I am working at Battles shop, a local family run business in my village. I am walking around and checking the stock on the shelves then move onto the till. I am then serving a customer and notice a shopping bag by his side. Perhaps he brought this in from another shop. I realise I am on the wrongside of the counter and have to reach over to retrieve one. I say 'And you brought that one in with you yes?' The shopping bag contained a box of Jaffa Cakes.'Yes' he said ' I had them in my garage'. We began to exchange small talk and he told me that he makes wooden houses for a living. I thought of all the hippies living in makeshift huts and homes, ignoring failing breastfed Irish society and its coercive chains and greedy red tape, despising modern culture and what it deems as conventional and normal, which nearly always transpires as lucrative for somebody else. Suddenly a man in a suit enters the scene. He looks like a stock FBI agent from terrible American daytime television. He doesn't look at me and barks 'Is this place safe?'. I told him the only harm around this humdrum cul de sac village, were everyday is a dress rehearsal for reality, is self harm. What we wouldn't give for a terrorist attack. He scanned the room with an observant and controlled eye, in charge of some secret information, the hidden beat of muscle memory unfolding and slotting itself into place behind his faceless dead eyed demeanour, waiting for the silent poised terrorist to jump out from the broccoli. He darted out the door and I ran to the window to raise the curtain and could see a van full of agents scanning the area then to spin and speed off down the vacant road. I return to the wooden house maker and resume to flex my customer service muscle. As he leaves a thought awoke from the bowels of a forgotten history class and I shout 'Sure didn't we invent the Crannog!' with a stumbling manic tongue tied pride. 'A what?' a startled girl to my side uttered. I told her crannog's were wooden structures dating back to 17th century Ireland which housed extended families, was used for hunting and fishing and acted as a sanctuary for those in trouble and in need of help. I began to think of sides and old ways.
DAY: 18th August 2012
Wake up to the cacophonous noise of multiple babies wailing like some sort of surround sound communal event of suffering, each wail triggers another like a set of sympathetic dominos. A galvanised prison crew uniting in song to mourn the death of their beloved leader. The sound is so intense and builds like some tawdry 80's paracetomol ad.
This housing estate is strange and depressing. The streets and playgrounds are empty but you can hear and feel the heat of unknown lives behind endless gray concrete walls and faceless windows. Thwarted dams at the brink of bursting, water seeping through the cracks. Two nights ago Katarina and I were sitting outside drinking lemon and ginger tea with milk when we heard a married couple argue. The wife called the husband a drunk, chastising him for being out for hours and leaving her with the kids, that its her birthday, that she hates him and was the biggest mistake of her life, that he has drained her and taken all her best years. We were speechless and could only laugh out of our nervousness. The argument had the same beat and rhythm of a soap opera. I never thought these scenes existed. Thinking they were only vomitted out of the pen by some mediocre Coronation Street hack. Perhaps they are magpied out of real life?
Walk to the cornershop to update my tube card. See a tabloid paper depicting a bruised and scarred woman. The story was about a British soldier returning from duty to find out that his wife was having an affair, so he decided to maim her and 'make her ugly' so no man would touch her again.
Walk to the fruit and veg shop to buy the contents of a laughable stir fry. I am wearing shorts and receive strange glances from the shop owner. It is as if my very presence is erasing the moral fortress he has spent a lifetime trying to maintain. What does he think I will be actually doing with the food?
Eat stir fry. Get the 73 from Essex Road to Kings Cross.
At work and I hear my fellow employees talk about the mystery shopper. A person that supposedly comes into your shop and secretly judges you on the presentation of the place, the service and overall mood. They tell us that if the branch is successful we will all get extra cash come wages day. A carrot on a string.
'Jesus is a mystery shopper,
buyer beware.
Like an uninvited stroke.
Descending from the air.'
I walk past a table and can hear Irish accents. Fills me with despair. Two rich Dublin girls sqwark with their gummy mouths, brandishing the letter 'S' like a stuttering socialite snake, Rachel Allen knock offs whose life long ambition is to make the perfect homemade guacamole. It's like they are bred on a farm sponsored by the Irish Rugby Football Union and Debenhams, fodder to the chinless rugby elite and incestous squash players.
I think back on the idea of 'Rich Irish people' and it sounds like an oxymoron. Half pregnant. Sensual Pope.
Walk to the bathroom. Not on lunch break. Bliss. Man walks past and catches me in mid yawn. He stares with arch eyebrows at my features, trying to work out my cryptic facial code. My face is covert braile and his eyes are hands.
I've got debilitating tiredness. Throwing and dragging my body around like veal jogging through water.
I take too long in the bathroom and wonder would anybody notice. I wonder how many people put their dignity on the line each day by saying they shat themselves, just for a few moments more of stolen freedom?
I walk the shop floor, emitting a low whine.
It's so hot I am nearly hallucinating. The kind of weather were you'll accept responsibility for a crime you didn't commit just so you can leave the room. Cool your forehead on the handcuffs.
Talk to the female chef and tell her that the oven she is working with smells like Christmas. She tells me that smell is actually oven cleaner. The spirit of Christmas in a bottle.
Talk to a fellow employee about future plans.I bring up the most common question in job interviews: "Where do you see yourself in 12 months time?" I am intriqued to hear what she will say. You can never say what you really think. You always have to tell your employer what they want to hear. "I see myself here with you Brad, as we are married to twin blonde stunners, who are outside salivating in our matching Ferrari's, as we laugh and engage each other in a never ending high five of perpetual bliss." Never say what you really think. Dead in a big occultist car crash, found bloody in a ditch with a face full of ram sperm. They just don't want to hear it.
Walk past a grief stricken, anorexic Jeremy Clarkson look a like, followed by a bloated, blimp like David Icke. Think about people that actually become celebrity look a likes for hire. Fulfilling? Then started to think about a company that would provide metaphysical look a likes of celebrities instead, depicting their inner state of life rather then there PR constructed nonsense image. Instead of "Bruce Forsyth" turning up to the christmas party they would just send a rotting, wood wormed broken kitsch clock.
They still haven't given me my name badge. They have given me a standby badge that says 'Jo'. Everybody calls me Jo now and I actually answer to it. Must inform my broadband provider.
On my break. Think about what Josefine said the other day about grandchildren and how it would be great to live near home and be around her parents. I begin to think about how my father will probably pass away before he can meet mine. Fills me with sadness.
Look at my fringe in the window. Looks like an ox bow lake.
Next I see a defeated Jeremy Paxman.
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
Saturday, 18 August 2012
DREAM: 16th of August 2012
I am on a bus. Maybe a school bus. I am surrounded by all my past lovers, great and small.Fellini and Radiohead wept. One girl, a rich demented tormentor from college, gets up from her adjacent seat and kisses me on the scalp. I feel guilty, like I am trying to provoke all the once intimate onlookers. The bus lurches on and a Leonard Cohen song prayerfully trickles out of the radio. The tormentor makes an elitist gesture like we two are the only ones in possession of the great mans inner heat. I said a frank "No" and nodded my head in the direction of my right shoulder. My nod was in reference to a sincere girl I was involved with on my travels. She sat quietly and alert. I said that " She knows everything about the Man."A despondent scowl hung from the tormentor's face, like she caught someone else performing her one friend winning party trick. I had my hood up and was sitting beside a man. I was talking aloud to the tormentor but tried not to look at her eyes while I spoke. The man was confused and was unsure to whom I was speaking to. I laughed and assured him that I was speaking to that asbestos aura girl over in that seat and not talking to myself. I jokingly said "Kill" aloud, followed by "Kill him" and looked him dead in the eyes. He laughed but I'm guessing out of nervousness. I'm so good I can even make new friends in my sleep. The bus trundled on. I could hear somebody tell a story about how to survive a heavy rain shower. I listened and didn't agree with this man's point of view. He was so adamant about his rain evading techniques that he forced the bus to stop and we got out to test his theory.
DAY: 17th August 2012
Planes dart accross the sky like a needle and thread administered by an invisible tailor then the pure white lines momentarily fade into hostless spinal columns. I sit barefoot, aware of the sights and sounds of the afternoon. Baby wails, spoon hits the inside of a tea cup, white curtain bellows in the wind, far off childrens cries of euphoria erupt, light reflects off a spiders web, nondescript crockery collide, postman makes his way to and fro. I contemplate making a boiled egg.
Now eating a boiled egg. I think about the collection of words separately. Soft as in the texture, boiled as in the process of preparation and egg as in the object. Strange. Texture, process, object. "Oh hello John, how are you today? Oh not so good Belinda, I am Wet Crying Sad." I try to think of other combinations but fall short.
Elis arrives home and we speak aboout our financial situations. I don't get paid until next Thursday so must survive until then. She is paying for college and is in a similiar predicament. I suggest we pool our money together, share food and such. We speak about the abundant fruit flies and how we could consume them. They must contain fruit somewhere. Just think of them as religious angel raisins. We speak about making a film and how it should revolve around us talking and making tea.
She has a packet of Tim Tam's, the Australian Penguin bars, and I tell her about the trick with a cup of tea. She complains because she doesn't like milk in her tea. I plead with her and say the trick is ruined without it. Like a sweaty, bearded Uri Geller going door to door with a bent soup ladle, pleading for eye contact in order to feel human. She holds the cup aloft and says that if she drinks this cup then this event will be revolutionary. If that constitutes revolution my generation is definitely fucked. We perform the ritual.
Get bus to work. Essex Road stop to Kings Cross station.
Walking on the footpath I hear a man shouting "It's not fair. Bankers are taking all our money and it's not fair. It's just not fair" screaming at the top of his lungs. People stand around and stare, laughing and prodding each other. I notice a policeman enter the scene.
Put on the work uniform and can never button it properly. I make small talk with a fellow co-worker from Wimbledon and ask him how does he button his? He says dryly "from the bottom". Friend No. 1 in the bag.
I find out later that I was actually wearing a woman's shirt. I tell him this to quench his sense of my incompetence and he replies with a nice throwaway "What can you do?" Knowing the battle is lost I mumbled "an ill-conceived sex change perhaps." Not only are we going to be friends but we're going to be best friends.
I stand behind a co-worker and he turns and accidentally hits me in the chest. He immediately apologises and I joke that it really, really hurt. He laughs and I go to shake his hand but he tells me his hands are dirty. I tell him to just look at my hand and then shake his head. Friend No.2 caught in my loving snare.
A manager gives me a few pointers about stocking drinks. He says you must make it look like the stock is overflowing. I tell him I could construct a few mirrors which would give the illusion of abundant corridors. He laughs. Higher level Friend No. 3 feasting from my caressing palm.
Clean a table and overhear a young adults conversation on the phone. Nathan Barleys understudy. He talks about having a Sunday roast. Probably an ironic Sunday roast. On Ash Wednesday. He finds it hard to hide his makeshift Machiavellian contempt. Probably made his millions by inventing an app that tells you were the nearest kravat(that doubles as a heroin sling) shop is located.
Started to face off the fruit section. Another manager approaches and tells me were I am going wrong. I agreed and told him I would do better next time. Choking back the tears. Serious strange fruit.
An employee stands up and ambles about due to the blood rushing to his head. I joke that if you're small then the blood isn't a problem because your head is very close to the ground already. Friend No.4 is bathing in my rejuvenating stream.
I walk around the shop and try to look busy. It's crazy that as humans we have to act out this role. Furrowed brows, eyes scanning, lost in thought, like your trying to work out some elusive equation unconsciously through the use of a dustpan and brush. The Orlando Bloom school of acting. Thousand yard stare, anticipating a phantom sneeze that may never come.
See a newspaper headline saying Pussy Riot won't beg Putin for a pardon. Young Tories are saying British people are lazy and need to get off the arse and help England to become a dominant power again. Vomit in my mouth.
I serve a father and his little daughters. One of the daughters is wearing an elaborate and detailed Where's Wally? map t-shirt. Highly inappropriate. The little tease. Maybe this could be used as a cost effective way to capture paedophiles?
Use the public toilets with the infra red motion sensing flusher. It violently splashed me. Perhaps it mistook me for Henry VIII.
Going to the toilet during a lunch break is probably the only time in human existence when using the toilet feels like a waste of time. I should be doing something more constructive with my precious time. Like checking if the soles of my feet are actually weeping.
Woman walks past and is transfixed by my yoghurt. She really stares at it. Hypnotised. Perhaps her mind is trying to comprehend the object by means of it's shape and the more I eat the contents the more her brain is lost. Phenomenology by means of dairy products.
An insensitive thing to say after an abortion: Ta Dah!
I am logged into a till now but have to use another persons card. Her name appears on the screen as a chef walks past. He says "Michelle is a good name". I told him my parents were hippies.
I clean the table of a family that look like a violent bunch of individuals. The father has a red scar darting down the side of his face. He looks like the type of man that would wallpaper an entire livingroom using just his head. I quickly move on.
I try to hide my yawn so as not to arouse suspicion. But the act of cover up makes my yawn look even stranger. From afar it probably looks like I am going through a growth spasm. Or impersonating a mute lion.
Talk to a co-worker who is studying politics. He is from Brazil and looks like he has never had an ounce of self doubt in his whole life. I feel like my forehead is a polygraph my parents attached to my head and then spent my life lying to me. We speak about the world and I tell him about the man shouting "It's not fair" in the street earlier. How we need to come up with a more productive way of protesting. A lone voice shouting on the street is not good enough. He tells me his plans about becoming a journalist and travelling the world. I get the feeling that he thinks he can hypnotise women, could talk a velvet bra off a ledge.
We prepare to close up the shop, sweep underneath the tables and chairs, wash the windows, preparing the fridge for the morning. Two co-workers speak about an ex-manager who was gay. They imitate him and mince around singing "I'm a Barbie Girl", wrists bent. It's amazing how as human beings sometimes to get by we need to nod our heads and chaperone homophobia and misogyny. They told me its fine to joke about it because the manager didn't know they were doing it, they said they spoke in parables. Just like the bible.
We finish up and play a game of spin the bottle were the winner gets a hug. Spin the bottle for determined priests.
Get the bus home from Kings Cross.
Arrive home. Katarina and Martin are watching a film. We talk about fashion, elephantitis, photography, flying squirrels and God's lack of imagination.
I see that Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years. My mind darts back to the solitary shouting man on the street.
DAY: 17th August 2012
Planes dart accross the sky like a needle and thread administered by an invisible tailor then the pure white lines momentarily fade into hostless spinal columns. I sit barefoot, aware of the sights and sounds of the afternoon. Baby wails, spoon hits the inside of a tea cup, white curtain bellows in the wind, far off childrens cries of euphoria erupt, light reflects off a spiders web, nondescript crockery collide, postman makes his way to and fro. I contemplate making a boiled egg.
Now eating a boiled egg. I think about the collection of words separately. Soft as in the texture, boiled as in the process of preparation and egg as in the object. Strange. Texture, process, object. "Oh hello John, how are you today? Oh not so good Belinda, I am Wet Crying Sad." I try to think of other combinations but fall short.
Elis arrives home and we speak aboout our financial situations. I don't get paid until next Thursday so must survive until then. She is paying for college and is in a similiar predicament. I suggest we pool our money together, share food and such. We speak about the abundant fruit flies and how we could consume them. They must contain fruit somewhere. Just think of them as religious angel raisins. We speak about making a film and how it should revolve around us talking and making tea.
She has a packet of Tim Tam's, the Australian Penguin bars, and I tell her about the trick with a cup of tea. She complains because she doesn't like milk in her tea. I plead with her and say the trick is ruined without it. Like a sweaty, bearded Uri Geller going door to door with a bent soup ladle, pleading for eye contact in order to feel human. She holds the cup aloft and says that if she drinks this cup then this event will be revolutionary. If that constitutes revolution my generation is definitely fucked. We perform the ritual.
Get bus to work. Essex Road stop to Kings Cross station.
Walking on the footpath I hear a man shouting "It's not fair. Bankers are taking all our money and it's not fair. It's just not fair" screaming at the top of his lungs. People stand around and stare, laughing and prodding each other. I notice a policeman enter the scene.
Put on the work uniform and can never button it properly. I make small talk with a fellow co-worker from Wimbledon and ask him how does he button his? He says dryly "from the bottom". Friend No. 1 in the bag.
I find out later that I was actually wearing a woman's shirt. I tell him this to quench his sense of my incompetence and he replies with a nice throwaway "What can you do?" Knowing the battle is lost I mumbled "an ill-conceived sex change perhaps." Not only are we going to be friends but we're going to be best friends.
I stand behind a co-worker and he turns and accidentally hits me in the chest. He immediately apologises and I joke that it really, really hurt. He laughs and I go to shake his hand but he tells me his hands are dirty. I tell him to just look at my hand and then shake his head. Friend No.2 caught in my loving snare.
A manager gives me a few pointers about stocking drinks. He says you must make it look like the stock is overflowing. I tell him I could construct a few mirrors which would give the illusion of abundant corridors. He laughs. Higher level Friend No. 3 feasting from my caressing palm.
Clean a table and overhear a young adults conversation on the phone. Nathan Barleys understudy. He talks about having a Sunday roast. Probably an ironic Sunday roast. On Ash Wednesday. He finds it hard to hide his makeshift Machiavellian contempt. Probably made his millions by inventing an app that tells you were the nearest kravat(that doubles as a heroin sling) shop is located.
Started to face off the fruit section. Another manager approaches and tells me were I am going wrong. I agreed and told him I would do better next time. Choking back the tears. Serious strange fruit.
An employee stands up and ambles about due to the blood rushing to his head. I joke that if you're small then the blood isn't a problem because your head is very close to the ground already. Friend No.4 is bathing in my rejuvenating stream.
I walk around the shop and try to look busy. It's crazy that as humans we have to act out this role. Furrowed brows, eyes scanning, lost in thought, like your trying to work out some elusive equation unconsciously through the use of a dustpan and brush. The Orlando Bloom school of acting. Thousand yard stare, anticipating a phantom sneeze that may never come.
See a newspaper headline saying Pussy Riot won't beg Putin for a pardon. Young Tories are saying British people are lazy and need to get off the arse and help England to become a dominant power again. Vomit in my mouth.
I serve a father and his little daughters. One of the daughters is wearing an elaborate and detailed Where's Wally? map t-shirt. Highly inappropriate. The little tease. Maybe this could be used as a cost effective way to capture paedophiles?
Use the public toilets with the infra red motion sensing flusher. It violently splashed me. Perhaps it mistook me for Henry VIII.
Going to the toilet during a lunch break is probably the only time in human existence when using the toilet feels like a waste of time. I should be doing something more constructive with my precious time. Like checking if the soles of my feet are actually weeping.
Woman walks past and is transfixed by my yoghurt. She really stares at it. Hypnotised. Perhaps her mind is trying to comprehend the object by means of it's shape and the more I eat the contents the more her brain is lost. Phenomenology by means of dairy products.
An insensitive thing to say after an abortion: Ta Dah!
I am logged into a till now but have to use another persons card. Her name appears on the screen as a chef walks past. He says "Michelle is a good name". I told him my parents were hippies.
I clean the table of a family that look like a violent bunch of individuals. The father has a red scar darting down the side of his face. He looks like the type of man that would wallpaper an entire livingroom using just his head. I quickly move on.
I try to hide my yawn so as not to arouse suspicion. But the act of cover up makes my yawn look even stranger. From afar it probably looks like I am going through a growth spasm. Or impersonating a mute lion.
Talk to a co-worker who is studying politics. He is from Brazil and looks like he has never had an ounce of self doubt in his whole life. I feel like my forehead is a polygraph my parents attached to my head and then spent my life lying to me. We speak about the world and I tell him about the man shouting "It's not fair" in the street earlier. How we need to come up with a more productive way of protesting. A lone voice shouting on the street is not good enough. He tells me his plans about becoming a journalist and travelling the world. I get the feeling that he thinks he can hypnotise women, could talk a velvet bra off a ledge.
We prepare to close up the shop, sweep underneath the tables and chairs, wash the windows, preparing the fridge for the morning. Two co-workers speak about an ex-manager who was gay. They imitate him and mince around singing "I'm a Barbie Girl", wrists bent. It's amazing how as human beings sometimes to get by we need to nod our heads and chaperone homophobia and misogyny. They told me its fine to joke about it because the manager didn't know they were doing it, they said they spoke in parables. Just like the bible.
We finish up and play a game of spin the bottle were the winner gets a hug. Spin the bottle for determined priests.
Get the bus home from Kings Cross.
Arrive home. Katarina and Martin are watching a film. We talk about fashion, elephantitis, photography, flying squirrels and God's lack of imagination.
I see that Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years. My mind darts back to the solitary shouting man on the street.
DREAM: May
(Don't remember any)
DAY: Working, working, working. Industrial revolution blues. Sausage roll drying up from the inside out.
DREAM: April 2012
(Don't remember any)
DAY:
Working and having dark nights of the soul in the daytime.
Thursday, 8 March 2012
DREAM: 6th March 2012 Birthday
(Don't remember)
DAY: 7th March 2012
On the way to work, walking to the Arsenal tube and can feel a pain in my right foot. Maybe due to me running drunk and frantically down the Holloway Road last night after 3. Worried I would get attacked by the solitary hooded inner city apparition across the road. Thought of a special compulsory hoody the government could invent were the perpetrator's face would be printed on the back and top of the garment so CCTV footage could identify them more effectively. Give my weeping family some solace at least. But how far would this governmental intrusion go? How long will our civil liberties be at stake? An Anti- Extra Marital Affair device, when the husband is in bed with another woman his wedding ring would project images and pre-recorded phrases his mother used to say, thus preventing him from maintaining an erection. "Beans or peas Tom?" " You can play your Gameboy after you finish your homework," "I love you Tom."Scary times.
On tube to Holborn. See an old woman with a walking stick reading an Ian Rankin thriller.
Mid 50's man gets on at Kings Cross sporting a red outdoor hill walkers coat with grey shock white hair and moustache. Looks like in a past life he hosted a children's science programme for ITV.
I began to think is there another person like me on this train doing exactly what I am doing? And if so, what are they writing about me? How many words do the eskimo's have for 'bald'?
Read snatches of a woman's paper to my left. A young man was picked randomly by a gang and was stabbed to death.
Hear an older man loudly flirt with a laughing younger woman. She is wearing a fur coat that looks like the top half of a gorilla suit.
Spanish woman meets my eyes. Skeptical of my writing.
See a poster for The Devil Inside. The advertisement states this is "The film the Vatican don't want you to see". This is untrue. The vatican don't want you to see any film. Or even be able to see.
"Will this Budget target re-election or the recovery?"
Spanish woman throws me another inquisitive glance.
"The road to economic recovery isn't a road. It's a flight path." Heathrow airports selflessly tossed two cents.
Announcer informs me I have reached Queensway and my soul emits a little whine.
Walk past an incredibly tall man with his extremely small girlfriend. From an aerial view their relationship would look suspect.
Talk to a fellow employee about being hungover. I told him that I don't appear to have a headache but if you were to throw a pen at me I would react two minutes later. We speak about going out in the West End, about the legions of tourists and drunks clogging up the pubs and footpaths, how you can't relax and enjoy your friends company. I told him about one night when a man bumped into me, I turned to face him due to a natural reaction, he took this as a taunt and puffed out his chest, I sheepishly turned away and awaited his knife in my spine, walking away I stopped to see if he was gone, when I turned he turned and again took this as a taunt. My co-worker enquired whether he was a big man. I told him these measurements don't matter to me, I barely have a shadow and can hardly take an insult never mind a punch. How I would be desperately trying to choke myself with my own tongue before my assailant could reach me. He laughed.
A waiter comes into the office and worriedly asks me why a manager was ringing him at 8 am. Was he in trouble? Did I have any answers? I told him they were ringing him at such an early hour because they wanted to make him ugly by stealing his beauty sleep. His reaction gave me the impression that this was a valid assessment.
Talk to a waitress about her new living arrangements in a hostel. She doesn't like it. I ask her does she feel safe there? She tells me that she is a big girl and can handle herself. Even when your asleep? I ask. She laughs and says nothing like that happens. I told her I begged to differ and that I could show her reams of footage on the internet. She shuddered and tried to change the topic. She says she is moving out next week so things will be better. So you have a new place? I ask. She says "Kind of". I instantly get an image of her hugging a piece of a roof.
Another waitress enters the office. I ask her about her day. She is from Poland and is here studying to be an actor. I ask her to recite something for me and she breaks into some Shakespeare A Midsummer Nights Dream. Helena:
O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent
Another waitress enters to pick up her money bag. She asks me in an accusatory tone " What do you do here all day?" I decided to indulge her and told her I spend my time giving my teeth individual names.
I went downstairs and told Hugo about the Shakespeare moment. I began to think more about the beauty sleep idea. If I got the phone number of Katy Perry or Cheryl Cole I could ring them night and day at obscene hours, they would become tired, irritable, sleep weary, agressive, then I would hide their Vitamin B12 sandwiches, destroy their nervous systems, they lose their looks, lads mags lose interest, they leave us alone. Bliss.
DAY: 7th March 2012
On the way to work, walking to the Arsenal tube and can feel a pain in my right foot. Maybe due to me running drunk and frantically down the Holloway Road last night after 3. Worried I would get attacked by the solitary hooded inner city apparition across the road. Thought of a special compulsory hoody the government could invent were the perpetrator's face would be printed on the back and top of the garment so CCTV footage could identify them more effectively. Give my weeping family some solace at least. But how far would this governmental intrusion go? How long will our civil liberties be at stake? An Anti- Extra Marital Affair device, when the husband is in bed with another woman his wedding ring would project images and pre-recorded phrases his mother used to say, thus preventing him from maintaining an erection. "Beans or peas Tom?" " You can play your Gameboy after you finish your homework," "I love you Tom."Scary times.
On tube to Holborn. See an old woman with a walking stick reading an Ian Rankin thriller.
Mid 50's man gets on at Kings Cross sporting a red outdoor hill walkers coat with grey shock white hair and moustache. Looks like in a past life he hosted a children's science programme for ITV.
I began to think is there another person like me on this train doing exactly what I am doing? And if so, what are they writing about me? How many words do the eskimo's have for 'bald'?
Read snatches of a woman's paper to my left. A young man was picked randomly by a gang and was stabbed to death.
Hear an older man loudly flirt with a laughing younger woman. She is wearing a fur coat that looks like the top half of a gorilla suit.
Spanish woman meets my eyes. Skeptical of my writing.
See a poster for The Devil Inside. The advertisement states this is "The film the Vatican don't want you to see". This is untrue. The vatican don't want you to see any film. Or even be able to see.
"Will this Budget target re-election or the recovery?"
Spanish woman throws me another inquisitive glance.
"The road to economic recovery isn't a road. It's a flight path." Heathrow airports selflessly tossed two cents.
Announcer informs me I have reached Queensway and my soul emits a little whine.
Walk past an incredibly tall man with his extremely small girlfriend. From an aerial view their relationship would look suspect.
Talk to a fellow employee about being hungover. I told him that I don't appear to have a headache but if you were to throw a pen at me I would react two minutes later. We speak about going out in the West End, about the legions of tourists and drunks clogging up the pubs and footpaths, how you can't relax and enjoy your friends company. I told him about one night when a man bumped into me, I turned to face him due to a natural reaction, he took this as a taunt and puffed out his chest, I sheepishly turned away and awaited his knife in my spine, walking away I stopped to see if he was gone, when I turned he turned and again took this as a taunt. My co-worker enquired whether he was a big man. I told him these measurements don't matter to me, I barely have a shadow and can hardly take an insult never mind a punch. How I would be desperately trying to choke myself with my own tongue before my assailant could reach me. He laughed.
A waiter comes into the office and worriedly asks me why a manager was ringing him at 8 am. Was he in trouble? Did I have any answers? I told him they were ringing him at such an early hour because they wanted to make him ugly by stealing his beauty sleep. His reaction gave me the impression that this was a valid assessment.
Talk to a waitress about her new living arrangements in a hostel. She doesn't like it. I ask her does she feel safe there? She tells me that she is a big girl and can handle herself. Even when your asleep? I ask. She laughs and says nothing like that happens. I told her I begged to differ and that I could show her reams of footage on the internet. She shuddered and tried to change the topic. She says she is moving out next week so things will be better. So you have a new place? I ask. She says "Kind of". I instantly get an image of her hugging a piece of a roof.
Another waitress enters the office. I ask her about her day. She is from Poland and is here studying to be an actor. I ask her to recite something for me and she breaks into some Shakespeare A Midsummer Nights Dream. Helena:
O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent
To set against me for your merriment.
If you were civil and knew courtesy,
You would not do me thus much injury.
Can you not hate me, as I know you do,
But you must join in souls to mock me too?
If you were men, as men you are in show,
You would not use a gentle lady so
This reminds me of my conversation with Hugo the last night about how life is a multi-media mish mash.Another waitress enters to pick up her money bag. She asks me in an accusatory tone " What do you do here all day?" I decided to indulge her and told her I spend my time giving my teeth individual names.
I went downstairs and told Hugo about the Shakespeare moment. I began to think more about the beauty sleep idea. If I got the phone number of Katy Perry or Cheryl Cole I could ring them night and day at obscene hours, they would become tired, irritable, sleep weary, agressive, then I would hide their Vitamin B12 sandwiches, destroy their nervous systems, they lose their looks, lads mags lose interest, they leave us alone. Bliss.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
DREAM: 16th January
I was watching some Questions and Answers type panel show and the topic of discussion was aliens and the supernatural. Two people were adamant in the existence of both while Chris Morris was giving glib surreal answers which seemed to heighten the absurdity of the occasion.
DAY: 17th January
Desperately Seeking Putin - idea for sitcom.
See a paint splattered inverted Impressionist builder holding a bread roll of cholesterol and a tabloid paper like a sick tongue lolling from his armpit in Tesco. Splashed on the front page is a picture of Kim Kardashian in a low cut top, it's almost like the picture was taken from space. It's that tasteful. Attention is their oxygen. Take that away and they die. What will she leave behind? Donate her breasts to Michelin.
On the tube to work. Pretty girl in the distance is weaving her hands through her hair. From the corner of my eye it looks like wheelchair bound Tai Chi or Capoeira. Or just fighting off metaphysical bees.
See a poster for hair removal. 39 quid. Mother Nature and Time is my hair remover and its free. I win. For now.
Man beside me is smiling incessantly. Unsettling. His smile seems otherworldly, like St. Peter at the Gates of Insanity is waving his knob around, coaxing him in.
Girl to my left is wearing a fur hat. Looks like she is either falling down the arse of a tiger or pushing her head out for air. Fur hair.
Man still smiling. Maybe he's happy. Maybe he's on his way to the hospital to embrace his new born son. Maybe I am just projecting my own cynicism?
Man reading the jobs section in the Law Gazette. Picture of a jockey in a speeding chariot. The chariot has spinning Pimp My Ride wheels with rims. The title of the picture says " Crims on Rims."
Man with folded arms and nosy eyes, watches every movement of this Gazette reading man. So do I but from a purely sociological perspective. M'Lord.
"Judicial Diversity group fails to meet"
Bump my head on the way out of the train. Like a character from The Remains of the Day trapped in an Akon video.
See a unfashionable girl read a fashionable magazine as the train pulls away.
Joke with a fellow employee about how the hot dog meat is most probably extracted from the elbow of ducks.
Talked to a really friendly girl from Kent. We share our stories and journeys, how we managed to find ourselves here in this room, at this point in time. She used to work as a managerial assistant in a trendy bar where she availed of the copious free flowing alcohol. She quoted George Best. We talked about Bukowski and how he paints a picture of alcoholism that seems almost noble, a coping mechanism to take the edge off the absurdity of people and the world. I mention I'm a vegetarian and that I'm not a vegan. I don't lick stones to survive.
We talk about yoga. I tell her how I deal with people that give me grief over it. I tell them I'm not doing yoga for spiritual purposes, I purely do it so I can live long enough to attend their funeral. How I will interrupt the weeping widow during her speech and ask the congregation " Does anyone fancy anything from Tesco?" Thereupon I will return with a shopping bag of Choc Ices and sporting a sombrero. In the foyer, I will then do a voluntary interpretative dance about his illness which will climax in a headstand in the shape of a cigarette as a tribute and warning to the remaining few. Maybe this is what goes through all the fitness fanatics heads? A long life is the greatest revenge. Especially if that life was purposefully boring and uneventful.
DAY: 17th January
Desperately Seeking Putin - idea for sitcom.
See a paint splattered inverted Impressionist builder holding a bread roll of cholesterol and a tabloid paper like a sick tongue lolling from his armpit in Tesco. Splashed on the front page is a picture of Kim Kardashian in a low cut top, it's almost like the picture was taken from space. It's that tasteful. Attention is their oxygen. Take that away and they die. What will she leave behind? Donate her breasts to Michelin.
On the tube to work. Pretty girl in the distance is weaving her hands through her hair. From the corner of my eye it looks like wheelchair bound Tai Chi or Capoeira. Or just fighting off metaphysical bees.
See a poster for hair removal. 39 quid. Mother Nature and Time is my hair remover and its free. I win. For now.
Man beside me is smiling incessantly. Unsettling. His smile seems otherworldly, like St. Peter at the Gates of Insanity is waving his knob around, coaxing him in.
Girl to my left is wearing a fur hat. Looks like she is either falling down the arse of a tiger or pushing her head out for air. Fur hair.
Man still smiling. Maybe he's happy. Maybe he's on his way to the hospital to embrace his new born son. Maybe I am just projecting my own cynicism?
Man reading the jobs section in the Law Gazette. Picture of a jockey in a speeding chariot. The chariot has spinning Pimp My Ride wheels with rims. The title of the picture says " Crims on Rims."
Man with folded arms and nosy eyes, watches every movement of this Gazette reading man. So do I but from a purely sociological perspective. M'Lord.
"Judicial Diversity group fails to meet"
Bump my head on the way out of the train. Like a character from The Remains of the Day trapped in an Akon video.
See a unfashionable girl read a fashionable magazine as the train pulls away.
Joke with a fellow employee about how the hot dog meat is most probably extracted from the elbow of ducks.
Talked to a really friendly girl from Kent. We share our stories and journeys, how we managed to find ourselves here in this room, at this point in time. She used to work as a managerial assistant in a trendy bar where she availed of the copious free flowing alcohol. She quoted George Best. We talked about Bukowski and how he paints a picture of alcoholism that seems almost noble, a coping mechanism to take the edge off the absurdity of people and the world. I mention I'm a vegetarian and that I'm not a vegan. I don't lick stones to survive.
We talk about yoga. I tell her how I deal with people that give me grief over it. I tell them I'm not doing yoga for spiritual purposes, I purely do it so I can live long enough to attend their funeral. How I will interrupt the weeping widow during her speech and ask the congregation " Does anyone fancy anything from Tesco?" Thereupon I will return with a shopping bag of Choc Ices and sporting a sombrero. In the foyer, I will then do a voluntary interpretative dance about his illness which will climax in a headstand in the shape of a cigarette as a tribute and warning to the remaining few. Maybe this is what goes through all the fitness fanatics heads? A long life is the greatest revenge. Especially if that life was purposefully boring and uneventful.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
DREAM: 10th January 2012
Scored the winner for Arsenal.
DAY: 11th January 2012
In the shower singing Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd followed by a selective stroll through Scott Walker's back catalogue. I sound better in the shower. It adds ten years to my voice.
In the midst of meditation and I keep getting interrupted by outside sounds. Two bickering rubbish collectors arguing over the right of way on a one way street. They sound like the Chuckle Brothers debating the best way to pass an ice cream maker through a window. I think of a concerned neighbour at her wits end, finally calling the police due to the repeated domestic disturbances at the home of the Brothers.
The lorry starts to turn and emits a beep and an quaint English voice repeats on a loop "Keep Clear, Vehicle Turning." I try to refocus my mind.
Hear building works in the distance, sounds like someone chopping a carrot into a microphone. BBC Sound Effects Volume 8 perhaps. Or a giant Jamie Martyr Oliver making a sugar free salad for some disenfranchised teens. Drenching London with his overbite spit. This is then followed by a noise that sounds like a manic elderly man testing his wooden cane on a footpath. Maybe it is all just a big tape recorder blaring out sound effects and all the property developers are really in the Cayman islands tanning themselves beside the pool, ill gotten cocktail in hand, lounging around like free ranged veal, while female transition year students rub their bellies and weep beside them, devastated with the fresh knowledge that they can never go home now.
Try again to focus my mind.
My stomach makes a noise that sounds like a man falling down a well. Dalai Lama wept.
Watched a video about the Jarawa tribe from the Andaman islands in India. A tribe that has shunned contact with the outside world but that all changed in the 70's when a highway was built through their forest. The video depicts members of the tribe dancing for tourists in exchange for food. One girl, completely naked except for a bag of grain, childlike, rocks uncomfortably on her feet, embarrassed and exposed like Eve. The police are supposed to protect them but they accept bribes and act as tour guides for the "human safari". The tribe is under threat from outside diseases and also there has been reports of sexual exploitation of the tribes women. Sick to my stomach.
Walk to Tesco. See a sleep weary zombie father bumbling forward while his son follows behind. The boy is eating a pink sprinkled donut. He takes a bite, grimaces and screams "I don't like this."
See a ready made pot of food called " All Day Breakfast Pasta."
Buying tomatoes, fake ham, pasta shells.
At the counter and need to open my jacket to fish out money from the inner pocket. Unbuttoning my coat on command it crosses my mind: how many times has a Tesco retail cashier been flashed? Or how many times has someone pulled out strange objects from his pockets in the search for coins like some pornographic magician.
Leaving Tesco I stopped to write outside the Arsenal football stadium. A bird flies toward me at head level. Think about leaving it to the last second and then try to header it.
I wait for my parallel housed neighbour to walk home first. It's not anti-social to evade people you don't like. That's just logic. She routinely stands outside her front door, night and day, cigarette in hand, staring into our living room window, secret smile drooping off her Loose Women face. She's like some freelance Neighbourhood Watch cottage industry of gossip. The kind of person that if you were involved in a car crash would only join you to the hospital so she could have something to say at her hairdresser.
Listen to The Electrician by the Walker Brothers before I head off to work. It's like they plant a throat lozenge in your brain, smash it and all the healing liquidy goo transports you to Heaven were you are then breastfed by Jesus.
Walk to the tube. See a mother push her baby in a pram. Her facial expression seems to convey confusion; almost like she hasn't fully worked out what the little breathing thing in the pram is.
On the Piccadilly line and see two teenage girls sporting big headphones like earmuffs and they seem to be dressed in pyjamas. They exchange stories about a boy who was "slapped."
Young trendy adult boy with red skinny corduroy jeans and Eraserhead haircut gets on. His face reads like a man who has just lost the code to the American Apparel after party.
See an ad for a type of Night Nurse medicine called Rescue Night. The blurb reads " Rescue Night can help switch off those repetitive, unwanted thoughts so you can enjoy peace of mind."What's next? A nice fuzzy, warm instant cuppa - prozac with extra croutons of serotonin.
See posters for the film Shame all over the tube. Deservedly so. Heartbreaking film. One that rattles around the system for days after viewing. Fassbender is a legend in the making.
See an old Chinese man asleep, head lolling lower and lower. From a distance it looks like he is sulking.
Catch my reflection in the window. My fringe looks like a solitary badgers paw.
Get the Holborn train to Queensway and the stench of urine in the air is now circulating through my own tubes.
An elderly couple get on and the wife takes the seat beside me while her husband decides to defiantly stand. I ask her does he want my chair when suddenly the train takes off and she falls into my lap. I felt like a Japanese businessman with sensory weighing scales for hands. We laughed about it and I moved one seat over to allow the husband to sit down and to also put a further hole into his dam of futile perennial protest.
A businessman gets on and basically sits on my arm. Somewhere Hugh Hefner's inner right ear is burning.
A pretty middle aged woman wearing a black beret and holding a bulging bouquet of flowers is intrigued by my writing. We make eye contact and her eyes drop like hot scones.
Even if strangers demand to see what I'm writing they won't be able to make head nor toe of it. I even tried to read something I wrote the other day and it was incomprehensible. It looked like hailstones. Dyslexic braille.
Old builder to my right doesn't know were to park his eyes, woman trying to sleep with her hands in the prayer position, bald businessman doing a crossword, businessman who sat on my arm is messing about with a game on his iphone. The game is of a man in an office. Perhaps he is the computer character and this is just a 3D version of his office diary. He could have virtual sex with his secretary. Marriages might last longer if this technology existed.
On the crammed silent human eyeless dull lift with fellow hound dog's body commuters wearing Buster Keaton masks of conveyor belt numbness. A Judi Dench- like voice tells us to keep clear of the doors.
Walk to work. Meet a fellow employee on the escalator. He asks me "You going?." I say "No I'm coming." I asked is he going? He says no, he just came early. We laugh at how we both came early. I am 25 years of age.
I am counting 1p's from the greasy leather money bags belonging to the waiters. The insides of the bag seem to be coming apart. Little strings like Jewish ringlets hang from the penny pieces. I instantly thought of Daniel Goncalves.
Catch my reflection in a life sized mirror. I look like a strange child in my dull, ugly uniform. Was talking to my sister Eleanor last Sunday about our pay structure and how we don't get paid until after the next month. How are you supposed to survive? Just let yourself eat your own insides. So I am basically on involuntary hunger strike and I don't want to wear my uniform. Accidentally like a Bobby Sands Martyr.
A girl at work I have never seen before says "Hello John." Unsettling.
I inform my fellow money counting colleague that I will be doing a breathing technique to pass the time. Just so he doesn't look over and think I am strange. I don't want to put my finger on my nostril because of all the greasy coins I have been sorting out. We talk about spots. I told him I don't want any facial blemishes, especially before marriage. Then when I tie the knot I'll immediately let myself go. No sentimental hygiene. Not even wash my face. Cycle with my mouth open.
Decided to use a pen on my nostril. Free will.
We spoke about relationships and how you can never be friends with ex-lovers. It just never works. It feels like your talking to an aunt. Too forced and no room for spontaneity. "Never go back to a lit firework" my co-worker says.
We talk about land and borders, my father's dreams of businessmen pulling cabbages out of the field, the full moon and it's affects on people and on A & E records, how a waitress was attacked and robbed last night on her way home, about McDonald's and how it all came from humble origins, American dream bollocks, Walt Disney and the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi's and nuclear energy propaganda for kids, L.A oranges and hatred, Irish history, nationalism and fanaticism, selective history and memory.
Running for the Picadilly line home.
See a girl in the distance ambling around in strange high heels. I do a double take just to make sure it isn't my overworked mind skipping.
A young man and woman share drunken stories. Cuts, kisses, quiz nights, bruises, drinks, kebabs, shags.
A self contained pretty young woman with a Mia Farrow haircut sits rigidly upright. Her confidence could be an act. Maybe shes 4 minutes from bursting out in tears. Who knows. She watches a couple go at it with reckless abandonment in the corner.
See a New Age woman wearing some green beaded jumper. Has a degree in finger paint, worships Saturn and murders crows with a boot on her fist. Probably.
See a bald future self of me. Looks like Moby with protein.
Now the young man and woman are talking about school romances.
On the tube cabin door the word RETCH is crudely written with a marker.
Watch Breakfast on Pluto and think how us Irish speak riddles and surrealism but it's never reflected in our film, music, television.
The moon casts its glare and acts as my bedrooms nightlight.
DAY: 11th January 2012
In the shower singing Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd followed by a selective stroll through Scott Walker's back catalogue. I sound better in the shower. It adds ten years to my voice.
In the midst of meditation and I keep getting interrupted by outside sounds. Two bickering rubbish collectors arguing over the right of way on a one way street. They sound like the Chuckle Brothers debating the best way to pass an ice cream maker through a window. I think of a concerned neighbour at her wits end, finally calling the police due to the repeated domestic disturbances at the home of the Brothers.
The lorry starts to turn and emits a beep and an quaint English voice repeats on a loop "Keep Clear, Vehicle Turning." I try to refocus my mind.
Hear building works in the distance, sounds like someone chopping a carrot into a microphone. BBC Sound Effects Volume 8 perhaps. Or a giant Jamie Martyr Oliver making a sugar free salad for some disenfranchised teens. Drenching London with his overbite spit. This is then followed by a noise that sounds like a manic elderly man testing his wooden cane on a footpath. Maybe it is all just a big tape recorder blaring out sound effects and all the property developers are really in the Cayman islands tanning themselves beside the pool, ill gotten cocktail in hand, lounging around like free ranged veal, while female transition year students rub their bellies and weep beside them, devastated with the fresh knowledge that they can never go home now.
Try again to focus my mind.
My stomach makes a noise that sounds like a man falling down a well. Dalai Lama wept.
Watched a video about the Jarawa tribe from the Andaman islands in India. A tribe that has shunned contact with the outside world but that all changed in the 70's when a highway was built through their forest. The video depicts members of the tribe dancing for tourists in exchange for food. One girl, completely naked except for a bag of grain, childlike, rocks uncomfortably on her feet, embarrassed and exposed like Eve. The police are supposed to protect them but they accept bribes and act as tour guides for the "human safari". The tribe is under threat from outside diseases and also there has been reports of sexual exploitation of the tribes women. Sick to my stomach.
Walk to Tesco. See a sleep weary zombie father bumbling forward while his son follows behind. The boy is eating a pink sprinkled donut. He takes a bite, grimaces and screams "I don't like this."
See a ready made pot of food called " All Day Breakfast Pasta."
Buying tomatoes, fake ham, pasta shells.
At the counter and need to open my jacket to fish out money from the inner pocket. Unbuttoning my coat on command it crosses my mind: how many times has a Tesco retail cashier been flashed? Or how many times has someone pulled out strange objects from his pockets in the search for coins like some pornographic magician.
Leaving Tesco I stopped to write outside the Arsenal football stadium. A bird flies toward me at head level. Think about leaving it to the last second and then try to header it.
I wait for my parallel housed neighbour to walk home first. It's not anti-social to evade people you don't like. That's just logic. She routinely stands outside her front door, night and day, cigarette in hand, staring into our living room window, secret smile drooping off her Loose Women face. She's like some freelance Neighbourhood Watch cottage industry of gossip. The kind of person that if you were involved in a car crash would only join you to the hospital so she could have something to say at her hairdresser.
Listen to The Electrician by the Walker Brothers before I head off to work. It's like they plant a throat lozenge in your brain, smash it and all the healing liquidy goo transports you to Heaven were you are then breastfed by Jesus.
Walk to the tube. See a mother push her baby in a pram. Her facial expression seems to convey confusion; almost like she hasn't fully worked out what the little breathing thing in the pram is.
On the Piccadilly line and see two teenage girls sporting big headphones like earmuffs and they seem to be dressed in pyjamas. They exchange stories about a boy who was "slapped."
Young trendy adult boy with red skinny corduroy jeans and Eraserhead haircut gets on. His face reads like a man who has just lost the code to the American Apparel after party.
See an ad for a type of Night Nurse medicine called Rescue Night. The blurb reads " Rescue Night can help switch off those repetitive, unwanted thoughts so you can enjoy peace of mind."What's next? A nice fuzzy, warm instant cuppa - prozac with extra croutons of serotonin.
See posters for the film Shame all over the tube. Deservedly so. Heartbreaking film. One that rattles around the system for days after viewing. Fassbender is a legend in the making.
See an old Chinese man asleep, head lolling lower and lower. From a distance it looks like he is sulking.
Catch my reflection in the window. My fringe looks like a solitary badgers paw.
Get the Holborn train to Queensway and the stench of urine in the air is now circulating through my own tubes.
An elderly couple get on and the wife takes the seat beside me while her husband decides to defiantly stand. I ask her does he want my chair when suddenly the train takes off and she falls into my lap. I felt like a Japanese businessman with sensory weighing scales for hands. We laughed about it and I moved one seat over to allow the husband to sit down and to also put a further hole into his dam of futile perennial protest.
A businessman gets on and basically sits on my arm. Somewhere Hugh Hefner's inner right ear is burning.
A pretty middle aged woman wearing a black beret and holding a bulging bouquet of flowers is intrigued by my writing. We make eye contact and her eyes drop like hot scones.
Even if strangers demand to see what I'm writing they won't be able to make head nor toe of it. I even tried to read something I wrote the other day and it was incomprehensible. It looked like hailstones. Dyslexic braille.
Old builder to my right doesn't know were to park his eyes, woman trying to sleep with her hands in the prayer position, bald businessman doing a crossword, businessman who sat on my arm is messing about with a game on his iphone. The game is of a man in an office. Perhaps he is the computer character and this is just a 3D version of his office diary. He could have virtual sex with his secretary. Marriages might last longer if this technology existed.
On the crammed silent human eyeless dull lift with fellow hound dog's body commuters wearing Buster Keaton masks of conveyor belt numbness. A Judi Dench- like voice tells us to keep clear of the doors.
Walk to work. Meet a fellow employee on the escalator. He asks me "You going?." I say "No I'm coming." I asked is he going? He says no, he just came early. We laugh at how we both came early. I am 25 years of age.
I am counting 1p's from the greasy leather money bags belonging to the waiters. The insides of the bag seem to be coming apart. Little strings like Jewish ringlets hang from the penny pieces. I instantly thought of Daniel Goncalves.
Catch my reflection in a life sized mirror. I look like a strange child in my dull, ugly uniform. Was talking to my sister Eleanor last Sunday about our pay structure and how we don't get paid until after the next month. How are you supposed to survive? Just let yourself eat your own insides. So I am basically on involuntary hunger strike and I don't want to wear my uniform. Accidentally like a Bobby Sands Martyr.
A girl at work I have never seen before says "Hello John." Unsettling.
I inform my fellow money counting colleague that I will be doing a breathing technique to pass the time. Just so he doesn't look over and think I am strange. I don't want to put my finger on my nostril because of all the greasy coins I have been sorting out. We talk about spots. I told him I don't want any facial blemishes, especially before marriage. Then when I tie the knot I'll immediately let myself go. No sentimental hygiene. Not even wash my face. Cycle with my mouth open.
Decided to use a pen on my nostril. Free will.
We spoke about relationships and how you can never be friends with ex-lovers. It just never works. It feels like your talking to an aunt. Too forced and no room for spontaneity. "Never go back to a lit firework" my co-worker says.
We talk about land and borders, my father's dreams of businessmen pulling cabbages out of the field, the full moon and it's affects on people and on A & E records, how a waitress was attacked and robbed last night on her way home, about McDonald's and how it all came from humble origins, American dream bollocks, Walt Disney and the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi's and nuclear energy propaganda for kids, L.A oranges and hatred, Irish history, nationalism and fanaticism, selective history and memory.
Running for the Picadilly line home.
See a girl in the distance ambling around in strange high heels. I do a double take just to make sure it isn't my overworked mind skipping.
A young man and woman share drunken stories. Cuts, kisses, quiz nights, bruises, drinks, kebabs, shags.
A self contained pretty young woman with a Mia Farrow haircut sits rigidly upright. Her confidence could be an act. Maybe shes 4 minutes from bursting out in tears. Who knows. She watches a couple go at it with reckless abandonment in the corner.
See a New Age woman wearing some green beaded jumper. Has a degree in finger paint, worships Saturn and murders crows with a boot on her fist. Probably.
See a bald future self of me. Looks like Moby with protein.
Now the young man and woman are talking about school romances.
On the tube cabin door the word RETCH is crudely written with a marker.
Watch Breakfast on Pluto and think how us Irish speak riddles and surrealism but it's never reflected in our film, music, television.
The moon casts its glare and acts as my bedrooms nightlight.
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