I never believed the end of this story. It was told to me three days after the events leading up to the end had happened. I believed that the previous occurrences took place before the inevitable end happened because I was there. I saw all of them take place; I even played my own part in this little tale, it was just the twist. The twist was the one thing I never saw and couldn’t believe. I was a stubborn 13 year old boy at the time and my lack of belief pretty much ended a friendship.
It was summer in 1994. One of my best friends, Elvis Lewis (yes that was his first name, his father was a massive fan of the king) had just moved house. They had finally gotten out of their tiny flat and somehow got hold of an old council house on the estate where I lived. The estate that I lived on was in the shadow of the block of flats but it didn’t matter; my friend was now only a couple of doors down from me instead of thirty floors up. We had begun spending this summer around each others’ respective domiciles as the weather had been terrible. We had amused ourselves by playing Super Nintendo games to death. Every game each of us owned, we played and completed. We were becoming bored.
One Thursday afternoon we saw another boy from the estate walking down the road. This boy was only one year older than us but he had been caught in the sweaty, clammy grip of puberty. He had acne populating his cheeks and chin, long greasy blond hair, a flannel shirt, torn jeans and Doctor Martin boots. Kids had many names for him: Grunger; Dyke; Tramp; Queer; Hippy; Greaser; but myself and Elvis new him by the name of Nigel Fenton. Nigel Fenton was picked on by the kids who were spending their days listening to the music of rave, populated by such artists as DJ Sy or DJ Druid; and he was worshipped by the kids who were listening to Nirvana, Guns N Roses and Pearl Jam. He had insisted that his name was ‘Soundwave’ at 12 and by thirteen could already play ten chords on a cheap old acoustic guitar. No one called him Soundwave though. It was either the insults or the standard name of Nigel.
Elvis and I were standing on the corner crunching on blue ice that had been sold to us under the guise of ‘Mr Snow’. It was a long ice pole that was dyed a variety of bright chemically colours, and though the day was not particularly hot, and the sun had been fighting with the clouds like a small man at a rock concert trying to get a view of the stage, Elvis had insisted on buying a range of these poles. I was eating a blue one and Elvis was eating a green one when Nigel walked by. We called out his name and he looked out from under his slick of blond hair and clumped his way over to us. We offered him a red flavoured ice pole and he took it. We began talking with him and he said that he had been on holiday with his parents to Cornwall and had had a ‘fucking shit’ time. He peppered his sentences with expletives as if he had just discovered them and needed to catch up on fourteen years of not using them. As we were ending the conversation I spied the one and only Goth girl we knew walking down the road. This girl was strange. Julia Wesnick-Wilson. Though some people liked Nigel Fenton and others hated him, the one person who brought everybody together was Julia. No one liked the Goth girl. No one understood the Goth girl. Dressed in black, face white, black lipstick; black and pink hair and huge boots she lumbered around the estate like a lost dinosaur. Rumours were abound that she was a slag; frigid, or worse (this was spoken only when a chosen few were listening) a witch.
I cannot tell a lie. I started it. I raised my melting ice pole and pointed it towards this beast and said ‘Look! It’s Julia!’ Elvis turned and looked and so did Nigel. First it started with just cat calling her name. She ignored it. Then it became sarcastic wolf whistling, at which she threw a few dozen choice hand gestures our way, the finally Nigel shouted a long string of obscenities that described in glorious teenage detail what sexual practices he would do to her mum and what Julia let her dad do to her. This was the final straw. Julia’s mother was dead and her father was a raging alcoholic. Julia slowly turned and stared at our triumvirate. The clouds started to cheer and rain started to fall. Julia started moving towards us. It was like a train picking up speed. We turned and ran towards the safety of Elvis’ parent’s house.
We made it inside and started laughing, blue, red and green tongues lolling out of our stained mouths. We all walked into the living room festooned with King Memorabilia and looked out of the main window (hidden behind the net curtain). She was there. Julia was just standing in the middle of the street. The rain was coming down in sheets, plastering her lifeless hair to her streaked black and white face. Make up was running and she was there. Staring. Through the double glazing, through the safety of the translucent net curtain, through me and Elvis right to Nigel, who was sitting on the sofa scratching his belly. There was trouble in the air. Nigel saw that myself and Elvis had not left the window and made his way there. He stuck his head under the net curtain and saw her. The strange sight obviously did not shake Nigel as it did us; for he flung open the windows and over the white noise of the rain hitting tarmac shouted another string of choice phrases her way. She smiled as he said them and told him to come outside. Nigel shut the window and uneasily sat back down. We started questioning him about why he did that. He said he didn’t know. We started wondering how long she was going to be out there for. We began checking in ten minute intervals.
Two hours later she was till there. The rain was till lashing down and Elvis’ parents still had not returned home. We were all feeling on edge. We didn’t know what to do. This girl was not giving up and when the power went out on the street that was when the witch rumour began to creep into our young, teenage heads. At first everything in the house stopped. The TV went blank and the fridge stopped regulating its temperature. There was silence. All we could hear was the rain not giving up its barrage on the streets and houses of the estate and also (though it seems stupid now) Julia’s breathing. She had gradually moved closer to the window until her face was just staring in. It looked like it was melting. We had tried to pretend it wasn’t there but every now and then one of us would sneak a glimpse and see this dilapidated teenage girl’s face staring, dead eyed and corpse like into the blur of the living room.
Now just a quick break to either remind people of what goes on in the minds of teenage boys or to explain what goes on. Not much. There is generally crippling guilt about things you do privately or things you have done. The odd thought process on how to get drunk or feel some girls’ breasts; or how to get the high score on a new computer game. That. Is. It. It is a strange mix of still being a child and yet wanting to start more adult activities. Often you have completely irrational and nonsensical plans that have formed in your head and you carry them out, not really thinking about the consequences. These happen throughout a teenage boy’s life. One such plan occurred in Elvis’ living room about how to save Nigel; for it was he that she wanted.
It seemed to make complete sense at the time. We had begun talking of the rumours of her being a witch like boys round a campfire. Many stories came up. She had killed her own mother with a spell and punished her father by making him an alcoholic with another spell. Friend’s of friends were mentioned and their run ins with her and the strange things that had happened to them, like a pet suddenly dieing or an injury suddenly happening to said friend of friend. We needed a plan and we needed one quick to save Nigel. She had begun tapping on the window within the last ten minutes and we could hear a muffled sound leaking through the rain, window and curtain that said ‘Soundwave’.
We moved into the kitchen to follow through with our plan. We began to hack off Nigel’s hair. We first tentatively grabbed hold of the greasy rag and held it like a pony tail. We snipped our way through it and the piece came off in one big chunk. We carried on cutting Elvis and I were trying our best now not to laugh. The terror of Julia had vanished as we became embroiled in our new task. Nigel I think was maybe crying, but I was never sure.
Once we had cut his hair we then entered the second part of our plan. We went into Elvis’ brother’s Aaron’s room. We dressed Nigel in some of Aaron’s ill fitting clothes. The point of our plan was to make Nigel as unlike Nigel as possible so he would be able to walk past Julia un-noticed. He was standing in the hallway with short hair and the stain of the early nineties culture, the shell suit. I glanced at the window and saw that the shape of Julia had gone. This was Nigel’s big chance. With myself stationed at the living room window and Elvis by the front door Nigel ran as soon as the door was open. I watched him scatter himself across the street looking everywhere at once and at nothing. That was when I saw her. I banged on the window and screamed Elvis relayed the message from the rapidly closing front door out into the empty street to Nigel. He saw her and ran. She chased after him a few steps and stopped. Nigel carried on running. Julia only slowed down to her usual lumbering steps and walked off round the corner in the rain and out of sight.
Three days later with the day’s events already fading into memory and myself and Elvis already assuming that it was Nigel Fenton who was scared, not us, we saw the new Nigel with a freshly shorn head. He told us that on his run home he saw Julia standing on every street corner laughing and holding the remains of his pony tail in her hand. We laughed and said that he was just scared and that it was all nonsense. He protested and then we picked on him. He went off and soon I never saw him again. He just drifted into the background of school life like so many others. The story made its way around and more people openly mocked him. Soon he stopped coming to school. Julia still came and we often saw her though she acted like the day had never happened. Though no one believed Nigel’s story more people avoided Julia and no one said a word to her. One day I was walking along the corridor and as Julia brushed past me she placed something in my hand. It was a lock of blond hair. We paused and looked at each other for the most fleeting of moments and then she carried on down the corridor head held low and though we must have only looked at each other for two maybe three seconds I now know what I saw. She smiled. She definitely smiled
Monday, 24 March 2008
Monday, 17 March 2008
The Funniest Thing I've Seen In Years
Today I probably wrecked any chance of anything nice ever happening to me again. If I believed in karma that is. Luckily I don't. I understand that life is just something that happens. There is no such as thing as what goes around comes around or anything happening for a reason (as if there is some big machine in the sky making everything happen for a reason with infinate arms and decisions being made, like you having that unsightly patch of hair on your back or when you poked your eye with a coat hanger, or dancing on ice- it's ridiculous).
Anyway I saw an old lady in a wheechair roll herself backwards and a midget who was walking behind her got crushed against some metal fencing by the bus stop. I saw and laughed. Other people on the bus saw me and scowled.
Come to think of it, maybe there is karma. After all, I'm stuck on public transport day in day out.
Anyway I saw an old lady in a wheechair roll herself backwards and a midget who was walking behind her got crushed against some metal fencing by the bus stop. I saw and laughed. Other people on the bus saw me and scowled.
Come to think of it, maybe there is karma. After all, I'm stuck on public transport day in day out.
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
The Haiku
This shop first passed into my hands two years ago. Mr Smith was a pleasant man to those who knew him but he could be as sour as a lemon to those he did not like (which were generally his customers). I ended up working for the old boy because I had been sacked from my office job for something that I would not rather go into for reasons of my own. I had been looking for jobs in a similar vein to that of my previous one but with no luck. At this unfortunate turn of events I was starting to worry about my family and myself. We all needed support and the money I had saved for a rainy day (I have always been fastidious over my finances, my partner never has) was drying up fast.
In the local paper one day I then saw an advert for an assistant manger for a shop; which said it required somebody trustworthy and intelligent (of which I excel in both). This shop was a tad different to most shops I had been in before. This shop specialised in selling lamps. Now I had never in my life seen a shop that specialised in lamps. Not that one tends to look for such shops in general but it struck me that I had never seen one before. I told this to Mr. Smith who shook my hand and welcomed me to his heart. He understood my predicament and said I would be the perfect assistant manager. As I said he could be extremely pleasant and said he could tell good staff from the off. He claimed he could make solid judgements about people’s characters from first impressions. I was happy with this and began my job having now been in dire need of money. He understood that young men with families were always honest as they had to set good examples for their children. With that successful introduction I went home and celebrated with my family.
The job did not pay particularly well but I was willing to spend many hours there and I had no choice really seeing as no office in this area would employ me because of the reason for my dismissal.
Life in the shop was slow and just went at a solid pace with nothing of note occurring. This was during the summer months. As soon as winter began setting in I noticed a change in Mr. Smith’s personality. Once, when it was beginning to get dark outside and the shop was closing, I began to turn off the lights. At this point Mr. Smith flew into a terrible rage. Seeing this thin man suddenly have an outpouring of such scope made me frightened. I was told that now it was winter and it was getting dark early I was either to turn off all the lights or none at all. I assumed this was Mr. Smith trying to make a point about saving money or making sure he was constantly advertising his objects.
Mr. Smith later died that winter. It turned out that I was the only person that knew him and when I entered his house to collect something that he had left for me I was greeted with a strange sight. It seemed that all of his furniture was placed in the centre of all the rooms I looked in. The place felt like what a rabbit’s warren must be like and Mr Smith had certainly not been making the most of the little space there was. Nothing had been put in the corners of the rooms. Television; chairs; tables; bed and even lamps were all pushed into the centre of each room they occupied. Everything was pitched under a light or a lamp. I soon left the pokey little hole with the possession that Mr Smith had left to me. The key to the shop. The old boy had seen fit to let me have the shop. It was a happy day for my family and me; who I had been seeing less of; because it meant I would be able to move them in above the shop where I worked and which I now owned. There was only one thing which had been playing on my mind and that was a note that had been enclosed within the envelope, which the key had also been in. The note was written in Mr Smith’s idiosyncratic scrawl and was short and simple. I am sure Mr Smith would not think it was invasive of his privacy if I were to tell you. The note simply read:
Believe in darkness
or collect the light. There should
be nothing between.
A tad cryptic I think you may agree. The only sense I could make out of the note is that Mr Smith knew his time was coming and left me this haiku. I think there is a brief religious undertone to it. You see “Believe in darkness” is talking about atheism and “collect the light” is referring to those of us who believe in God. The rest of the strange little poem is saying that we should not be undecided about our fate. I realise this interpretation may seem a tad sloppy but I am happy with it and it also makes me smile to think this is something Mr Smith may have spent his time working on.
Life continued in the shop but I was still seeing less of my family and I have to tell you the truth; this lighting shop made a measly turnover. Each week I was barely making a profit. One thing that was costing me money was the fact that I had slipped into the habit that Mr. Smith used to perform of keeping every light in the place illuminated. This of course used up a barrelful of electricity every week and was also costing me a small fortune in replacing bulbs. One day I decided to turn off some of the lights in the shop to save money.
That’s when the shadows came.
In the local paper one day I then saw an advert for an assistant manger for a shop; which said it required somebody trustworthy and intelligent (of which I excel in both). This shop was a tad different to most shops I had been in before. This shop specialised in selling lamps. Now I had never in my life seen a shop that specialised in lamps. Not that one tends to look for such shops in general but it struck me that I had never seen one before. I told this to Mr. Smith who shook my hand and welcomed me to his heart. He understood my predicament and said I would be the perfect assistant manager. As I said he could be extremely pleasant and said he could tell good staff from the off. He claimed he could make solid judgements about people’s characters from first impressions. I was happy with this and began my job having now been in dire need of money. He understood that young men with families were always honest as they had to set good examples for their children. With that successful introduction I went home and celebrated with my family.
The job did not pay particularly well but I was willing to spend many hours there and I had no choice really seeing as no office in this area would employ me because of the reason for my dismissal.
Life in the shop was slow and just went at a solid pace with nothing of note occurring. This was during the summer months. As soon as winter began setting in I noticed a change in Mr. Smith’s personality. Once, when it was beginning to get dark outside and the shop was closing, I began to turn off the lights. At this point Mr. Smith flew into a terrible rage. Seeing this thin man suddenly have an outpouring of such scope made me frightened. I was told that now it was winter and it was getting dark early I was either to turn off all the lights or none at all. I assumed this was Mr. Smith trying to make a point about saving money or making sure he was constantly advertising his objects.
Mr. Smith later died that winter. It turned out that I was the only person that knew him and when I entered his house to collect something that he had left for me I was greeted with a strange sight. It seemed that all of his furniture was placed in the centre of all the rooms I looked in. The place felt like what a rabbit’s warren must be like and Mr Smith had certainly not been making the most of the little space there was. Nothing had been put in the corners of the rooms. Television; chairs; tables; bed and even lamps were all pushed into the centre of each room they occupied. Everything was pitched under a light or a lamp. I soon left the pokey little hole with the possession that Mr Smith had left to me. The key to the shop. The old boy had seen fit to let me have the shop. It was a happy day for my family and me; who I had been seeing less of; because it meant I would be able to move them in above the shop where I worked and which I now owned. There was only one thing which had been playing on my mind and that was a note that had been enclosed within the envelope, which the key had also been in. The note was written in Mr Smith’s idiosyncratic scrawl and was short and simple. I am sure Mr Smith would not think it was invasive of his privacy if I were to tell you. The note simply read:
Believe in darkness
or collect the light. There should
be nothing between.
A tad cryptic I think you may agree. The only sense I could make out of the note is that Mr Smith knew his time was coming and left me this haiku. I think there is a brief religious undertone to it. You see “Believe in darkness” is talking about atheism and “collect the light” is referring to those of us who believe in God. The rest of the strange little poem is saying that we should not be undecided about our fate. I realise this interpretation may seem a tad sloppy but I am happy with it and it also makes me smile to think this is something Mr Smith may have spent his time working on.
Life continued in the shop but I was still seeing less of my family and I have to tell you the truth; this lighting shop made a measly turnover. Each week I was barely making a profit. One thing that was costing me money was the fact that I had slipped into the habit that Mr. Smith used to perform of keeping every light in the place illuminated. This of course used up a barrelful of electricity every week and was also costing me a small fortune in replacing bulbs. One day I decided to turn off some of the lights in the shop to save money.
That’s when the shadows came.
The Pause For Thought
1)Some may know others may not that it is 100 years this year when Einstein came up with the equation we all know so well as E=mc2. To the uninitiated it simply means Energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared (or more commonly known as the theory of relativity). Now many people used this theory to create the atom bomb, which Einstein hated, obviously. Now I realise after discovering a rare letter to weight watchers written by none other than Albert himself it really means something completely different! In this letter he expands on the theory for its true use. Energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of corpulence squared. NOT LIGHT!!!
Therefore I used this new shred of information to equate if we get energy from mass we should harness as many fat people as we can for they are made out of that rare particle the fatom. Now if the scientists who work on the atom bomb could make the amount of energy they did from 0.000000000000000000000006 grams of an atom imagine the energy from a human being!!! Especially an overweight one!!!
I am considering making myself the fattest human on this planet (and any other planet). I will become the most powerful commodity on this green Earth. Governments will fight to harness the amount of energy my globular frame will have inside it. Then I will rule the world!!!
2) Pete Doherty came round my flat this week. He usually pops round when he’s not doing anything of importance like Kate Moss. As we sat down to tea and biscuits I decided to press him on the issue of drugs. I said, “Pete, I respect you as a musician and a person but this new album is showing a decline. The trappings of celebrity surround you and you cannot escape it. This has lead you into drugs and any fool knows that this will only end up with a tragic and unpoetic ending. Now I know you embrace your poet of the people and troubadour status such quality rags as the NME and The Sun have put upon you but you are better than that. I implore you to avoid drugs and just help yourself and your family and friends. Ignore the sycophants who surround you and listen to real people like me!!”
Pete carried on eating the sponge off the bottom of the Jaffa Cake I had, previous to my soliloquy offered to his meagre frame and then he put the orange part in his mouth and let it dissolve slowly. I could see my words had taken an effect on the poor boy. He sighed and then said these words to me, “Have you got any crack?”
Therefore I used this new shred of information to equate if we get energy from mass we should harness as many fat people as we can for they are made out of that rare particle the fatom. Now if the scientists who work on the atom bomb could make the amount of energy they did from 0.000000000000000000000006 grams of an atom imagine the energy from a human being!!! Especially an overweight one!!!
I am considering making myself the fattest human on this planet (and any other planet). I will become the most powerful commodity on this green Earth. Governments will fight to harness the amount of energy my globular frame will have inside it. Then I will rule the world!!!
2) Pete Doherty came round my flat this week. He usually pops round when he’s not doing anything of importance like Kate Moss. As we sat down to tea and biscuits I decided to press him on the issue of drugs. I said, “Pete, I respect you as a musician and a person but this new album is showing a decline. The trappings of celebrity surround you and you cannot escape it. This has lead you into drugs and any fool knows that this will only end up with a tragic and unpoetic ending. Now I know you embrace your poet of the people and troubadour status such quality rags as the NME and The Sun have put upon you but you are better than that. I implore you to avoid drugs and just help yourself and your family and friends. Ignore the sycophants who surround you and listen to real people like me!!”
Pete carried on eating the sponge off the bottom of the Jaffa Cake I had, previous to my soliloquy offered to his meagre frame and then he put the orange part in his mouth and let it dissolve slowly. I could see my words had taken an effect on the poor boy. He sighed and then said these words to me, “Have you got any crack?”
The Seagulls
The sun has nothing better to do
Richard woke up. The seagulls were making their usual din. The incessant screeching which seemed to never stop, like the grandfather clock his father always made sure was ticking, continued unabated. Richard liked living by the sea though. He had lived in London when he was young and he detested the city. He was always penned in there and had no sense of direction. In London he felt he couldn’t centre himself, living by the sea he always knew what direction he was facing. This home by the sea wasn’t perfect as it was constantly bombarded by weather but at least he felt free. Or as free as he could living with his parents. They were not too strict he kept telling himself. He still wanted out though. They never really understood him. Richard felt disengaged from his family. His older brother had left home and he never really spoke to him. His brother was a cliché. Richard was not.
He looked over at his digital alarm radio clock. The blinding red numbers showed it was 5:23 in the morning. The sun was coming up because it had nothing better to do; but Richard wanted to sleep. He had another hour before he had to get up for work and he didn’t want to waste any sleeping time, though he knew he would probably just lay in his bed with his eyes closed not sleeping. He hated his office job and disliked many of his colleagues but not as much as the seagulls. Richard closed his eyes.
On his way home
Richard closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The office was cloying him. He was stuck in the toffee of office politics and wanted to escape. The girl across the office had sent Richard an e-mail in which he declined the offer of a drink. He could never find a girl who he liked and liked him back. This situation of his life and relationships annoyed him.
On his way home he glanced through the Metro and realised he hated commuting. Richard had been indifferent to it but this was the first time he had felt any real emotion towards it. He needed the toilet but never went on public transport. He always felt invaded. Richard looked across at another passenger and saw she was trying and failing to hold back tears. He wondered why she was crying and thought he should ask what was wrong and whether she was ok. He didn’t.
21 and bored
He didn’t like commuting. To an office he hated. Back to a home he didn’t care about. People surrounded him but he constantly felt alone. As he approached his parents’ house he looked up and saw something that resembled a nest. He was 21 and bored. As he went to his room to throw off his work clothes he could hear the scratching of the seagulls on the roof. Then they started their screeching. He hated the seagulls. Could it be that they had more in terms of relationships going for them than he did? They were seagulls! He was a human being!!
At five that morning he was woken again by the relentless screeching of the pair of birds. They were scrabbling about on the roof. A surge of annoyance shot through his body. It was Saturday. It was his day off. He wanted to sleep in and those creatures were doing their very best to make sure that he was not going to be able to fall back to sleep. Richard turned over and buried his face into the pillow. He could smell the cheap washing powder his mother used. Why didn’t she buy the nice smelling stuff!! As he drowned in the pillow and his hearing became numbed he thought he heard the seagulls shut up. His face came back out of the pillow and he listened. There was silence. Richard closed his eyes and bathed in the sound. Then the noise started again. Richard shouted into the pillow. This had torn it. He was fed up with these birds making his life a misery. He decided he was going to pay a visit to his neighbour across the road. He was going to visit Keith.
The same old smell
Keith Boarer was the boy who lived across from Richard. When they moved down from London he had come over and called on Richard to say hello to what he thought was another young male like him. But Richard wasn’t like Keith. Keith listened to hip-hop and drove his crappy car with silver flames adorned on the sides and had a disgustingly orange girlfriend called Tanya. Richard just put up with him the same as he put up with everything and everyone. Apart from the seagulls. One time he had called on Keith and had hated walking into the bedroom of the boy. The walls were plastered with ironically named glamour girls. What’s so glamorous about plastic women getting their tits out and sneering provocatively into a camera and into teenager’s bedrooms? The room also smelled of pot noodles and stale sex.
As Richard knocked on Keith Boarer’s green peeling front door he looked at his house opposite and saw the seagulls looking back at him and then chattering to each other. Did they know what he had planned for them? Keith opened the door. He smiled and let Richard in. They walked upstairs and into his room. The same old smell. Tanya was in Keith’s bed. Keith made a joke about the state of his room and his girlfriend; Richard faked a chuckle. Tanya said hello and did not seem to be bothered that another person was in the room when she was probably naked under the duvet cover. Richard cast his eyes around the room and saw Tanya’s bare feet sticking out the end of the bed. Did he feel a twinge of jealousy towards Keith? Or was it something else towards the perma-tanned Tanya and the just woken up look? catcarcatcarcat. Keith’s DVD collection appeared to consist of Proud To Be British/Guy Ritchie films, splatter core movies (that had been banned in the 1980’s Keith proudly told Richard), and from what he could make out from the ‘comedy’ titles cheap pornography. Keith offered to lend Richard a couple but he declined the generous offer. Richard had only come over for one thing.
Looking a little too hard
One thing that hadn’t really struck Richard before he called on Keith was how he was going to ask for the instrument that he was after. Keith popped out to the toilet. Richard was left in the room with Tanya. She smiled at him. Should he smile back? Her smile didn’t let anything be told about it. Was it a genuinely friendly smile or a derogatory one? Or maybe a sexual one? Richard pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Was she naked under the duvet? catcarcatcar. He caught himself looking a little too hard at her. He started talking about the seagulls. Tanya agreed with him. She hated the fucking things too. Keith came back in. Richard noticed dark spots on Keith’s grey jogging bottoms. He had to leave quickly. The smell was becoming too much. Richard just blurted out what he was after. The words came too quickly. Keith shrugged his shoulders and didn’t really pay any attention to the excuse Richard made up off the top of his head. Richard smiled. Thanked Keith, said goodbye and made his escape. As he walked across the road with the equipment one of the seagulls flew dangerously close to his head and screeched mockingly at him as he made his way home and closed the door behind him. He was ready for the fuckers now.
Wine coloured grass
The fuckers now were finished. Richard kicked the lifeless body. He had no idea where the other one had fallen. But he knew he had got it. When the first seagull crashed in his back garden Richard had made a whoop of joy. And as the other had tried to make its winged escape he had managed to get the other shot off. He had seen its head jerk at an impossible angle and then it disappeared from view. Richard bent down for a closer inspection of the seagull’s body. Its beady black eye stared back at him. He wondered if this was the one that had dived bombed him so confidently yesterday. He chuckled to himself with the idea of drawing a chalk outline around the bird in the wine coloured grass. The white feathers were stained with blood. Richard picked up the body and walked it up to his parent’s compost. He threw the bird on the heap and walked back down the garden whistling.
As he sat down dinner with his parents he felt happy for the first time in a long time. Before he made the first bite of his roast chicken there was a knock on the front door.
With a hatpin
The front door was closed by Richard and he turned to face his parents. He shrugged and smiled. The neighbours had come round with the other body wrapped in an old Tesco carrier bag. His parents started with the questions. He shrugged them off. They could question him all they wanted, they would never understand. They never did. He remembered the time he had stabbed a beetle with a hatpin and watched the impaled mini beast writhing in the garden when he was five. He remembered the time when he had got a lighter and burned the under side of a snail. It sounded like it was screaming and shrieking though he knew it wasn’t. He remembered the time he fed slug pellets to his Auntie’s budgie and watched it twittering on the floor of its little cell with blue foam coming out of its beak. He remembered when he was fourteen and he saw a cat get hit by a car. He felt excited by the creature’s high pitched mewling and twitching around on the bloody tarmac. He thought of Tanya.
Richard woke up. The seagulls were making their usual din. The incessant screeching which seemed to never stop, like the grandfather clock his father always made sure was ticking, continued unabated. Richard liked living by the sea though. He had lived in London when he was young and he detested the city. He was always penned in there and had no sense of direction. In London he felt he couldn’t centre himself, living by the sea he always knew what direction he was facing. This home by the sea wasn’t perfect as it was constantly bombarded by weather but at least he felt free. Or as free as he could living with his parents. They were not too strict he kept telling himself. He still wanted out though. They never really understood him. Richard felt disengaged from his family. His older brother had left home and he never really spoke to him. His brother was a cliché. Richard was not.
He looked over at his digital alarm radio clock. The blinding red numbers showed it was 5:23 in the morning. The sun was coming up because it had nothing better to do; but Richard wanted to sleep. He had another hour before he had to get up for work and he didn’t want to waste any sleeping time, though he knew he would probably just lay in his bed with his eyes closed not sleeping. He hated his office job and disliked many of his colleagues but not as much as the seagulls. Richard closed his eyes.
On his way home
Richard closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The office was cloying him. He was stuck in the toffee of office politics and wanted to escape. The girl across the office had sent Richard an e-mail in which he declined the offer of a drink. He could never find a girl who he liked and liked him back. This situation of his life and relationships annoyed him.
On his way home he glanced through the Metro and realised he hated commuting. Richard had been indifferent to it but this was the first time he had felt any real emotion towards it. He needed the toilet but never went on public transport. He always felt invaded. Richard looked across at another passenger and saw she was trying and failing to hold back tears. He wondered why she was crying and thought he should ask what was wrong and whether she was ok. He didn’t.
21 and bored
He didn’t like commuting. To an office he hated. Back to a home he didn’t care about. People surrounded him but he constantly felt alone. As he approached his parents’ house he looked up and saw something that resembled a nest. He was 21 and bored. As he went to his room to throw off his work clothes he could hear the scratching of the seagulls on the roof. Then they started their screeching. He hated the seagulls. Could it be that they had more in terms of relationships going for them than he did? They were seagulls! He was a human being!!
At five that morning he was woken again by the relentless screeching of the pair of birds. They were scrabbling about on the roof. A surge of annoyance shot through his body. It was Saturday. It was his day off. He wanted to sleep in and those creatures were doing their very best to make sure that he was not going to be able to fall back to sleep. Richard turned over and buried his face into the pillow. He could smell the cheap washing powder his mother used. Why didn’t she buy the nice smelling stuff!! As he drowned in the pillow and his hearing became numbed he thought he heard the seagulls shut up. His face came back out of the pillow and he listened. There was silence. Richard closed his eyes and bathed in the sound. Then the noise started again. Richard shouted into the pillow. This had torn it. He was fed up with these birds making his life a misery. He decided he was going to pay a visit to his neighbour across the road. He was going to visit Keith.
The same old smell
Keith Boarer was the boy who lived across from Richard. When they moved down from London he had come over and called on Richard to say hello to what he thought was another young male like him. But Richard wasn’t like Keith. Keith listened to hip-hop and drove his crappy car with silver flames adorned on the sides and had a disgustingly orange girlfriend called Tanya. Richard just put up with him the same as he put up with everything and everyone. Apart from the seagulls. One time he had called on Keith and had hated walking into the bedroom of the boy. The walls were plastered with ironically named glamour girls. What’s so glamorous about plastic women getting their tits out and sneering provocatively into a camera and into teenager’s bedrooms? The room also smelled of pot noodles and stale sex.
As Richard knocked on Keith Boarer’s green peeling front door he looked at his house opposite and saw the seagulls looking back at him and then chattering to each other. Did they know what he had planned for them? Keith opened the door. He smiled and let Richard in. They walked upstairs and into his room. The same old smell. Tanya was in Keith’s bed. Keith made a joke about the state of his room and his girlfriend; Richard faked a chuckle. Tanya said hello and did not seem to be bothered that another person was in the room when she was probably naked under the duvet cover. Richard cast his eyes around the room and saw Tanya’s bare feet sticking out the end of the bed. Did he feel a twinge of jealousy towards Keith? Or was it something else towards the perma-tanned Tanya and the just woken up look? catcarcatcarcat. Keith’s DVD collection appeared to consist of Proud To Be British/Guy Ritchie films, splatter core movies (that had been banned in the 1980’s Keith proudly told Richard), and from what he could make out from the ‘comedy’ titles cheap pornography. Keith offered to lend Richard a couple but he declined the generous offer. Richard had only come over for one thing.
Looking a little too hard
One thing that hadn’t really struck Richard before he called on Keith was how he was going to ask for the instrument that he was after. Keith popped out to the toilet. Richard was left in the room with Tanya. She smiled at him. Should he smile back? Her smile didn’t let anything be told about it. Was it a genuinely friendly smile or a derogatory one? Or maybe a sexual one? Richard pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Was she naked under the duvet? catcarcatcar. He caught himself looking a little too hard at her. He started talking about the seagulls. Tanya agreed with him. She hated the fucking things too. Keith came back in. Richard noticed dark spots on Keith’s grey jogging bottoms. He had to leave quickly. The smell was becoming too much. Richard just blurted out what he was after. The words came too quickly. Keith shrugged his shoulders and didn’t really pay any attention to the excuse Richard made up off the top of his head. Richard smiled. Thanked Keith, said goodbye and made his escape. As he walked across the road with the equipment one of the seagulls flew dangerously close to his head and screeched mockingly at him as he made his way home and closed the door behind him. He was ready for the fuckers now.
Wine coloured grass
The fuckers now were finished. Richard kicked the lifeless body. He had no idea where the other one had fallen. But he knew he had got it. When the first seagull crashed in his back garden Richard had made a whoop of joy. And as the other had tried to make its winged escape he had managed to get the other shot off. He had seen its head jerk at an impossible angle and then it disappeared from view. Richard bent down for a closer inspection of the seagull’s body. Its beady black eye stared back at him. He wondered if this was the one that had dived bombed him so confidently yesterday. He chuckled to himself with the idea of drawing a chalk outline around the bird in the wine coloured grass. The white feathers were stained with blood. Richard picked up the body and walked it up to his parent’s compost. He threw the bird on the heap and walked back down the garden whistling.
As he sat down dinner with his parents he felt happy for the first time in a long time. Before he made the first bite of his roast chicken there was a knock on the front door.
With a hatpin
The front door was closed by Richard and he turned to face his parents. He shrugged and smiled. The neighbours had come round with the other body wrapped in an old Tesco carrier bag. His parents started with the questions. He shrugged them off. They could question him all they wanted, they would never understand. They never did. He remembered the time he had stabbed a beetle with a hatpin and watched the impaled mini beast writhing in the garden when he was five. He remembered the time when he had got a lighter and burned the under side of a snail. It sounded like it was screaming and shrieking though he knew it wasn’t. He remembered the time he fed slug pellets to his Auntie’s budgie and watched it twittering on the floor of its little cell with blue foam coming out of its beak. He remembered when he was fourteen and he saw a cat get hit by a car. He felt excited by the creature’s high pitched mewling and twitching around on the bloody tarmac. He thought of Tanya.
The Death Of Cats
Nevis looked at the box in the corner of the stock room. This was the famous box that everyone had been talking about. Since he had joined the small printing firm Nevis had thought people were generally quite friendly but nothing to write home about. Today at lunch however, was the first time anyone had mentioned the box. Laura had been the first to tell Nevis about this thing that the rest of the staff had neglected to mention to him before, yet they all seemed to hold with a certain amount of reverence, or maybe a slight amount of fear.
As soon as Laura had mentioned the box to Nevis everyone in the staff room had had a different reaction. Some people went pale; others had made nervous laughter or tried to get Laura to avoid the subject, whilst others just dismissed the thing all together. James had said the story was all a load of bollocks. Nevis finally felt he was being accepted with all the rest of the work people. He had wanted to go out to the pub with them for drinks on a Friday afternoon but never had been invited. Now he was being told about something that they all knew about. The paranoid part of Nevis’ brain said that Laura could be winding him up but the look of excitement in her eyes didn’t seem to have any signs of deception in them.
Laura had told Nevis that the box had always been here and as with every high street business there is always a high turn over of staff but no one had ever taken this box or claimed it as their own, customer or employee. James had told her the very same story once even though he now dismissed it. No one knew how the box had got here and yet no one (so far as she knew) had ever opened it.
As Laura started telling the story more people in the staff room began chipping in with information. All that was on the box were some initials. It was just a small thing, it didn’t really stand out from anything apart from the fact everyone knows about it. Nevis wanted to know about the initials. Some said that they weren’t initials they were just letters. Laura said they were the initials Q.C. Adrian said they actually stood for Quality Control. Nevis asked Adrian why he hadn’t ever opened the box if he thought it was just something as innocuous as quality control. Adrian imparted to Nevis his experience of the box. Laura chipped in that everyone has an experience with the box.
Adrian said that when he first started working at the firm Squidink there were different people working there (he was one of those people who actually enjoyed working in retail) and when he was first told about the box he went and found it within the stock room. It was sitting where it usually is now within the room. As he originally approached it he had the intention to open the box up but then Adrian lost his nerve to – if no one else had opened the thing up why should he? He left it alone. But because he didn’t open it all throughout that day Adrian had the nagging sensation that he needed to open the box. Just because no one else had, that didn’t mean that he should not be the first person to see what is inside.
At the end of the working day Adrian snuck back in to the stock room. The box was nowhere to be seen. He walked further in and shut the door behind him. His eyes scanned around for the box but he couldn’t find it. All he could see were packets of paper and plastic binding materials. There was a crash behind Adrian and he whirled round. The box was on the floor behind him. The stock room door was still closed. No one had come in behind him, he was sure of it. He looked around and saw there were no shelves where the box could have fallen from, and he was sure no one had come in and moved the box. Adrian walked towards the box and picked it up. He shook it like a small boy would when trying to figure out what his presents consist of under the Christmas tree but there was no sound. Adrian decided to put the box back on a shelf. He walked out the room a little faster than he wanted too but his legs seem to be in charge of this quick exit.
Nevis let out a small whistle that Adrian took to be sarcastic. Nevis had to assure him it certainly wasn’t. Another person chipped in. Her name was Maxeen. She had a recollection that once she picked up the box and it seemed to be generating so much heat it burnt the palm of her hands. Maxeen had made a trip to the stockroom to collect some more binding materials and as she walked in there was a blast of heat that hit her. She said it was like when you get into a car when it had been sitting in the sun all day. As she moved towards where the binding materials were perched, she saw the box was not where it should be. The heat in the stockroom was stifling and claustrophobic. She explained that in the summer the stockroom was always bad but never usually this bad. She would have to have words with the manager. Also as Maxeen was particularly anal she had to put the box back to where it should be. She picked up the box and then the searing pain shot through her hands and up her arms and seemed to burn the synapses in her brain. This acute pain was like something she had never felt before. Maxeen dropped the box and watched it fall to the ground with tears in her eyes. As soon as the box had been dropped the heat stopped. Maxeen ran out of the room with her hands in the safety of her armpits. She showed Nevis the burn. As she put her hands together palm upwards towards Nevis he could make out the scarred outline of the box. She said she never wants to go near the box again. She told the then manager about it but he didn’t believe her story. Maxeen never goes in the stockroom now. She just stays on the till.
Gradually the people in the cramped staffroom started telling their stories about the box. All of them seemed strange but none of them seemed to link up with each other.
Laura’s own story was whenever she went into the stockroom and saw the box she would always get the most disgusting whiff of something rotting. Whenever she pulled other people in to see if they could also smell anything strange no one ever could. Laura told Nevis sometimes the stench was over powering but no one else would ever smell it and suddenly one day it went. There was never any explanation for it. Nevis just shook his head in wonder. This was stupid. He wanted to believe what they were saying but he pictured himself as one of life’s victims. Were they laughing at him?
Nevis stood in front of the box. Were they laughing at him? If they were, no one would know that he had checked the box out for himself and if they were telling the truth then he was sure he would be able to join in with the stories. No one had seen him sneak into the stockroom. Nevis stared at the box and it looked back at him. There were the letters. Q.C. Quality Control. He licked his lips. His heart was beating a little too fast for his liking. Nevis reached towards the box and picked it up. Nothing so far had happened to him. Nevis suddenly thought he heard a low humming – could be the air conditioning. He chose a key from his staff regulated choice of keys to ink cupboards and ran the edge of it along the tape that secured the box. The yellowed tape split open easily. The humming was getting louder. Nevis turned round but nobody was there. He looked at the box. It stared back at him. Its mouth now split open and free. Ready to tell Nevis the secrets. The humming was now completely around Nevis. He wanted to put the box down and run back into the safety of the store but he didn’t. Nevis wondered if anyone else could hear the humming. Nevis swallowed the lump in his throat. His feet were now part of the concrete floor beneath him; cold and immoveable.
Nevis opened the box.
As soon as Laura had mentioned the box to Nevis everyone in the staff room had had a different reaction. Some people went pale; others had made nervous laughter or tried to get Laura to avoid the subject, whilst others just dismissed the thing all together. James had said the story was all a load of bollocks. Nevis finally felt he was being accepted with all the rest of the work people. He had wanted to go out to the pub with them for drinks on a Friday afternoon but never had been invited. Now he was being told about something that they all knew about. The paranoid part of Nevis’ brain said that Laura could be winding him up but the look of excitement in her eyes didn’t seem to have any signs of deception in them.
Laura had told Nevis that the box had always been here and as with every high street business there is always a high turn over of staff but no one had ever taken this box or claimed it as their own, customer or employee. James had told her the very same story once even though he now dismissed it. No one knew how the box had got here and yet no one (so far as she knew) had ever opened it.
As Laura started telling the story more people in the staff room began chipping in with information. All that was on the box were some initials. It was just a small thing, it didn’t really stand out from anything apart from the fact everyone knows about it. Nevis wanted to know about the initials. Some said that they weren’t initials they were just letters. Laura said they were the initials Q.C. Adrian said they actually stood for Quality Control. Nevis asked Adrian why he hadn’t ever opened the box if he thought it was just something as innocuous as quality control. Adrian imparted to Nevis his experience of the box. Laura chipped in that everyone has an experience with the box.
Adrian said that when he first started working at the firm Squidink there were different people working there (he was one of those people who actually enjoyed working in retail) and when he was first told about the box he went and found it within the stock room. It was sitting where it usually is now within the room. As he originally approached it he had the intention to open the box up but then Adrian lost his nerve to – if no one else had opened the thing up why should he? He left it alone. But because he didn’t open it all throughout that day Adrian had the nagging sensation that he needed to open the box. Just because no one else had, that didn’t mean that he should not be the first person to see what is inside.
At the end of the working day Adrian snuck back in to the stock room. The box was nowhere to be seen. He walked further in and shut the door behind him. His eyes scanned around for the box but he couldn’t find it. All he could see were packets of paper and plastic binding materials. There was a crash behind Adrian and he whirled round. The box was on the floor behind him. The stock room door was still closed. No one had come in behind him, he was sure of it. He looked around and saw there were no shelves where the box could have fallen from, and he was sure no one had come in and moved the box. Adrian walked towards the box and picked it up. He shook it like a small boy would when trying to figure out what his presents consist of under the Christmas tree but there was no sound. Adrian decided to put the box back on a shelf. He walked out the room a little faster than he wanted too but his legs seem to be in charge of this quick exit.
Nevis let out a small whistle that Adrian took to be sarcastic. Nevis had to assure him it certainly wasn’t. Another person chipped in. Her name was Maxeen. She had a recollection that once she picked up the box and it seemed to be generating so much heat it burnt the palm of her hands. Maxeen had made a trip to the stockroom to collect some more binding materials and as she walked in there was a blast of heat that hit her. She said it was like when you get into a car when it had been sitting in the sun all day. As she moved towards where the binding materials were perched, she saw the box was not where it should be. The heat in the stockroom was stifling and claustrophobic. She explained that in the summer the stockroom was always bad but never usually this bad. She would have to have words with the manager. Also as Maxeen was particularly anal she had to put the box back to where it should be. She picked up the box and then the searing pain shot through her hands and up her arms and seemed to burn the synapses in her brain. This acute pain was like something she had never felt before. Maxeen dropped the box and watched it fall to the ground with tears in her eyes. As soon as the box had been dropped the heat stopped. Maxeen ran out of the room with her hands in the safety of her armpits. She showed Nevis the burn. As she put her hands together palm upwards towards Nevis he could make out the scarred outline of the box. She said she never wants to go near the box again. She told the then manager about it but he didn’t believe her story. Maxeen never goes in the stockroom now. She just stays on the till.
Gradually the people in the cramped staffroom started telling their stories about the box. All of them seemed strange but none of them seemed to link up with each other.
Laura’s own story was whenever she went into the stockroom and saw the box she would always get the most disgusting whiff of something rotting. Whenever she pulled other people in to see if they could also smell anything strange no one ever could. Laura told Nevis sometimes the stench was over powering but no one else would ever smell it and suddenly one day it went. There was never any explanation for it. Nevis just shook his head in wonder. This was stupid. He wanted to believe what they were saying but he pictured himself as one of life’s victims. Were they laughing at him?
Nevis stood in front of the box. Were they laughing at him? If they were, no one would know that he had checked the box out for himself and if they were telling the truth then he was sure he would be able to join in with the stories. No one had seen him sneak into the stockroom. Nevis stared at the box and it looked back at him. There were the letters. Q.C. Quality Control. He licked his lips. His heart was beating a little too fast for his liking. Nevis reached towards the box and picked it up. Nothing so far had happened to him. Nevis suddenly thought he heard a low humming – could be the air conditioning. He chose a key from his staff regulated choice of keys to ink cupboards and ran the edge of it along the tape that secured the box. The yellowed tape split open easily. The humming was getting louder. Nevis turned round but nobody was there. He looked at the box. It stared back at him. Its mouth now split open and free. Ready to tell Nevis the secrets. The humming was now completely around Nevis. He wanted to put the box down and run back into the safety of the store but he didn’t. Nevis wondered if anyone else could hear the humming. Nevis swallowed the lump in his throat. His feet were now part of the concrete floor beneath him; cold and immoveable.
Nevis opened the box.
The Hippy Graffiti
OK. I am not a big fan of graffiti. I think 'tagging' your new moniker on a railway bridge, the side of a roof or some old ladies back is completely pointless. Graffiti is pointless. I have managed to ignore it though as it is generally not offensive.However new graffiti has been springing up more and more around Brighton. It's probably the fault of "underground artist" Twat Face Banksy (of course him actually having a twat face is mere conjecture as no one has seen his face). These hippies that populate Brighton playing with their odd yo-yos, twirling batons and crap guitars singing Bob Marley tunes seem to be bringing their own form of graffiti to the streets. They put slogans over posters and billboards. These slogans annoy me. They tell me to do stuff. And it's stuff that makes no sense. For example, one piece of graffiti instructs "Creativity not consumerism". Pointless. They have no idea how infantile and ironic that statement is. Firstly what they have written is not creative, and secondly they had to buy the paint.
The New York Memory
I feel in love with the city that never sleeps. It is the only place I have visited that feels like a living organism. The place throbs and pulsates with life and lights and tarmac and greenery. The beauty of Manhattan Island is almost scientific. This is my briefest of love notes to a city that I miss.
When approaching the city after being spat out of the Queens-Midtown tunnel the land/skyscape was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. The sky was pink felt and the buildings looked as if they had been painted on top of it. As we dove onto East 34th street we were swallowed by the open wounds of streets and avenues. As we drove through, an enormous sense of déjà vu swamped me, though I had never set foot in the place.
I was dropped off on the corner of 55th and 8th. My new home in the heart of the Theatre District. I was here for only a short while and spent my time being teased by Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village; East Village and the Lower East Side where I was witness to one of the longest chess games in history. I wanted to leave my mark on everyplace I had been. I wanted to kiss each paving stone and steal each street sign. I wanted to be the city. I was green and the city was multi-coloured. The skyscrapers didn’t touch the sky because on Sunday the sky lowered itself down so it could touch the buildings just to remind itself of what it was missing.
Though I had to leave I promised myself that I will copy the sky and make sure that I too will lower myself back down to remind myself of what I will constantly be missing.
When approaching the city after being spat out of the Queens-Midtown tunnel the land/skyscape was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. The sky was pink felt and the buildings looked as if they had been painted on top of it. As we dove onto East 34th street we were swallowed by the open wounds of streets and avenues. As we drove through, an enormous sense of déjà vu swamped me, though I had never set foot in the place.
I was dropped off on the corner of 55th and 8th. My new home in the heart of the Theatre District. I was here for only a short while and spent my time being teased by Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village; East Village and the Lower East Side where I was witness to one of the longest chess games in history. I wanted to leave my mark on everyplace I had been. I wanted to kiss each paving stone and steal each street sign. I wanted to be the city. I was green and the city was multi-coloured. The skyscrapers didn’t touch the sky because on Sunday the sky lowered itself down so it could touch the buildings just to remind itself of what it was missing.
Though I had to leave I promised myself that I will copy the sky and make sure that I too will lower myself back down to remind myself of what I will constantly be missing.
The Petshop
As Gerald shut the door he knew that the police had nothing on him. This wasn’t his fault. It was business. In business you can’t show compassion. No matter how big or how small the business is. Whether you are a huge multi national company or just a struggling local pet shop. Money is money. The police and the RSPCA had tried to lay some proportion of the blame on him but he knew it wasn’t his fault.
Gerald could see how people may assume that he is partly responsible; but then if they did think like that then they weren’t looking at the whole picture. He needed to sell animals. That is the primary function of a pet shop is it not? What people do with the animals after they have brought them from him is no business of his. Even if he originally became suspicious with the old dear who kept buying a new animal every week. At first he thought she was dotty and was just filling her house up with a myriad of creatures to stave off the sense of loneliness which surrounds his ‘older’ customers. Then he heard the rumours of what she did to the animals. Well rumours are rumours. No one needed to pay any real attention to what other old women said. One day though she had admitted to Gerald as she was buying a Russian hamster that the rumours were true. Gerald sold her the hamster anyway. He needed the money. His business had been flagging and any money given was always received. He sold it to her. When she moved onto puppies and kittens he couldn’t say no. And anyway, what happens behind closed doors is nobodies business but the persons’ behind the door.
Gerald could see how people may assume that he is partly responsible; but then if they did think like that then they weren’t looking at the whole picture. He needed to sell animals. That is the primary function of a pet shop is it not? What people do with the animals after they have brought them from him is no business of his. Even if he originally became suspicious with the old dear who kept buying a new animal every week. At first he thought she was dotty and was just filling her house up with a myriad of creatures to stave off the sense of loneliness which surrounds his ‘older’ customers. Then he heard the rumours of what she did to the animals. Well rumours are rumours. No one needed to pay any real attention to what other old women said. One day though she had admitted to Gerald as she was buying a Russian hamster that the rumours were true. Gerald sold her the hamster anyway. He needed the money. His business had been flagging and any money given was always received. He sold it to her. When she moved onto puppies and kittens he couldn’t say no. And anyway, what happens behind closed doors is nobodies business but the persons’ behind the door.
The (insertpopularnamehere)
I am a child of Big Macs and Big Brother. My name is Chantelle; David; Paris; Brad; Whatever. I dance to the right music which judges have told me to like. I drink only the newest and brightly coloured drinks which have been sold to me. I write with vowels missed out of words so others may understand what I am saying. I am underage sex fighting over taxis drunk. I celebrate celebrity and scorn the faceless. I subscribe only to the charities that James Nesbitt and Lenny Henry tell me too. I bath and cleanse my self with Heat and Ok. I feel better about myself when reading that Jennifer Aniston has bad skin or that Britney Spears drops her spawn on the floor of a chauffer driven limo while holding a tequila sunrise. My phone has the latest ringtone from Jamster ironic or not. I laugh at Little Britain and my own humour derives from repeating the catchphrases to my work colleagues and friends. My contempt of normalcy is a contradiction because it is what everyone else views as normal. 9 to 5; 2.4; 24/7; 9/11, 7/7. I am numb to death and pain. I watch the news for entertainment. The adverts it shows for the gradual extinction of the human race is pornography for me to jerk off to. I enjoy seeing John Snow’s ties and I applauded the death of Princess Diana. Crime Watch is a soap opera and Channel 5 documentaries are brilliant unwitting social commentaries. Last night the pet dog of the same breed as Paris Hilton’s that I bought was stamped to death with my faux snakeskin loafers purchased from Topman on their store card.
The Womb
What else do you need to know? This girl tricked my friend. She didn’t trick me. He had known her for fourteen days and had basically been fucking her constantly and had some puppy dog hang up on her.
I thought she was ok. She was funny to talk to and funny to look at. She was odd to start off with. Just her whole demeanour was slightly off kilter. She had written letters to everyone in the house for example explaining her situation with my house mate. We didn’t need the details. He thought it was quirky. We thought it was weird.
Then on the fifteenth day she rang and told my housemate she was four months pregnant. The father was a forty year old scientologist who wanted nothing to do with her. My housemate took her in like some pregnant stray which is whimpering in the rain. I wasn’t happy but you can’t upset a friend and anyway, he’s twenty five and he knew my viewpoint on the situation. She was against abortion because she had already had one. I sarcastically said does she use it as a form of contraception and that joke went down as well as I do. She spends the night and in the morning my friend and I head off to work. Leaving her in the house. I was uneasy about the situation to say the least.
We came home. Everything was gone. Everything. Our house had been gutted. I nearly broke my neck stepping through the door to find there were no floorboards. The house was as empty as that bitch’s womb.
I thought she was ok. She was funny to talk to and funny to look at. She was odd to start off with. Just her whole demeanour was slightly off kilter. She had written letters to everyone in the house for example explaining her situation with my house mate. We didn’t need the details. He thought it was quirky. We thought it was weird.
Then on the fifteenth day she rang and told my housemate she was four months pregnant. The father was a forty year old scientologist who wanted nothing to do with her. My housemate took her in like some pregnant stray which is whimpering in the rain. I wasn’t happy but you can’t upset a friend and anyway, he’s twenty five and he knew my viewpoint on the situation. She was against abortion because she had already had one. I sarcastically said does she use it as a form of contraception and that joke went down as well as I do. She spends the night and in the morning my friend and I head off to work. Leaving her in the house. I was uneasy about the situation to say the least.
We came home. Everything was gone. Everything. Our house had been gutted. I nearly broke my neck stepping through the door to find there were no floorboards. The house was as empty as that bitch’s womb.
The Husband
Audrey woke to find her dead husband of six years lying in bed next to her. She wasn’t quite sure what to say to him as he turned his face towards hers and smiled. “Hello Bill,” Audrey said trying to sound as normal as possible. “How are you doing?” Bill just raised his finger to his lips and made the quiet sound. Audrey obeyed and listened.
Suddenly she heard the noise of someone else moving stuff around in the kitchen. Then she heard muffled voices. Audrey’s eyes spread wide with fear. “Burglar?!” she asked Bill. He nodded. Then she felt her dead husband get up out of bed and watched him walk out of their bedroom door and out into the darkness towards where the sounds of the intruder were coming from. Audrey pulled the blanket tight up to her face. She heard the sounds of speaking in the kitchen the sound of a scuffle and the silence. Why was her dead husband here? Had he known she was going to be in danger tonight and had appeared as a sort of guardian apparition to protect her from danger? She knew it was Bill straight away as she felt absolutely no fear when she had woken up with him next to her in their bed.
Audrey heard the sound of her bedroom door open and then the comforting sound of feet padding softly around the bed. The bed sagged as Bill climbed back into bed with her. “Don’t worry,” he said “You’re safe now.” Audrey turned to face Bill and found herself looking at the face of the burglar smiling at her.
Suddenly she heard the noise of someone else moving stuff around in the kitchen. Then she heard muffled voices. Audrey’s eyes spread wide with fear. “Burglar?!” she asked Bill. He nodded. Then she felt her dead husband get up out of bed and watched him walk out of their bedroom door and out into the darkness towards where the sounds of the intruder were coming from. Audrey pulled the blanket tight up to her face. She heard the sounds of speaking in the kitchen the sound of a scuffle and the silence. Why was her dead husband here? Had he known she was going to be in danger tonight and had appeared as a sort of guardian apparition to protect her from danger? She knew it was Bill straight away as she felt absolutely no fear when she had woken up with him next to her in their bed.
Audrey heard the sound of her bedroom door open and then the comforting sound of feet padding softly around the bed. The bed sagged as Bill climbed back into bed with her. “Don’t worry,” he said “You’re safe now.” Audrey turned to face Bill and found herself looking at the face of the burglar smiling at her.
The Yummy
There are many reasons why some people will not like this thought. I told my friend Louise and she claimed it was misogynistic. But then what is misogyny? I know what it literally means but women can get away with hating men by calling feminism a political standpoint. Then can’t misogyny be classed as a political standpoint? No? Well fuck you.
Anyway, the thought I had was that I was going down on my girlfriend and realised I hated doing it. I only ever did it because I saw it as a means to an end. I was half way through and decided I couldn’t do it anymore. How can I spend time down here with my face between her legs? I am licking; kissing; and nipping the place where I have stuck my penis in many a time; and am just about to stick it in again.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-sex. I love it. I love oral sex performed on me. I just don’t like doing it. And no, I’m not being selfish. I just don’t like it. Like the fact I don’t like tomatoes. Now I’m not being selfish to the little red fruit because I am not eating it, am I? No. (Repeat that last sentence for an innuendo)
Anyway it would be disgraceful if I was only using the act of oral sex, no, oral love as a means to an end. That would be shallow and I respect my girlfriend far too much to use oral love as a means for her to suck my end. And we all know it’s impossible to spell misogyny without ‘vagina’. Well it isn’t but you all know what I mean.
Anyway, the thought I had was that I was going down on my girlfriend and realised I hated doing it. I only ever did it because I saw it as a means to an end. I was half way through and decided I couldn’t do it anymore. How can I spend time down here with my face between her legs? I am licking; kissing; and nipping the place where I have stuck my penis in many a time; and am just about to stick it in again.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-sex. I love it. I love oral sex performed on me. I just don’t like doing it. And no, I’m not being selfish. I just don’t like it. Like the fact I don’t like tomatoes. Now I’m not being selfish to the little red fruit because I am not eating it, am I? No. (Repeat that last sentence for an innuendo)
Anyway it would be disgraceful if I was only using the act of oral sex, no, oral love as a means to an end. That would be shallow and I respect my girlfriend far too much to use oral love as a means for her to suck my end. And we all know it’s impossible to spell misogyny without ‘vagina’. Well it isn’t but you all know what I mean.
The Flesh
I watched Brian kill the first girl he had ever slept with. Her body was laying in the centre of my bed; her mouth and eyes open and dead just like her legs. I had heard the creaking of bed springs and then the scream. I rushed in and watched Brian throttle her. She looked at me while he was doing it. You’re probably thinking that I should have been angry that Brian was doing it in my bed but Brian and I share everything.
I had grown up with Brian beside me my whole life. We had grown up together; we were like brothers. I always think that Brian was a little jealous of me because everyone always paid me more attention. He always hung around a couple of steps behind me. I was really the only person who paid any attention to him whatsoever. That’s why we have such a strong bond. We did everything together and shared everything. We even slept in the same bed when we had both moved out of our parents’ house. The only thing that was different was the one night Brian wasn’t there I had finally lost my virginity to some bint down the local club. Brian never forgave me though he told me he had. This night when Brian killed the girl, was the first girl he had ever slept with and it was the same girl I had fucked a few weeks before.
The strange thing about this night was that this was the first time Brian had actually appeared to someone else rather than myself.
I had grown up with Brian beside me my whole life. We had grown up together; we were like brothers. I always think that Brian was a little jealous of me because everyone always paid me more attention. He always hung around a couple of steps behind me. I was really the only person who paid any attention to him whatsoever. That’s why we have such a strong bond. We did everything together and shared everything. We even slept in the same bed when we had both moved out of our parents’ house. The only thing that was different was the one night Brian wasn’t there I had finally lost my virginity to some bint down the local club. Brian never forgave me though he told me he had. This night when Brian killed the girl, was the first girl he had ever slept with and it was the same girl I had fucked a few weeks before.
The strange thing about this night was that this was the first time Brian had actually appeared to someone else rather than myself.
The Kettering
Scene: My local pub’s toilets at the urinals. Myself and a friend are trying to piss talking:
JW: I can’t do it.
Simon: It’s easy.
JW: For you maybe but for me –
Simon: How about if we do it in silence?
JW: Ok.
We stand there. Simon begins whistling.
JW: Will you stop that. No, that’s it. I need to go in private. I can’t do it.
Simon: I can’t go now.
JW: See. See! That’s pressure. Because of the silence it put too much pressure on us. I can’t do it in silence. It’s as if someone might be listening for it.
A man walks in and uses the urinal in between the both of us. He is quick. He washes his hands and leaves.
JW: Look at mister confidence there. In and out. That’s what I wish I was like.
Simon: At last. I was getting worried there.
JW: Do you think that guy who just came in is laughing at us now? Knowing that we couldn’t do it.
Simon: What’s with the we? I can wee. Just finished now.
Simon zips up and goes to wash his hands.
JW: I’m just going to have to hold it in. I can do that.
JW zips up.
JW: Do I still need to wash my hands?
Simon shrugs.
JW: I can’t do it.
Simon: It’s easy.
JW: For you maybe but for me –
Simon: How about if we do it in silence?
JW: Ok.
We stand there. Simon begins whistling.
JW: Will you stop that. No, that’s it. I need to go in private. I can’t do it.
Simon: I can’t go now.
JW: See. See! That’s pressure. Because of the silence it put too much pressure on us. I can’t do it in silence. It’s as if someone might be listening for it.
A man walks in and uses the urinal in between the both of us. He is quick. He washes his hands and leaves.
JW: Look at mister confidence there. In and out. That’s what I wish I was like.
Simon: At last. I was getting worried there.
JW: Do you think that guy who just came in is laughing at us now? Knowing that we couldn’t do it.
Simon: What’s with the we? I can wee. Just finished now.
Simon zips up and goes to wash his hands.
JW: I’m just going to have to hold it in. I can do that.
JW zips up.
JW: Do I still need to wash my hands?
Simon shrugs.
The Crocodile
My local pub The Bleeding Heart is a typical pub. A mixture of students; under age kids and O.A.P.s. One evening just like any other a local thug called Dave Sams walked into the pub with a crocodile on a lead. You can imagine the reactions: people screaming in shock and awe and the landlord Gerry telling Dave to take the creature back to where he found it. Dave just laughed and told everyone not to worry. The crocodile was apparently tame and would not hurt anyone or anything. To prove his point the already drunk Dave smashed a bottle over the beast’s head. This intrigued everyone in the pub and we all gathered round to stroke the croc as if it were a friendly dog.
As the evening wore on the novelty of the crocodile continued to grow. We were all getting progressively more drunk and sitting on the crocodile and then my friend Pete asked if he could put his head in the crocodile’s mouth. We all laughed thinking he was joking but when the croc opened its mouth Pete stuck his head in! One man came up called Stinky Doug and popped his penis out; stuck it in the poor animal’s mouth; then hit the animal on the head with a bottle. The crocodile seemed to take this with reptilian good humour. More men went and copied this trick to show that it was not only Stinky Doug who was brave. Soon an old lady who had been sitting in the corner all evening walked up and asked if she could have a go. Dave said of course.
“Thanks,” she said, “just don’t hit me too hard with the bottle”.
As the evening wore on the novelty of the crocodile continued to grow. We were all getting progressively more drunk and sitting on the crocodile and then my friend Pete asked if he could put his head in the crocodile’s mouth. We all laughed thinking he was joking but when the croc opened its mouth Pete stuck his head in! One man came up called Stinky Doug and popped his penis out; stuck it in the poor animal’s mouth; then hit the animal on the head with a bottle. The crocodile seemed to take this with reptilian good humour. More men went and copied this trick to show that it was not only Stinky Doug who was brave. Soon an old lady who had been sitting in the corner all evening walked up and asked if she could have a go. Dave said of course.
“Thanks,” she said, “just don’t hit me too hard with the bottle”.
The Yes
Charli was stuck in this situation because she had said “Yes”. She should have never listened to her magazine. Charli had read an article that had told her to fill out the questionnaire that had come with it. It turned out her personality was far too negative so she had decided to become a more positive person. Her friends all agreed.
It seemed like an easy thing at first. Whenever the opportunity for a question with a yes or no answer came up, she had to say yes. Now here she was. In a coffin. She could hear people laughing outside the box. She had always been claustrophobic and she was beginning to panic now. If this is where saying yes all the time gets you she would stick with being negative. What did a magazine know about her personality? How could she take advice from a magazine with no prior knowledge about her personality? You can’t sum up an individual’s personality within a series of a, b or c questions. She was sure the magazine would argue that she shouldn’t take things like the questionnaire so seriously but it was in her nature.
Why were her friends laughing? This situation was horrible. “I want to get out,” she said calmly. Nothing. Then a giggle. Try not to panic she thought. This is a joke; some horrible, sick joke. She banged against the lid. Don’t let them think you’re worried. From outside the box came a voice asking another dreaded question, “Do you want the lid nailed shut?”
“Yes.” Charli said.
It seemed like an easy thing at first. Whenever the opportunity for a question with a yes or no answer came up, she had to say yes. Now here she was. In a coffin. She could hear people laughing outside the box. She had always been claustrophobic and she was beginning to panic now. If this is where saying yes all the time gets you she would stick with being negative. What did a magazine know about her personality? How could she take advice from a magazine with no prior knowledge about her personality? You can’t sum up an individual’s personality within a series of a, b or c questions. She was sure the magazine would argue that she shouldn’t take things like the questionnaire so seriously but it was in her nature.
Why were her friends laughing? This situation was horrible. “I want to get out,” she said calmly. Nothing. Then a giggle. Try not to panic she thought. This is a joke; some horrible, sick joke. She banged against the lid. Don’t let them think you’re worried. From outside the box came a voice asking another dreaded question, “Do you want the lid nailed shut?”
“Yes.” Charli said.
The Shadow
Vincent had felt strange all day. Something had been missing. Everything in his life was fine. He had recently married his long term partner and had been promoted at work. No matter what he tried to find out he could not put his finger on what was missing.
As he walked home his eyes focused on the pavement and he noticed what was wrong; what was missing. He had no shadow. He stood underneath a streetlamp and waved his arm about. He began moving in many different positions underneath the orange glow and often got strange looks from the odd passer by on their own way home. Vincent felt sick. His shadow had gone. But when did it go? You never really pay any attention to the fact that you cast a shadow but now it had gone Vincent began to want it back.
When he arrived back home he tried to tell his wife the problem, and when he showed her she began to cry. Vincent sat down next to her and felt lost. Where could his shadow be? Vincent’s head was full of questions and his wife’s tears were no help to him and his problem.
* * * *
Across the road Frank Merryweather was promptly demonstrating to his wife that he was now the owner of two shadows. It had come from nowhere and it also didn’t follow his movements. He didn’t want it.
As he walked home his eyes focused on the pavement and he noticed what was wrong; what was missing. He had no shadow. He stood underneath a streetlamp and waved his arm about. He began moving in many different positions underneath the orange glow and often got strange looks from the odd passer by on their own way home. Vincent felt sick. His shadow had gone. But when did it go? You never really pay any attention to the fact that you cast a shadow but now it had gone Vincent began to want it back.
When he arrived back home he tried to tell his wife the problem, and when he showed her she began to cry. Vincent sat down next to her and felt lost. Where could his shadow be? Vincent’s head was full of questions and his wife’s tears were no help to him and his problem.
* * * *
Across the road Frank Merryweather was promptly demonstrating to his wife that he was now the owner of two shadows. It had come from nowhere and it also didn’t follow his movements. He didn’t want it.
The Hermaphrodite
Whilst I was at university I lived next door to some strange neighbours. The husband had one arm that was about a foot longer than the other and hung limply at his side while his wife was just obese. They often did strange things; such as on one Sunday afternoon they loaded up their car with all manner of objects for hours and then took them all back inside again. This was the most pointless activity I had ever seen. Though these characters were funny to me seeing as I have never really grown out of school yard humour (no one really does) it was their child that interested my housemates and I. We were sure their child was a hermaphrodite.
There were many reasons why this creature puzzled us. For starters; its mix of female and male characteristics and physical (one hesitates to use the word) attributes. This thing had the body of a woman but sounded like a teenage boy whose voice is breaking. It had strange hair like Art Garfunkel. It played guitar and often rocked out to Ozzy Osborne. We spent hours trying to figure out what it was. We even found out where it worked so we could look on the nametag to see whether we could tell from the name but it never wore a nametag. This became an obsession with us. I even had conversations with it as we both hung out the washing but it never brought out any tell tale underwear. We often found ourselves looking a little too hard sometimes at them. In the end I think the neighbours thought we were the odd ones.
There were many reasons why this creature puzzled us. For starters; its mix of female and male characteristics and physical (one hesitates to use the word) attributes. This thing had the body of a woman but sounded like a teenage boy whose voice is breaking. It had strange hair like Art Garfunkel. It played guitar and often rocked out to Ozzy Osborne. We spent hours trying to figure out what it was. We even found out where it worked so we could look on the nametag to see whether we could tell from the name but it never wore a nametag. This became an obsession with us. I even had conversations with it as we both hung out the washing but it never brought out any tell tale underwear. We often found ourselves looking a little too hard sometimes at them. In the end I think the neighbours thought we were the odd ones.
The Ego
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The Floor
He tried though I will give him that. After the accident he stuck by me. Washing me; cleaning me; feeding me. I was a vegetable. I just sat in that wheel chair. True, as the years wore on I became more compos mentis again and was able to speak a little and breathe without the help of apparatus. I could even thrash my arms wildly on occasion if I wanted attention from those around me. He was always there for me even though he often fed me the food I hated or sometimes was a bit dismissive in the way he cleaned me. That was embarrassing for the both of us.
That accident made me helpless but also put me in charge of the relationship (if he had needed reminding). I was the master and he was the servant. He was always there when I wanted and needed him. But where is he now? He used to push me through gardens so I could witness the mocking beauty and poetry of nature. I had the views shown to me of some of the most spectacular sights of Britain. He took me more places when I was in this state than he did when I could have fully enjoyed them. I did enjoy the trips though. Him pushing me everywhere and taking me places where I wanted to go. It was fantastic. Now what’s my view? The dust that has collected under my bed. God knows how long I am going to lay here and if anyone will find me. He won’t. He left with my sister yesterday. All I can do is flail my arms like a fish out of water and wait to drown in dust and air.
That accident made me helpless but also put me in charge of the relationship (if he had needed reminding). I was the master and he was the servant. He was always there when I wanted and needed him. But where is he now? He used to push me through gardens so I could witness the mocking beauty and poetry of nature. I had the views shown to me of some of the most spectacular sights of Britain. He took me more places when I was in this state than he did when I could have fully enjoyed them. I did enjoy the trips though. Him pushing me everywhere and taking me places where I wanted to go. It was fantastic. Now what’s my view? The dust that has collected under my bed. God knows how long I am going to lay here and if anyone will find me. He won’t. He left with my sister yesterday. All I can do is flail my arms like a fish out of water and wait to drown in dust and air.
The Toothbrush
David rubbed his eyes and absently looked into his bathroom mirror. He ran his hands through his thinning hair and sighed. He opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out. It looked like an old sweaty gym sock had been stuck over this thing protruding from his mouth. His eyes were red and bloodshot. He was not hung over though. Just tired of work and tired of life. He picked up his blue toothbrush and suddenly noticed another one sitting next to it in the water stained cup that sat on the windowsill.
David looked at the red toothbrush. It shouldn’t have been there. He knew this for three reasons. 1) David lived alone and had the need therefore for one toothbrush not two. 2) It was red and he always bought blue toothbrushes. 3) He had only one mouth and had the need therefore for one toothbrush not two.
Where had this toothbrush appeared from? Everything else this morning had been like normal. The sun had risen. The alarm went off at the same time. He got out on the right side of his bed. He had stood on the same bare patch of brown carpet that had worn through with his repetition of always getting out the same side. He had gone to the toilet first. He had then looked in the mirror after rubbing his eyes. He had run his hand through the same thinning hair. David put down the blue toothbrush that he was going to use. Why had this red toothbrush appeared? David looked at the red toothbrush and picked it up and began to brush his teeth.
David looked at the red toothbrush. It shouldn’t have been there. He knew this for three reasons. 1) David lived alone and had the need therefore for one toothbrush not two. 2) It was red and he always bought blue toothbrushes. 3) He had only one mouth and had the need therefore for one toothbrush not two.
Where had this toothbrush appeared from? Everything else this morning had been like normal. The sun had risen. The alarm went off at the same time. He got out on the right side of his bed. He had stood on the same bare patch of brown carpet that had worn through with his repetition of always getting out the same side. He had gone to the toilet first. He had then looked in the mirror after rubbing his eyes. He had run his hand through the same thinning hair. David put down the blue toothbrush that he was going to use. Why had this red toothbrush appeared? David looked at the red toothbrush and picked it up and began to brush his teeth.
Tuesday, 11 March 2008
The Sweden Trip
Myself and Rich touched down at Alanda airport, only a brief 40 minute bus trip away from Stockholm. Once again my bag came riding on the conveyor belt like some crap prize rejected from the generation game but this time it had not been slashed open by whatever monkeys had been let out from the zoo to handle luggage. Once we had arrived at the Hostel and had chowed down on the first of many cheap burgers (which, by the way, ended us coining the phrase McTummy; use your imagination) we passed out; now I’m not trying to make excuses but we had had a long day and seeing as it was one in the morning it seemed like the intelligent thing to do.
On Saturday we awoke and made our way to do some brief sightseeing and reacquaint ourselves with the city. During this time I began to feel the bite for a beer, and Sweden being a country where people obviously care about their livers, found it rather hard to actually find a place to begin getting drunk. Luckily for me but unluckily for my largest gland we managed to find a hole of sorts that dispensed beer. We then remembered that Sweden; once again looking after the second largest organ in the body (it is…the skin is the largest…look it up); runs its alcohol distribution through some government run off licence called System Bolaget.
Now the strange thing is on a Saturday the System closes its doors at three in the afternoon and therefore at half past two it seems that every Swede is a raging alcoholic as they attack each other for the booze and a place in the quickest queue. I and Rich managed to join in the scrum and elbowed chaos in the face and managed to buy as much booze as we could so we would be able to drink ourselves into some sort of drunkenness like all English people can. A joke I heard once, I feel, best describes our mindset: “English people are the only people on Earth who get drunk before they go out to get drunk. That’s like eating a steak before going out for a three course meal.” When we promptly tried to explain this mindset to our Swedish friends we failed because we were well on the way to getting drunk.
We headed in to Slussen section of Stockholm so we could make our way to an Alternative Club called ‘Debaser’. This club is somewhat of a perennial place for bands to play from all over the world. The roster of artists and bands that have played there reads like a who’s who of…well you think of the simile yourself. I’m tired from the trip. We entered the club and carried on our drinking in earnest. Between bands, whilst the dance floor was empty, I punch danced myself out for awhile (Rich managed to record the whole thing on his mobile, and keeps threatening to post it on youtube).
We began to mix and talk with many people and once again, Swedish people proved to me that they are the friendliest people on the planet. Every person we spoke to smiled and had conversations with us while we mumbled our way through. Kudos to the Swedes for not only for having English as their second language, but also for being able to understand us; where English probably sounded like it was our fourth or fifth.
Of the people we spoke to one guy we met was called Rickard and after him having to put up with us telling him he resembled Jack Black (sorry Rickard) we found out that he was a member of the band Suburban Kids With Biblical Names ( a fantastic moniker I think you’ll agree). After many more drunken conversations we all agreed to come and watch his band play in one of (how ironic) the suburbs of Stockholm.
On a Tuesday night we arrived at a suburb called Telefonplan and after making our way out of the station headed towards a smell venue. As we entered it dawned on us quite how small the venue was. We were crammed into the place and it was packed so tight it felt like my eyeballs were getting popped out of their sockets. I bought a beer and wished for a straw as I bumped someone every time I tried to lift the glass to my lips.
I fought my way through a plethora of indie boys with sucked in cheeks that looked like retired lab technicians and indie girls wearing polka dot dresses and looking uncannily like the indie boys. The band edged their way on to what really should be called a plinth (though we will assume it was a stage) and played a great set. The music sounded like they had somehow bottled summer and then spread it across their instruments and melodies, for a moment I forgot it was February. Each song managed to bring a smile to my face and made me wish that I knew the words. Rich had the task of taking the snaps whilst I was able to enjoy the music, as my beer became warmer and warmer. After the band completed their set the floor suddenly breathed out and I could move again.
We continued to watch the other bands on the bill though I was unimpressed after seeing Suburban Kids… These bands sounded like they had spent months listening to Moldy Peaches outtakes and then had decided to play them backwards. There is Lo-Fi and then there is just an inability to play and the last two bands fell into the latter. We drank some more and finally bid adieu to our Swedish friends after having a great night. It was only marred by some loud Americans who obviously felt the need to broadcast where they came from…like we did a couple of nights previously.
But I like to think we did it with more class.
On Saturday we awoke and made our way to do some brief sightseeing and reacquaint ourselves with the city. During this time I began to feel the bite for a beer, and Sweden being a country where people obviously care about their livers, found it rather hard to actually find a place to begin getting drunk. Luckily for me but unluckily for my largest gland we managed to find a hole of sorts that dispensed beer. We then remembered that Sweden; once again looking after the second largest organ in the body (it is…the skin is the largest…look it up); runs its alcohol distribution through some government run off licence called System Bolaget.
Now the strange thing is on a Saturday the System closes its doors at three in the afternoon and therefore at half past two it seems that every Swede is a raging alcoholic as they attack each other for the booze and a place in the quickest queue. I and Rich managed to join in the scrum and elbowed chaos in the face and managed to buy as much booze as we could so we would be able to drink ourselves into some sort of drunkenness like all English people can. A joke I heard once, I feel, best describes our mindset: “English people are the only people on Earth who get drunk before they go out to get drunk. That’s like eating a steak before going out for a three course meal.” When we promptly tried to explain this mindset to our Swedish friends we failed because we were well on the way to getting drunk.
We headed in to Slussen section of Stockholm so we could make our way to an Alternative Club called ‘Debaser’. This club is somewhat of a perennial place for bands to play from all over the world. The roster of artists and bands that have played there reads like a who’s who of…well you think of the simile yourself. I’m tired from the trip. We entered the club and carried on our drinking in earnest. Between bands, whilst the dance floor was empty, I punch danced myself out for awhile (Rich managed to record the whole thing on his mobile, and keeps threatening to post it on youtube).
We began to mix and talk with many people and once again, Swedish people proved to me that they are the friendliest people on the planet. Every person we spoke to smiled and had conversations with us while we mumbled our way through. Kudos to the Swedes for not only for having English as their second language, but also for being able to understand us; where English probably sounded like it was our fourth or fifth.
Of the people we spoke to one guy we met was called Rickard and after him having to put up with us telling him he resembled Jack Black (sorry Rickard) we found out that he was a member of the band Suburban Kids With Biblical Names ( a fantastic moniker I think you’ll agree). After many more drunken conversations we all agreed to come and watch his band play in one of (how ironic) the suburbs of Stockholm.
On a Tuesday night we arrived at a suburb called Telefonplan and after making our way out of the station headed towards a smell venue. As we entered it dawned on us quite how small the venue was. We were crammed into the place and it was packed so tight it felt like my eyeballs were getting popped out of their sockets. I bought a beer and wished for a straw as I bumped someone every time I tried to lift the glass to my lips.
I fought my way through a plethora of indie boys with sucked in cheeks that looked like retired lab technicians and indie girls wearing polka dot dresses and looking uncannily like the indie boys. The band edged their way on to what really should be called a plinth (though we will assume it was a stage) and played a great set. The music sounded like they had somehow bottled summer and then spread it across their instruments and melodies, for a moment I forgot it was February. Each song managed to bring a smile to my face and made me wish that I knew the words. Rich had the task of taking the snaps whilst I was able to enjoy the music, as my beer became warmer and warmer. After the band completed their set the floor suddenly breathed out and I could move again.
We continued to watch the other bands on the bill though I was unimpressed after seeing Suburban Kids… These bands sounded like they had spent months listening to Moldy Peaches outtakes and then had decided to play them backwards. There is Lo-Fi and then there is just an inability to play and the last two bands fell into the latter. We drank some more and finally bid adieu to our Swedish friends after having a great night. It was only marred by some loud Americans who obviously felt the need to broadcast where they came from…like we did a couple of nights previously.
But I like to think we did it with more class.
The Olive
Right. My gripe. Now I don't have anything against olives. Let's just get that out the way. I think they do their job perfectly, lounging in martinis or perching atop a pizza trying to make it look classy.
My problem is people who eat olives.
Now, I was with someone who was eating olives the other day and they asked me if I had ever tried one before. I said 'No'. So they offered me one. I ate it. It tasted like what the back end of an elephant's scrotum must taste like. I promptly told said olive eater. They laughed and said 'Well no one likes them at first. You just have to keep eating them until you become used to them'. By that missive I deduced that said 'Olive Eater' doesn't actually like them now. They eat them because they are used to the taste. So, by proxy, I should have suggested they eat some three day old dog's vomit. They may not like the taste at first but, if they keep eating it they will get used to it. Or maybe if I keep punching them repeatedly in the face they might not like it at first but they will get used to it. See what I mean?
So as them being a metaphor for the human race, I think maybe they are metaphors for people who eat them and offer them around to people. You see you don't like them when they offer you the olive at first and after they keep offering them you just get used to them.
Or maybe you don't like this point I'm making at first but I assure you keep reading it over and over again and I'm sure you will get used to it.
My problem is people who eat olives.
Now, I was with someone who was eating olives the other day and they asked me if I had ever tried one before. I said 'No'. So they offered me one. I ate it. It tasted like what the back end of an elephant's scrotum must taste like. I promptly told said olive eater. They laughed and said 'Well no one likes them at first. You just have to keep eating them until you become used to them'. By that missive I deduced that said 'Olive Eater' doesn't actually like them now. They eat them because they are used to the taste. So, by proxy, I should have suggested they eat some three day old dog's vomit. They may not like the taste at first but, if they keep eating it they will get used to it. Or maybe if I keep punching them repeatedly in the face they might not like it at first but they will get used to it. See what I mean?
So as them being a metaphor for the human race, I think maybe they are metaphors for people who eat them and offer them around to people. You see you don't like them when they offer you the olive at first and after they keep offering them you just get used to them.
Or maybe you don't like this point I'm making at first but I assure you keep reading it over and over again and I'm sure you will get used to it.
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