them because they were irritating. In truth they were dead already; they died the moment they quit, or retired or moved on and of course the exact same thing will happen to you when your time comes.

Here we are shuffling along like penguins, we know and recognise the ones close by, they keep us warm, protect us, we do the same for them, we laugh and chatter and journey together, we share a common love. Penguins on an ice flow making noises. Those others though, farther out to the left or the right, just a little beyond our reach are something else; they have their peer group, their helpers and their own pace. We may nod or wink or blink towards them, they may politely return but their journey is their own. When they fall we can’t halt and turn to pick them up, there are too many others in the way and we are moving away all the time, each of us caught up in our own blinkered piece of progress. So we feign, a second’s hesitation, a thimble of respect and then we go on.

I doubt if the Queen cares about the medals or awards or knighthoods she gives out, the numbers are too big, the production line is relentless, she is a machine and they are passing cogs. Clicking and whirring and having a moment, the Queen is the champion of the feign and unfortunately as I get older and cogs and wheels continue to obit at a distance or pass me by so am I. I’m sorry for anyone who has some of my detached death going on but that sorry can’t generate a real tear, can’t put me off a ham sandwich, discolour a holiday day dream or stop me looking forward to getting home. My survival instinct is strong enough to know where and when I must spend my emotions, at what point I can empathise; the odd charity, African water shortage, natural disaster or donkey sanctuary gets through but few of them stick…

It’s not religion or charity we need, it’s perspective.

Dangerous wiring

2012-01-14T21:35:00.001Z

Wiring diagrams and the random samplings of cheesy baguettes: Those stumped by the antics of their Twitter alter egos remain bemused, their sharp and pithy messages resonating around cyber-voids and causing excessive stimulation to some or is it that the are simply transmitting clues to a huge, sprawling crossword puzzle than none of us, earthbound and blinkered as we are, can actually see?

God has given us dangerous minds. They say that people who have had religious experiences early in life and then moved on (as life's rich tapestry of strange beauty and disaster unfolds), still cling on to their spiritual wreckage remaining passively obsessed with god and their abject failure to find him or even some close approximation. I'm not sure who it is who is saying these things but I wish they'd stop and allow the likes of us a little head space in which to explore other less fuzzy, less furry and less fussy modern conundrums. Modern life is quite simply a quiet conundrum, a game with shifting rules, narrow windows of opportunity, possibilities that we cannot grasp and because of this, huge potential. Imagine my pleasure therefore at discovering the Swiss, bespectacled boffins at Nescafe (a division of some bigger and uglier thing) had devised sample sized sachets of coffee, milk and sugar molecules fuzed into tiny pieces that could be activated by the simple addition of a small quantity of boiling water to form a tasty and invigorating hot beverage. It has a name but as it is so close to that of god's own (secret) name I dare not even speak it or write it down. I shall call it a supreme guilty pleasure and say no more.

The Ticket

2012-01-06T14:29:00.002Z

It was the raffle prize of a lifetime, a seat at the top table at the Grand Vizier's Garden Party. She could hardly believe her luck. It was of course the social event of the year, all of the cream of society would be there, the weather would be perfect (it always was) and the whole event was the most marvellous spectacle and experience. She nursed the ticket in her open hand and mused a little more over her good fortune. What should she wear? Who would she be sitting next to? She thought of some the wonderful anecdotes she'd heard about previous winners, how their lives had changed, how their fortunes had improved, VIPs they'd met, some had even married or travelled to other planets and even strange countries as a result. (I should point out that interplanetary travel was considered relatively normal for most people but a local passage from country to country had become a lot more difficult and unusual these days, this was mostly due to diplomatic rather than technical travel issues).

She put the ticket back into the metallic blue envelope and locked it up in her fire and ant proof safety deposit boxes. (You had to be very careful about ants, there were many tribes of highly intelligent ants operating in the area and being ants they were inclined to acts of burglary or simply just carrying things away, you had to take sensible precautions. The good news was that a small bowl of sugar could be left out and that would distract the ants, in fact if they ate enough of it they became drunk and were then relatively easy to apprehend and capture them). The last thing she wanted was the ants to carry away her prize and then try to sell it all across the Inter-ant Net System to whoever or just hold it to ransom. She pushed the box keys and entered her security digits. “Phew, the ticket is now as safe and ant proof as I can make it.”

She made herself a hot banana chocolate and allowed herself a deep, smug, happy and satisfied smile. She flicked over the catalogue pages and thought a little more about her dress.

Bright blue somewhere

2011-12-31T22:28:00.003Z

So I was caught up in the moment, a memory, a glimpse into the workings of the mind. The lazy mind that, as far as we see fails to retain so much. Of course that's not true , we are all cameras, we load up a mega pixel record the world that goes deep into the library. It's the playback that is the problem, that and locating the images. The grey, ever bumbling information that becomes cross wired and tired out and too lazy to recount itself in any comprehensible way. The mind leaves us with jumbles and tasters, distortions and non-default versions prone to decay and exaggeration, wildly sometimes.

My version of my world and my experiences is crazily unreliable, untrustworthy, stared at through a milk bottle bottom and then scrapped in the dirt, but it is all I have. The good news is I can beef up the pleasant and dull and discolour the nasty. All by myself I can rewrite that tiny pin prick of human history I inhabit and dance, every forgetful on the head of the pin that caused the pin hole I walk across. Here am I, whoever I am, whoever you were, wherever that was. You'll have to take my word for it though.

How good it was

2011-12-02T18:28:00.005Z

Front cover.

Back cover

I'd forgotten how good this album is, the first I ever bought. Hard to imagine that I was listening to this whilst my parents watched the Black and White Minstrels on the BBC. Things have changed.

Blue bird of happiness

2011-11-23T18:58:00.002Z

Then there was the day, that special day, one in which everything rhymed. I looked out of the window and I saw a blue bird. It was just as you had said it would be but not to me. Between the grasses and branches, between the sky and earth, dancing on an easy wing. Gripping the finest perch, letting go in a millisecond then alighting, so gently. An unfamiliar sun was moving around a foreign sky, all to a pattern and formula, the very correct details that somebody else had worked out. I watched it for what seemed like hours but the study was over in minutes, perhaps less, all played out in elastic time. The image however has stayed in my mind, like a tattoo or some beautiful ordeal or torture I can never quite forget. That deep and lazy blue, the divine colours blending in form and feathers and a tiny, pounding heartbeat, there inside. Heartbeat, wingbeat, strange pulses and the lightness of the golden moment.

It was also on that same day, I saw you, the far side of the quadrangle, walking away, looking back, then moving on. You had your own choices of colour, chosen and worn and on display. You didn’t quite see the blue bird, you were elsewhere, in thought, meeting yourself headed in another direction, perhaps. My thoughts stopped and then raged and then engaged and formed up in a time stamp. A black and blue mark that was never to heal. How careless of this fragile mind of mine, the only one I shall ever know, to see and hear these things so briefly, for such a small amount of time, only then to blindly and so easily let them go.

A certain sense

2011-10-09T20:52:00.002+01:00

A certain sense of not quite belonging, not home not away,

A part and piece, an entity but incomplete,

A certain sense, a vague feeling,

Stuck on the edge, struck out,

Without quite knowing what it's all about,

Because nobody really knows,

Nobody really knows anything.

Do they?

Madonna McGowan

2011-10-02T10:34:00.004+01:00

Madonna McGowan

Madonna McGowan

Gone up to the town

Her nails are bright purple

Her thoughts go in circles

Her temperament brittle

She might scream, she might spittle

Name has nothing in the middle

Like a Polo mint

She spent time in a hospital

Some institution or special school

She mixed with offenders

She offended the mixers

Nail varnish remover her elixir

Of choice and necessity

She read your tattoo

You read her ones too

All crimes, mean, nasty, petty

But she's forming a plan

Looking out for a man

To nail varnish the town

Madonna McGowan

Her of the daisies, in town.

Dali

2011-09-14T21:07:00.003+01:00

Salvidor Dali

Sneakin' down the alley

Heading for the ballet

In the Auditorium

Hieronymus Bosch

Under the cosh

Never at a loss

In the Planetarium:

There are many artists out there, most are not quite parasites

Many deserve their human rights

More so than others might allow, for art is such a sacred cow,

To the educated, emancipated masses,

Who want it done away with,

Daily Mail style, while all the while just

Moan about the licence fee

So we give it away, for free.

Paul McCartney's Lamborghini

2011-06-29T20:26:00.005+01:00

On the street or on the TV

On the beach in her bikini

Like a woman likes the meaning

All the boys are heavy breathing.

In the pages, on the screen

Everywhere you've ever been

Tyre marks black across the road

All the places that you want to go.

Wire wheels and shiny machinery

Paul McCartney's Lamborghini.

Couch v Sofa

2011-06-05T15:24:00.007+01:00

"Great, that stuck up bitch won't ever notice a twenty missing from her handbag, nor that mascara either."

"This is fecking useless, a horrible tinny sound that won't impress Simon or the other judges."

"Ok, I'm fed up with you SKY, so maybe I can't recall my PIN number, you lot must have it on file somewhere, I'm payin' £40 a month for this."

Not a couch but a sofa, a return to the settee: Doe eyed and supremely satisfied with their lot in life they sprawl barefoot in carefree ecstasy never worried about the interest free bow-wave that crashes before them. Sofa women enjoy the warmth and comfort of having nothing to worry about or be responsible for as they relax into sofa induced trances in their perfect staged lounges across the world of advertisements. There are no spills, crumbs or pet hairs here in the sofa dimension. Couches are king, places to dream dreams, stroke cheap guitars, rummage in a neighbours handbag while she makes the coffee, talk to the sofa help line on the phone – it's all like a perfect world stuck in 1955 (which we all know happened to be the perfect year) and nothing needs be paid for until after the divorce is finalised.

Terrorist's blues

2011-05-09T19:34:00.004+01:00

whatever's done is done

lost to change, out stare the sun

embrace the blindness yet to come

safe in some knowledge, ripped and torn

that those in power couldn't care less

for the truth, honesty or openness

so you just hurt and take another hit

with no way of expressing it

the poor, the foolish and the brave

watch the concrete poured on every grave

recall the faces but the names are gone

step into shadows everyone

clear as blood, too thin to run

whatever's done's already done

whatever's done is done

Radiation rose

2011-04-15T15:36:00.003+01:00

In Bank of Scotland blue, in radiation red

In General Motors blue , in radiation gold

In Levi Straus blue, in radiation glow

In Barclays Bank blue, in radiation rose.

Somewhere

2011-04-05T12:41:00.008+01:00

We were left to look for our own forms of wisdom, to find it where we could, to seek it out, to nurture it and so make it clear and believable. We had the dream that we would be understood and that, ultimately understanding would prevail and we would prosper as we passed through. As a young man I took that road, not realising where it would ultimately lead nor did I appreciate the ardour of the journey or the full depth of the disappointment that I would feel as I neared it’s end. To travel so far for so long but never arriving was not something I was prepared for. I had comforted myself with the knowledge that friends walked with me, we were a troop, a cabal, a team searching but one by one they strayed or fell away until I too finally was lost and all but consumed. The road’s end now beckons, neither a cliff edge nor a dark cave, not a blinding light or a peaceful refuge, floating on some serene ocean many miles deep. No, there will be none of that, that is not my fate for I see now I never had a destination nor a direction, I followed and illusion and is into an illusion that I have travelled. There is no way back. Somewhere in the distance I hear a cat’s meow.

(Some scholars, such as Michael V. Fox, have suggested that Ecclesiastes is influenced by philosophies like Stoicism and Epicureanism. “The boldest, most radical notion in the book is...the belief that the individual can and should proceed toward truth by means of his own powers of perception and reasoning; and that he can in this way discover truths previously unknown…This is the approach of philosophy, and its appearance Ecclesiastes probably reflects a Jewish awareness of this type of thinking among foreign intellectuals…He does not look to revelation or tradition for guidance. He believes that he can discover what is good to do in life by acquiring wisdom and using it to examine and contemplate the world. This is the stance of Greek philosophy…Koheleth’s focus on individual experience, in particular the perception of pleasure, bears a significant resemblance to Hellenistic popular philosophy, whose central purpose was to find the way to individual happiness by the use of the powers of reason. The Epicureans sought happiness through pleasure and freedom from fear. The Stoics thought to find it in the shedding of desires and passions…In 1:4-7 Koheleth mentions that the four elements compromise the totality of the physical word – a notion common to Greek philosophers especially Stoics…These general similarities…support the hypothesis that the author was aware of some concerns and attitudes of philosophical thinking current in the Hellenistic age.")

Sphere

2011-03-21T20:38:00.003Z

This sphere believes we’re doing well

This sphere considers there’s no hell

This sphere knows life in every cell

This sphere believes we’re doing well

Jewels

2011-02-13T19:10:00.003Z

Sleeping in tiny jewels

Across the place where the universe was

A hand was reaching, fingers crosses

We watched with awe but felt no fear

For love’s sweet shelter is always near

Always near, always near,

Some where close around about here

In the corner where wisdom rules

Sleeping in those tiny jewels

Under the red sun in a rusty sky

We point to crosses and cross over bye and bye

We stretch the boundary you and I

It’s not enough to say you tried.

It’s not enough to say you died

Nothing is ever enough.

So the longest story goes

We walked across the oldest stones

Steady as thunder and sand blast

Where ever the five winds blew us

We held our breath to address the past

In the corner where wisdom rules

Sleeping in those tiny jewels

Bathsheba

2011-01-14T15:27:00.002Z

Bathsheba had a lover

She loved him eye to eye

She fed him bread and hogs head pie

And they danced on through the night

Bathsheba made a promise

Before the moon and sun

With trickled blood she praised the Lord

But the damage had been done

Bathsheba stole the answer

She took it to her heart

There’s slim and thin who don’t get in

The church is torn apart

Bathsheba had a lover

The lover slept all night

She called the Lord but he ignored

"Why does he stay so quiet?"

"Why does the Lord stay quiet?"

She called the Lord but he ignored

"Why does he stay so quiet?"

Bathsheba’s gone to Heaven

Or so the good book said

Bathsheba’s name is still alive

But the lover is long dead

The lover is long dead

Under the knife

2010-12-14T19:24:00.004Z

Looking at you and your artificial self.

You will go under the knife.

Your brow is a tortured lie, your lips a mess,

You will go under the knife.

I try to study another photograph to make some sense,

There only is, the sense of self defence,

No reliable point of reference,

As you go under,

Inevitably under,

Fighting back but you're under the knife.

...half biscuit

2010-11-26T16:17:00.004Z

There are questions in the corner of my mind that lurk

Like how do the road gritters ever get to work?

Answer me that and you could win a lifetime of a cruise

But hold the phone, here’s Judy Tzuke to take us to the news.

So Tanita Tikaram remains obsessed with tragic Judee Sill

Said “Jesus was a cross-maker who’s making crosses still”

And Linda Ronstadt covered it and so did young Beth Orton

There may be better versions but most of them are now forgotten.

On a moon-lit night when nothing’s right I think of Warren Zevon

The werewolf riff we can’t forgive and a caravan in Devon

The Hollies didn’t make it right nor Dexy’s Midnight Runners

But I used to have a Telecaster not unlike Joe Strummers’.

Life

2010-10-31T15:32:00.004Z

A life in Brief:

My parents were

Esoteric fabulously rich working class from the extreme North East of the UK via the Soviet Union with a Swedish bloodline.

The house I grew up in

Small with woodchip on the wall, you know the rest.

When I was a child I wanted to be

Marilyn Monroe

If I could change one thing about myself

I would have preferred to have larger feet as they would have given me a stable platform and kept me rooted and grounded during lifetime times of trials and exasperation.

You wouldn’t know it but I’m very good at

Masturbation

You wouldn’t know but I’m no good at

Planning and organising elaborate Prussian style award ceremony banquets and sober deer shooting weekends. Then doing the washing up.

At night I dream of

The blackness at the end of time or fluffy clouds, ponies and golden harps.

What I see when I look in the mirror

Most times I see a mirror.

I wish I’d never worn

Out my knee cartilage

My favourite item of clothing

My Christmas Hari Krishna begging robes

I drive

A custom Tuk-tuk around the windswept streets of Glasgow handing out warm soup to the homeless.

My house is

Not my home.

A book that changed me

“Grease and all that greasy stuff didn‘t help my complexion much “ by Olivia Newton-John.

My greatest regret

Born too late to participate fully in the Renaissance and the French Revolution.

The last time I cried

I stubbed my toe on the bed leg at 3AM in the dark.

My five-year plan

To be President of either the USA or the UAR.

What’s the point?

All religion is a noble but pointless and absurd pursuit pursued by the unenlightened, encouraged by the idiotic.

My life in five words

”Once there was a way…”

Concrete

2010-10-28T22:27:00.002+01:00

So here I am in that awkward place between inspiration, concrete temples and perspiration. Focus is diluted and well unfocused, ideas are there but a little too far out of reach, energy is low and a nagging irritating voice says to me in an unpleasant accent, “what’s the point?” I hate that voice and I work hard in a brain cell crunching, twisting way to ignore it, I avoid any answer or direct dialogue. Even this small piece of typing seems like a risk. Does describing an atrocity, a work of horror and cruelty or a terminal disease bring you closer to it or does it create a buffer? Do you risk becoming overcome, becalmed or set adrift? I’m opting for the cathartic effect, a cleansing move and a geography defying revisit. Something better than the other options and inactions. So this dull pain, like a thick headache or ongoing hangover, not a writers block or a dry spell but just a lack of the drive, one that avoids and argues to postpone the act of closing, the act of closure, the finish and the final step back to look, to take in, the final finished piece.

Mirror Lake

2010-09-29T18:18:00.004+01:00

So we headed for a winter honeymoon,

But the desk clerk said “the snow is comin’ soon”,

“You’d better take a four wheel drive, help you make it through the night”,

But I don’t know

Drove from Winnipeg up to Mirror Lake

Just to see how long the journey'd take,

Never did apply the brakes,

But I don’t know

Been bathing in the hottest springs

Jumpin’ cracks and different things

Try to mend those broken wings

But I don’t know

And every time I hear that lonesome train,

I think about the people, the shoguns and the rain,

Caught your eye a while ago, seems we take things pretty slow,

But I don’t know

A cowgirl waitress told me “live it well”

And always end the set on “what the hell!”

I should’ve let her kiss and tell,

But I don’t know

So I’m in the arms of someone that I love

Fate called round and we gave it a shove

Learned a lesson, learned it late, three big pancakes on my plate

But I don’t know

So now I know.

Soul

2010-09-09T20:19:00.003+01:00

Growing into your soul

Weird that you don't sense me

Recompense me

Try to apprehend me

As I'm growing into your soul

After all these years still

Growing into your soul.

Stacks

2010-08-22T21:44:00.003+01:00

Stacks and sticks

Thrill me to bits

But pain will never hurt me

Scottish seas

And chilly breeze

A hundred miles from Dundee

Golden slate

A garden state

I couldn't really careless

Waves that break

And earth that quakes

A hundred miles in Caithness.

Waterfall adoption thingy

2010-08-02T19:05:00.004+01:00

All over (some parts of) the world orphan waterfalls are looking for, waiting for, hoping for your generous adoption donation. If you like waterfalls, rocks, the sound of rushing water (a bit like God's voice) then this is the scheme for you. If your dream, or that of a loved one has been to be immortalised in tasteful clear, non-brackish water then this is what you have been waiting for. Pick a waterfall from our exclusive catalogue, donate, donate, donate and we'll see to it that your name or inspiring motto is written in one of three special places on your very own waterfall, choose from:

On the falling water.

On the swirling, splashy bits.

In the deep pool.

Your once in a lifetime choice, it's all permanent H20 to us, so don't delay.

Stay wet.

Duck Down

2010-07-16T17:03:00.001+01:00

Take care

I’m not a millionaire

Look straight ahead

It’s a velocipede

Know what?

I’m not an astronaut

Take that

You’ll have heart attack

Don’t strain

We cannot make it rain

Hey fox!

Inflatable buttocks

Bling Bling

You like some shiny things

Keep clear

I’ve got a pint of beer

Duck down

Is fluffy.

Random number

2010-07-16T16:58:00.003+01:00

Penelope Cruz

Is an actress and dark eyed Latin beauty

She may be under scrutiny

Or not but

She features in films

In feature films

Not non-feature films

Nor non failure films

Or railway films

But films that succeed

Successfully featured

Featuring her

And her featured co-stars

They feature this creature

This lovely creature

For fashion and feature

And occasional screws

Screwed by Tom Cruise

Then had a wee snooze

Did Penelope Cruz

Then got wed in a garden

To Javier Bardem

In a Galliano dress

She is a success

And Spanish apparently.

Some figures were released just in time.

Ships like these

2010-07-05T22:48:00.005+01:00

In ships like these, the young men went to war

Saw the things they should not have

Whispered the unspeakable

Watched good friends die

As mistakes were made

Stayed brave and bucked the odds

Swallowed thick oil and salt water

Bobbed in the cold, cruel sea

Cried in bunks and shook with fear

The young men went to war

And came home brittle, hollow, hurt or lost

Voices silenced

Peering through the mysterious glass

To see reason

Ill conceived plans tossed aside, ruined

Sunk

In ships like these.

The spiral path

2010-07-01T19:17:00.003+01:00

I am climbing and so are you. We remain fixed however, stuck on the climb, the long ascent while we wait on oxygen and energy, halfway upstairs.

We share the same problem, the desire to progress, to create and leave a mark while we wrestle with a lack of drive and energy and the daily grind of working and earning.

Our lives are a mess of contradictions and imbalance. We struggle for a time and then seem to glide, we look for progress and see feet stuck in mud. Strangely, all around us the undeserving appear to us to flourish. Succeed.

Our own terms are not on our own terms. They are fixed by others, dark, nameless and hooded. From somewhere ahead they mock - at least that's what we think. Most of the time we are unsure.

But the fact remains that I am climbing and so are you, by degrees and steps, we explore this spiral path.

Which way is up?

Smoke Fairies

2010-06-15T22:09:00.003+01:00

Smoke Fairies

That blend with light

And rise and fall

Wisps and circles

The early touch

In nose and mouth and hair

To take the edge

Away and here

Or over there

So beware

The fairy

And the smoke.

Pineapple heads

2010-06-07T13:17:00.003+01:00

A cargo ship full to the gunwales with pineapples docked in Scotland earlier in the week. We, the most restless of natives marvelled at the strange and exotic sight as the fruity cargo was unloaded. We lined the dockside and cheered as the brave stevedores moved the boxes from their container cruise line home to the back of a grey and yellow Bedford lorry that grunted with customary disapproval at the effort. It was, for a moment as if some tropical carnival scene had erupted out of a street party and spread itself across the suddenly sunny Grangemouth dock.

At one point the leader of the shore party pulled out a huge Commando knife and in an almost symbolic set of moves raised it towards the heavens it’s shining tip glinting in the sunlight and then suddenly plunged it into the corner of a box and cut a great gash along the side. The cardboard collapsed and a dozen large pineapples poured out , were caught by the dockers and then flung into the cheering crowd like errant footballs. Hands were raised and heads bobbed as the juice grenades flew over the heads of the people. There was a scramble, more whoops of joy and then the retrieved pineapples were held aloft and carried away into the streets in a triumphant wave with the passion and enthusiasm of some kind of sporting victory or shared tribal rite.

Once the lorry was loaded and the container cleared the atmosphere began to calm, the truck drove away to distribute the fruit in the wider world and the fortunate locals who had witnessed the event began to disperse. However as a calm descended here and there small groups formed around the prized pineapples, those gathered from the fatally stabbed box and they stood and marvelled at their shared prizes. In their eyes and in in their minds questions formed, how do we open them? How do we eat them? What will they be like? What is their texture? Will there ever be any more? Is it all over for us? It was a summer the taste of which we thought we would never forget.

A week later I regret to say the pineapple remains were rotting under broken autos and all but forgotten - it was the day that the first ship carrying boxes of Trojan American Super-lube condoms arrived since the end of the Great Pan-European Wars of 2016/17. We, the most restless of natives marvelled at the strange and exotic sight...

Mask

2010-05-17T22:36:00.002+01:00

“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

Sell us your soul

2010-04-19T21:42:00.003+01:00

By placing an order via this Web site on the twenty first day of any month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from impossiblesongs.com or one of its duly authorized minions.

Phillip Pullman says...

2010-04-11T11:06:00.002+01:00

On spirituality and the rest...

"Nowadays, I’m as sure as I can be that there is nothing there. I think that matter is quite extraordinary and wonderful and mysterious enough, without adding something called spirit to it; in fact, any talk about the spiritual makes me feel a little uneasy. When I hear such utterances as ‘I’m spiritual but not religious’, or ‘So-and-so is a deeply spiritual person’, or even phrases of a thoroughly respectable Platonic kind such as ‘The eternal reality of a supreme goodness’, I pull back almost physically. I feel not so much puzzlement as vertigo, as if I’m leaning out over a void. There is just nothing there.

Consequently, the immense and complicated structures of Christian theology seem to me like the epicycles of Ptolemaic astronomy – preposterously elaborated methods of explaining away a mistake. When it was realised that the planets went around the sun, not the Earth, the glorious simplicity of the idea blew away the epicycles like so many cobwebs: everything worked perfectly without them.

And as soon as you realise that God doesn’t exist, the same sort of thing happens to all those doctrines such as atonement, the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, original sin, the Trinity, justification by faith, redemption and so on. Cobwebs, dusty bits of rag, frail scraps of faded cloth: they hide nothing, they decorate nothing and now they mean nothing."

It's a new year somewhere

2010-04-09T22:21:00.001+01:00

I was unaware that the Thai New Year celebrations occurred in April and that, irrespective of nationality and other allegiances, many of the locals would vigorously indulge in marking the event by drinking heavily. On the evening in question I was becoming reacquainted with White Russians and was in fact supping on one when the clock struck 12 midnight. The party was by this point spilling into some strange uncontrolled place and the only person in the room with either Asian ancestry or Thai Nationality was already comatose and horizontal. The line to be taken with the official celebrations therefore seemed to me to be beyond pursuit. It was a New Year of some sort, I imagined many good Thai people (mostly in Thailand) raising their glasses to whatever new number it now was but I myself remained puzzled, after all we were in a cramped and overpriced pub in Broughton Street, Edinburgh.

Scarfe says it

2010-04-05T22:30:00.001+01:00

Tiny Ears

2010-03-31T21:47:00.003+01:00

Tiny ears listen to hidden worlds.
Tiny ears hear tiny words.
Spoken in the silence.
The silence of the arc.
The arc across the heavens.
Above the tiny worlds.
I hear some tiny words.
Somewhere.

Some vehicle

2010-03-29T22:07:00.004+01:00

Last night I had me a dream but tonight sadly, we must pay tribute
to some one already dead. Who is here, who is anywhere? You don’t know how sweet you are
And at the moment and I should’ve been there.

Once I had it all, yes, see the North East Force 7, visibility generally poor and all to the point.

He was never a manager and nobody but nobody takes you seriously when you are 23

Despite what you said before you’ve got to let me know. We bring the women and the cars out apparently, a lovely ten minutes.

Her lips are warm while yours are cold.

They don’t have to give him a three year contract anymore.

“Well I am asking you.. Classic. Choke your heart and you fall apart, this western feeling strains and remains. Look back, how far have you come in this foreign place But you wont come down and settle. I can explain. I know what “Please please me” was all about, For experience and that’s it, what else would it have been?”

Traveling in some vehicle.

Unremarkable Car Parks

2010-03-18T17:57:00.002Z

One of Fife's unremarkable car parks.

Where are you now, unremarkable car parks? Acres of grey space but no space to park, crammed and cramped with miscellaneous vehicles all there for good reasons, visits, shopping, going for a wee walk etc. Some unkind drivers double park, over the lines, across exits and carelessly on the edge of a row, sneaking in to be with the others. Trying to solve the emotional problems of their lonely car by getting up close and personal with a body of strangers. Then the diadled badges or are they disabled or are they at it or unable to read. Some cars are new and snooty, some old and battered, others ill maintained and taken for granted, turn the key and go and never check the oil or clear out the accumulated litter in the boot. The social work office have the worst records in terms of car care but I never said such a thing. Optimistically looking for spaces, hoping, waiting for the moment. Hoping nobody comes in the other way quickly and steals that vital place, oh the injustice of it all and the inner quiet rage. Ticket swoppers and hander overers, failing to read the small print on the ticket next to the stupid advert, some where it says "not transferable" but how would they ever know? If you want to travel you have to park, the parking is remarkable, the car parks are not.

Cool Thing

2010-03-14T23:09:00.002Z

This is a cool thing. Red and orange and green rainbow snake, angular in the dark. Walks the line. Mighty fine. Great square shoulders and optional pads, she was very popular with the lads. In those days, those old days, bad days. When we were the friend's of snakes and their impressionistic representations in whatever form they took before they were regarded as evil. So I was told.

I was drawn to this but I did not draw it.
I copied this but I remained original.
I found it in a strange place but I had been there before.
It seemed quite ridiculous but made perfect sense.
I avoided the confrontation by meeting it head on.
I was hungry but fed up.
I was thirsty but found it hard to swallow.
In the end I had to send it back but I won't return it till tomorrow.

Johnny Depp

2010-03-06T18:26:00.005Z

What is it about Johnny Depp that makes him the success he is?
Idiosyncratic films and commercial junk.
Living out some Bohemian dream, in a dream scape.
In France.
Another movie comes along.
You can't quite believe.
You can't quite believe, it's all too good to be true.
You believe, I know you do.
But I see through you.
And all the boys are jealous 'cos all the girl's think he's hot.
Which he probably is, whether I like it or not.

Rat Race

2010-03-04T21:08:00.003Z

The problem with the Rat Race is that even if you do well and win it, at the end and in the end you are still a Rat.

Jennifer Taylor

2010-03-01T22:13:00.003Z

She was standing outside the Coop. She asked me for 97p for her bus fare. I said that I had no change. In the shop I bought bread and soup and dithered a bit, I thought a couple were following me. My laptop is on the front seat of the car. There was a queue at the till because a young man was cashing in his lottery tickets and scratch cards. The assistant apologised for the wait, I said that it was fine. I walked back outside and the girl was still there. She looked at the ground as I handed her a pound coin. "Now I can get my bus" she said, "thanks". I thought of Karma, Heaven and Hell as I drove away nursing some unnamed guilt. None of the feelings made sense. Few things ever do. This is a short, short story.

Jenny Taylor

2010-02-28T17:55:00.002Z

You don’t know where I’m going
You don’t know where I’ve been
You don’t know what I’m laughing about
You don’t know what I mean.

Tie me up, tie me up, tie me up, tie me down.

Dance, dither, turn, tumble,
Melt and merge, something precious,
In the mix, how we revolve,
Return , converge.

I don’t know where your going
I can’t tell what you’ve seen
I’m just glad you can laugh at it all
Don’t have to know what it means.

Tie me up, tie me up, tie me up, tie me down.

It's my thing

2010-02-16T22:18:00.003Z

Family business. Barclay’s billions will result in bumper bonuses for all.

Listerine Smart Rinse cleans where brushes miss.

There’s no better way to start your adventure than with the multi award winning Singapore Airlines.

T Mobile are challenging the established rules.

Now we need you to go to 4 Music.com

Cover your nakedness and worship our Lord.

“To failure dear brother!”

Post Production Supervisor.

She’s got all that except she has a cheating husband.

The cost of living is going up fast.

The reason they think you are crazy is because you are collecting little shirt buttons.

The official has lost his job but must now face court action.

A well know local businessman and boxing promoter.

Selfridges say they’ve sold out.

Unfortunately you’ve got to have Posh’s cash to get Posh’s look.

They are real women. You can tell.

Why don’t you just say sorry?

Today Donald Trump has submitted his master plan to Aberdeen Council, including details of their houses.

There have been a few interesting editions to it….wonderful steam collection.

It got nasty and they was singing bad songs. It riles you up.

Is that what you really want, me and you cooped up in that rabbit hutch?

The nice thing about autumn is people.

He’s seen attitudes change since then, but it’s not his fault.

People were moved by the story of the boat people but now we’ve lost sight.

Asylum has become a dirty word.

It’s only a fifteen minute hop to Guernsey.

Up to £6000 contribution towards 3 Series models, at Eastern BMW.

Everyday in the Scottish Daily Mail.

A group of assassins carrying fake British ID are at the centre of an international investigation.

Where the tin was removed. Saved by a whisker.

Television evidence is not the answer to referees problems.

She’ll wear black and stand alone on stage.

I picked up a pillow and smothered him until he was dead.

Just like most British people do.

I thought, “how am I going to get myself on there? I’m a jewellery expert with a bit of a difference.”

Do us a favour and put some vodka in that orange.

We are very close to that stage and it’s all very exciting.

Cheryl can’t sing to save her life but she is brave to perform.

He’s become a massive hit on the internet.

Shovel, drift, shovel, drift back over. Can I get a one-way ticket to New Orleans?

A weather warning is in force across the Grampians and Highlands of Scotland.

The chairs were a bit rickety and now it’s raining over Coventry Cathedral.

It’s always been known as granny’s sewing table. There was chemistry between us. Never.

Staff at the bank’s investment arm will get an average of £191000 each.

Checking into assorted hotels.

Where did these come from? They belonged to my mother. They are just charming.

Mitamultiair. Get to the next level. Alfa Romeo.

Paratroopers with pink machine guns and camouflage. It’s my thing.

Surreal Handbag

2010-02-07T22:09:00.004Z

I'm lost and unaware
your handbag
where is it
and what does it look like?
black grey or brown
crammed and stretched
with what at the bottom
only one person knows
worries and accounts
for many things in
various amounts.

your handbag

Degrees of success

2010-02-06T13:54:00.004Z

The less you say the more likely you are to be heard.

Interesting

2010-01-30T22:19:00.003Z

Things that are interesting:

1) Interesting things.
2) Things that stimulate the latent interest nerves.
3) Things you can look at or into.
4) Things you can listen to or sounds you can create.
5) Puzzling things*.
6) New things that perhaps you’ve not noticed before.**
7) Surprising things***
8) People can at times be interesting and so demand a degree of observation.
9) Stories - in whatever form of media they are told.
10) Interest (general).

* Puzzling things are characterised by their normally very puzzling nature.
** Can also be puzzling.
*** Not dissimilar to puzzling things.

Almost Karma

2010-01-25T21:19:00.003Z

I do what I do but then I did something.
Something else.
Something unheard, unseen.
Something you don't know.
Uncertainty.
Ties me to the universe, so I think.
But I always was, something.
Never everything, never nothing.
The things. The thing.
Ties me to the universe, almost.
Almost Karma.

In the bathroom

2010-01-20T22:31:00.005Z

In the bathroom keep scissors handy, you never know when you may need them.

Scotland, a land with so much where so little is done.

The media: At odds with itself and it's supporters.

Documentaries: Factual films without conclusions.

In the kitchen keep towels handy, preferably near your hands.

Cat food does not easily go down sink drains.

Sky 1 is a TV channel completely lacking in personality.

Cold sunglasses refresh the face like a lick from a passing sheep.

Scrabble: A game where familiar letters are made into unfamiliar words.

In the bathroom there is no music other than the rhythmic drip of the cold tap.

In Praise

2010-01-16T20:15:00.003Z

In Praise of Coca-Cola and all it's extraordinary properties: It holds our fragile world together, it scares the pants from the deadly spectre of the hangover, it makes a nice fssssssss noise, it features in glossy commercials, it has latent power, it is stronger than many Third World governments, it tastes quite nice, it is a lot better than Pepsi and I can tell.

Best of all it works like the warm demist setting on your windscreen and clears the fuzz, smog and cobwebs from inside your brain.

It's alright

2010-01-15T21:44:00.004Z

It’s alright Grandma...

...I had a grandmother who knew the names of all the Christian Apostles and could recognise their images on apostle spoons, a well know series of tea spoons popular in Victorian Britain and later on in the East Neuk of Fife when the caught up. Apostle spoon recognition, what a gift and a useful and marketable skill. Would Muslim4UK, the well know text message based religious organisation approve of them? Probably not, they don’t seem to approve of anything apart from their own ridiculous world view. Must be tough and a tad stressful having to be right about everything all the time. Probably why they’re in a permanently bad mood with us all.

“Those that defend what they cannot see with the killer’s pride, security, it blows their minds most bitterly to think that death’s own honesty won’t fall upon them naturally , life sometimes must get lonely.”

Perhaps a better and more acceptable spoon would be “Karma Spoons”, they could only be used if you’d cleaned and cared for your last spoon. Failure to look after them could mean food poisoning , black fingernails, loss of inner peace and achieving an inferior standard of reincarnation next time over.

“And if I though dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.”

Events at a funeral I recently attended made me wonder about organising or if you like facilitating at a public debate between the good people of Muslim4UK, the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes, some Glasgow Rangers FC supporters and a group of tall blonde Nihilist from Berlin.. The topic would be “What aspects of human behaviour mark a true and loyal supporter of the British Crown and Constitution”, then the debate would run via text message only. I presume all of these groups have opposable thumbs.

“Advertising signs that con you into thinking you’re the one ,that can do what’s never been done, that can win what’s never been won. Meanwhile life outside goes on, all around you”.

Antediluvian of course means before the flood or more correctly “before the deluge” The period of time (1656 years) between creation and the flood. Unfortunately it was (apart from the sun, moon earth, animals, plants and mankind being created) a period of great wickedness and boredom. Imagine that a mere 1600 years into creation everything got so screwed up so quickly that such drastic action was required. Bugger. So the predominately wicked Antediluvian period came to a rapid and watery end when God sent the flood and so wiped out everybody apart from Noah, his immediate extended family, a few animals that had conveniently paired themselves off and naturally representatives from Muslin4UK who were accommodated in a separate boat. They did have a few problems getting a good phone signal however and argued amongst themselves a good deal of the time. Meanwhile the rain stopped, a dove found a branch and the rest is history according to our version of history that is.

Footnote: During the Antediluvian period 500 million humans were born and then mostly drowned or ran away to the south pole and froze. Their remains were pummelled into the soil by natural forces and subsequently turned into coal, diamonds, penguins and diesel. Overall then we’ve benefited from this whole event apart from the loss of the unicorns who died because they missed their time slot on the ark. They were listening to a Val Doonican song at the time via headphones.

“A question in your nerves is lit yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy and show you not to quit, to keep it in your mind and not forget that it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to. Although the masters make the rules, for the wise men and the fools, I got nothing Ma, to live up to.”

Comments in italics by Mr Zimmerman of course.

Oracle

2010-01-07T21:24:00.006Z

The collected wisdom of Fairy Tale Management: part wop wop of an occasional series on good advice, suggestions and hints and tips for you from the deep pool of the Fairy Tale Oracle. Terms and conditions apply and there are other blog type things available but I've no idea where.

Always err on the side of gravity.
You can lead a horse to water but not a mouse.
Cooking can be complicated but with no guaranteed result.
Attention spans are shorter than the speaker might think.
A telephone call is a small voice far away.
You can live quite well without music.
Your odd socks will go unobserved.
Though urine is sterile beware of the strawberry jam.
The climate is whatever you get.
Those who drop litter are idiots.
You will be surprised by the output from the seeds you plant.
Families will argue more than friends.
The bottom of the freezer drawers are a mystery.
Clean what you can, no one will notice the rest.
A man without a tie has as much clout as a man with one.
Most people have already seen the thing you consider brand new.
Everybody gets stuck behind a tractor, there is no need to share the tale.
Standing still in the shower does not get your body wet all over.
Think whenever you can.
There is always a news headline but the weight of the stories change.
The days of pubs are numbered - sadly.
You cannot keep snowflakes alive.
There is care and there is extreme care but who knows the difference?
Your community is where you are, whether you like it or not.
It can get colder.
You may not be going anywhere.

White Rose

2010-01-01T13:59:00.003Z

Every honest one of us
Remains ashamed these days
Never in my name we say
For all our children’s shame.

We will not be quiet
Who says yes means no?
We are your bad conscience
Sent to hold this white rose.

One day the veil falls away
While crimes stretch out to tell
Guilt can’t just evaporate
Your heads will fall as well.

Your heads will fall as well.

Here we all are

2010-01-01T13:55:00.003Z

Lady Ronaele

No excessive use observed
But my dreaming leaks persist
The old age and the mystery
The punishing mental history
Inflated pictures and the dubious taste
Of my lost pleasures and their worn down waste.

Some dreadful social gaff
Unspeakable but such a laugh
The cure may be a tepid bath
Or an operation’s aftermath.

I’m stoical and belligerent
A new man, once intelligent
A customer and a complainer
Card carrying atheist and true believer.

So we rejoice in a machine gun membrane
A quality of life unpicked and scattered
To keep your chin up in dignity
With the hope that nothing mattered.

And no one noticed…
…then in walked Roderick Usher with the Lady Eleanor.

Based on the base of a true story by the Brothers Grimm.

This is not Facebook

2009-12-21T19:59:00.002Z

Gentle Giant

2009-12-08T21:57:00.003Z

Simon Dupree and his big sound,
Came to my town,
Came to my town,
And left as Gentle Giant.

Sooner or later

2009-11-19T15:20:00.004Z

Every so often a bird falls from the sky. Lone members of the great armies of birds, squadrons of feathered warriors, falling from the sky, in a slow, skinny , silent rain. We never see them fall, we never hear them land. All that remains is the decayed evidence of their soaring lives found in fields, hedgerows, wasteland, in tree branches, in the great stone plains and at the bottom of the rivers, seas and oceans.

There lives are unrecorded, their history unwritten and their magnificent and terrible journeys are forgotten and blown away. Their routes and plans, what they have seen, what they have done and the families they raised and lost make up millions of untold stories that stretch back to their dinosaur descendants.

We look up occasionally, we crane our necks to watch the weather, mask our eyes from the sun, rage at winter moons or puzzle at the cloud shapes. Outside of our narrow view they soar and dart like our own stray thoughts, never quite at rest, never quite getting anywhere. Staking a strange curved claim or forming a zig-zag geometry across the blue and then back to earth. Tiny souls searching, feeding and posting messages on wires, towers and steeples, tree branches and windowsills till the call comes to them, to fall back to earth.

Sooner or later we all fall back to earth.

Magnus Robot Fighter

2009-11-18T22:41:00.004Z

When I was a child
I wanted to be many things
At times they conflicted
As if I could care
So it came to me
Unexpectedly
That Magnus Robot Fighter
Was who I'd like to be.

The result of some comic bought
Without much plan or thought
The steel hands of Magnus
Chops robots down like trees
In North Am 4000 AD
The diversion lasted
Till we got a colour TV.

Personal Space

2009-11-16T19:21:00.004Z

A virtual female defines her personal space - as one might expect.

In the universe territory is important and it's useful that you learn, at an early how to define and control it particularly without having to urinate. It's quite simple really, just extend your elbows sideways till they form a 45 degree angle. The space that you now occupy in the X and Y axis, horizontally and vertically is all yours. It is in the true sense all that you will ever own but by the universal laws of time and personal space it is yours and no-one else's. Enjoy.

The male version, simple, similar and to the point.

Grand Hotel

2009-11-15T17:17:00.003Z

In The Grand Hotel
Grand people dwell
Or so one assumes
By the size of the rooms.

But when the glory fades
And the thin paint peels
The grand walk away
With a click of the heels

So I drink a toast
To those Grand Hotels
Ne'er do wells
That scans with nothing
And their numbered days
And their numbered doors
And celebrity lives
All gone in an eye sparkle.

Greenland

2009-11-05T17:32:00.003Z

fly if you want me to
fly if you want me to
fly if you want me to

going to greenland via the moon
going to greenland via the moon

fly if you want me to
fly if you want me to
fly if you want me to...

Fly, if you want me also.

Lottery

2009-09-07T21:44:00.003+01:00

Lottery

Friday: Jackie ran her finger across the pink ticket and read the numbers slowly, mouthing each one as if reciting some whispered poem or incantation. “ 03 10 14 23 40 47.” They were as wild carded and random as they could be, drawn from a lucky dip setting in a branch of ASDA she’d never visited, bought on an impulse and quickly folded and hidden away in her purse like the golden key to a lost treasure. Trembling she had paid for it with the only pound coin in the purse and all through the transaction she had made deep and uncomfortable eye contact with the young man operating the till and the ticket machine. The she had spun quickly on her office heels and walked smartly out of the door and into the car park and across to her car. Once the door had slammed she pulled the ticket out and read the numbers and repeated them, over and over again. Inside her head, aloud, aloud in singsong, aloud in whisper, aloud in a deep made up voice, in accents and with pauses and in staccato rhythms that just came to her. The numbers were alive with a new identity she had breathed into them. After fifteen minutes she put the ticket away, started the engine and drove away, still recounting those six squiggly and fateful digits.

Once Jackie was safely home and the door locked she undressed and quite naked she took the ticket, rolled it up and tied it with a purple cord like a tiny scroll. Then she laid it on a bed of fresh oak and myrtle leaves and scattered the contents of a small brown bag over it. A fine dust of herb like powder covered the leaves and the ticket and she walked around it seven times. Then she placed a wicker pentagram measuring about two feet across over the pile of leaves. She walked around it a further seven times, clockwise and then anti clockwise. Then she stood quite still staring down at the ticket a repeated the numbers, “ 03 10 14 23 40 47, 03 10 14 23 40 47, 03 10 14 23 40 47.” Many times, I don’t know how many times, certainly until it was dark.

Saturday: Jackie woke up on the floor, she was wrapped in a blanket, a stale smell of incense hung in the air, Jackie coughed and rubbed her eyes. The room still revolved around the sacred pile in the centre, the ticket, the leaves, the willow pentagram and the herbs. She stood still wrapped in the blanket and walked over to the window and tugged at the handle. It was stiff and she wrestled with it, it came unstuck suddenly, the window popped and a stiff breeze flooded the room. The wind seemed to spiral up and around the room as if searching, it whisked the curtains, rustled the flowers on the mantelpiece and then saw the pile on the floor. It spat on the leaves and scattered them all over and then picked up the ticket, blew it across the room and into Jackie’s’ outstretched hand. Jackie looked at the ticket, smiled, pushed the window shut and sat down in the corner flicking the ticket between her index and middle fingers. She closed her eyes and whispered, “ 03 10 14 23 40 47.”

In the distance the church bells chimed twelve noon. Jackie opened her eyes and laid the ticket back into the centre of the pentagram and began again the ritual of pacing around and repeating the numbers.
At two o’clock the phone rang, without breaking stride she swooped on the handset, picked it up and spoke, “Yeah? Yeah! Yeah! Ok, see you at seven”.

Jackie stared at the blade of the dagger. Its polished surface reflected the room interior. She laid the blade flat onto the palm of her open hand, her left hand and squeezed it. She gave a slight tremble and bit the corner of her lip. She squeezed the blade more and trembled more then threw it down. It felt like she’d walked through a mirror or a pane of glass or a wall of ice. She pulled the blanket and walked into the kitchen, boiled the kettle and made a cup of coffee, the knife was too much, much too much.

From the kitchen drawer she drew a sheet of paper, the guide and instructions she’d been working from. The preparation, the steps, the moves, the ingredients, the spells and the commitment, she read the whole thing again. The knife. She clutched a pill bottle and shook out and small handful, pondered and threw them into the bin. Then back into the room with the ticket and the knife. This time she didn’t hesitate, she pushed the blade hard into her pink and stretched palm until a red flow appeared, she muffled the scream somewhere back in her throat and fell to her knees, the knife dropped and she spun her arm throwing the bright red onto the scattered leaves, the willow and in a fine spray the ticket. She grasped her hand again and rushed into the kitchen once more, wrapped it in a towel and lit a cigarette with the other. She sat on a stool and vacantly looked out of the window, the towel pressed hard to stem the flow.

An hour later the bleeding had stopped and she returned to the ticket. It was still rolled up and now flecked with red speckles on the outside. She picked it up with her right hand and began the circling and the chanting again, “ 03 10 14 23 40 47,” a sing song tune seemed to accompany her numbers recital. It was nearly four in the afternoon but she had decided to consciously lose track of time, if she could.

There was a thud at the front door, she jumped in surprise and clutched the blanket. She was still naked underneath and sweaty and dizzy with number dance. She was also suddenly aware of a heavy tiredness that was falling all around her. She unlocked the door and saw Buzz standing there. Buzz was dressed head to foot in washed out black jeans and a t-shirt, a heavy silver bracelet was round his right wrist and a chain around his neck. He wore motorcycle boots but didn’t appear to have arrived on one. They exchanged few words, he tried to kiss her but she pushed him back, the pushing continued as they walked (her backwards, him forwards) into the lounge. They stopped and she showed him the ticket. The lounge was sparsely furnished, a couch, a TV, a coffee table and few baskets in the corner. Jackie was suddenly aware of the leaves and the blood stains splashed and scattered across the carpet. Buzz noticed them also, shook his head and smiled “You’re a good girl, let’s see your hand”.

The blood had dried but had been diluted with sweat, the thick red line of the diagonal cut remained and Jackie’s fingers curled in towards it protecting it and pointing like a road sign. She was in pain. Buzz pushed her again and in a quick and mechanical move she grabbed the back of his head with her right hand and planked a deep kiss square on his lips. They coupled and toppled onto the couch, Buzz pulled himself out of his clothes, Jackie’s blanket dropped and they rutted together in the cushions and then across the floor. Time swam for both of them, the ticket had passed from hand to hand to floor, the chanting had long ceased to be replaced by grunts and sighs.

Buzz stood up, pulled on his trousers and hiked the t-shirt back over his head. Jackie was rolled up in the blanket asleep. It was grey dark and cold. Buzz moved through to the kitchen and emerged carry two lit candles, he placed them on the floor by the pentagram, he returned to the kitchen with another two and formed a cross around the shape, he picked up the rolled ticket that had been discarded earlier and returned it to the middle of the remains of the leaves and herbs. The flickering lights awoke Jackie, she sat up on the couch and moved her knees under her chin still in the blanket. Buzz was in the kitchen, glasses clinked and he returned with wine for each of them. Hardly a word had been spoken for some time but after a mouthful of wine Buzz seemed eager to talk and began musing about the lottery ticket, the spell, the candles and how “everything was about to change”. Jackie, slowly coming back to life assured Buzz that she had done everything according to the instructions. “The spell is set, the time is right, everything is coming together for us.” Buzz gently stroked her injured hand, held her fingers and kissed her fingertips and nodded. It was seven thirty, they stared down into the candlelight and onto the tiny numbered paper.

There are many things in life that you can control, there are many more that you cannot. The tension between these two positions, those points and circumstances, has baffled and infuriated the greatest minds, the commonest man and noblest of kings. Seizing the initiative and making a change, willing your position on, against the odds and against the forces of nature, time and the will of whatever god you can name are constant markers in our lifelong struggle, and the struggle to control goes on, by any an every means possible and imaginable.

280 miles north of Jackie and Buzz’s couch, in Berwick upon Tweed, Jackie and her husband Bob were sitting on the couch finishing a Chinese carry out and watching the credits roll on the X-Factor. Bob flicked the remote and called up teletext screen 555. In the back pocket of his jeans was a ticket with three lines on it, he checked the results and swore under his breath, he turned to Jackie, “nothing for me this week darlin‘, you get a ticket?” Jackie reached for her handbag and pulled a ticket from her purse, she read the numbers aloud and watched as Bob’s face lit up in a huge and uncharacteristic smile. “My God! 31, 1, 4, 23, 40, 47...we’ve won!”

Buzz looked at the ticket, “a bloody tenner, all that for a bloody tenner!”

Out looking

2009-08-27T20:13:00.003+01:00

I was outside, looking for scooters, their raspy burp, their noise and stutter and chrome accessories. Beasts and creatures from the 60s or thereabouts. This left me no choice other than to go home and compose crazy emails, none of which I ever send, the thought of the reader reading them and the potential exposure is too much. The grim reality that is actually far grimmer than reality itself but no I never was a big fan of the film Rosemary's Baby. Not my cup of tea, nor Mr Polanski and his wretched life nor Mia Farrow and her peculiar life. Peculiar like some but different in other ways. That just about sums up the death of the short story. No misspellings found.

Carol

2009-07-17T15:48:00.003+01:00

Craig was on his own in the flat, the TV was on in the background playing a documentary about the Beverley Sisters, Jimmy Tarbuck was talking about the London Palladium. Craig was in the kitchen stirring milk and sugar into a white cup of coffee whilst looking into the distance. His mind wasn’t on the TV or the coffee or the annoying fungal infection glowing red and white beneath his foreskin. Neither was he thinking about smoking a cigarette, though that seemed like a good idea, no it was Carol. Carol at the counter of the bar, Carol with the cleavage and the beer and the smile and quick line in cheek and wit, available to all the customers. A golden haze surrounded her in his head in his self indulgent daydream, she wasn’t prefect but she was close to prefect. He stopped stirring coffee into submission, sipped a little and nipped his lip. Then it was back to the couch and some mindless channel hoping to fill the gap until pub time came around.

8.45 was pub time, a clean shirt, a little gel and out down the stairs, through the dim to bright light effect of the lower and corridor and out onto the street. Twenty five steps down the grey stained pavement, a left turn past the laundry, the Chinese and the vacant double glazing shop and then the Saracen’s Head, Carol’s pub, the pub. The spring on the door always needed a tug to overcome, sharp and defiant, holding back entry to the bar but a brisk practiced pull led into the dark brown interior. Craig quickly made a mental note that none of the regulars were in, a suit in the corner reading a paper and nursing a pint, two students fiddling with phones and crisps and an older gent munching on a sausage roll. By now he was leaning on the bar looking up, down and across optics, racks and glasses for Carol.

Up from under the bar a dark head popped and a gruff voice announced “Aye, what’s yours!” Craig was momentarily stunned, no Carol just this white shirt, steely blue eyed interloper. “Emm..IPA please, a pint!” The new barman looked away and poured the beer slowly, carefully, he knew what he was doing. “So’s Carol not in tonight?” Craig gulped at the end of the short sentence. “Carol?” the barman said casually, “aye she’s gone, am just fillin’ in.” “Ah right, Carol’s in tomorrow then?” “Naw, she’ll no’ be back.” Craig gulped again. “Got another job then, another pub?” “Naw, getting’ married, this weekend, keeping it quite, her lad's a biker, £2.70 that’ll be.” Craig handed over three pound coins, scooped up the pint and wobbled towards one of the round tables. He was controlling himself well, nobody could know, nobody could see the huge slow tremble that was grinding up and down his spine like a lazy snake, feel the sweat and heat, the embarrassing heat, the warm backward glow of his failure.

Suddenly aware of his surroundings Craig saw he was facing the bar, seeing the space where Carol should be, the new barman now dotting back and forwards, serving a customer, handing over change, making the idle chat, switching the TV channels. Carol was gone and was marrying somebody, how could his goddess marry a mortal man, an ordinary man, a man not him, a biker. Craig finished the beer and without looking back left the pub, through the stubborn door and onto the street and the suddenly spongy pavement, no Carol, no future. He was looking at his shoes, the street lamps fished fat and distorted shadows from the paving stones, his shadow was staggering but was still walking, walking past his flat entrance and on down the road, walking in a panic, burning up and showering in a wicked adrenalin. A bright pub door was opening before him, not the Saracens’, this would do.

Craig woke up. He was squashed onto a wooden bench, a church pew. Looking around there was brass, stained glass, Jesus and Mary and assorted saints, assorted plaques dedicated to the heroic and rich local families, dignitaries and Victorians. He was at the back by the door with no memory of how he’d got there but today had become tomorrow, he could sense that much through an aching head. Looking over the carved edge of the seat he could see a lone figure down by the alter, some candles flickered in front of it, now recognisable as a woman. Slowly Craig rose to his feet and moved silently towards the alter and bank of candles. The woman was sobbing into her hands, quietly, purposefully, unloading. Craig looked at her, her head was covered, her age and look indistinct in the shards of stony church light. Craig sat beside her an touched her shoulder, he was feeling something but it was something beyond himself, a not knowing. The woman responded to his touch and fell silent, “Carol?” he said as if it was the only word he could find. The woman turned and with a crumbling and cracking voice said, “y..you knew her?”

Strange people

2009-07-15T19:18:00.002+01:00

It’s the people who don’t look when everybody else is looking that you worry about.

They are there and they are everywhere, some say. In shop displays, grimy reflections, magazine covers and behind windscreens and tinted glass. Blankly staring out of office windows, on buses and other forms of public transport, in queues waiting to served with tea and coffee, standing beside supermarket trolleys, pushing supermarket trolleys, putting their purchases into trolleys and then depositing them into the rear end of a cheap Korean hatchback. Others hold mobile phones up to their heads and talk incessantly or text with their thumbs using those popular fonts. This is the unique vision, a world without end or sense, more painful shopping excursions, dirty public transport, food that reminds of congealed slurry and buildings built with materials that are suspect from designs that are corrupt. In the back ground sweet and soulful slide guitar music plays but is drowned out by the hammerings of the water pipes buried deep in the apartment walls. Once their clanging stops, strange screams and thuds are heard, all from unknown sources. The banal and the everyday are unpeeled before our eyes and after our unreliable thoughts have started to form into some pained rejoicing actions. So we cling to the cold wreckage and maintain a sober but polite sense of humour thinking “it could be worse and it could be better so it must be all that it is.”

Amerika

2009-07-15T19:15:00.003+01:00

I always dreamt of America,
A bright place in my 1950’s dreams
Scurrying across the pillow
In the monochrome of the TV
But sharp as gangster
And as defined as a cowboy
Black people in white shirts
And spaceships with monkeys in them
Hamburgers and Coke that you don’t get at the Coop
Road signs and hoardings
Names, games and advertisements
Households with porches and screen doors
Things that I don’t know what they are there for
Each telling some fantasy
That becomes as familiar as a friend
A foreign language I could comprehend
Where the ugly becomes as beautiful
As tailfins, long cigarettes or bucket seats
And so I lay me down to sleep
To dream of the mythical America.

Islands

2009-07-15T19:11:00.002+01:00

“There are at least 27 islands but I have heard that the count can vary, at least two are inhabited and they are a fair size, the others are just covered in trees.”
“Surely you could just fly over and count them to get a true figure.”
“I’m sure that has been done but for some reason the count isn’t always consistent, even modern map makers can struggle at times.”
“Well I’d have thought that we had the technology to count a few islands on an inland body of water.”
“of course some of the islands aren’t islands at all, they are actually floating and from a surveyor’s perspective that could cause problems, you know, float islands might merge or sink or break or something.”
“OK but you can still establish what islands are real by simply landing on them.”
“I’m sure that has been done.”
“But every so often islands appear or disappear so fudging the count?”
“Well it must be possible, we’re a developed country.”
“Crannogs? Are they called crannogs?”
“The floating islands?”
“Well they could also be man made, perhaps thousands of years old but still floating.”
“Crannogs don’t float, they rest on wooden stakes or piles or something, and in relatively shallow water.”
“They could be mistaken for islands though.”
“Well yes, in the sense that they are in the water but not on it.”
“We need to take a boat trip.”

intermittent stimuli

2009-07-10T21:24:00.004+01:00

Summer memories in winter

The most commonly played card in the pack
Placed face down
Worn at the edges
And round

Constructing the end of the game
Celebrate the way we came
To be here in this adopted strangeness
Always unaware of the rush

The breeze that blew the years
Was just exhaled breath
And I sip and suck
On past times and curse what passed for luck

I took no time to even mention
The tired and unjust predestination
That colours all their chaotic thoughts
And bought us nothing

So we salute the rain
And the intermittent stimuli
That feeds a waking need
Evermore invisible

Some tunes and fragments
As we go
As our forces splinter
Some summer memories in winter.

Methodist Madness

2009-07-06T21:04:00.003+01:00

Kelvin believed that there always was an undiscovered best method for doing anything. There had to be some new approach or some change or improvement that could be made to any task that would take it to some new economical or expedient height. It could be described as continuous improvement of course but that term had become rather debased and tired in the world of modern business. Kelvin liked to refer to his thinking processes and their results as simply “better methods”.

In this state mind, not fevered but normal in his opinion, all of Kelvin’s waking hours were spent exploring and studying other ways to tackle the rudimentary and the basic things in life. At times the copious amounts of lateral thinking were almost painful. He would break into sweats making a cup of coffee or spend thirty minutes trying to decide where best to lay down the TV remote, the position of furniture, groceries placed in cupboards, clothing in drawers and on hangers, mixing laundry and then the optimum amount of time to wear any piece of clothing. Sometimes getting out of the house was a major problem if there was some new approach that he had to test out whilst in the process of leaving. Fifty ways. He soon began to realise that he needed a better method of establishing better methods, his own world was too small and his time available never enough and of course the point of better methods was to get to the place where all these economic methods paid off and the individual became free to other things. That point seemed further away than ever as Kelvin wrestled with mundane activities that continually scream out for his attention.

Sometimes he felt like god hearing the many never-ending prayers for improvement and understanding from the routine tasks: Shower from the head down, only use one shaving product, comb wet hair, just a centimetre of toothpaste on the brush, turn the tap 1.5 turns, socks on last, always put your valuables in the same pockets or bag space whenever you go out- so it went on.

Eventually Kelvin made it outside and into his car and after a short altercation with himself decided on the best route to take to his office. Already tired by his incessant self analysis and questioning he began to day dream in the way that regular drivers do. He was conscious of moving forward, slipping up through the gears, weaving through traffic and obeying the many signs and lights that came into his blurred field of vision when it occurred to him, “Why not get others to do it all for you?” That was it, get others to study the methods, make the improvements and then they’d simply update him in a way that allowed his adoption of their method. Suddenly he was aware of his driving again as he slowed down to join the queue of traffic that was forming up in front. So what was the best method to employ to get others to develop these best methods and then in turn report them. This was something he’d have to research. The best methods to engage and motivate people, the means to inspire them to understand his goals and then for them to have a similar motivation to deliver solutions. This in itself was significant and he’d need more help with it, just to understand the process before he fully embarked on it through his extra hands. It was as if Kelvin’s universe’s boundaries had spurted in growth exponentially, now where could he go and where would this takes him?

Kelvin’s office was very logical in it’s layout, it had taken a few attempts but now once the furniture had been rearranged numerous times a truly methodological balance had been struck, the emphasis being on function and not form. He sat at his desk, switched on the PC and picked up the phone, he looked at a list of numbers on the wall and punched the keys. “Hello is that the First Minister’s Office? Kelvin Bishop here at The Scottish Executive, I’d like to speak to somebody about a slab of new funding urgently required for a very special project that I‘ve recently become aware of.

Almost two months later Kelvin handed in his resignation, there were by now a team of 25 people working on “better methods” on behalf of the people of Scotland. The “Better Usage Methods - Measures Engineering Revisions” or BUMMER Project was taking Scotland and the lives of the common people by storm. Neurotic and irrational behaviours has increased by 50% in the few weeks the project had been operating and domestic violence and personal debt are spiralling out of control. “Excessive social micro-management, change for the sake of it and increased self based absorption are the causes” said an official spokesman.

Kelvin was last seen heading for the international departures desk at Edinburgh Airport carrying a biography of Tallulah Bankhead in one hand and a Chinese “ear” cushion in the other. He seemed to have hit upon a better method.

Black and White

2009-07-06T19:20:00.002+01:00

Brian was hunched over the pub urinal in the usual way when he first noticed the little spot of blacky brown pigment on the tip of his foreskin. There were currently about five pints of Guinness in his system and he recognised that now was not the best time or place to do further research so he quickly did the business and returned to the bar nursing a small amount of concern and the strong desire to have another beer.

Next morning he awoke with little recollection of the previous night, typical Friday was as much as Brian thought. It was only when he lazily took of his pyjamas and stepped into the shower that he realised that something was not right. The previous evening’s small spot was now about a inch wide, a deep dark brown and was covering the entire head of his penis. He applied soap and scrubbed and inspected the result only to see no difference. He comforted himself with the thought that at least there was no pain or bleeding and that it must be some sort of skin pigment problem or mole that no doubt could be treated eventually. That would be ok.

At work Brian was distracted and much more than usual paid visits to the toilet, not to use it but to inspect the “browning” effect. With each new observation it became clear that the small square stain was spreading rapidly and Brian was beginning to panic. He quickly excused himself and drove down to the local A&E where he demanded an urgent consultation. The details of the problem were difficult to explain the young lady on reception but fortunately a male doctor came upon the scene and seeing his obvious distress ushered him into a cubicle.

Brian blurted out what he understood to be the problem and the doctor duly examined him. “I’ll need to run some tests, please wait here a few moments” said the doctor, his face a picture of perfect puzzlement. Brian tried to calm himself and not look but as the examination had been running it had almost been as if the new colouration was moving more rapidly, almost right down to the base of his penis and threatening the rest of his body. Already he looked like a white man with a black dick, a concept he did not find amusing.

The doctor returned accompanied by a female doctor and a nurse, “do you have any pain?” A series of questions followed whilst the nurse administered what was described as “ a relaxant”. Brian continued answering the questions as best as he could but his head was starting to swim, the medical faces blurred and their speech rose and fell like some peculiar and formless music. In a few minutes the waves of sleep overcame him and all was gone.

Brian awoke slowly in what he realised was a strange bed, behind the curtains it was clearly night time and the room was only lit with the red glow of emergency exit signs. He stared at the dull ceiling and angled unlit lamp and tried to collect his thoughts and walk away from whatever dreams had passed over him. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and let out a gasp. Even in this poor light he could see that the skin on his hands was a very deep brown, the colouring had spread. He pulled back the bed sheet, sat up abruptly and opened the surgical gown. All his skin was affected, head to toe , a new thick skin had formed. Bursting with an indescribable feeling he stretched across the bed to look into the small vanity mirror. An eerie beery black face stared back and crop of new and frothy white curls was perched on top of his head.

Suddenly a light switched clicked, the room was dowsed in a brighter but unhealthy electric glow and the doctor walked in. “Ah! Brian, Mr Encino, I’m glad to see that you are awake, I’m afraid it’s what we thought, a pigmentation problem has occurred within your skin and hair cells. As you can see your tone has turned a very dark brown and I’m afraid it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. “ “God almighty.!“ Brian gulped and made some curious choking sounds. “Nurse!” called the doctor.

When he next regained consciousness he quickly became aware that the doctor was there hovering over him checking a pulse and writing on a chart. Along with him were two men in suits who sported grim expressions on their faces and did not look like the usual medical types. “Mr Encino, these gentlemen have asked to see you, they are from a famous local brewery, apparently there was a problem with a recent batch of Guinness“.

Clouds

2009-06-25T19:23:00.002+01:00

I had wanted to drink more but by now that seemed pointless. In fact I just wanted to drink, smoke, eat and stimulate every part as far as I could and could survive. I imagined an imaginary line, red in colour somewhere near the top of my head, I wanted it all to go up there and beyond, covering the dip stick. All the dials showing full and fuller still. It was a series of silly , destructive, juvenile, lovable thoughts. I tried to dismiss them but who has any power over their thoughts, who can exercise that kind of control over any such an abstract thing?

I was probably rolling now, probably unsteady, doorways, stairs, seats and the smell of cooking, the wide world I was peering into all had a warm and ragged edge attached. Seats and levers and a vague sense of the others around me. I knew it (the feeling) didn’t belong there and I didn’t belong either. It was about then that I became aware of the clouds. White and shiny and magnificent. A wild parade of random curves swooping and diving in their own cloudy slow motion and I felt I was amongst them. Rays of golden lasers of sunlight would penetrate and pursue them ready to bring them low as if they were hostile bombers in formation. Light like some surgical incisor pushing into the droplets and swirls, threatening to deflate and explode all this flying water, brining it down as an unholy rain on the masses below. The white fluff moved towards me and through me, I was excited and elated and on the edge of needing to be drinking more, everything in my senses was overloading and the barrage of cloud was like some final piece of over indulgence. I was focusing on the strange detail, the changing shapes, seeing the inside out and the microscopic detail that was pushing against my retina and back into my brain. I was high.

Time was a lost concept, the cloud armies overrunning and over coming at me like crazy Chinese warriors or a sweating and rising Hawaiian surf. I felt my nose pressed against glass, my palms were dry and then wet, there was a crackle in my ears, I was still elated but unaware, the voices were close and then far. I could hear words but not get the meaning. I pulled my fingers tight and moved my knuckles, like a pianist preparing to play some elegant sonata. I wanted to roll up my sleeves and read the music, see the notes and hear the tune. I knew I was a part of something, I knew I was in a team, perhaps the leader , perhaps the apprentice, surely the apprentice, young and immature and infatuated with clouds and the silly feelings of feeling good. I must because I had an invigorating and clear sense of having no responsibility, no pressure. Perhaps I was the tea boy or a messenger who just fetches and carries and never has to think. I must be that, a winged messenger striding through the tinted fields of strato nimbus and cumulous without a care like some flipped out experience junkie. Maybe an angel, maybe I have been hitch hiking and an angel picked me up.

Minutes and hours rushed by and I suddenly became aware of my white shirt, it gleamed like some bright sword cutting across my torso into the skies. What am I wearing and where am I now? A firm hand is on my shoulder, more unexpected noise, vibration travels up my arm, I’m controlling, people are to the left, clouds to the right, close rushing clouds, grey now and thick as soup. The voice in my ear becomes clear, I’m wearing an ear piece so it travels right through my head, jarring and breaking into the warmth of the dream, “Stanstead tower to EZ361, clear for approach, over!”

American Mall

2009-06-25T19:19:00.002+01:00

Giocomma Masteriosso was fed up fiddling with the still controls of the Audi, he cursed the plastic switches and chrome levers and exited the dead car slamming the silver door behind him. “Tomorrow I will live in far less of a technologically reliant bubble and will not succumb to the compromises that so often make me angry and see little red spots”. He pointed to some spot between his eyes and began a nervous operatic whistle walking away from the vehicle. The day was one of those days that’s not really sure of itself. It may have been midweek and that could make it one of the main three, no more no less. Funny how you always know what day it is, unless you are in a coma or very drunk, whatever, somebody will always tell you if you ask but they may suspect you are a time traveller of some sort. Or a lazy calendar user who lives in and communicates with broken sentences.

For Gio leaving the car was a significant event, a bit like losing a limb, he would have to walk now. That meant that the car was more of an arm than a leg otherwise he’d have been hoping or crawling. He questioned the need for the journey one more time and then carried on. He had to buy a gift. The car lay 100 metres behind, not causing any real obstruction, he’d do some thing later with it once he’d prowled around the mall and located the gift like a real hunter gatherer. He estimated that he’d be there in about fifteen minutes and despite the auto irritation gnawing at the corners the walk was potentially a pleasant one.

Now there was some time available to consider the gift. He’d never bought a woman shoes before but he knew that Sara had seen a pair of golden sandals in one of the shops and he wanted to surprise her. The problem was he was unsure of the shop, the exact type of sandal and worse the exact size of Sara’s feet. He thought about her feet a lot, their shape, their feel, the nail polish, the rougher skin around her heels, her white toes, they’d be a five or six he was sure. He wished he’d looked into her shoes and read the size but it was more feet than shoes for him so he didn’t ever inspect her inner shoe. Now that was a regret and clearly many missed opportunities to glean the size. There are some things you should know about your fiancé albeit the romance had been short. Obvious things.

His mind moved to foot touching in bed, soap bubbling between wet toes in the shower, games under restaurant tables, on the couch rubbing feet on the stool watching a TV soap. He thought how their size might compare to his bigger, stubby and chunky ex-Italian feet. A six would be best.

He didn’t know the day but the time was apparent from a digital clock hanging over the mall car park entrance, it blinked a yellow 10:24 at him and a 23 degree weather check. Today is a warm day and one that will get warmer thus underlining the need for nice cooling footwear that protects but glamorises the feet in an attractive and appropriate way. For Sara. To the left was a short cut up some concrete steps, through the car park jungle and urine stained walkways and corridors, sunlight playing on idiot graffiti and water salted cracks and marks. Up to the shopping level, briskly through heavy and impractical doors to the bright lights and thin music of the mall. He stopped and took it in and took his bearings and briefly remembered the broken Audi. “I thought they were supposed to be reliable?”

The shops glared back at Gio as the Audi angry briefly abated and he took stock of his situation. A travel agent, a heel and key bar, a ladies fashion handbag shop, a chemist, a cheap gadget and gizmo shop, a stall selling pastries and another selling watch batteries and useless plastic accessories for mobile phones. He would have to move further into the body of the beast to battle and to win.

The mall people were eyeless as if they to had lost track of the days and were hovering, staring at the bright objects but never deciding or buying. They moved in some syncopated shuffle whilst children and old people cut across their paths like herds mingling on the Serengeti unaware of the lions watching from the bush. Bags were dragged, tattoos, caps and midriffs sped buy, faces that seemed familiar but were of a type, some ugly gene that always belonged to other people. The one you never wished for in your family and if you caught sight of it, that glimpse it shook you to the core. People carried cups of coffee, water and soft drink bottles, whatever the day they did not wish to sit and savour the drink, they poured it over their thirst as they walked, as if putting out some transient fire with a handy extinguisher and then quietly starting another once at a safe distance. Food and drink should not be consumed whilst on the move. That image was an indicator of a society in straight decline, at odds with itself and with no appreciation for the finer things or no perception of even what they might be.

He moved through the people and remained detached and for the purpose of his own position in the tribe pretended that he owned a working car as they all surely did. The neon and oddly yellow shop fronts opened before him like the mouths of dental patents starved of regular consultation and flossing. Each trader becoming less interesting than the next, there were of course shoes, boots, sandals and accessories stacked in racks and pushing against the inside glass of the windows but none were right. Gio was confused and exasperated and more than half way around the mall. Then he saw a sign peeking out from a brace of fast food booths and artificial flower vendors. “Casey’s Shoes”.

Casey’s held a selection of summer pumps, beach and deck shoes and sandals up and down in the window, shoes hung there like cooked meats on hooks and ribbons, some on bright coloured boxes others sat in the fat belly of a stripped deck chair. An assistant was finishing her work on preparing the display, fussing with a few models and sweeping some cuttings that had fallen onto the floor. Over on a tall pedestal by the door were a selection of glitzy, golden sandals. Flat and shiny, gold sinews of straps and braids, some with beads and little jewels all clean and new and tagged up to sell. The assistant approached Gio carefully avoiding eye contact and admiring to herself the work she’d just completed in the window. “Can I help?” Gio shrugged and swallowed and gestured towards the display of sandals and picked up a gold shoe from the top of the stack. “In a size six?” the girl took the shoe away and disappeared into that mysterious space that exists behind all shoe shops, a great dark storehouse where no one other than those in the trade ever go. A portal into a world of boxes and lefts and rights and the ones that come in half sizes or strange widths, all shielded by a curtain that covers this dark and unexplored world.

After a few moments the girl returned with a navy blue box stuffed with white tissue, the lid upside down under the bottom and the sandals brightly shining side by side in their paper bed. “$45.99” she said offering them to Gio like a sacrifice and without having been asked the question, “but only in a six and a half”. Gio looked over them and ran a finger across the strap and single buckle of the left shoe and allowed the box to drop a little. The assistant was still looking away, this time watching a young man trying on pale tennis shoes on the other side of the store. “Fine” said Gio and ambled to the cash desk where he handed over a small bundle of notes as the till beeped. The blue box was slipped into a glossy carrier and handed over, the receipt stuffed carelessly inside along with a summer sale flyer.

Gio swung the bag casually and walked back into the two way and restless traffic of fat bottomed shoppers and retired and silver haired masses killing their remaining time before it kills them. He followed a pastel draped shuffling posse into a coffee shop and thoughtlessly ordered a latte and lemon muffin from the teenage Asian assistant. It came wrapped in corrugated cardboard that reminded him of South American shanty town roofs. The muffin was in an unnecessary brown paper bag smattered with green messages, there was also a wooden stirring stick and a bleached napkin. “Four Dollar ninety cos of special offer” said the young man. There was a empty though not particularly clean table available with some unforgiving wooden seats close to the door , he occupied the space and looked over at Casey’s Shoes.

Going home would be the next problem, the mechanical mass and sterile lump of Audi needed attention and recovery. He fiddled with his phone and considered the need to call and then wander back through the mall and car parks to the spot where it lay by the kerb. By now it would hot outside and the waiting and the walking seemed unattractive, somehow like the hardest piece of work of the day. The coffee was insipid, the taste and the caffeine effect quietly strangled by the milk and the tepid feel of the liquid. The muffin was blank apart from a central jammy lemon effect and he imagined it had all come from a far away place, some place not quite right or completely clean. He looked deep into the carrier back and saw the box standing on end on the floor, the shoes pointing toe down towards the basement car park and into the earth’s hot centre.

Next to the shoe shop was a large Disney Store that threatened to swallow the walkway with it‘s breadth, green and yellow fairies and pirates were visible, dancing behind the glare of plate glass. He thought of the strange sexual chemistry, jealousy and spark between Wendy, Peter Pan and Tinker Belle and wondered where it would have ultimately led them. Who could have stayed happy in such a trio where so may issues and complexities existed and what would growing up bring them to? Things were never easy for those trapped in a life driven by the needs and wants of flesh and blood. It was at that point he remembered the first time he’d seen Sara’s penis.

Wabi-sabi

2009-06-06T16:51:00.002+01:00

After a few weeks of drought the divine rains are once again pouring over us and onto us from above. Great streams and rivers of silver lightning rod rainwater flow down through the green trees and splash across leaves and branches, they puddle for the shortest time as if to gather and catch their breath and and then cascade down over more greenery and foliage onto our upturned faces and into our cup clasped hands. We are refreshed and in possession of a new and keener spirit, sharp as a lady shave and clean as the bottom of a dishwasher. We are younger in mind and taut and ready to escape back into the wilder places were our thoughts and aspirations can know no firm boundaries. We are the ones who have chosen to be chosen, we defy the gods, the governments and the mass conscious and the mediocrity of life, we rise above as we destroy and rebuild ourselves. There is a new and available imperfection out there for all of us to contribute to and the fear of failure or criticism is of little or no consequence. Wabi-sabi.

Amazing

2009-04-10T20:08:00.002+01:00

Your use of the world amazing, repeatedly and without thought,
irritates me and does you no favours,
it shows how little you understand,
the power of words and their relative meanings,
and that it is not important to you,
to express yourself in a credible way,
so you deserve whatever you get next
and it will not be amazing,
of that much I am certain.

No other just cause...

2009-03-06T22:08:00.002Z

...than to follow the strong scent of life,
that takes us from here and into decency,
away from the perpetual longing,
that haunts a lonely and nameless population,
ones that are not us,
we grow and pick the moment,
our time to be,
we choose to rescue, we chose to be something more,
than even we remember.

Our fathers knew better,
but their message was lost,
they grew old and troubled,
and we stood as their root,
thick,
now a pretentious cloud passes,
and the young become the elders,
and pass on what they can.

Something led me here...

2009-02-15T22:22:00.002Z

...I don't know the name of the disease,
from which I suffer.
But one day, as sure as eggs are eggs
and birds are not bees
(another species altogether)
I will infect you.

A deliberate accident.
A clumsy changeover.
An contaminated beaker or glass.
The poison spills.
This is the last.

Amazon

2009-02-08T15:30:00.002Z

She's an Amazon
She shops on line and saves money
She's in the jungle and independent, unorthodox,
A vixen fox,
Be the queen if only somebody needed ruling,
The teacher if they had to catch up on schooling,
She's an Amazon
From Basildon, or the Home Counties,
Malls and creepers, police and bounty,
It's an origin,
Of the species thing.

I'm comin' around

2009-01-27T21:27:00.004Z

A song about jealousy and other little hidden dips, trips and experiences:

Maybe you should step out with him,
Dance in the spotlight and share his grin,
Bathe in the milk and breathe out again,
Twinkle like starlight and shed your skin.

I'm coming around, I'm coming around,
I'm coming around, I'm coming around,
To your way of thinking.

I'm coming around so I face up to you,
I'm coming around to see your light,
I'm coming around for a biased rendezvous,
I'm coming around to set things right.

Over the hills

2009-01-22T22:38:00.002Z

Over the hills and farther away than I can go
Locked in shadows I cant quite see through today
Backed into a corner and a dark unlit pool
Some kind of stretched longing
Some kind of well served memory
Puzzles and shapes

I think of Grey Havens or some other film's ending
A curtain pulling closed and my daemon no more
The end of the school play with no encore
I can never go back, no more than you
The spooky places reign.

I was clumsy at times and took things for granted
I made the most, watched, learned or I ignored
But I still believe myself to be a good person
As your fun, and killer instinct pulled me out
As you left your mark all over the place.

Thanks and sleep peacefully.

Nothing

2009-01-16T22:22:00.001Z

Nothing is all that and more, nor is it remarkable.

Taking credit for a crunch

2009-01-16T21:45:00.003Z

There were piles and there were heaps, for keeps.

Money, sand and oil, staple foods and furniture,

Jets and company nomenclature

Real estate and squeezed up landfill,

Coke machines and traffic lights,

Now life runs to a standstill.

A junkyard angel to see fair play,

A bully and a bigot to run away,

A secretary to hold the calls,

A statistician to count your balls

A bonus, a gold card, a clever hunch,

A three hour champagne business lunch,

Let's all take some credit for the credit crunch.

Art is wherever

2009-01-12T18:48:00.003Z

Art is where it is.
In the long run.
In the short stop.
In the place and at a certain pace.
Space.
Effort makes art a special thing that thrives best when unappreciated.
Misunderstood is also some how good.
But be under no illusion, the paint that watches your ideas dry out will take revenge some day, far away and peel.

MMIXa

2009-01-04T13:37:00.001Z

Newer Year

Fingers stuck in the door of 2009,

The melted chocolate of time

Where war breaks out and the moments melt

As things unknown pivot on the different day

And we seem worlds apart but nestling.

I speak five words or five lines but never enough

Talk is cheap and cheap talk is tough

Here come the signals from above

Driven from heaven and on your head like a dove

This must be love, love, love.

I want to mix things up but my energy’s bankrupt

A power struggle and crisis looms

From mist to morning, from frost to loss

Here in the warm alternatives we can belong.

Here in the New Year we can be strong.

pools

2008-12-07T16:42:00.002Z

When I say we wrote a piece of music and called it pools what I mean is we didn't really write it at all as no pens, paper or other writing instruments were involved in the process. The music just came about, was put together and then for a time forgotten, then remembered and remixed and there was a funny noise at 2.10 but I just left it in though I tried to cover it on one version. Then I thought "what the hell" and so I saw it as just something getting bothered about about nothing. It wasn't really about pools either but the image came up along with the overall sound. It was made using guitars, effects, a drum loop and a keyboard and I'm quite pleased with it. (Am I writing this from an "I" or "we" perspective and does that matter at all?). Sometimes things just happen for no reason and in the end you get something new (or new to the listener). I think it will be Christmas soon but that's nothing to do with the tune either.

Leek (and in this case turkey)

2008-12-07T16:34:00.004Z

Leeks are green and white and long,
Is there anything they've done that's wrong?
Have they started wars or slaughtered whales?
(They've some mild association with Wales,)
They can turn their talents to soup or stew,
They're versatile and under used,
They fit the bill and feed the weak,
So let's give some recognition to the humble leek.

Kitchen animals

2008-10-23T14:44:00.003+01:00

Most animals that make it into a kitchen are either dead or functional. The squirrel here is functional as he also has a separate career as a real nut cracker and provider of cracked nuts - useful. The monkey however lacks any real functionality and has since expired as a result of an illness brought on by excessive cigar smoking (as per the warning on the pack). Some dead animals may also be lurking in small packs in the fridge or encased in a case of tin in some cupboard or other.

Children and dogs

2008-09-29T20:33:00.001+01:00

Goodbye, farewell the pub's not open yet,
Goodbye, farewell the pub's not open yet,
We only serve our lunches from 1pm till 2.
Children and dogs are welcome,
and a happy day to you.

Red but not quite dead

2008-08-31T17:41:00.002+01:00

From the days when Victoria reigned over an empire and not a secret,
The red of the post man's charge and duty fades to flowery white,
The mice and squirrels run past and ignore the damage and change,
They care nothing for the cast iron hands of time passing old faces.

The ghosts from the village houses send out messages and notes.
At midnight some may read the few lines they wrote,
Scratchy pens and blots and gummed paper to seal,
Folded and posted to far away places like Dundee, Edinburgh or Australia.

Now the spiders webs are thick and grey, today's rain drips in,
The grass is as green and collected in a dirty wheelie bin,
Range Rovers, black dogs, tractors and funerals pass by,
From Victoria to Elizabeth in the blink of an eye.

Things we like

2008-08-18T22:16:00.003+01:00

I've no clear idea why this is here other than to take up some valuable space that could otherwise have been better used in a more worthwhile cause.

Trick

2008-08-01T21:50:00.002+01:00

A trick of the lazy light, see the tall trees that lead to the end of the path and more trees. Ornamental and serene, organised and bright, plantings and planning and the schemes of old men dug out by their young workers.

People come and sip cool drinks and chat and talk and laugh about this and that and what ever seems important enough or trivial enough and that is relaxation.

Once the weather breaks the slopes are empty and the paths run with rain not feet. Watch the sky through glass, let the evening fall and let the storm clouds pass.

This was part of summer and has registered.

Never mind the font

2008-07-11T19:37:00.001+01:00

Warm wine like you might drink on holiday.

Radio Two or is it two or is to or might it be too also.

Neon Neon on My(Feking) Space

Fleet Foxes are the new CSNY who were the new COOP.

A cut and bruise obtained on your left hand index finger does little for guitar playing techniques.

For some reason I was putting together all these tracks.

The science of science fiction now governs all of our lives and this could be the biggest thing you've been involved in to date.

Struggling with backing vocals.

I don't quite know what to make of the Clone Wars.

Toast and cheese and wine and rice pudding, you are welcome to it.

I didn't buy

2008-07-02T21:40:00.003+01:00

The first record I didn't buy, I didn't listen to any tracks, I opened the cover but didn't read the sleeve notes. It may have been playing in another room or in the house next door but I couldn't hear. I didn't borrow it from a friend or buy it second hand for fifty pence. It was never in my house or bedroom or carried to school under my arm or in a back pack on the bus. There may have been reviews in the music press but I didn't read them and I can't remember the track listings. Was "Ride a white swan" on there some where or was that just a single? None of that matters now as the two guys playing in the band are dead and gone any how and I'm still here but not hearing them.

Tom Horn

2008-06-21T23:24:00.002+01:00

Tom Horn, you woke up this morning and wished, you'd never been born.
Tom Horn, a simple life, undone and lost, forlorn.

We all need to grow, we all need to change, we all need to understand the virtue and the range of our time. Time is sublime, you need to change, Tom Horn.

Useless Money

2008-06-13T19:02:00.002+01:00

When the day is done. You have piles of useless money.
When the sun falls down. You can't spend your useless money.

Useless money grows on trees.
Brings relations to their knees.
Useless money won't pay bills.
It counts you out and steals your will.

In every shopping mall. People spending useless money.
You can't catch an eye. They're all blind to useless money.

Useless money's tied up more.
In property or just off-shore.
In the chip in your little card.
Try to claim but there's no reward.

Try to claim but there's no reward.
All you've got is useless money.

ubuntu utnubu

2008-06-11T22:26:00.002+01:00

Life in a parallel universe. Life in a universe where sexism, racism, fascism and all other glorified isms are less than isms, they are non-isms. Our strange god is the god ubuntu, a sterile, un-worshiped, non profit making god who works for us, not against us. Our relationship with him remains taut and untested, fragile and pure, dangerous and unsafe. We stay tense. His angels speak slowly and clearly when they pass on their short, important messages. In the office of our daily tortures we admire them from a safe distance as their edicts are downloaded and consumed, we treasure their memory. Their holy host, confused and drifting with no obvious purpose remain, as ever unspeakable.

Vashta Nerada Deconstructed

2008-06-09T19:42:00.002+01:00

Do you remember when you were a kid and you got a new note book or sketch book? Didn't you want to keep in neat and clean, have nice drawings on every page and good, clear writing throughout. That book, you thought would live on as some piece of finished work that you have and look back on, your ideas and views would be recorded and your artwork, possibly primitive and not fully formed would still have a meaning.

The book would possibly be a day or maybe two old when the Vashta Nerada would strike. A shadow crossed the mind, a cloud edged out the light and a strange and unwelcome consumption took place. Your will and resolution are gnawed at and slowly eaten away by the princes in the shadows, the voices in the half light, the doubt and mind cancer that set in when you start to fray at the edges. The dumbed down darkness does it's work and by the third page your careful constructions are slowly coming apart, the patience has gone from your work and you are left with scribbles, ill formed and conceived ideas and second rate attempts at sketch or prose. The bubble has burst and the idol has been toppled from the temple, you cannot make this thing work.

By the fifth or sixth pages it has degenerated into comic book scribbles, bomb explosions and cliched sound effects, swear words start to appear and word balloons are too big and mis-shapen. To lose care and the desire to maintain a standard is a terrible thing. The mess only gets worse, the smooth paper surface becomes broken up, the pages and covers are dog eared, some of the spine is beginning to come away. Slowly the pace at which you work decreases, there is little if any detail on the page, light pencil work or cheap pen adorn the blank pages with unfinished notes and hardly discernible images. Then by pages fifteen or sixteen only white, blank sterile paper. The Vashta Nerada have consumed you, your bleak notes are testimony to their heartless triumph and your motor has wound down to zero. Until your mother buys another or you pick up the next pad from some store dump bin.

Money

2008-06-03T19:47:00.005+01:00

Let's all think about money, let's all get beat up over money, let's do crazy things to get money, it makes the world go round.

Money isn't abstract, conceptual or vague, money is real paper and pays it to your face.

Let's all fantasise about money, let's sit and daydream on money, let's idly waste time on money, it makes the world go round.

Wars are fought for money, folks are killed for money, some will kill for money, it makes the world go round, and round and down and a whole lot of things possible if you choose to use it wisely.

Go find yourself

2008-05-30T14:28:00.004+01:00

Go find yourself.

Go find yourself.

For it is here today and gone the next,

a trick of the light before the great showpiece of dawn,

you leave with nothing but the breath you blow,

and it remains a mystery how, so silently we come and then just go,

so when you find the precious freedom, when you get to wear the tainted crown,

when you try to hold the water in between your open palms

and the drops fall between your feet,

what will you do with it?

Hot but not

2008-05-21T19:43:00.002+01:00

Why oh why is it not hot?
When warming and warnings and giant footprints litter the skies from Jumbo Jets and methane pets and power stations that have a smoke fixation. Why is it not yet hot?
Not hot here, just bearable spring with birds that still sing and weeds that grow in surprise rain showers. We are a simple folk, a simple few, out here, far away from townies and hardly touched by mountain or magic dew and still a bit cold. Three dog, two cat and extra duvet nights and minimal light pollution to bother us. Yes we sleep well but still await the planting of our vineyard and the shimmer of evening sunlight running across the swimming pool. Perhaps when I make the big 60 the day will quietly dawn and I will relax in some hammock and sip beer in the artificial shade.