Gentleman Practice

They told him he'd be doing a show at their gallery/house. There'd be an invited audience and musical support and a keg and fine times and popcorn. They hadn't told him that sixteen people from a variety of universes'd spent months disgorging their art into a whole big actual situation based entirely on his words. He'd been in a car having not the foggiest, with one of the pillars of the gallery/house next to him, driving, every day somewhere else and every night a gig, while the gallery/house behind them hoarded all the look-at-thats. When they finally got to the gallery/house it was late and he didn't want any tea. He had a look at what was stuck to the walls and hanging from the ceiling and settled on the floor and began to realise they all existed only because of his words. He'd sent sixteen people into various raptures and crises and puzzlements and they'd emerged thank-eyed and gladstruck, some of them through side-doors they hadn't known were there until they pushed, and the next night quite a few of these people and their friends turned up to look at the look-at-thats while fractured drones and glistening kicks crept into their ears and fifty mouths gobbled popcorn hot out of cones and yes pleased ale out of any available vessel until a writhing silence erupted and it was time for him to speak.

Without Which We'd Be Finished

After you submit the book for e-sale they mull it over. I imagine they have a mulling machine. I imagine the mulling machine makes sure that the book is legible and unlikely to start a riot. Obviously you hope it'll be loudly denounced as obscene and banned in at least one territory and a few of your favourite booksellers will be very publicly arrested and the shame will blight your family tree and people will not touch anything you've touched and the shop will charge you extra and the postman never knock again. But all our freedom has taken away that sweet and eventually lucrative ostracism. And it's only about a man and a seagull and a young woman and an old woman and a series of very short-term jobs and some inexplicable music. And it's self-published which means it's for a daring and cleverly-dressed and wise-smelling, especially today, few. It's not like those books you see piled up on retail plinths with their covers all clamouring at your poor hobbled bank cards. It's in the gutter getting nuzzled by abandoned kebab-scraps and all it really wants is to be looked at.

If you bought or buy the physical one you get the e one for free. That's the future. Email me at ed dot garland at gmail dot com with the last sentence of the book as the subject line and I will email you right back with the whole business. (I hope that works). Thanks again for everything.

Ill Bill It Isn't

Could you do us a thing they said, and I did them a thing and they put it up in English and Greek and you can go here and look at it and the other words and photos they've got all having a go at each other in capsules politely. It's only two lines. Afterwards I pasted the Greek version into Google and made it go into English and it was arguably better than the entire output of James Joyce, but too late for that now it's been chiselled into the internet. Cheap shortcut to a snazzy ha-ha though.

Substance Misuse and Tennis

Good god a new Job Centre. What a postcode we've acquired. Trees out the window. The hum of opportunity. Men in small cubicles screaming hopefully into phones. Being told to go to one floor, then another, then back to the original one, apologised to, adminned at and ejected. She was a fizzy whirlwind and had nice-smelling teeth. Appointment next week and everything. Didn't ask me what I was reading, disappointingly, because it's a large book and after saying its title I was going to say usually I read books that weigh less than my head and we were going to laugh like dolphins and slap our fucking thighs off. It's the little things. But no.