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Saturday 30 June 2018

Day 63: Penny for your thoughts

The same writing prompt as yesterday, but using the idiom: "A penny for your thoughts."

The homeless man sat down next to the executive. The executive made no outward movement, except to cross his right leg over his left, his moleskin chinos riding up his calf, exposing his cotton work sock and an inch of lightly tanned skin.

The executive continued to smoke his cigarette, knocking ash on the floor.

"Alright, fella" the homeless man said.

The executive nodded, looked away.

"You don't have a tab I could pinch, do you?"

"Sorry." The executive shook his head. "Last one."

The homeless man batted the apology away with his hand. "Don't worry."

The square was quieter now. You could hear the hum of taxi engines idling in the pick-up bay, the shush-clack of wheeled luggage, the rhythmic zwoosh of the automatic doors opening and closing. Above the two men the sun, bright all day, was finally going down. The light was draining from the world. There was a band of pink haze sailing to golden further down, and then, just before sky touched land, a line of brilliant blue, clear and deep as the first ocean of the world. Looking into it you could believe the universe just went on like that, uninterrupted, forever.

"Cheer up," the homeless man said. "It might never happen." He grinned with yellow teeth.

The executive pulled a brief, polite smile, made a noise in his throat that could have been one thing or the other.

"I mean it," the homeless man said. "You're best off letting it go. Don't sweat it. You know?"

The executive this time made no sound.

"I saw you here, I said to myself, there's a fella who's got his share. You can tell. Yeah. There's a bloke going through it. I saw you, I did. But am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong."

"Everyone has their share," the executive said. His shirt was crisp. He either had barely sweated into it during the heat of the day, or had changed on the train.

"I knew it. Oh I knew it." The homeless man raised his arms, as if to accept praise from an audience. "You can tell. Yeah. You can always tell."

The executive stubbed his cigarette out, shifted his weight on the bench, coughed.

"Come on then, my man," the homeless man said. "What's eating you?"

- - -

Forty minutes later the executive stood up to leave. It was dark now, and there were fewer passers-by.

The executive looked at the homeless man. "Thank you," he said."I'm sorry. Thank you. And here--"

He thrust his hand into his pocket, brought out notes, pennies, the lot. He handed it all over.

The homeless man took the wad carefully, folded it, stood up, slipped the wad into the pocket of his filthy joggers. "Hey," he said to the executive. "Good luck. Seriously."

The executive didn't know what to say in return. The two men stood facing each other. Finally, the one man put out his hand, which the other man clasped in his. They both shook.

And then the executive, picking up his leather briefcase and dipping his head, moved off into the night.

Day 62: Coming in or going out

Paul stood in the doorway of the living room. He had made it this far, but could go no further. His mother was watching Holby City with the sound up loud, a can of Dark Fruits on the coffee table beside her.

"You coming in or going out?" she called.

He was doing neither.

He'd been over it in his head, over and over, for the last three hours. But he could not, now it came to it, go all the way. He could not say it.

It was different to when you had it straight in your head. It was now and it was horrendous. His tongue felt fat in his mouth. He was dizzy. It was like he was down inside something that was wide and lashing above him. He decided to escape back up to his room.

But he couldn't come downstairs, stand in the doorway, then go back up. That would be weird. So instead he went into the front room and pretended to be studying the street out of the bay window.

"Is it bins tonight?" he asked. "I feel like it's blue bins tonight. I can't see any of the neighbours' bins. But maybe they haven't taken them out yet. I was coming downstairs and I just thought, is it blue bins tonight?"

His mum didn't look up from the screen. "Blues on Monday, moron."

"Oh, of course. Well that's good. It's almost full already, with those magazines from tidying my room and everything. I just didn't want us to forget."

"I'm glad you finally got rid of those lads mags, Paul. They're basically porn. They give you unrealistic ideas about women. You don't want to grow up like that."

Paul swallowed. It was as if God was listening, giving him his chance. It was now.

"Mum..." he began.

"I know, I know, it's gross when I talk like that. I won't say no more."

Paul could hear his heart beating. He sat and listened to his heart beating. He sat and listened and sat and listened, and slowly felt the moment slip away.

On Holby City one of the doctors was having an affair with one of the surgeons and the doctor's husband had just found out. Paul's mum drained her Dark Fruits and shook the can.

"Be a darl and get your poor old mam another cider," she said.

It was her evening off. She wasn't back in the factory while midday tomorrow.

Paul decided it would help to leave the room and gather his resources. He went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, stood looking inside. He gazed at the half cauliflower, the bag of wet carrots, the crusting remains of the pasta bake from the night before. It was just Paul and his mum. She meant everything to him.

He pulled a can off the ring pull and took it back into the front room.

She mussed his hair.

He sat down next to her and looked ahead. On the telly the doctor's husband was yelling and the doctor was crying. Paul looked at the wall.

He swallowed.

He couldn't tell her.

What would the other women at the factory say? He knew how their sons all talked at school, the words they used. They had to get it from somewhere. His mum found it hard enough at work as it was. She wasn't good at making friends. He didn't want to make it harder.

But by the same token she was the most important person in the world to him. How could he not tell her?

"This show is dumb," he said.

"Shh."

"It's not... people aren't like this. Relationships aren't like this."

"You'd know, Casanova!"

He stared ahead. The room opened before him. The walls were going to swallow him. His tongue was enormous. His forehead prickled. Everything was thudding. Everything was exactly as it was.

"Mum," he said. "I threw the magazines out because I didn't need them. I didn't want them. They were just... I felt I should have them. But they weren't... what I wanted."

On Holby City the doctor's husband was the one now crying. He cried and while sobbing he said he couldn't believe that the doctor had lied to him. The doctor replied tearfully that it was their relationship that had been a lie, it bad been a lie from the start and she couldn't live that lie any longer.

Paul's mum was watching the drama. She was listening to Paul, but not hearing.

"I'm glad you didn't want them," she said.

"The thing is, Mum... the thing is... they weren't for me. Maybe other magazines, but not those."

His mum turned to him. "Paul," she said. "It's OK. I understand."

Paul looked at his mum.

"You don't have to be ashamed," she said. "I won't judge you."

The air was alive in front of Paul's face. The air was electric.

"You don't have to make excuses," his mum said. "Don't worry what I said before. It's completely natural for you to enjoy looking at a bit of bush." She let out a long cackle. "You're a healthy boy. There's nowt wrong with it."

But that was almost precisely the problem.

Paul let his breath out a long, long way. He let his shoulders sag. He couldn't say it. How could you say it?

On the television the husband wrestled with the doctor fiercely and the two crashed through the apartment, into the bookcase, around the dresser, through the balcony doors, over the railing, and down to the street below, the lie they had been living finally having engulfed them both.

The credits played, and then the news, and then Paul went back upstairs.

- - -

So that was a writing prompt called Idiomatic. It involved creating a scene based on an idiom -- in this case "Beat around the bush" -- which scene had to also contain the literal use of one of the figurative words from the phrase -- so here it was the word "bush".

I didn't get there, I don't feel, it didn't quite come together. But it was fun trying, and it's 03:30 now after a long shift and I have to put this up and go to bed. Back on the open tomorrow, for my sins. TTFN

Thursday 28 June 2018

Day 61: She should eat

Another show-don't-tell writing prompt, this time attempting to express the feeling of depression.

Claire's bedroom was thick with the smell of damp. The washed clothes had been sitting in the machine for a day and a night and half a day again, and now Claire had finally hung the creased shirts and skirts and jeans over her clothes horse they were giving off an acrid, wet-dog stench that was permeating the room.

Claire gave up and climbed into bed. The quilt was a tangled mess by her legs, stained with the crusty spillage of some microwaved meal or other, and she kicked at the wad until it rolled off the foot of the bed and landed in a heap on the floor, on top of a pile of folded print-outs from a lecture from months ago.

She'd only been to two lectures since then.

The laptop was going, playing a series on Netflix that Claire had enjoyed as a child. She'd meant to put on a documentary or a foreign film or something that would be good for her intellectual development, but had somehow ended up with this series instead.

She stared at the screen. The main character, an American high-school troublemaker, was plotting how to go on a date with two girls from his class at the same end-of-term summer luau.

Claire watched the show without seeing. She fidgeted with her hair, scratched at her skin. She had a small rash on her stomach. She tried not to scratch it. She gave up and scratched it. She watched the show. After a while, halfway through a scene, she closed the lid of the laptop and lay back into her pillow.

She dozed fitfully for an hour. When she awoke it was beginning to get dark. her blind was already half closed. She pulled it down all the way and turned on the light.

She should eat. She should eat. She should eat. She wrenched herself to the edge of her bed and looked down at the teetering collection of plates and coffee mugs and bowls on the carpet. The plates were covered in the crumbs of toast and pizza; the mugs had rings of congealing residue in the bottom. The bowls were a sugary, milky mess.

She turned herself back over, lay there looking up at the ceiling.

In the corner of the ceiling were the fine scraggly remains of a cobweb. The strands were dancing in the draft coming in through the window. So what? The spider that had woven the web was dead now. So what? Claire watched the silk tilt and sway, watched it, saw it, saw that it meant nothing, saw and saw, closed her eyes, kept her eyes closed.

The evening wore on.

Wednesday 27 June 2018

Day 60: Ignoring sirens

It's another hot day. There is only the haze of sky, the furnace of the sun, the bricks that are fiery to the touch. The car bodies and the rooftops in the sun are too brilliant to look upon. The air is heavy and oppressive.

Sixty days of sober blogging today. Two-thirds of the way to my goal. I'm right inside it now. I can't look up or back or too far ahead. I just have to keep my head down and keep ploughing onwards.

I'm working to fundamentally change the way I view myself, to change my relationship with the world, my relationship to my ego, to pain, to suffering, to work, to writing, to art. To change my conception of who I am and what I'm doing here.

This is not easy. There is no eureka moment, no quick fix or instant turn-around. It's just about getting up every day and forcing myself to act in a way that feels completely unnatural, but is I hope healthier than the default way I have fallen into acting over many years.

I still feel shitty much of the time. Tired, miserable, jaded, old, bored. But the feeling is perhaps not as suffocating as before. Those feelings are a fog twisting about my feet, not a maelstrom encasing me, a choking cloud out of which I can see but from which I can never escape.

Sometimes, usually the mornings, the fog creeps higher up my legs. Sometimes it's barely there at all. Yesterday was a good day, climbing trees with Mike and Zoe at Padley Gorge, making friends with regal cats, sticking my head out of the window and my tongue out of my mouth in the car as we wound back down into the city with the late afternoon sun still strong and bright above us.

Maybe I'm slowly finding more space that's me, less that's the depression. Maybe for the first time in a long time I'm finding something approaching hope.

But, like I said, I can't concentrate too much on this. Rumination spins up the negativity and makes me ill. I know this. I love thinking deeply about things, but for the moment I can't do it about myself. I have to just get up, do the blog posts, leave all those icky thoughts trying to spiral upwards well alone. Then go to bed, sleep, get up, do it again.

It's like my brain has all these warning sirens flashing on its control panel all demanding attention. When I go to them they say things like, "You've fucked up everything in your life!" or "Everything you create is shit!" Running to each of these alerts and trying to switch them off or to argue with them doesn't work. So I'm learning to simply ignore them instead. They're constantly going off, blaring, yelling out, but I just have to turn away and pull levers unconnected to them, turn cogs, do normal mundane stuff on the control panel. The warnings flash. I ignore them. They flash. I ignore them. On and on.

Perhaps they'll dim in intensity as time goes on. Perhaps they'll give up entirely. I don't know. What I do know is that I have jobs to do using that control panel. And no stupid flashing lights are going to get in my way.

Day 59: Feels

The email came through to his work address. She usually WhatsApped, or called. He didn't think he'd even given her this email address. She must have found it somewhere online.

He read the message. Then he went back and read it again. Half an hour later, when Pat came to his cubicle to hand him the morning's sketches, he was still reading those three paragraphs -- for three paragraphs was all she had written him.

He minimised his email window, brought up the layout plans.

"How goes it?" Pat asked, ruffling his hair.

"Oh, fine," he replied.

When Pat left he got the email back up again.

Three paragraphs. That was all.

He looked at his hands on the keys of his keyboard. He looked at his wallet on his desk. The leather-bound day planner with the scruff on the front. The potted cactus, needing so little, needing something. "Like you," she had said. Before.

He looked at Percy, the green arms wrapped around his desk tidy in the corner. He looked in the dinosaur's big eyes. He reached out and touched the soft head, then took the toy's tiny hand in his own larger hand, held it tight.

He sat like that until Nikki came to see how the design was going. he let go of Percy, pretended to be arranging his desk.

"You OK, pal?"

"Oh, yes. I've got some errands to run this afternoon though."

He walked without knowing where he was going. The streets repeated. Kebab shops being set up for opening, overflowing bins, the little parks, the bus stops, the offices. They flitted by.

He found himself outside a large department store. Through the big glass doors he could see mothers dragging their recalcitrant children, elderly couples shuffling along, a gaggle of store workers stood around the perfume counter gossiping, touching each other on the arms, putting their hands over their mouths, all bending over in laughter.

The sun was going down and the street was getting dark, but inside all were lit by a warm glow.

He stood outside and looked in.

"May I ask, sir, whether you are happy with your current broadband supplier?"

The man with the clipboard was young, with a sharp stubble line and a piercing in one ear. There were flakes of dried wax in his hair. He had only made three referrals today. It was looking like another bad one. Well, he'd buy another of those six-packs on offer after work, roll a fatty, see if anyone online was up for a raid or two. There was always tomorrow.

The man he was addressing turned, and for one terrible moment the man with the clipboard thought the other was planning to attack him. What the other did instead was teeter, and then collapse into the folds of the man with the clipboard's coat.

Through the thick fabric and the rocking sobs the man with the clipboard caught only two words:

"She's gone."

- - -

That was a writing prompt to create a scene where a character was "upset about the news he had received", written without any "feeling" words. So no saying "he felt sad," for example. I think it could have gone better, but I was out looking at alpacas and climbing trees with Mike and Zoe all day, and then I collapsed when I got in. What can you do? You can't hear about an alpaca farm and not instantly go there. They're alpacas, for Chrissake!

Tuesday 26 June 2018

Day 58: Flavours

Another writing prompt, this one about noting down 12 flavours, of ice cream, sweet, savoury food, whatever, and then writing a scene including all the flavours, starting with the words "The sparkling water was..."

The sparkling water was tangy, like Stilton, on Booker's tongue. She swallowed it down and looked out at the horizon. The first of the drop ships were landing on the ridge to the east. By the end of the night royalist troops should have taken back the city, and fresh supplies -- including clean drinking water -- would hopefully begin to flow out to the camps once again.

Booker took a bacon-and-cauliflower-bake capsule from her pack and snapped it open, and poured the drops of concentrated liquid within onto her ration of boiled cabbage. She ate hungrily, trying not to look down at her fork.

The sky was dark and the polythene cover of her compartment snapped in the wind. Booker sat on the corrugated tin roof, painted mint green to signify her refugee status, and settled in to watch the fireworks. Hundreds of miles away balls of orange flame popped like exploding grapefruit against the black of the sky. The royalist aerial bombardment had begun. Scattered plasma fire, pink like the bubblegum Booker had once chewed with her classmates at school, ripped loosely into the night -- Iphal militia fighting back.

Booker thought about her school, wondered whether any of those fiery blooms in the distance was the site of her childhood memories going up in smoke. She thought she remembered rebels taking the school as a stronghold, after Arch Pasha Monsul promised to free the country. But maybe that was the gym. Those days had been a blur. Booker hadn't wanted to leave home because she had been baking pecan slices in the reactor oven -- she hadn't understood, was annoyed at her father, but he had grabbed her wrists and pulled her to the door, and Booker had been halfway to yelling, had felt full of fury, but then she had seen the worry and terror in his face, and had fallen silent.

She thought then about her father's whiskers, about the scent of chocolate and vanilla on his skin when he used to return home from the factory and put his ID and payment chips on the sideboard and gather Booker in his arms...

She didn't want to think about that. She chewed the last of the mush in her bowl, licked it clean, and stowed it back through the flap that was the one window of her hut.

The plasma fire was more sporadic now; Iphal were losing.

Everything was as Monsul's soldiers, clean and fastidious in their caramel uniforms, had said it would be. They had marched through the camps two days ago, handing out lemons and loaves and that funky-tasting sparkling water, and promised that the city would be freed by the end of the week. Some refugees had cheered. Most, like Booker, had looked on, starved and exhausted, wondering whether these tall warriors were going to undo the last three years, wipe the survivors memories clean of the atrocities they had witnessed, or whether these new liberators would be another layer added to the palimpsest of this small but bloodied country, scratching their mark crudely over the top, yet never quite erasing the horrors that had gone before.

Away at the edge of sight another fireball erupted, and Booker, sitting with the wind whipping at her skinny legs, perched on top of her makeshift house, watched as her town was demolished with engines of fire so that the charred remains could in the morning be presented back to her. She sighed, and looked out.

Monday 25 June 2018

Day 57: The locker

They kept the head out of sight. They chopped off the head but they kept it out of sight.

It was a bright and blown out day as I walked down to the house on the corner. The national football team had won that morning and there were groups of revellers still swaying out of the pubs, thumping one another on the arms and singing snatches of patriotic songs. Families bobbed down the hill on the way to town: mothers in sandals that slapped on the hot tarmac, fathers pushing prams with gaudy helium balloons tied round the handles. The warm weather had turned the city into a festival.

But as I walked round the high street the crowds began to thin. As the road dipped I passed into shadow and shivered, cold now I was out of the sun. I had been to the house before but found myself lost in the coiling warren of streets leading down to the valley, and I had to consult the map on my phone to find my way. Men taking advantage of the day to wash their cars stared up at me as I passed, their eyes suspicious under their flat caps. I nodded stiffly and continued on my way.

I heard the party before I saw the house. I heard laughter, the murmur of voices, the clink of glasses drifting across the little gardens with their hanging trees. Suddenly the side passage loomed before me. I steeled myself, and went in.

At the party were people I knew, and people I did not. I scanned the faces and saw gaiety, ease, yet underneath something else. It was subtle but it was there. I saw hunger.

None of the guests were eating. The host came out numerous times, then went back inside the house. Next door a family were getting ready to leave for an afternoon out; there was a picnic bag, cameras, games for the children, and I got the impression that our host was waiting for these simple folk to depart before he commenced our proceedings.

There was no mistaking it, a palpable air of anticipation now filled the garden. The house was built into the side of a steep hill, and the garden stepped down on crooked levels. The guests were congregated on the patio on the lowest step, huddled on chairs and stools. The positioning of the trees and fences meant that this small area was entirely hidden from the outside world. On the top step of the garden was a table with supplies arrayed upon it.

Between the guests and the table stood the locker. The host had brought this locker specially for the occasion. It was old and chipped. The inner shelves had been removed and discarded. The locker's door was closed tight, a deep colour smeared around the handle.

We waited.

Finally the neighbours left, and the host emerged from the darkness of the house. In one hand he carried tongs; in the other a large metal cleaver.

The door of the locker was swung open. The head had already been chopped off and was kept out of sight. The host removed the smoked body, and the party, held in check for so many hours, was now able to begin.

- - -

So that was a writing prompt I came across, an exercise that suggested writing about your day as if it were a mystery story (though I guess I wrote more of a horror?). Arron and Pat smoked a pig, is what happened, and had everyone round to Arron's for a barbecue. Being a vegetarian I wasn't exactly elated at the idea, but the animal had been ethically farmed, and I do think if you're going to eat a living creature it's only right that you take responsibility for that, are prepared to do the butchering yourself. Anyway, I ate veggie burger, hung out for a while, then came home. Now I'm going to leave this here because I've been going to bed way too late recently, and if I stop right now I can read for half an hour in bed and still get a good night's sleep before work in the morning, and to be honest that sounds sublime.

Ciao x

Sunday 24 June 2018

Day 56: A sketch in a coffee shop

I had no time today so here is a sketch from the hour before work...

It is an echoey room, woold-floored, cold after the mugginess of the day. The ceiling is covered in industrial pipes and exposed air ducts. The decor is corporate utilitarian chic. It is a chain coffee shop. the tables are chestnut brown, varnished deeply to make the wooden lacquer appear more expensive than it truly is.

There is a female student behind the bar wearing the uniform of this ubiquitous coffee shop, the clothes smudged and dirty from a day on shift. The woman is bow-legged and wears thick-heeled shoes that accentuate the clumsy gait, but she is attractive, with blond hair tied back and deftly applied makeup. She is wearing just this side of too much spray tan. She hitches her trousers up, adjusts her bra strap; she is uncomfortable in her thick cotton apron on this hot day. She is neither friendly nor not.

Another woman comes out from the back carrying a tray of washed utensils. She is plumper than the spray-tanned woman, wears clompy boots, has frizzy hair pulled up in a bun. This woman bangs coffee grounds out into the bin, cleans the coffee machine noncommittally with a damp green cloth. She is the spray-tanned woman's superior, or at least the more experienced of the two. The spray-tanned woman defers to her. The two do not talk much. They work together and they get on but they are not close. They are both getting through the day. They have enough friends. They just want to get through the shift.

A customer hunches over in his low seat and slurps a thick milkshake. His back is curved and he leers down at his milkshake and pokes at it with his straw. He wears a rumpled shirt and brown cords. He looks like the character of Al Bundy from the American sitcom Married... with Children. He has a lanyard round his neck and a messy buzz cut. He is sitting with a woman who has been attending the same conference as him, she chats about work while he stirs his milkshake with his straw.

A wicker basket is filled with plastic water bottles for sale. The wrought-iron stand behind the wicker basket displays the coffee shop's own brand of whole bean and ground coffee for purchase, along with cafetieres, takeout mugs, and a drip-filter jug.

The shop is inoffensive, mildly depressing in its corporate emptiness. There are small touches of humanity, sketches of coffee plants on the walls, colourful paintings, that are precision designed to humanise just enough while meeting the target budget, and are thus all the more inhuman for this. There is a sterility to the environment, a starched, static quality, nothing cruel but certainly mass-produced. This is a pattern of interior design to be repeated a thousand times across the globe, and somewhere within that sits a dark existential horror.

It is not a bad place to find yourself -- there are no edges left after testing and prototyping on which a body could rub. There is nothing wrong. And in this is the revulsion.

This place is carried along by a force that is not human. It is beyond human, it is the Corporate, the force of a creature to which we are but fuel. Not food to be painfully consumed, but plump hens to be kept just warm and content enough to keep laying those eggs. The chain is not run by humans, they answer to a higher power. Human happiness is not of primary concern -- not the customers', not the workers', not the owners'. Humans move through this place, but it is owned by an abstract creature. The Corporate looks after itself.

Saturday 23 June 2018

Day 55: None of it means a thing

The light is fading. You step to the bus stop as you always do, your headphones in, and you stand in the throng, surrounded by people who are all alone. The light is fading and the sky gets dark and the trees move in the darkness, some of the leaves of the trees lit complicatedly by the streetlamp on the corner.

A tram arrives, disgorges passengers, leaves again. An elderly couple, a boy with a skateboard, a gaggle of gossiping Chinese students, travelling back to halls after a show. They move off into the night. A bus passes and the driver wears no expression, you want to reach for him but there is so much empty space, and already he is gone.

There was a time when it was not like this. You cannot now remember when this time was but you know it existed. There was a time before the world was fully formed. It has hardened into shape now and it is brittle and inert but there was a time when all things were loose. When colours came and went. When vast coruscating cities floated in your eyes. When lovers entwined and lost their carapaces and moonlight flowed through their skin.

But now there is only this. The choosing of outfits. Swearing at self-service checkouts at 9:35 p.m. Tilting your head in the shower to let the water run into your ear canal, holding your head there, tipping the water out, tilting the other way. Applying sun cream, moisturiser, shower gel, shampoo, all these products in their bottles that you cannot tell apart. And cartoned milk and packaged cookies and plastic-sealed sandwiches assembled on conveyor belts in factories in all the towns you don't want to visit. Going to work and standing at the entrance and sighing, certain you can't do it, and then stepping forwards and pushing through another day. Smoking. Giving up smoking. Mugs of tea you haven't finished. Cooking with spices from halfway round the world, then the day after eating cereal in your dressing gown in bed.

You read the news on the lambent screen on your phone and see that the world arcs inexorably towards chaos. Dissolution of communion, the breaking of what was bound. And this is how it is. We take their oil and they take our safety, and none of it means a thing. None of it is wrong, shouldn't happen -- nor is it right and pure. It just is. It is miserable and it is.

Where is the wonder that you used to know? Where is the beauty that shifted mountains? The stars that you swallowed whole? Remember the friend, the one whose fingers you touched in the grass. Was that when you were a child? Or was it further back? You were not yet born, yet you dreamed of aeroplanes, their rudders glinting in an embryonic sun. If there is a God then who taught him how to weep?

Your bus pulls in to its stop, and you get on. You put your money in the tray and the driver takes it, and though both hands occupy the same space they never meet. The driver mostly doesn't notice you and you do not notice the driver. The bus sets off up the hill and in the fading light you travel home, so removed from the magic, yet with still the faintest of its traces on your softly cracking lips.

Friday 22 June 2018

Day 54: A quick question


Imagine this: your close friend comes to you and tells you that they've become interested in origami, that they've started creating origami models, but that recently someone has been messaging them saying horrible things, telling them their models are rubbish, that they (the friend) are a joke, that everything they make looks pathetic, that everyone is laughing at them, that it's all a waste of time and the friend should give up before they make an even bigger fool of themselves.

You'd give this friend a big hug, right? You'd give them a big hug and look directly into their eyes and tell them in complete honesty to ignore that prick. You'd say that that stuff all is nonsense. We're all only going to die, we're reaching no final goal apart from that, death, and if we can find something that gives us meaning in the doing of it, for a short while, then that is worth doing.

You'd say that you bet the origami models are not rubbish, that you bet they're really cool. And that even if you did personally think they were rubbish, that still would be only your opinion, that there is no one objective truth about art. That even if there was, and even if your friend somehow ended up making objectively the worst origami models the planet had ever seen, they should just get on with doing that, over and over, that they should love it all, should gather up handfuls of their terrible origami models and set the fuckers alight, torch them, and dance naked over the flames, dance and howl at the moon, spit at the stars -- then put their clothes back on and make a whole load more terrible origami models.

You'd say that we contain no permanent selves. That we are not fixed, there is nothing in us to be a failure, to be not good enough. That we are a flowing dream of a ghost passing through carbon atoms arising and falling on a rock hurtling through infinite space on its way back into the birthing pool of nothingness, and that with all that in mind if they, your friend, want to make origami models then they should bloody well go and make origami models, haters be damned.

Right?

That is what I would say. That is what I truly believe. It would be easy.

And yet when we ourselves are beset by self-doubts over our own endeavours, when that negative voice in our heads is telling us it's all worthless, everything we do is pathetic, that we should give up -- why then do we find it so hard to be similarly kind to ourselves?

If you wouldn't let a stranger say it to your friend, don't let your own head say it to you. Disagree, argue, talk it down. You are deserving of love.

I'm trying to keep this in mind tonight. It's so tough, but I'm trying.

Thursday 21 June 2018

Day 53: Miffed Matt #6

CONTINUED:

IN THE THUNDERDOME

the great beast Yaxley-Lennon is charging straight for Miffed Matt.

MATT'S P.O.V. - YAXLEY-LENNON

roaring in, the creature's fists going up high, higher, coming down with the force of a crashing asteroid.

CLOSE ON MATT

not moving. Waiting. Surely too long. Finally, right as the fists smash down, Matt leaps away. The fists slam into the earth, throwing up sand, and Yaxley-Lennon is temporarily staggered --

-- which opportunity Matt takes to unleash a flurry of punches into the beast's legs, thighs, torso.

It's the tickling of a gnat. Yaxley-Lennon barely notices. Looks down at Matt, twists --

-- and backhands the smaller man, hurling him clean across the arena.

Matt smashes into the cage's metal bars. Falls, winded.

Yaxley-Lennon springs, surprisingly agile, up into the air, coming down directly at his wounded prey.

Matt shakes the tweety-pies off just in time, rolls, and Yaxley-Lennon's knee comes down right where Matt's head was a moment before.

Matt tries to run, but Yaxley-Lennon grabs his leg, flings him as if he were a child's doll at the roof of the cage.

Matt thuds into the bars, cries in pain, but grasps on. He's clutching to the roof, looking down as Yaxley-Lennon gets a run up. Matt scrambles to hook his legs up and round the bars.

YAXLEY-LENNON

leaps, powerfully, as --

MATT

gets his legs through, lets go his arms, hangs down --

-- and grabs onto the speeding meat-bullet that is Yaxley Lennon, twists with the creatures momentum, lets go.

Yaxley-Lennon is fired, spinning, into the bars, which groan and buckle as they are struck by the force of the behemoth.

The impact would kill a lesser man. But Yaxley-Lennon shrugs it off. Gets back on his feet, rips off a buckled length of cage -- makes for a perfect lance -- and roars at the sky.

Yaxley-Lennon takes the lance and starts jabbing it at Matt, who's still up there clinging to the bars at the top of the cage.

Matt dodges the jabs, swings across the cage like monkey bars, arm over arm across the arena and down, dropping on the other side, pirouetting, coming to rest breathing heavily facing his opponent.

Yaxley-Lennon bellows mightily.

The creature claws the ground like a bull. Lowers its helmeted head. Raises the lance. Charges.

Matt yells and runs to meet the juggernaut.

FROM HIGH

as the two enemies close the space.

MATT

at the last moment feints, dives under the lance and right between the giant's legs --

-- but not fast enough. Yaxley-Lennon, dropping the lance, brings a brutish foot down as Matt passes, right into the smaller man's ankle.

A sickening crunch. Matt howls in anguish.

Yaxley-Lennon is relentless. That one second is all he needs. A huge fist thumps into Matt's chest, knocking half the life out of him. Another fist into his skull. One more, an uppercut, pushing out teeth and saliva and blood, the force arcing Matt upwards and backwards and over on himself.

Matt crashes to the ground, broken, destroyed.

Yaxley-Lennon stoops to pick up his lance, turns back to Matt, raises the lance to the heavens, ready to bring it down right through Matt's limp frame.

The Crowd, who have been going ballistic this whole time, pause in a pregnant silence.

MATT'S P.O.V. - YAXLEY-LENNON'S HELMET

and the noise coming from within. Now Matt is close to the beast, and there are no other sounds, he can hear a continuous buzzing, like that of a hornets' nest, emanating from the helmet.

What the hell? Matt's curiosity gives him the strength to rouse himself from the depths for one final gambit.

He dodges the downward thrust, grabs the lance in both hands, and with all the strength left in his body he jabs it back upwards, angling it under Yaxley-Lennon's helmet, prising the metal headpiece free and popping it off like a Pringle top.

Yaxley-Lennon goes flying backwards, but we follow --

THE HELMET

rolling, rolling across the sand. It comes to a halt facing up, a small electronic device visible in the lining inside the helmet, playing the National Anthem over and over on a loop.

MATT

takes the lance, leaning on it for support, and, dragging his injured foot, hobbles over to the downed Yaxley-Lennon. Raises the lance above his head, preparing for a finishing blow --

-- as Yaxley-Lennon rolls over onto his front.

CLOSE ON YAXLEY-LENNON'S FACE

grinning simply. It is the face of a child, naive, confused, blinking in the harsh lights of the arena.

YAXLEY-LENNON
Where da buzzy-buzzy go?

MATT'S FACE

utterly shocked.

YAXLEY-LENNON (CONT'D)
Buzzy-buzzy make me anggy. All da time buzzy-buzzy, no fink of other stuff.

UP IN THE V.I.P. BOX

Grand Humungous Timmartin is on his feet. He bellows down at the combatants.

TIMMARTIN
Yaxley-Lennon, our brave warrior, you almost have him. Just a little more!

YAXLEY-LENNON
Me no wanna. Me wanna sun lounge, play fly-planes, no do smashy-smash.

The Crowd is agast. But the day demands a victor.

ANNOUNCER
Well, Miffed Matt. It appears the final move must go to you. The Numberdome will have its five pounds of flesh. Strike, now.

CROWD
Finish him! Finish him!

Matt looks up at the Announcer, the crowd, at Timmartin and Farazze leering down from their pod. Looks at all of them, at the makeshift lance in his hand, slick with his own blood. Finally at Yaxley-Lennon. And --

-- he drops the lance in disgust. It rattles to the ground.

MATT
Get someone else to do your butchering for you.

ANNOUNCER

uncertain. Looking to Timmartin.

TIMMARTIN

pauses for a long beat. Sighs.

TIMMARTIN
So be it.

He nods, and a brawny LIEUTENANT steps forwards, raises a scavenged rifle, squeezes the trigger.

ON YAXLEY-LENNON

as the bullet pierces his heart. The huge man slumps, dead.

No one moves.

Then the crowd erupts. Screams, howls, commotion everywhere.

A second bullet thuds into the ground where Matt was standing --

-- but he's already on the move, running towards the gap in the cage where the metal bar that became the lance was torn off. As a third bullet ricochets off the cage beside him he ducks, pushes himself through the hole, and is away, into the chaos of the Spoon Town night.

CONTINUED ONE MORE TIME...

Wednesday 20 June 2018

Day 52: Miffed Matt # 5 - Miffed Matt Beyond Numberdome

INT. NUMBERDOME - NIGHT

A bright spotlight pierces the blackness. It illuminates a patch of sand.

LOOKING UP

at the source of the spotlight we see shapes moving around its diffuse edges. A larger shape is hoisted into the centre of the spotlight, partially blocking it, and then lowered towards us, the shape in silhouette. It is a body, the limbs hanging limply at its sides.

THE BODY

lowered to a couple of feet off the ground, and then dropped, falling with a thud onto the sand. The body groans, rolls itself over, throws back the blanket in which it is wrapped. It is--

MIFFED MATT

--groaning.

FROM SOMEWHERE ABOVE

the crackle of a loudspeaker, and then a voice, deliberate, enthused, belonging to a female ANNOUNCER.

ANNOUNCER (O.S.)
The old world ran on decimal points. On fractions. On equations. Life and death were decided within the cells of a spreadsheet. A banker squeezed zero-point-one of a dollar here, a politician saved their fat friends a quarter of a penny there. An accountant tapped a button on her keyboard, and half a planet away an entire city starved. Well no longer. We don't hold truck with large sums, with tiny fractions. Only one number concerns us in this age. The number five.

CROWD (O.S.)
Five! Five! Five!

ANNOUNCER (O.S.)
Less than five can't be counted, it's dirty; more than five makes your head all hurty. But five is the perfect mid-point. Five is the universe in glorious balance. All must be brought to five, and in that five will we find peace.

CROWD (O.S.)
Peace in five! Peace in five!

Miffed Matt stands, checks he's still in possession of all his appendages, brushes himself off.

ANNOUNCER (O.S.)
And where do we do this sum? Not in checkbooks and underhanded spreadsheets. We do our accounting out here in the open, in the Numberdome, where all can see, all can witness. Numberdome. Three may enter. Two more may enter. Five must remain!

The spotlight goes off and all the lights flash on. The arena -- for it is an arena -- is lit up. Miffed Matt is on the floor of an enormous cage, the bars reaching upwards all around him and meeting at the top, where a small hole from which he was lowered is being barred and bolted by two bare-chested mutants. Around the cage are stands housing a boisterous Crowd, cheering and pumping their fists. In a special observation box Timmartin and Farazze sit scoffing pre-match snacks -- English snacks, none of those vole-oh-vaunts or other foreign muck. And on a central podium, high above the arena, holding a microphone, is the Announcer, a flamboyant woman with spiked shoulderpads who looks not dissimilar to Tina Turner.

CROWD
Five must remain! Five must remain!

ANNOUNCER
Or four may enter. But then only one may enter. Five must remain!

CROWD
Five must remain!

ANNOUNCER
Or seven may enter. But then two are going to have to leave. Five must remain.

CROWD
Five must remain!

MIFFED MATT
I'm not sure I'm getting this.

ANNOUNCER
What is there not to get? Five must remain!

CROWD
Five must remain!

MIFFED MATT
Is that a game? I don't see how that could be a game.

ANNOUNCER
It is the most glorious of games, played through the generations by our people. The sacred game of fives.

MIFFED MATT
Sounds like a card game to me.

ANNOUNCER
Well it's not, OK? It's a game of terror and agility and universal balance. Eighty-eight may enter. Eighty-three will have to leave. Five must remain.

CROWD
Five must remain.

MIFFED MATT
Yes, I can do arithmetic. I'm just not getting any sense of depth. It's like someone has taken a one-line joke and based an entire belief system around it.

ANNOUNCER
Enough of this. Bring in the champion!

A gate in the side of the cage is pulled open by a handful of nervous TAMERS, and a man steps through. More than a man. A hulking, gargantuan creature. YAXLEY-LENNON -- at least eight-feet tall, with rippling muscles and skin marked with homemade tattoos. He is naked but for a Union Jack loincloth covering his waist, and a battered and notched Saint-George's-cross helmet hiding his head.

The Tamers spur Yaxley-Lennon forwards with spears and buzzing electrical whips, causing the beast to howl, lash out, and, in time-honoured tradition, grab an inexperienced Tamer and rip his head off and eat him before leaping into the arena.

TAMER #1
Goddammit. That's the third apprentice in three fights. And I really liked Terry.

TAMER #2
It is becoming rather a trope, isn't it?

TAMER #1
Why don't we just take his manacles off inside the arena?

TAMER #2
It's part of the spectacle, I suppose.

ANNOUNCER
Ladies and gentlemen, mutants and aberrations, I give you your undefeated champion, top of the league, defender of our freedoms, king of the sunbeds -- Yaxley-Lennon!

Crowd goes mental.

ANNOUNCER (CONT'D)
Two have entered. But you all know the rules. We've got a discrepancy here. Yaxley-Lennon, I guess you'll just have to tear Miffed Matt into four equal pieces. For five must remain!

CROWD
Five must remain!

MIFFED MATT
Oh.

ANNOUNCER
Oh what?

MIFFED MATT
No, it's just. A fight to the death? Really? I thought it was going to be more interesting than that. 

ANNOUNCER
What could be more interesting than a fight to the death?

MIFFED MATT
I mean. All that stuff about fives seems like misdirection. I rather feel you're using it as grand populist rhetoric with which to mask the inherent simplicity and thuggishness of your approach.

ANNOUNCER
(hurt)
We're not the kind of people to do a thing like that.
(back to business)
But whatever your words, Miffed Matt, it is time to move past them, to a place of actions. Contenders, you are in the Numberdome now, and it crackles with anticipation. You go now into history. Stand, contenders, and be counted! Begin!

Miffed Matt turns to face his opponent --

-- and Yaxley-Lennon charges.

CONTINUED...

Tuesday 19 June 2018

Day 51: the fifty-firstiest day of them all

I keep staying up until 4am to get these dumb scripts finished, and I've not finished the next one, but I also can't stay up till 4am, so I'll have to just come here and write this instead. Which is fine. Everything is fine.

I got up late today and then played Super Mario with Mike before he had to go to work. He kept being Cat Mario and running up the finish pole and stealing the crown from me, but then I picked him up when he was distracted and threw him over the edge of the level, so fair's fair.

Jiggs was home with his haircutting stuff so he gave me a trim after Mike left, then I did writing and watched the England game and ate a meal of beansprouts and courgette on portobello mushrooms in tomatoes and spices that Phace had cooked, then wrote more and drank tea and now here we are.

I'm dead tired all the time at the moment, but I feel pretty good. I mean, I feel all right. 51 days without a drink. 51 blog posts. That's really good.

OK. I'm going to bed. Here's a picture of Tim Martin, the chairman and owner of the Wetherspoon's pub chain. Emphasis on "chain". Night night.


Monday 18 June 2018

Day 50: Miffed Matt and the Game of Fives # 4


INT. EYRIE - DAY


Miffed Matt, bruised and bound, is shoved roughly into the chamber high above Spoon Town. DOOTY MANAGERS #1 AND #2 follow after him. They bow to Grand Humungous Timmartin, a towering behemoth in arcane breathing apparatus and gimp suit with uncovered nipples, then turn and bow a little less enthusiastically to Timmartin’s second-in-command, a wretched and stunted creature, salmon-eyed and piranha-toothed, a limp little potato-faced wart known as NIGE FARAZZE.


MIFFED MATT
I see you’re looking as hale as ever, Farazze.


Farazze wimpers and crawls to Timmartin, starts suckling at the larger man’s teat.


TIMMARTIN
Nige Farazze is Prince of the Tender Boyz, Leader of the Yewkippers, Supreme Jussaruggular of the Blokes, and I will not have him disrespected by you, worm.


Nige Farazze purrs and laps his moist tongue around his master’s exposed nipple.


Timmartin removes a spiked glove and with a great veiny hand slaps Farazze so hard that the runty man goes skidding across the floor.


TIMMARTIN
He is, however, utterly repugnant.


MIFFED MATT
Why am I not surprised to find you sitting at the corner of this web, Timmartin?


TIMMARTIN
And why am I not surprised to find you at my mercy shackled before me, Miffed Matt?


MIFFED MATT
You know you won’t get away with this.


TIMMARTIN
But, Matt -- I already have. Just this week a mounted column of my fiercest Tender Boyz dissolved the last of the senate in Brussels -- dissolved them in vats of acid, specifically -- and set a torch to their holy books of Ee-Yew legislation. The last remnants of your old world have been swept away. You are a man out of time, Matt. With your German efficiency and your Latino hips and your mullet adored by men of the Netherlands, you stand for an integrated world that no longer exists. I have seen to that. From Pole to Pole now there is only the wasteland, a new order based upon each man standing by himself, for himself, and garroting any who get in his way. Strong and stable castles in the dark, each of us, unassailable, impenetrable, protected from the horrors outside our walls.


Timmartin leads the way out onto a balcony overlooking the town.


TIMMARTIN (CONT’D)
Look, Matt. Look at the beauty we have created.


MIFFED MATT’S POV - SCAVENGERS


A group of brutish scavengers are kicking a pig to death.

BACK TO SCENE

Timmartin walks his prisoner back inside. Miffed Matt comes to a standstill with his back to a burning torch, his bound hands close to the torch’s metal casing.


TIMMARTIN (CONT’D)
We were tired of those out-of-touch banana-straighteners in Brussels telling us what to do, so we wrenched back control. We were tired of our jobs going to foreigners, so now there are no jobs. We were tired of being sold funny European food that made our tummies yucky, so now there is only good old-fashioned British cuisine, like roasted rat and irradiated trout. Where once there were poncy feathered clothes from Paris, now there is only real English garb, hessian sack tunics and leather jerkins and rusted iron chain mail. Where once the ruling from distant shores regulated every aspect of our lives, now we are free to beat our neighbours over the heads with metal pipes and steal their possessions and leave them bleeding to death by the side of the road.


Timmartin pauses.


TIMMARTIN (CONT’D)
You are uncharacteristically quiet, my pathetic adversary. Is it taking time for the reality of your situation to sink in?


MIFFED MATT
No, I had no problem with that. The only thing that was taking time was cutting through these bindings.


Miffed Matt brings his hands, now decidedly free, round to his front.


MIFFED MATT
But that’s done now.


Miffed Matt jerks to the side and grabs the container holding the burning torch, flings molten tar at the approaching frames of Dooty Managers #1 and #2, who drop their weapons and scream, blinded by the boiling pitch. But these guys, like all duty managers, are used to suffering at work. A bit of molten tar in the eyes is pretty much a better-than-average shift. So they regain their composure and, though blinded, begin fumbling for their weapons.


Miffed Matt leaps into the air and swings from a chandelier.


TIMMARTIN
Get him, you fools! He’s swinging from the ... from the light fixture. You know. The ornate circular light fixture. Oh I can’t bring myself to say it. It’s far too French.


Dooty Managers #1 and #2 are bumbling around the room.


Miffed Matt swings, somersaults in the air, lands on a chaise longue.


TIMMARTIN
He’s on the ... oh you know, the long chair, the one with the varnished wooden legs and the opulent plush red cushion covers.


Miffed Matt dives from the chaise longue and scrambles to the corner of the room, up onto an antique bureau.


TIMMARTIN
Oh for fuck’s sake.


Dooty Managers #1 and #2 take a guess at the sound of Miffed Matt’s footsteps and charge in his direction. Miffed Matt backflips from the ... erm ... the writing desk as the guards approach, slicing at both their necks with fountain pens from the desk as he flips. The guards crumple to the floor, gurgling and dying noisily.


DOOTY MANAGER #1
(last words)
Still not the worst shift I’ve done...


DOOTY MANAGER #2
(last words)
About par for the course, actually...


Miffed Matt, turning, picking up Dooty Manager #2’s halberd in one smooth motion, starts towards Timmartin, who panics, tries to flee.


But they’ve all forgotten Nige Farazze. The little goblin, who had scuttled away from harm as soon as the situation got dangerous, as always, now comes flying towards Miffed Matt.


Matt slices the halberd directly at Nige Farazze’s chin -- but Nige Farazze doesn’t have a chin, just a flaccid face that dribbles away weakly into a gummy neck, and so the halberd misses by inches, slams into a wall.


These are the only seconds Timmartin needs to pull a long blade from his own substantial chin folds, to manoeuvre -- ahem, manipulate -- the edge of the blade into place against Miffed Matt’s neck.


TIMMARTIN
Enough.


Timmartin is sweating heavily, his breathing apparatus hanging loose, his moulding fetid body visible below his torn gimp suit.


TIMMARTIN
Farazze, well done.


He flings Farazze a scrap of sausage -- Wall’s, not one of those Polish or Spanish ones or anything like that -- which Farazze catches in his nasty little teeth and devours hungrily, before slurping a pint of ale and muttering something incomprehensible about immigrants.


TIMMARTIN
As for you, Miffed Matt. I was fond of those guards. Good help is surprisingly hard to find in today’s economic climate. To think, I was just going to gut you and feast upon your entrails. But now I see that is far too gentle a death for the likes of you. What to do, what to do?


FARAZZE
I knows, master. I knows what to do with the nasty man.


TIMMARTIN
Pray tell, my unctuous one.


FARAZZE
How about we get him to do a little bit of counting?


A rare smile plays across Grand Humungous Timmartin’s toad-like face.


TIMMARTIN
You think so, do you?


Farazze nods eagerly.


TIMMARTIN
Well, Miffed Matt, looks like you’re going to be playing a game of fives.


Farazze throws back his head and cackles.


FARAZZE
Fives! Fives! Fives!


Timmartin stands, beams.


ANGLE ON MIFFED MATT


Caught, defeated, confused.


TIMMARTIN
What fun.


CONTINUED...