Tuesday, 31 January 2012

I sit on the bus

I gaze out of the window

Rest my chin on my fist

And scowl

I'm moody and tormented

I'm a Liam Neeson character

Oh cruel world

Oh cruel world

Monday, 30 January 2012

Sneak I by the old church, and see I lots of trash. Whispers in my ear from elsewhere say where I go and things I've changed on the way, and I want to say back "How do people do this? How does one play this game? How do people do this?" But I don't want to wake the sleeping church, so I say nothing.

Sunday, 29 January 2012

We are all in bed, sipping water and nursing a hangover, but some of us are looking at the ceiling. It's all about context.

Saturday, 28 January 2012

Inky fingers. Sand in your hair. Tiny flecks of blood soaked into denim. Metallic sting of rust rubbed off and ground in, lost in your skin. Micro-organisms teeming, dismantling and collecting, squashed against one another. Smell of sweat and sunburn, baseball caps, a blast from the past, eating your present, biting big and angry, teeth crunching and buckling, and iron doors closing underground. Keep your head up, back straight, don't slip on that ice, keep your head up, don't look down, there's a way out, there's a way out.

Friday, 27 January 2012

These big, blocky houses remind me of Gormenghast or Dream's palace. This won't be the last time I upload a photo of one. Most days the school children file past the window two hours after I wake up. Their day is already over, and they bounce all around the street, happy and loud and trying their parents' patience. When was the last time I got up before midday? Oh dear, oh dear.

Thursday, 26 January 2012

I've been told these photos seem sad, but it's not all doom and gloom. Some days (sunny days, usually) the world seems so inviting. A great, vivid, corporeal mass, brightly lit and wonderful. Trees look like hands bursting up triumphantly from under the earth, like the coffin scene in Kill Bill, and the sky looks like a landscape in its own right, a floating continent inhabited by who-knows-who doing who-knows-what above our heads all day.

Wednesday, 25 January 2012

It began as a simple distraction as he walked to and from work. Counting trees. The hard part was remembering the order in which he acknowledged them. Because it was not about merely knowing the number of trees - it was about discerning one from the next. Saying "this tree is not just a tree, it is the fourteenth tree I count on my way from home to work". Giving each tree an identity, a place in the world. This is what had always troubled him about nature: its randomness, its devotion to futility, its determination to let each and every creation get lost and become meaningless. A product emerging from a factory is given a number before it is sent out into the world, and thus has an identity, and can be called a distinct thing. A tree is only a manifestation of nature, one protruding piece of the endless, meaningless entity of nature. These thoughts became an obsession, and the obsession has followed him through life. Look at one of the trees in his city and you will see his mark, and you will be able to say "Yes. Yes. This is Tree Number 2782."

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

You're trying to ascertain, in a cunning and indirect way, whether that beautiful girl has a boyfriend so that when it turns out she doesn't you can say "Well, I find that hard to believe" or something equally disgusting. And of course it turns out that she does have a boyfriend and that he earns lots of money, skis, cooks, plays sax in a jazz band, speaks Spanish (or is Spanish) and has directed five short films.

In the words of Barney Calhoun: "Let's get the hell outta here."

Monday, 23 January 2012

"I don't suppose you're recruiting at the moment, are you?"

"Mmmmmm, weeeell, nooooo not really... Do you have any bookshop experience?"

"Uh. Does a charity shop count?"

"Mmmm, no, sorry, I'm not recruiting right now."

I don't talk myself down, I just don't talk myself up. Too fucking honest, that's my problem.

Sunday, 22 January 2012

This week, in Manchester, this party has shown the discipline, the unity, and the purpose that is the mark of a party of government. I’m proud of my team, I’m proud of our members, I’m proud to lead this party – but most of all, I’m proud of you. People have very clear instructions for this government:

“Lead us out of this economic mess.”

“Do it in a way that’s fair and right.”

“And as you do it, make sure you build something worthwhile for us and our children.”

Clear instructions. Clear objectives. And from me: a clear understanding that in these difficult times, it is leadership we need. To get our economy moving. To get our society working, and in a year – the Olympics year – when the world will be watching us, to show everyone what Great Britain really means.

That smear of birdshit in full: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/8808521/Conservative-Party-conference-2011-David-Camerons-speech-in-full.html

Saturday, 21 January 2012

A black cloud on the blue horizon. You wake up at noon, stinking of whiskey and trying to decide which shirt to wear. It's a cold day but your dedication keeps you warm. Presently you come to a T-junction, like in a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. Will you go left or right, little soldier?

I tried coffee again recently. I still don't like it.

Friday, 20 January 2012

Green Belt Syndrome: A set of behaviour often exhibited by martial arts students after, typically, about 18 months of training (around "green belt" level in many styles) where the student, having reached a certain level of confidence (but being still a very long way from the fabled "fighting without fighting" mindset), becomes quite eager to prove him or herself in combat, and looks (whether consciously or unconsciously) for opportunities to brawl. In the former days of classical martial arts, Green Belt Syndrome is thought to explain many students who proved their devotion to the art and willingness to stick with it, but mysteriously never made it to black belt level...

Thursday, 19 January 2012

No fire. In time, I believe the cosmos will lay its inner workings before us, though not in the way Stephen Hawking (for example) might predict. Rather, we shall see, for instance, whether Kurtz himself is the heart of darkness, or merely an old maniac lost among a darkness that has no heart. In much the same way that Scarecrow enters in the second half of the film to embody the theme of fear that dominates the first half, and Two-Face enters in the second half to embody the theme of duality (light vs. dark, legitimate vs. illegitimate justice) that dominates the first half, I believe we shall see an "embodiment" (though whether he/she/it will have a "body" to speak of remains open to debate) of the dominant forms of strife that have dogged humanity during its life to date. Milton, and to a lesser extent Blake, would undoubtedly approve of such tangential meanderings, although the chirping of mobile phones on the 176 between Waterloo and Dulwich might suggest otherwise.

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

The people who used to tell us the best thing we could possibly do would be to go to university, study hard and get a degree, are the people now calling us entitled for expecting a degree to give us an edge in the job market. There is an edge in the job market, but we are on the wrong end of it. John had not had time to investigate.

Tueday 17 January, 2012

A white eye behind a curtain, it's been cold and dark lately. Occasionally I wonder what it must be like to live in a hot country. I've been writing quite a lot, squeezing words through my brain like Play-Doh (TM) through a mincer. I find myself worrying about copyright issues on a semi-regular basis. This will not become streams of consciousness unless I let it. I can't remember the last time my toes were warm.

An Introduction

My third blog. This one's a little different, and will hopefully last longer.

It will be, essentially, a journal. Not a very coherent journal, probably, but certainly a record of each day as it passes.

It will contain, each day, a photograph taken that day and a piece of text. The photograph might be of anything, absolutely anything within reason. I lack the skill set and equipment of a photographer, so I apologise in advance if the photos are not up to much. The text might be prose fiction, prose non-fiction, some kind of poem, someone else's words cut up and re-arranged, my own words cut up and re-arranged, or some other form I haven't thought of yet.

I will try to keep it interesting and I will try not to lose interest. I might miss a day here and there, but they will be nothing compared to the number of days I have already missed through not deciding to start the blog until today. Perhaps I'll give up altogether and this rather ambitious introduction will end up looking a bit silly. Who knows?

Thus begins a blog.