£1995

Every so often your faith in faith and the milkyness of the milk of human kindness is restored by some random event or in this case car advertisement. £1995 for a twelve year old Cougar smacks of the unrealistic or the desperate or perhaps both. I don't mind, in the troubled times we live in I'd like to think that there is somebody out there with two grand to spend on this old lady. He or she probably wont regret it right away, it's only when you become trapped into the way of the Cougar that you realise the actual price.

Enjoyable conversation

Sometimes when I think about losing weigh and the effort and exercise just to shed a few pounds I reflect on H G Well’s Mr Pyecraft. Weight, size and the resultant self-image are largely illusionary things that can be pursued but never caught. Feeling fit and healthy and comfortable with yourself is quite different and much more inner than outer. Feeling good does go with looking god, in a parallel way but they seldom intersect. Often I feel hungry in the core of my being, I feel the gnaw and the knots in my stomach as if it was devouring itself, growling and bubbling in anticipation of a crust. Then that feeling passes and my core sulks, denies it’s needs and slinks back like a battered beast that has been maltreated. Then I eat something, it’s never enough but it silences the howl. Then maybe I take some exercise, a brisk walk or a cycle, I feel ok but my mind is restless. The truth is that I want to eat and drink what I want, indulge that great Scottish appetite for excess and fill every god shaped, dog shaped and whisky shaped hole to it’s addicted limit and then float, serene, grinning, smug and over indulged like a rotund Pyecraft. Then I wake up and I’m not hungry at all. It must be a new hotel room but as is my habit I don’t recall checking in.

I though of us up there in that hotel room, alone and busy, supping great classic drinks and smoking, like Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda. Here we are half mad with the alcohol, the clothes and the creative drive that’s pushed us into this elegant prison with either a typewriter or a laptop, depending on the era. The drapes are close to closed, only allowing in the thinnest bands of the Mediterranean light, keeping the cell shrouded, hanging in smoke and passing clouds. Providing lift and nesting spaces for random words and phrases so they can float in that gap about our heads and below the ceiling until they finally encage with a kindred idea and can come to rest on the screen or paper.

We are asleep in a Steampunk world of planned disorder, we gather artifacts to worship, we hope to find uses for them and we read books hoping to find meaning and short cuts. Books that will lead us across bridges and obstacles with their iron and steel words, taking us places we would otherwise have missed. This illusion of education and shared experience is hard to avoid, it pops up like some acid distraction and causes our thoughts to fail in this perpetual eclipse. Somebody someplace knew better and wrote it all down in a book and we, desperate to claw our way to that place read it and then replicate it and replace it with another. Our unseen audience scoops them up and places them on shelves, in cardboard boxes or in suitcases but as long as there is an income stream to be accessed then why should we care (and that is not a question).

A nervous waiter brings in a tray of fresh drinks, bowls of lemons and limes, ice in a silver bucket, gin, tonic and more gin. A Champagne bottle pops out on the balcony and laughter, thinner than the sunlight edges into the space. I’m too bust pretending to concentrate, she is too busy too notice, the girl on the balcony is sipping and smiling and looking out across and blue sea that burns cold with an inner light of drowned promise. “How I love this time of day, it makes my troubles melt away, just to see the porpoise’ play in the ocean’s frantic spray” The words are tagged onto a Gershwin melody that she repeats between sips. All of the land is locked in siesta, asleep and blind, we are locked in the search for a holy grail of plotted ideas and she is trapped in her bottle blonde world.

Sweating at the brow I stand up a walk backwards from my desk and throw an ice cube into my mouth, sucking it as if it could lead to the source of some inspirational point, sucking as if it gave me strength. Then I ‘m alongside, like a liner on the balcony, parting the drapes and blinking in the sharp sunlight. Zelda person reacts and pretends to swoon but quickly joins us with her glass. We mumble about royalties and royal families and royal swear words. We sit back in those finer white cane chairs that came from somewhere, we talk about our writings and look at each other, painfully thin through the lenses of these expensive sunglasses that still fail to cut out the glare. But then maybe it’s the over stretched glare of our failing personalities, burning out before our eyes, dying like some alien race about to go down, below the surface as in a repeat of Atlantis and other lost legends. Civilization interrupted and held back, progress denied and stunted, growth impaired and development thwarted. If we only had something to say we could have such an enjoyable conversation.

“I see all people as equal, all as the same, all as different and all as victims of the eternal shame. The original sin was never man’s; god (he deserving only a small g) committed it with his nonsensical vision. We failed him because that was all we could have done. Now people marvel at it all and waste their lives in ridiculous devotions, competitions with other narrow minded idealists or bigots and cathedral building exercises. No sane god would have let this happen.” She finished speaking and sipped more champagne. “ See that dog sleeping in the shade there? He has more purpose and knows more satisfaction than any one of us because he is a dog and dogs don’t go to war with one another.”

“God failed us first because we invented him in such a slipshod manner,” Zelda piped up from the room from the couch. “He failed us first and we now build our careers on perpetuating and exploring that failure but at least we have sex and alcohol to dull the pain. And we have errant days like these and crashing typewriters to click the miles of paper that lie between us and that artificial heaven you seem determined to manufacture for us.”

“I was never my intention to deceive any of you.” I said. With that I rolled up the newspaper, left the company and went next door for a cool shower. Tomorrow we would travel across continents and under newly formed clouds, the aroma of strange cookery and spices opening and stimulating our senses at every turn.

From Russia...

...with a measure of unrequited love. At least these Bosch bad boys burn a little brighter and last a little longer than their Halfords counterparts which judging by their limited life span are made either in Zambia or Antarctica under license from a fledgling manufacturer based in Taiwan and determined to cut costs. In the past five days I've replaced four bulbs, an activity mostly carried out in the rain in supermarket car parks or in retail parks. The simple theory being that it's much easier to check your lights in greasy reflected shop fronts than any other way, that's my way of working. The good feeling of fixing things and getting your fingers a little grubby in the process makes it all worthwhile.

Strangers on a trainset

Everybody is just coming to terms with something, arriving before leaving, embarking on a journey, writing journals and trying to look your best. A train may well be along in a moment and some folks may just sneer at the photographer, none of that means much, images are best held in the mind's deep places. It's more important to be yourself and if you can, catch the eye of a kindred spirit. They do exist, out there somewhere. Just be careful that they are not on the other platform and about to travel in the opposite direction. Happens everyday to at least two strangers.

The truth about magic

It was inevitable that something would go wrong with the magic trick at some point. There were too many elements, it was inherently unstable, the rehearsal time had been too short and the equipment and the props were unreliable. We were led into a period of false security however, this was brought on by everything going quite well in the first few performances and as a result the audience reaction was very good, so good in fact that we began to get confident. This in turn grew and developed into something worse, cockiness. That was bearable but then that developed into complacency and that in this business was tantamount to recklessness. In stage magic recklessness will quickly lead to disaster.

It was the seventh time we'd done the trick, the perfect number but we were all very nervous. I looked across at you and winked, I remember that moment well. I strained to hold your glance for a few seconds longer, just as the applause was building, rushing towards us but you looked away. That precious moment never came and now it's too late. You will die not knowing, you wont put two and two together, the evidence will never fall into place for you into some recognisable pattern. This is all rather unfortunate, not what was planned at all but look upon it this way, over the piece we entertained, enthralled and amazed very many people. That is our mark and our history, I'm just sorry that it all had to end.

Holiday Autos

No1 in an occasional series. This fine specimen was spotted and captured by me the other day parked near the beach in Marmaris in Turkey. I felt a bit sorry for it, not for the owner though.

Of idols and the idle

They are there and here and there. Travelling around the world spending other people's money, tweeting their warped wisdom as they go. Beware the wormy tongue, the shiny, bright lights and the promise of something too far away to grasp. Their religion seems to get them somewhere but they themselves are in a worse place than nowhere.

Wordy

Truculent isn't a word I use regularly, neither is xenophobic. There is of course a very good reason for this namely I only have a vocabulary of five hundred words (exactly) and these two bad boys are coming in at five hundred and one and five hundred and two respectively. This simple fact has placed these two very useful and certainly meaningful words outside of my current range of basic word benchmarking if you will. A lesser man would perhaps be frustrated by this limitation but not me, when faced with using words outside of my vocabulary and over that somewhat abstract, imagined yet tangible line of five hundred I simply use the time honoured technique of substitution.

For example if I wished to use a word such as “azle” (coming in a seven hundred and ten) I might just use biscuit or roller, or if wanted to say “pernicious” (a close one at fivefivefive) I could say hammock or liquid. Easy. This method has saved me conversational(?) embarrassment many times over and the fact is that as conversations and debates run on few people if any notice it when you drop and hammy, stupid or inappropriate word in there. Language should flow freely, abstractly at times, make interesting noise and allow itself to be as absurd as the topic. Folks the truth is, people only really ever listen properly to what they are saying themselves, everything else is blah-blah right up to word five hundred. Don't believe me? Next time pay close attention to where their eyes are focused as they speak...

Whatever is written

We were looking at each other we think, odd wandering thoughts persisting. I concentrated on the shape of the face, every one's face tells a...? I ate a scone and drank a latte, she had a slice of millionaire shortbread and a larger latte, she had an Americano, she has water, water is clean. I remained persistently invisible, as always. Outside the sun shone, traffic and shoppers passed. When I got home I looked at mine, deeply hidden in the parallel universe of a shaving mirror. How had time played tricks with it, a thousand thousand cigarettes, facial scrubs, alcohol and sugary drinks, shaves, exhaust fumes, summers in Ibiza, Florida and France, rain and salt sea spray, not sleeping, slimy bars of chocolate and greasy fried foods, time, tides, worry and wear and tear, tears, laughter and the occasional heavy handed slap. What I feel is always written on my face.

Lentil as anything

In Denmark there are no lentils, they just have a plain thin soup recipe to get them through the hard Winter months. History is vague on this but my theory is that marauding Vikings had them done away with as a direct result on an intellectual crisis that occurred over the portrayal of Loki, God of Mischief and Mayhem (later to be translated and cruelly reinterpreted as a child's sweet, yes, I can reveal that that is what M&M actually stands for). Loki was always the subject of camp fire arguments and mass murders and due to his wiry profile and scary demeanour associated with thin and (unmanly) soup. It was believed that to thicken the soup would be a gross insult to Loki and so incur the God of M&M's great wrath or he might just play some cruel tricks and twists of fate on you. These might include sinking your longship on some uncharted reef or rendering you unable to rape or pillage properly due a mystery illness, impediment or complex psychological disorder.

None of this went down well with the chronically superstitious and baffledVikings great sailors thought they undeniably were (discovering America before the Americans and Greenland before the colour ever existed or could be knitted into a nice pullover). As a result the Vikings avoided using lentils and went so far as to deny their very existence, this was reflected in them being removed in a cruel and ritualistic manner from songs, sonnets, great and epic tales and most soup recipes. The end had arrived for the lentils of the west lands, the rest as they say is some kind of history.

Editor's note: Loki is/was of course a Norse God and maybe didn't have much of a following in Denmark...or did he?

Better

“It’s all I ever think about, it’s all I ever think about.” That’s what she said, she kept repeating it, over and over, like some mantra, like a prayer, a quiet cry for help as she walked away. She was tall, attractive, troubled and I was intrigued. Those within earshot could not understand this mumbling, slowly ranting woman. None of us knew quite what she meant or understood. I was fascinated, briefly, eternally, questioning so I followed. Not something I was used to doing, not my normal behaviour, tracking a strange, disturbed woman, on the edge and striding away to deal with or confront that mysterious purpose. I kept what I considered to be safe distance, I let the crowds part before her, the lights change and the barrage of traffic get between us. I borrowed a technique I’d seen in a hundred movies, change pace, stop occasionally, look away. As if aware of my inexperience she steadfastly walked on, not looking back, not turning, allowing me the luxury of this temporary moving bubble. I was closing in, may be something would happen, a sudden stop, a meeting and perhaps I’d understand.

Fifteen long minutes passed and we were out of the business district, through a shopping centre and into an area of bars, cafes, street vendors and more shifting crowds. Her brown hair bobbed ahead of me, above, below, hidden as the Red Sea gaggle of pedestrians shifted, parted and closed in. I was still in the hunt. Left down a side street, right onto a busier one and then abruptly stopping, looking at her phone and sitting down quickly on a silver chair outside of a sprawling restaurant that opened onto the street. I stood still looking blankly into an opaque pub window, I stepped to the right and began to read a wall poster, she was still on the seat, now talking on the phone, her back to me, unaware. I moved carefully and as far as I was aware naturally towards where she sat. I noticed an empty seat in a table opposite and made a bee-line. Just as I crossed the pedestrian barrier a couple laden with shopping and embroiled in a vigorous conversation beat me to it and sat, absorbed in there discussion. I prepared to turn on my heels and retire, then I saw another space, vacated by a young suit, three tables away and facing her, perfect.

A waiter was by now at her table and she ordered something. Another waiter was now by my table, “coffee, a pot and a ginger cookie please.” An automatic order made as I looked across. Both our orders arrived a few minutes later, she had tea and water, I supped my coffee, she was still oblivious of me, her faithful and unfamiliar follower. Then from nowhere (well from the street ) another woman appeared and sat down quickly at her table, it was it some electric spark flashed between them and as I watched they seemed like a pair of some sort. Both were dressed smartly, business suits, one blue one grey, skirts and heels, both from the same office or business possibly. Handbags were strategically placed on the tabletop, they then both began to lean back, creating a battle space it seemed, staring at one another, like rival sisters about to quarrel over a lover or some long running family dispute.

I cupped my coffee with both hands and leaned as far forward across the table as I dared, straining for some snippet of conversation or vital word to be borne across to me, above the street noise and café chat but there was nothing recognisable that I could sift from the babble. Now they were speaking taking turns, animation seemed to be bristling, slowly building, even without the essential key of words I could unlock that much. Suddenly the other woman stood up and squarely slapped the other, the one I’d followed, rudely across the cheek. A shriek followed and an abrupt silence…every head turned their way, as you would expect. She stayed in her seat and bowed her head, the other woman took a step back and with a stiff back straightened up. Her voice rose up from the table, she sniffed and with a trembling and whispering tone said “But I’m wearing it better…”

They (may) mean us no harm

Fair and affordable: Watching the world pass under the very tip of your nose. Perhaps you are out and about, enjoying a drink and some relaxation. Then as you sip on your coffee and munch on your caramel biscuit you remember that these are not just people that you are watching. Many of them are in fact shape shifting alien lizard tourists from the future on holiday and participating sociological studies for long periods of their visit. They arrive through the numerous sink holes in the Pacific, transported by energy beams powered by captured solar winds. Then they absorb the look of the locals by a temporary regeneration process and mingle and interact as they gather data and unwind. They mean us no harm. You have thought about it for a while, how it really was and then you were distracted. It was a rather nice cup of coffee and the biscuit was crunch and tasty, the service was fine though there was something about the waitress, was she, could she be? You park that idea and enjoy the afternoon sunshine, overall the total experience was fair and affordable. You have a fresh thought, what kind of feedback do the lizards give after their holiday?