THING

It started like so many nights before , 6 maybe 7 pints of lager , 5 vodka tonics and I have no idea how many cigarettes.
I left the pub under the thick lashes of winter rain and promptly found myself spinning over the mirrored kerb and tussling with my pockets.
I knew I had a few ciggies left , I knew that because I had bought 16 for about £8,
I knew that because I had bought 16 for about £8, 16 for £8, Malboro maybe , I don't know, 16 for £8.
I remember the grey tint of the clubs and the people I passed , the long slow blur of the night. I remember going on about those fags, I remember my lonely mumur and hissing.
I remember looking in the mirror and seeing a tragedy , a puffed up drunk face, tired red eyes and a distant expression.
I suppose of all of it , it was the expression that I think of most now , a long resigned stare, not surprised at the mess it saw before it.
By the time I got to the bus stop , I had found my cigarettes and sat slumped against the glass.
I remember an old muslim lady sat across from me , I remember how strictly she stared out into the road , bunched up and frail, putting on a brave face.
I thought about saying hello , about telling her not to worry , about telling her I was alright. Then I thought, why lie ? I wasn't alright , I was a cunt , pissed again, on my own, on a fucking wednesday at 35.You only get to this point when you've kept pushing away at people.
I think I probably slept on the bus, because a chunk of it is a blank, I was so pissed though I probably went and gave the old woman a load of abuse or sat at the back of the bus and sung the national anthem.
I remember coming home and pissing in the hedge , I remember that because a light upstairs went on and pretty soon after I had piss all over my trouser leg.
After that I don't really remember.



The class room this morning is busy, it's the first week back from term, like a gym in January, full of the misplaced optimism of people who will never change. I expect a third of these faces will attend every lecture I give maybe another third will go to over half of the lectures and the others I won't see until after Easter.
I couldn't say now that I didn't care, I didn't use to, the money was the same and so were the hours but the job had taken a hold of me. I had taken an interest in what

short story (edp)

this is a short story , I entered for the EDP short story competition , I listened to alot of zero 7 and air when I was writing the summer idyll bits and mars by gustav holt for the parts in itallic. The theme of the competiton was "Norfolk : a county of stories" , I hate the title massively.




The Poppies Of Aylsham
Warm air breathed through the sunny reeds of grass, the little emerald stems of grass dancing with childhood abandon. Above only the blue sky, those long vast acres of distant heaven that not the Saxons, the Vikings nor the Normans had ever seized. Distant erratic sounds gently appeared and then fluttered away basking in the beauty of a rural scene. Along with the thin clean air Reg breathed it in, he would also breathe in the dignity of the tall old oaks that lined the fields, the useless twittering swallows that darted around with seemingly no essential purpose and the serenity of being home.

Lost in all its empty beauty Reg could see Tom and Jack hiding in the grass, buried within the rough . Jiggling with laughter they pushed their stubby little digits against their mouths and hissed at each other to hush as not to be found. Their poor tiny legs did them no good as they tried to stand, falling over their clumsy young stumps hoping that Reg would not see them.

Reg looked a little more, allowing them to suspend their illusion of invisibility , he turned his head slowly, furrowing his brow, every part of his face was a caricature , his thin lips screwed up and his eyes intensely sharpened. The more confused he looked, the more the long grass would giggle, the more a patch of it would wriggle and shake.

"Now wherever could they be ?" he asked aloud

There you were sat in the pub, the golden light of a summer evening falling through the window, drinking ale with the boys , talking about how you would miss old Aylsham but you would be back soon with tales of all the things you had done, serving king and country. How you loved those boys as if they were your brothers, singing and laughing, your blood and theirs . When Christmas came you'd all be back as heroes, how you felt you would be young forever.

Reg walked a little closer , deliberate in the pantomime of his walk , slowly and steadily pacing around the grass.

"sshhh… shhh… be quiet, he's gorta find us" he heard little Jack say
" I am being quiet" Tom gasped.

As Reg heard the laughing stop , he darted for them both, his hands outstretched yet only finding more field. Perhaps there was more in the minds of these young boys than Reg had thought, he was underestimating the wily little cubs.

Sitting upon the earth, somewhat tired, Reg thought he would leave the boys until they tired a little or it at least until it grew darker.

The sodden black dust threw up again, those long piercing screams whistling through the air and then coming violently at the ground. You had never seen a look in a man's face like that before, the crippling fear choked him dumb. Under your feet you felt the lice and the earth, under your feet you felt it waiting, coming like a promise.

After a while, Reg picked himself up and decided to walk home , knowing little peeps of laughter would follow him to the village. Taking them by invisible reins he walked toward the village , where he could share the burden of responsibility for the boys.

Little Tom Feek and little Jack Yaxley, effervescing in a summer orb, where time gently passes and things were slowing down, they tumbled around and screamed with laughter.

It comforted Reg to hear them happy, it helped him make sense of why he went away and for whom he had gone away.

Tom, the older of the two boys, would often decide what they would do, his days seemed to be spent in tireless pursuit , he enjoyed the simple things of childhood the most, were it running , hiding or playing sport , they were skills he took to with ease.

Reg noticed how Tom seemed to enjoy the beautiful triviality of these things and he also noticed how in Tom there was a nature that people could often draw from, people would often seek to see themselves in him, to relive their past.

How all of this county and all of this country seemed to be open for Tom, Reg often thought, how anything the boy wanted he could have.

Sucked up by the damn mud and ground, he held his trembling hands up, screaming for his mother. Screaming for her to take him from here, this land of twisted steel, this land of vile dirt and wailing skies. You were supposed to come home with him, that's what you had promised to his mother. You had heard him drawing sharp and panicked breaths crying himself to sleep, they had never told you or the boy. You went back for him and held his grip, you can not forget the way that bony, trembling white thing felt against your skin, you can not forget the promises he made you keep through his shortened breath, you will not let yourself forget.

Jack was not so fortunate , early on in his life he had been troubled by the obstacles handed down to him from his short sighted mother and clumsy father. He would amble and lag behind when the two lads played together and often when they hid it was Jack's feet or his arms Reg would see sticking out from the grass or behind a tree. Even at the age of 8 he seemed to wobble precariously over the earth , slowly and carefully chasing his young friend.

There was a sensibility in Jack that Tom admired , even in their young years Tom could never bring himself to tease Jack were he unable to climb as high as him , or stopped to breathe when they had been running as poor Jack often did. Tom loved his friend Jack because it was Jack who had nursed Tom's grazed knee when he had fallen , it was Jack who never rose to anger or being unkind . There was a safety in Jack's presence that Tom felt he could bathe himself in, a feeling that he would always have his friend around if anything bad were to happen.

You would have told him if he had lived that poor snivelling boy, no use to anyone in this hell, go home lad, you thought to yourself. If you shoot yourself in the foot, they'll let you go, they won't waste much time over a clumsy lad who couldn't hold his gun for the trembling. Sometimes you would look over at him staring in the distance, his gaze held at the empty grey skies wondering how soon he would be dead.
That's what bites at you the most , that nags and will not end its choke, the faces of those that were afraid, those who could not kick a stone in anger let alone kill a man , forced out here, in this scorched terrain.

Reg walked toward St. Michael's and the boys were now ahead, the old cobbled house of god before them, how stiff and straight it looked. The gravestones were another matter , age had bent the old grey planks crooked , their crumbling faces no longer bearing names.

The cenotaph , they had cared for well, it's dignity had not been worn by the crashing tides of time and against its concrete spine were the poppies, little red darlings, nestling safely against the stone.

Safe is what they would always be now , safe in the small green field of St. Michael's church , safe at home again.

Reg looked at the cenotaph again and saw the names of TOM FEEK and JACK YAXLEY , hearing the boys laughing again , he thought he would leave them here a while , wishing he had time to stay.

Mucking about (Please listen to tracks as you read each passage)

UNTITLED STORY PROJECT

01 PYRAMID SONG – RADIOHEAD

The tablets fell gently to the bottom of the glass, they foamed and spat a billion white balloons to the surface. I thought about each bubble , how each one was like a little life, a little person swaying gently to the brim. Others had gone before it in their ascent to the top and others would go after it , their tiny fragile swim like every other tiny fragile swim , totally common yet totally unique.

I suppose some of this was due to the fact that I was still drunk and half asleep but the beauty I found in that little glass is no less significant to me now. I had not thought of bubbles, lives or people for a long time , I suppose I thought I had , I mean, most of my time was spent discussing other people but not as if they were real people.

It doesn't make much sense now I suppose but don't be concerned that I've found jesus, mohammed, buddah or any other kind of religious figurehead or that I got a six pack in thirty days , that I had a momment of clarity, that I attended a bullshit seminar in some no mark hotel lobby, I just learnt some things.

Those things resonated in me when I sat and stared at the glass and wondered how much it mattered to be a tiny bubble floating to the top of a tiny glass on a tiny planet in an infinite universe.

02 How to completley disappear – RADIOHEAD

What was going to make this hard was the way everyone was going to react , they would get caught up in the same way as each other. They would cry, they would shake their heads, they would ask how long and then they wouldn't see me anymore.

They'd see the dying yellow man , the dying yellow man who wasn't booking holidays anytime soon , the dying yellow man who wasn't looking forward to much because the dying yellow man didn't have much to look forward to.

I'm not brave enough to commit suicide , so I live with this , I live with this until kills me , the cancer inside of me . I live with not telling anyone about my condition and wondering what I am going to do for the next two years.

something in my head today

Screaming, bloody and visceral you entered this world, drenched in a slump of gore and sinew . Screaming for a breath of air your tiny purple body wriggles in the hands of a giant , and here you are . This is it, you are 24 waterless hours away from death, you must breathe oxygen for every single moment , all that separates you and the world from your tender vital organs are a few inches of skin. Your body will age and decay and yet the seasons will not relent, the winters will be no more warmer and the summers no more cooler. This is what you were given. But you did not want this , you wanted comfort , you wanted security, you wanted to live forever.

You found beauty in nature, but it was nature that gave you this , this fucking blind plummet of an existence , it was nature that gave you the sun that burns your skin and the diseases that want to riddle your body, it was nature that gave you your blurred vision and your clumsy balance.

So you took action , you built your cars and your factories and you grew unrelenting like the bacteria's that riddle sodden hands.

back

I'm currently in the process of writing a few things at the moment , a short story for an EDP competition and some journalism to hopefully boost my prospective and currently ailing career.

I thought I would sign in as I had a couple of comments on a few posts which is encouraging enough for me to plough on with this. The blog isn't out of mind and if there is anyone out there in the web reading this, you can look forward to some fresh posts.

Asshole Kong

Like someone with no social life and bad acne (well I say like..) I've rediscovered the world of classic video games.
Classic being an interesting term given that applies more directly to the old rather than masterful end of the description.
Classic video games are those which appeared around the time of my birth and are normally made up of no more than 8 bits.
Pac Man , Donkey Kong , Centipede, Pong and Asteroids are regarded as the Mustangs and Moonlight Sonatta's of the video game world , eternal art works that have stood the test of time.
Obviously the test of time in button basher land is far shorter than that of Classical Music or Classic cars but its hard to imagine most of the above titles won't be around or talked about in years to come.

The classic videogame world has probably never been better documented than in the brilliant King Of Kong which tells the tale of world record breakers and their pursuit of a high score that will stand forever.

Christ, that sounded like the back of the dvd , I wont ruin the plot here but the film is a superb document of how insular and competitive that world has become. Billy Mitchell the villain of the piece compares himself to the world war one pilot the Red Baron and waxes lyrical about his status as a world champion and what it takes.

On a parouse through Youtube I came across the brilliant ASSHOLE MARIO which is a typically blunt American translation of the japanese title (Hacker Mario: me making my freind play Mario). The difficulty of this game is beyond joypad smashing, it is so ridiculosly hard that is funny.

What is tragic about the clips is that they're more addictive than big bowl of crack , every obstacle looks difficult but is not impossible and the level design in some parts is work of einsteinan brilliance ( I'm not sure how many Mario levels he designed) however do check it out and reimerse yourself in a time before Movie tie-ins and hollywood scripted cut scenes.