Realms of Annihilation

I wonder when's a good time to talk about the decomposing cat, in the rain, on the grass, its skin the colour of the pasta we overcooked, extremely visible from the covered picnic bench ten feet away, on which we ate all our dinners for two weeks, while on the empty campsite around it we worked, with shovels and sacks, and occasionally argued about who should pick it up, and nobody picked it up.

I wonder when's a good time to talk about the gruesome 1978 cover of Renata Adler's Speedboat, with its blurred brown humanoid staring at a frozen grey boatless sea, beneath a John Updike quote that's been trowelled on under the author's name in a nervous font that has something up with its A's, but I couldn't tell you what, and Updike always comes attached in my mind to the most unpleasant book title anywhere, ever, which is Rabbit, Run, which I tried to read once, but something about the sound of the title's syllables and the big pompous comma, like a fingernail in the eye, made me stop. And all the bits of this cover's text seem very slightly too close together, and very slightly off-centre, and this ocean of hogwash rested in my hand the whole time I was reading the book, which was very good, and I nearly removed it, the cover, but kept thinking then what?

If I put it in the bin, someone else might see it. If I bury it, a child could accidentally or on purpose dig some of it up. The proper thing to do is to feed it to a massive snake.
I just left it. But now it's over, I really think something should've been done.

If Poss

The Chemist, at the till, asked if I had everything I needed for Christmas.
Not really, er, are there some medicines on special offer? A selection box? Has something good become legal again?
She said tut tut, and stepped aside to reveal behind her some low shelves filled with mainly perfumes and hot water bottles. I said oh. She talked me through the range.
Maybe you have a girlfriend.
Who's cold, or stinks.
A hot water bottle can make a surprising gift.
And I could fill it with boiling perfume and really make a name for myself.
Just think about it, doesn't have to be today.
When she handed me my prescribed medicine, she said here's the prescription for [my full name], like that might not be me. She hasn't done that before. She just wanted to have fun in a hat and I was smugly walloping it away. I did want a gift, but not one from the seasonal shelf.
Maybe if there was a tiny tree, with benzodiazepines for baubles, and you could eat the whole thing like a shish kebab.
You'd need a prescription for that.
I'll be back in a month or so.

Turns Out It's People

If everyone in this cafe right now formed a band, we'd be called Loudmouth Donny and The Cosmic Douchebags. It's unfair, but accurate. Like this pen would be named The Clicky Bulbous Struggler, at the South-West Pen Afficionados' annual pen-naming convention and hog roast, to which I've never been invited. There's a stupefying mismatch between its shape and its purpose, like someone's stuck a nib to a balloon and said well boss we've made it user-friendly for people who don't want to use it too much, the fuck else you want? And using it solely to make complaints about it was what qualified me to become a member of The Douchebags, Donny-less and non-cosmic until four minutes ago, when a young spam-cannon wrapped in a woollen rainbow walked in, enunciating into his phone and dragging our futures behind him, and instantly we realised our purpose. We haven't, strictly-speaking, practised, or met, yet, but we've definitely been brought together.

Examples Quite Excessive

Johnny Cash sang about Christmas. A History of Bombing described innovations in missile stability. I sat everywhere in a succession of childish chairs, trying to concentrate on the bombing, but anywhere I went the CD started skipping, although I didn't think people used CDs anymore, and none of the other customers anywhere seemed irked, so I never asked the staff what was up with their music, or the customers when they planned to begin to be irked, Johnny isn't half going on about this pudding of his, do you not think? In case they said it's not a CD, it's not Johnny Cash, it's not even music, you're in the hospital, your head's come off.
A History of Bombing finished, and I burped and started on Martha Gellhorn's History of Aftermaths, which isn't what it's called. The music dissolved into something small and nervous, and Martha went round talking to people and looking at stuff.

Competence

Notes: Recipient again attended interview to assess suitability to perform functions already contractually obliged to perform. Recipient approached interview with surplus of I's in mouth ready to deploy after surplus of we's deployed at other interview led to impression of insufficient individual worth. Interview performance an improvement. Again a wait and while waiting performing functions contractually obliged to perform but not deemed capable of performing. Again the assessment unsuitable. One part of second interview feedback lamenting lack of banging-on re: teamwork. Probable cause: surplus of I's taken on after previous interview feedback highlighted we-surplus and I-dearth. News this time received Thursday afternoon, reaction of recipient being immediate exit of building. Friday morning recipient booked appointment at doctor's for following Thursday and again performed functions contractually obliged to perform but twice now deemed incapable of performing. Weekend: rollercoaster. Monday morning recipient attempted to perform functions contractually obliged to perform but stopped after thirty-five minutes, exited building and went to library. At library recipient attempted to read books of familiar, soothing, perspective-enhancing nature, Tropic of Capricorn, but found library didn't stock such books or if it did they would not be due back for many terrifying weeks. Recipient went to coffee place with achievable crossword and drank coffee and didn't achieve half of crossword, finding during the non-achievement that the silent recital of the alphabet when, for example, thinking of what a half-filled word's final letter could be, didn't go like the silent recital of the alphabet usually does, sometimes skipping from f to t, sometimes just stopping, and sometimes changing into thoughts of what seemed at the time like life-enhancing physical violence. Recipient left coffee and coffee shop and crossword and went home to wait until time for doctor, the new dissonance-cocoon varying in severity but never falling away. Doctor had recipient give a first-person account of the above, and offered recipient some information and some people to talk to, and a six-month course of anti-depressants. Recipient declined and was surprised by offer of anti-depressants, and accepted information and people to talk to. Doctor forbade for two weeks recipient's performing of functions contractually obliged to perform.

Shortcrust Leverage Imbroglio

Blobs of doubtful vitality ought to keep their holes shut, I wanted to overhear someone saying, at the pie shop, two weeks ago, but didn't. The previous night I'd watched Savages bring down a church from the inside, then had some confused but lively sleep and taken my howling ears to work and finished early with an imaginary appointment. You ask to finish early and they say do you have an appointment, and you say if I did have an appointment would I also have to have proof of the appointment, and they say no, and you say well then of course I have an appointment, in fact this interrogation is making me late, and the appointment people take an extremely dim view of lateness, whoever they are.
So the pie shop was subdued but for the kitchen-clatter and my howling ears and the damp rustling pies inside heads make. I was having difficulty overhearing something I could steal and put amongst the fragments of the thing that is now finished but then wasn't. It was research and I was hungry. At the door as I was leaving I heard some lively pie-based dialogue I could use, and went home and put it in the thing, and half an hour later deleted it, and spent the next two weeks moving fifty thousand words around until an order that doesn't look like much of an order emerged.

Eight Likes

I was making a sandwich in the dark at 6.45 a.m. and wondering if I could get away with not showering. Maybe take a towel to work and monitor the situation through regular discreet whiffing. Of myself and of the nearest other. Trouble is our bathroom's plagued, at home, by thin slugs and draughts and every time you open the door you wonder how far things might've gone, this time, and could we change things by repenting or is it just a matter of waiting. Because the broodings and the slayings haven't worked. And please no repenting because repenting hasn't so far showed itself to be worth the effort. I'm reading a fine-smelling Tolstoy about it and it just goes on forever and he can't even taste his food eventually. Improvement is a slippery slope.

Hold It Hold It Yeah Nice

I looked at the pictures of faces in the exhibition of pictures of faces. Two of them were so bad I wanted to phone some kind of very specific hotline and tell them it's their fault I'm infuriated and demand that they compensate me in ways it's not my responsibility to imagine, except to say that if they're not at least prolonged and terrific they'll be no compensation at all. I knew why I disliked these pictures, both at the original viewing and when I went back during lunch to check that I was still pummelled into froth by absolutely every aspect of their existence. But the good ones just made me think things like: yeah, good that, tones etcetera or: that's a really nice fence in the background there, a decent arrangement of shapes and colours, and I like shapes and can tolerate colours. For the bad ones I thought: these pillocks look like they've been asked to look like they're feeling the feelings people in compelling photographs feel, but all they seem to be feeling is the hope that the photograph might be good, which it isn't, because the hope for a good photograph is getting in the way of what's worth photographing, or is this actually the whole point and it's actually very successful, hence its inclusion in this travelling exhibition of successful large photographs, I wish I was looking at something less complicated. And when people asked how the exhibition was or why I'd been on lunch for ninety five minutes, you're not in France anymore mate, I didn't say anything about my detailed dislike of the things I disliked, for fear the amount of detail in the dislike would reveal other unpleasant character aspects, ones I don't cultivate on purpose, which might then ruin my chances, of what I'm not exactly sure.

Everyone At Some Point

Bournemouth was dark and breezy and trousers-wise I was strictly business. Because I forgot to pack the jeans. I've never been casual below the waist anyway. It's hard to find the town centre if you walk in the wrong direction. The first night there was silent lightning below the clouds above the sea. Lone cars stopped on the road to watch it. Lone men sat at tables in bright pubs watching the lone cars watching it. I lone sat in Wagamama at a table with twenty-five absent people. I got smiled at a lot, by the staff and the people at the other tables. I couldn't help thinking this wasn't necessary. Maybe the smilers were somehow vicariously amused by the amusing book I was reading, maybe the brisk dialogue was blasting out of my scalp. More likely the smiles were acknowledging the blue ink that'd gone from my pen to my pocket to my fingers to my face without me noticing until hours after, in the hotel room, burping. Wagamama: you should've told me. They'd've told me in Tampopo. They'd've rushed over with some helpful fluid to wash the stain or drown the sorrow in Tampopo. And then they'd've asked me what I was even doing eating evening bowl-food without a zesty and mysterious companion. I rang them to verify this and they said A: where've you been lately, and but before you answer that, where has she been lately, and B: we welcome any facial blemish regardless of hue, as you well know, your face having displayed many alarming and unnatural spasms of colour in the long but not long enough time we've known it, sir. And the hues, lately, have been intense, we've heard, please accept our vigorous sympathies and consider buying a gift voucher for your famished pals this Christmas. And before Bournemouth I'd been swept up in a compressed-head delirium and spent all night believing my eyes were about to burst like squeezed peas, and every change of position made it worse, and all I'd wanted to do was to hammer nails into my face until whatever was in me was gone and I could enjoy a wet heap of something with not too much coriander in it. Wagamama didn't press me for these details. Their dish of nuanced liquid, tender dead things and small long hot things was fine, but in and around and during and amongst and after it I couldn't detect a single concern for my wellbeing.

Relish Lack Be Enjoying

Situations lunge. I said yes to a three-day course in a town by the sea. The Union will welcome me and I'll be fully informed and riled up for baptism. I've put a toothbrush and all my prejudices in a sack made of high horse leather. I'm already practising responses to being called comrade and hearing it spoken between respectable folk. Weeks ago at the sixty-thousand people thing I couldn't stay for the speeches. We shuffled and whistled and listened to the chants. I found it hard to want to start chanting, after listening to the chants. I smiled at the bits of the air the chanting was in, and at the helicopter above it. The Union had a large yellow balloon and a band. Back at work I was interviewed for the same job as now but for forever. The questions were the questions for when the job was for six months. As soon as I noticed this I made up a rule that I couldn't use any of the answers that I'd used the first time. This was unexpected. I spent so long answering one of the questions that I forgot what it was.

Skills Gap Analysis

A man put a mask on and attacked the drumkit set up in front of the stage. Between the mask and his mouth was a small microphone. Between his back and the stage were two large amplifiers. His singing came through some looping and distortion and reverb boxes and out of the amplifiers. He played very fast and loud and intricate things on the drums. It was unclear whether he was enjoying himself or not or almost. The singing didn't involve words and the treble was like rusty sideways-raining needles. Eleven years ago, in a DVD, he jumped off a fridge and landed on his drum stool and immediately played exactly the necessary thing no sooner or later than it was required. He controlled the looping and distortion with his left foot. Men shook their hair and grinning women danced. A bald man plugged his ears with tissue paper. Absent people would say it wasn't music. The drumming stopped and over the applause he told a story through his distortion and reverb. The only intelligible words were Motley Crue.

Upped

The waitress thanked the living shit out of me and insisted that I have a great day, a great one, one of the top hundred days of the ten-thousand seven-hundred and thirty-six-ish experienced so far, three-thousand five-hundred and fifty-eight-ish of which you've pretty much just slept through, you cocky slob, she almost said, and turned towards the kitchen. I looked at her spine and said thanks and walked out with a double espresso twitching against my hangover. The words great day glided into my mind's eye in birthday-banner colours and danced while I looked for somewhere to relieve the despair of standing up and having to navigate through people and their lives and hats. I sat in the park and leaned against a tree that knew nothing of my predicament and tried to read. But the words in the book were moving far too quickly, while great day'd moved in closer to inflict a sickeningly jovial rhumba. I shut the book and closed my eyes and breathed through my nose and exuded slime into my best clothes. I wondered if this counted as meditation. And I thought I should really maybe make the effort again, really again, beyond just a book and one attempt again. Get absolutely off my swede on calmness. And it might help with one or some or all of the things I need help with. And it might make the walls of the house seem further apart. If I can make it back there without dying of agitation.
A breeze cooled the slime and I was seized by a non-specific shame-and-terror or the caffeine kicked in. I stood up and went to a bar and after a lot of humming ordered a soft drink with gin in it.

w/r/t

These people have a David Foster Wallace special issue. I took his book about infinity and made it into a couple of babbling paragraphs. I was also asked if I wanted to write something about the man and his writing and how much of my clothing it's removed, throughout the years, as I kept going back for more. And I did but all I really should've written was: I enjoy his books because they seem like funny sacks of spikes.

Only To Be Expected

Every not often next-door has a party in its back garden and as I exit my front door at sundown to begin another Desecration Wednesday or similar, I find at our wall a shiny young guzzler wondering how close to the right place they are. Very, I say, and while they ask if I've got any phone credit and if yes can they borrow the phone and some of the credit to summon someone from the next-back garden to the next-front gate, I hoist them like a fat baby over my shoulder and through my cluttered hall and thin kitchen to the back door, where they wonder what I'm playing at and I undo all the locks and plod through the shin-deep weeds and hurl them neighbourly over the fence without warning or apology.
Later, at large, as I thrust the empty bottle of anything-over-five-percent into the municipal waste-heap, I feel a vague sense of community.

Acts of Waste

The restaurant was tall and full of itself.

Have you been doing to a reasonable standard all the things now required of you?
Yes. Mostly. Almost mostly. Just about. Yes.

I de-bowled the cold pigeon slices onto the salad, and spooned on the granola and the fennel cream.

And this'll persist?
Most likely.
And you'll be taking them as inspiration in the things you do that aren't them?
Not if I can help it.
For you there is no help.
I...
And the methods are still...?
The prevailing doctrine demands improvement, from everyone, at all times. I try to apply it. I admire its ambition.
The whole place must be gleaming.
At the ground floor reception there's twenty eight thousand pounds nailed to the wall. And it's ten feet up and it can't be removed.
Bill Drummond?
Not so far.
It doesn't flutter away? In the winds of innovation?
It takes the form of a TV that's never on.
And this cost nearly double your yearly young go-getting income?
It also involved a man and some software that displayed information and a man to run the software.
And whither they?
Not sure. The information it used to display was already displayed on sheets of A4 paper.
My tits hurt.

The waitress removed our remains and filled our wine glasses. People celebrated results.

It can't be broken off and donated to someone who wants it?
It has to stay.
And what of this principle of permanent bettering?
It doesn't reach that far up the walls.
Who ordered this?

The waitress asked if we'd like another bottle. I nodded.

A long-gone somebody. Before the doctrine.
I'm experiencing a thing I don't want to experience.

We moved on to smoother subjects and waited for the fish.

Deeds

The building has four floors. The lift's buttons are set up so that the number on the button you press is also the number of the floor the button instructs the lift to stop at. A voice announces the number as you exit. And on the bit of wall next to the lift doors on each floor is a large plank of information to do with where everything is and why you might want to go there.
Some people mentioned that they found it difficult to discover, after they got there, what floor they were on, and I was asked by a manageman to solutionise the improvable. I think that's how he put it. Solvify the crevasse. Bradbury the topknot.
I tried to resist. If your problem is you can't find out what floor you're on, your problem is much bigger than not being able to find out what floor you're on. But no. Then what about a sign directing you to the plank? No, this would appear deliberately unhelpful and maybe sarcastic. So I was wafted into the reprographics alcove and ordered not to come out until I'd stated the obvious.
I printed an A4 sign that said you are on the first floor. In bold Helvetica, I think, although it could've just been something that looked a lot like Helvetica. Taking care not to repeat myself or make any signs for places that didn't exist, I printed similar but not exactly the same statements for the other three floors. By which time the laminator was purring like a distant helicopter, ready to attack anything, regardless of colour, typeface or grammar, and as I fed it the four signs I patted its lilac flank and whispered the words the work we're doing here is vital to facilitate the smooth running of this organisation, whatever this organisation is. I switched it off after it'd passed the fourth sign, and went to the lift in a more businesslike manner than usual, so as not to appear to be gloating.
The lift has its own internal plank which includes information on all the floors and rooms except it doesn't mention a thing about room number six.
I leapt out onto the fourth floor and began mashing the this is the fourth floor sign against the wall opposite the lift with my forehead and elbows and the aid of a substance that strongly resembles but is significantly less effective than blu-tack, while people who've never not known what floor they're on stared at the sign and then at me and shook their heads and started conversations like
Are you really...
Yes.
But there's already a...
Yes.
and moved off with faces like funeral rain. I returned to the public waiting area and sat behind the enquiries desk and imagined a future where every wall was a sign, the comic sans smeared up it like abbatoir splashes and the apostrophes scurrying like lice. And I was doing nothing to stop it. I opened a Twix and carried on with the paperwork.

Fat Together

This didn’t quite happen: I was the café’s only customer, sat at the counter seducing a bacon sandwich looking out the window and reading a book while the waitress sat beside me tutting at the Times quick crossword. My book was an old Russian novel and I was hoping the waitress would notice the fuss I wasn’t making about my impeccable taste, so I could then tell her it only cost fifty pence and establish that along with my heroic lack of look-at-me I also know about how far money can go. She exhaled through her nostrils and looked up from the crossword and said I’m not good at these things. I smiled and said sometimes they’re a bastard. I didn’t ask her whereabouts in Australia she was from. 

We stared out the window and I conquered the sandwich and watched legs and shoulderblades go past outside and time stand still in the cold and cockroachy prison in the book. She said moustaches in the summer must be bothersome. I thought about telling her how I used to have a moustache but it was joined to a beard because everyone had a hairy face because we were in the mountains near enough and if you shave in the mountains your priorities are reckless, you’re not going to be able to wrestle any goats or worry any snakes with a soft bald mouth, are you, mate, but I just said yeah. 

Something two foot tall fell from above the window and shattered on the pavement. It was a potted house plant. Soil rolled into the gutter. The waitress tsked and said it’s the flat upstairs, they’re really spacey. It probably frightened one of them and they kicked it out. We watched legs avoid tripping over it. Or maybe, she said, it just got sick of its owners.

Eye Balm

London, london, listen, an exhibition, Mail Me Art, loads of excellent pictures on envelopes from all round the world and I have some words on one too and they're all for sale for charity and the show is 30th July to 3rd of August at the Framers Gallery W1T 2JT Goodge Street tube or Tottenham Court Road tube or put rollerskates on a horse and get there on that, as long as you get there.
Inf: http://www.mailmeart.com/
Purch: http://www.mailmeart.com/product/ed-garland-original-mail-art/

Bearable Onslaught

The weather got in bed with us and would not respect our boundaries. Weekdays we all worked beyond our thresholds in breezes bought from Wilkinsons that made an office-wide soup of our deodorants. Widened margins of error let photocopied rectangles land on previously unthinkable desks. Chiming phones were gripped in sweaty trepidation. Remarks were made. The customers were hungry for rain.
In the unwaged hours we groaned in parks showing our feet to each other and suffering leisure. A frisbee is a machine that takes away from the people in its immediate vicinity the ability to fully relax and replaces it with the faint but persistent worry that at any moment some jovial wrist will launch a silent disc at your favourite nostril irrevocably.
A memory wails: before a P.E. lesson in the gym this tall guy was spinning round under a basketball hoop with a rounders bat in his left hand. Others were gathering in a bored and fragrant murmur in the middle of the court and under the far hoop this older tall guy was stretching and doing smiling older tall guy stuff. The first tall guy increased the speed of his spins until he felt queasy and then stopped spinning and also stopped gripping the rounders bat, which was then launched across the basketball court in a dead straight untumbling line towards the back of the other tall guy's head, past and through and inbetween everyone else's white-clad adolescent necks and foreheads and oozings and worries, and as the other tall guy tuned into the collective clench of expected horror he turned to receive the fat end of the bat with his mouth half-open at first and then shut just before it bulleted into his face. Half the audience looked at the other half for an indication of how to react appropriately.
He staggered into the changing rooms and leaned on the sink and spat out a tongue of blood and shattered tooth. The bat thrower stood just inside the doorway, unsure of the etiquette, crying. The teacher picked the tooth fragments out of the sink and took the boy and his mouth away. The rest of us played games with no projectiles.

Bulk Centre

The screens above the seats on the return train all had the same scrolling message saying this seat is probably reserved. As the carriage filled up people stared at the message for their own seat and turned around to stare at the one opposite and then stare at each other and wonder when this new lack of certainty had been demanded. I walked through some conversations - this is a yes or no thing surely - this country's public services - how much more are we going to take - maybe the destinations are only probable too - I do hope there's a drinks trolley - I'll be needing a drugs trolley - and a word with the governor - has the smell got worse or has my nose improved? - just got out, a week, see the kids - sand in my lungs - countryside, a real treat - so ludicrously above inflation - seem to care - of course Hugo insisted we weren't to fly - futile sanctions - the sound off please - a diabolical sense - flabby like she is, no thanks - put up with - nice little set-up if the weather doesn't - had to babe - locked into a punitive schedule here, so I'm not able to - can't tell him yet but the silence must seem - I found an empty seat as the train began to crawl and fell asleep next to a woman who smelled like a goth but wasn't.

Doff

One of the pictures in the gallery was a huge dark shiny abstract probable vagina, and I leaned in closer thinking I might learn something about technique, yes they’ve really, you can see right here, applied one thing to another with unfathomable panache, etc, but a piercing one-note alarm went right through everyone’s head, and an attendant scuttled over politely muttering about sensors and invisible thresholds. I withdrew, and from then on tried to keep my head directly above the rest of me, and shuffled past the tasty sculptures and bland collages until I came to the infinite book.
A man had photocopied bits of some books and illutrations he owns and likes and once he had fifteen thousand pages he packed them into a few boxes and placed the boxes on several one-bright-coloured steps and stages and plinths, with instructions for us (you) to have a rummage and take ten pages home and make a book or a whatever you like out of them, nobody's going to come round and check. On my way out I stole a pencil from the lobby and went back to the pasty shop and bought and ate another chicken pasty, alertly, and watched the sea for an hour.

Right of Way

Drizzle soothed my warm ham face. I ate a sausage bap and got wet. The bus to Land’s End was open-top, but nobody’d brought their goggles so we all sat on the lower deck peering at the bottom half of some green and grey views for an hour. I wondered about the first-and-last pub at our destination, I vaguely remembered its existence from a school trip or a family holiday or a film or a dream or a newspaper article or an episode of Michael Palin's Affable Wayfaring or a hallucination or absurd wish I had once. The drizzle stopped. The bus stopped. The pub was still standing, but it seemed like some slobbering maniac with a hammer’d boarded up all the windows. I checked round the other side, thinking maybe there was some kind of sunlight tax in operation (if you want natural light you'd better go outside and fucking work for it, explained Mr. Osborne, not just loaf around in booths and nooks, drinking yourself gormless and sucking away the sunlight from hard-working British outdoor family units, before laying down a classic slide show about how the way to solve a problem is to make it worse, to a theatre full of thieves and ghouls, naked except for hoods) and they’d covered up all but one of the windows to keep the overheads down and pass on their savings to you, the valued customer, in the form of competetively-priced while still independently-owned pints. But no. There was a man pulling things out of the front garden and putting them in a bucket. It’s closed, he said.

I turned around and strode and wept manfully towards the westernmost shopping village in England. Tears slid down my neck while I looked at jumpers and sweets and wondered what this tiny mall had to do with the demise of the pub. Probably everything. Maybe I should snap all the sticks of rock in half and start eating the fudge without taking it out of the boxes until someone views my thirst and anguish seriously. French children threw soft toys at German children. I went and stood on the edge of a cliff.

It was a good cliff, surrounded by other good cliffs, and I walked towards Sennen Cove wondering if there are people who grow up without cliffs like there are people who grow up without snow, and thought I might write the word cliffs down as a note to myself, and discovered I’d lost my pen.

I walked up the hill to the Sennen post office bus stop and waited for the bus to Porthcurno. It arrived exactly on time but on the opposite side of the road to the one advertised, and for some reason didn’t take my slightly narrowed eyebrows as an indication it should stop. I waited a bit longer and got the bus to St Ives, thinking how many times can a man accidentally arrive in St Ives in one holiday, but I haven't been to the Tate yet so I guess I'll do that now. 

I got off the bus and bought a chicken pasty to eat on the walk to the gallery, and it tasted good and made me think that I was doing the right thing and that all my hopes and dreams were perfectly valid and in no way unattainable, and on the final stretch, gallery to the left, sea in front, last bite of pasty in my raised right hand and me looking at it thinking we were fucking made for each other, you and I, there was a ripple in the atmosphere and the sudden sense of an uninvited presence and no noise at all and then I was looking at the ascending behind of a seagull with my food in its beak, clearly unwilling to negotiate or apologise, and an American couple in white baseball caps asked me if I was alright, and I said I spose it was my turn. I was still hungry.

Eventually Direct

(You needn’t go on about things you loathe all the time, it’s garish.)

I sat on a bench on a bit of sea front between one road and another and listened to a man play a harp, good notes in a fine order while the sea sent wafts of white noise in approval and the seagulls kept their beaks shut for once. It was all a good accompaniment to Jose’s horror, which had intensified to the point where I thought I could smell it. A young man in an old man’s clothes went past pushing a walnut-faced dog in one of those upright-canvas-bag-in-a-wheeled-frame things in which your gran might carry home her bargains. The dog was facing him and he was staring at it not for the first time that day. He pushed it yapping past the harp and before he turned the corner asked it: why are you being like this?

Facing west now (it's important to let you know in which directions this was written), trying to find things to say about the view, get some visual sauce on this introspective pile of uncertain nourishment, but I can’t so I won’t, but I will type it up and submit it to the Telegraph’s travel-writing prize and be utterly furious if it doesn’t win five hundred quid.

Last night the train from St Ives to Penzance went as far as St Erth before going backwards. I should’ve paid attention to the unboldness of the numbers next to the stations after St Erth, in the timetable, which indicated a change should've been made, if Penzance was where you wanted to end up. But I was busy with Jose and had no interest in why some numbers were bold and some unbold, nor why the unbold ones continued in an unbroken chain to the destination. Logic or curiosity might’ve prompted some easy research. But I’m on holiday so I have a lack of both. 

We hurtled backwards while the sun disappeared and Jose piled on the horror and I said to the conductor I’ve stayed on by accident and he nodded like you’re not the first. By the time we were going forwards again the moon was up, looking sunburned.

Jaws

In St Ives there are crowds in thin lanes and when a bus goes past everybody faces the wall. We are looking at the sea and through gallery windows at pictures of the sea. Tiny dogs ride around in handbags. A few of the shops sell fudge, and one of these shops is very keen to let you know, in an underlined and laminated sign, that the fudge on offer there is in no way affiliated with any of the fudge on offer elsewhere, you got that? All the other fudge is full of broken glass and lies. The fudge game must be no joke round here, many a life having been torn to sweet tatters by the retailing of inferior fudge under the superior name of, I forget what this shop is called. I hope they can find peace before any blood flows into the sea.

Giedra finished. I’ll miss her. Jose Saramago arrived, beeping and jiggling, with his Blindness. It has funny bits, at first, dollops of ha-ha in the worsening squalor. (So far, that is, by page 109, who knows how it’ll progress. The outlook is not good.) I like that Jose doesn’t have time for speech marks. 

I’m at a table on a balcony. Having spent an hour looking at the sea and beach to the east, it might be time now to spend an hour looking at the sea and beach to the west. If I close one eye and tilt my head a bit, I can make my nose replace the land on the other side of the bay, and the waves trundle up it and it tickles.

By page 173 there’s no more room for joking. Maybe the jokes went in at the start to make the eventual lack of jokes seem more serious by contrast.
A sign advertising boat trips lists one of the destinations as Hell's Mouth (no mention of death’s door). For booking information phone Derek. Now I’m in a craft beer/hot dogs type place. You know: a Ruby Jean’s Burger Garage, a Betsy Turnpike’s Chow House, and it has a balcony with a good view of the harbour and the bay and the hills and the balcony I was on earlier. David Gray or oh god it might be James Blunt is playing, and I’m pining for Motown. I could run and launch myself, wailing, off the balcony and over the road and into the water.
Out in the bay a rumour of dolphins emerged and was blown into Derek’s ears and out of his mouth, opposite, but nobody’s biting. I’d like to see a dolphin but he hasn’t offered to bring one to me, and I don’t want to end up in Hell's Mouth, I’ve been there before and only a fool’d go back on purpose, and now The Killers are playing, Jesus, put James Blunt back on.

In between these balconies I walked to Carbis Bay, the next one over, behind the hill my nose was, it was big and quiet, blue and beige, you know what a beach looks like. At the back of it a man sat drinking rose (ay, rose-ay, where's the button for e-garnish on this Mac?) from the bottle, a pink umbrella obscuring his face, but you could see a grey cone of beard tickling his chest, and three small dogs sat watching him.

I’m facing east again. Soon it’ll be time to face west.

Oh here’s Jack Johnson, my life is fraught with invisible peril, won’t be long before Laura Marling’s here, this soundtrack doesn’t seem to go with the hot dogs and craft beer experience, shouldn’t we be having Huey Lewis or a Bill Cosby monologue or something, why’s nobody consulted me on this, it’s as if they don’t value my many balanced opinions at all.

It must be time to go elsewhere. This pint is reluctant to disappear, I don’t know what the music is now but it’s obviously meant to induce contentment, which I’ve always found obnoxious, like a stranger squeezing your hand, here’s Redemption Song, it’s time to go. 

Much At All

On a blustery corner outside a pub, ludicrous to try writing in this wind but let’s. An atmosphere might find its way onto the page for once. It's flinging the top of my San Miguel into the street. The pub is called the Dolphin Inn, the dolphin on the sign looks a lot like a dragon, green skin and a red tongue and it’s flying. I think I detected some disappointment at the bar when I didn’t order the local lager, but I’ve had it before and it tastes like fire extinguisher, the cloudy powdery variety, and is not a refreshing experience. Giedra Radvilaviciute is with me, in book form, wind-bashed, and she’s fun. I’m reading it very slowly so it doesn’t run out, and in case there’s no or very little more of her in English. I’m going to wake up at 6.15 tomorrow and think it’s time for work and spring out of bed and realise it isn’t and spring straight back in to bed. Across the road there’s a building that calls itself a Meadery, but it isn’t open yet. I’ve walked too far today and my feet feel like prime minister’s question time. All this wind is taking the edge off the sun, I don’t mind it. When I arrived last night there was rain congealed in the air and you had to cut through it eyebrow-first and the future seemed grim and familiar. The receptionist had an everything-will-be-fine voice and said tomorrow it might not rain.
I began to mind the wind. Now I'm in the Turks Head garden (no apostrophe), for historical reasons, and a seagull keeps offering to carry my bag home. There’s a sign up discouraging bad language. A man at one of the other tables just said chefs, don’t talk to me about chefs, and started talking about chefs. Mariah Carey’s getting involved. She doesn’t sound happy. Never has. A woman at another table just wants coleslaw for dinner. Come on, you have to have more than that, okay maybe some skin-on chips. They talk about dolphins while I read this in Giedra: I read that a woman in Israel married a dolphin. She kissed him, said I love you, and then dived into the water with her clothes on.
This abundance of dolphinry is encouraging and makes me believe I’m on holiday. I wonder if there’ll be a real one to look at, talk to or provide administrative support for, soon, and do they have tongues in real life or only when they’re on pub signage? Coleslaw woman’s voice doesn’t match her appearance, somehow. Her husband or, who knows, accountant, was talking earlier about the fluctuating price of cherry tomatoes, and why having a regular veg box delivered to your house becomes uneconomical if you always throw away the swedes and turnips. She was listening to this and making one-syllable answers. Now she’s on about something in a sing-song tone that sounds as if it’s building up to a difficult truth, and it’s his turn with the one-syllable answers, but the wind is obscuring the details, except this: you don’t get a haircut before you go to the barber's, do you? And he’s made no response.

Four Supremes

I’m in Cornwall. (Not now. I’m copying out what I wrote in a notebook and then changing it). Seaweed skulks and mooches and flops in the bay. (It doesn't, it just sits in water and on rocks, doesn't it, yes, there's no need to pretend it has motives). The sun squints behind clouds. (Maybe this is accurate). In Mousehole there are two headlines either side of the swinging local headline display unit: Mousehole Man Recalls Role In Car Prank. £20M Of Cocaine Found On Yacht. (Sometimes it's hard to know when exactly fun turns into crime). 

I’ve come on holiday on purpose, I’m going to experience a thing or two. I’m sposed to be starting the finishing of the first draft of a book, but two weeks ago when I gently placed my laptop back in its position something inside the screen exploded and the only images it now displays are meaningless. And how can I start the finishing of the first draft of a book on paper when the rest of it’s trapped in a useless beloved machine, I dunno. When the Greatest Hits of Motown is the only thing that’s playing on the café terrace, there’s no way of knowing whether or not it’s stuck on repeat. (It’s been stuck on repeat your whole life, this is just one more moment in which to be unsure whether or not Diana Ross is still alive, and what she might be up to, either way, right now.)

Things I haven’t brought with me to the café or the holiday include a hat, suncream, shorts, flip-flops and the iPod charger, because I left in a hurry, because I always have to manufacture a minor crisis, because I dunno. I did remember to bring some books and my eyes, though, so that’s a relief. (How long after we’ve invaded Mars will it take for someone to put on the Greatest Hits of Motown? What sort of objections might there be? Will it sound fresh, again, finally, over there? Is there a sound art piece that’s every Motown hit being played simultaneously, like there was with all the national anthems a while back?)

While I was walking to Mousehole this morning, to learn about what vehicles they use for pranks and cocaine, I passed a garden full of scarecrows with plates for faces and bottles for arms and bits of old rope for hair and then one of them was a dolphin on a stick. (Half-hour interlude for relocation here because Motown stopped and Simply Red came on, and while I was scattering tables, shattering bowls and sinking boats in my desperation to get out of earshot or die, I was regretting everything I’d just written about Motown and promising, internally, to you and whoever else, that I’d never be ner-ner about a good thing again, because of brain-consequences, like after I wrote about the bird foetus I dreamt someone gave me fifteen budgies, but they lived with their feet planted in little pots of soil, and I said thanks I’ll look after them, and the giver went away, and all of the budgies very quickly one-by-one died quietly gasping, and I shook them all out into a bin bag and held the bin bag to my chest and it started squirming, and I woke up with the feeling I should stop being flippant about gestation.)

Yesterday's Mistakes

We saw a sparrow foetus in the pub. In the garden, by the hedge. Some people were screwfacing away from it and some people were, having heard about it, sprinting towards it. It fast became a must-see foetus. And I don't know if it was a sparrow or not, but sparrow foetus sounds a lot better than boring old non-specific bird foetus. And if it's not a sparrow then it must be something like a brown shrieker, lesser privet bellower, or beige nuisance, which are the three species most commonly spotted in that hedge, from the nearby tables, at which we've all spent entire months drinking oceans of booze a pint at a time, listening to the high-speed metallic quarrelling of these birds without ever finding out their proper names or what it is that makes them so angry. Maybe it's that we'd been ignoring their foetuses. No more. It lay in the sun with a crowd exuding scrutiny at it, pointing out each feature with a my god or a fucking hell, eyes, gob, hands, are those hands, they're not sposed to have hands, while the other crowd, a few yards away, groaned as it heard each new detail, and became a support group for people who didn't anticipate this kind of thing landing in their Sunday roast, especially if they'd opted for the chicken. We love nature.

Unheard-of Side

In a right-angled cavern south of everywhere, a mercilessly average film projected itself at our heads. Bees were in it so how are you going to really complain. It featured a distressingly competent actor playing identical twins with beards and coughs. And one pretty soon ended up pretending to be the other and some people realised and some didn't. And there was a plot and some vengeance and it was all in Spanish. Which probably was because the financial backers had had it all filmed in English like anyone with any sense would've done but then grew worried about recouping their dubloons and had shown a rough cut to the local ombudsman and he'd gone fine yeah guns and money I get it. But: If an English-speaking-and-hearing audience is going to leave a screening thinking they haven't been filmically nobbled by this then we're going to have to re-do the whole thing in Spanish so as to hang a thin and arty and therefore more valuable gauze between the audience and its common sense. But we'll show it in the multiplexes rather than the art-sheds. For extra because so basically I'm not very sure. But I've booked it all now and it's too late to stop. And in the taxis afterwards they'll wonder what it thought it was, and in beds they'll curse and shrug while dreams of better things run through them, and you might almost make your money back.

Till It's Finished

We were asked to play some songs to some people in a pub, an interesting pub, a stinking crisis arena where men go to perch on stools and bark at each other and wait impatiently for death or a fight or the guy who sells stolen meat to come in and sell some stolen meat. We couldn't say no and we didn't. They put us upstairs and moved the pool table over so there'd be room to waltz and heckle. We soundchecked and were fucking okay. Our friends arrived and the men began slurring with delight. We drank and played some songs. A dance-off erupted. We ran out of songs. We were thanked. We attempted to get the equipment back home in a taxi. The taxi informed us it long ago stopped picking people up from this particular pub. The non-payment. The abuse. The fluids. We waited a minute and booked the taxi from the nearby supermarket the guy who steals meat steals meat from. Everything was fine.

Finger

Three rolls of new carpet arrived and were immediately left in the hall for a week, taking up all the space and fulfilling, brownly, none of the functions of a new carpet except the smell. We would get back from work having forgotten about them and open the front door and they'd lurch at us, softly begging to be nailed to the floor, or however it is you install a carpet. But that's not our task, we'd say, patting their rumps and shaking our heads. Until the landlord gets her shit together you're just three colossal air fresheners.
And every night there'd be a long face to long face about the staggering untogetherness of the landlord's shit. And phonecalls and promises and apologies and Polish lagers, which on a weeknight is reckless and not to be encouraged.
And after three or four we'd sit on the floor in the hall with our backs against the carpets, reassuring them that any future spillages will be dealt with promptly, efficiently, and possibly erotically, but we can't promise the boiler won't piss its pipes off again because of the aforementioned widely-strewn condition of the landlord's dutiful cack. And you ought to be aware of that. And we'd sleep and wake up and work and forget and get home and there they'd be. It wasn't a satisfactory arrangement for anyone.

Booking Form

I wrote a thing on paper and put the paper on the bed and went in the other room to enjoy a few cold premium yeah go on thens and a fucking adequate sandwich. Two hours later everyone was dead. No, water came from the ceiling like in that film about terrifying damp patches and turned the paper into paste and the ink went into the bed and my mattress was full of nonsense and we mangled the landlord. A drunk plumber arrived and laughed into his toolbox and we tried to forget about everything. I slept on the couch and woke up to find my upper left eyelid'd become a little sausage and everyone I saw at work offered remedies: punch yourself in the other one so at least they match, wash it with boiled salted water, rub a gold ring on it. A gold ring? Yes a gold ring. Are you a fucking warlock? No my gran swears gold rings are good for it, she's always having trouble with her eye-flaps. Could that be because she keeps mashing her filthy jewellery into them? Could be, yeah.

Minimum Fuss

A bench by the fountains and the sun for breakfast. A sweating egg in a black leather jacket landed on my right and pointed a camera at the crow on my left. He asked permission for its picture and wondered about its habits. I ate a cheese and chicken sandwich and believed I mustn't move. The egg told the crow it had great feathers. It nearly moonwalked. He compared it to a jackdaw but needed it to know he didn't mean jackdaws were better. It bobbed its head and blurted yeah and flew away. He leaned in and showed me his pictures. I nodded and said decent. He looked at me. I chewed through the silence. He compared the rear of a passing woman to the rear of his girlfriend in the mid-seventies. I got the feeling they were no longer together. I didn't want him to ask me who's removing my trousers these days and he didn't. I chewed.

If You Don't Count The Duplicates

We saw the oldest thing we will ever see. It was some white powder at one end of a clear plastic tube. White powder from space and the past, back when the past was an enormous now and space was wall-to-wall everywhere. The tube was on a stand in a perspex hutch. Other perspex hutches stood to its left and right, housing their own big and small things from the universe. We were in a fucking museum, is what I should be saying. Until that moment, the oldest thing I'd ever seen was a group of kind and intelligent South American blobs using telepathy to tell me all about the mushrooms I'd just eaten. I could tell they were South American by their hats. So this powder being there all warningless and tiny was a nice surprise. A lot of very young people added fizz to the experience through inexplicable roaring. I don't have the official figures but I think there were four million of them, and it was my birthday and I forgot to get a vasectomy again. There ought to be booths for this kind of thing. Maybe I'll do it myself with a craft knife and a couple of bulldog clips. It's important to think about the future. I've been practising, which is why I haven't updated in a while. I've reached no conclusions. I still have a job.
The Pulitzer Smackdown is going fairly well and people are being nice about my efforts. For which I thank them. A lot of the stuff there is good. And are you well?

Minor Crimes

The freezing jungle wants us dead but before that some news:

Mail Me Art is a thing where people do hand-art on envelopes and send them through the actual her majesty's royal post office mail to be collated and displayed in exhibitions and a book. The Factory Road Gallery are hosting one of this year's exhibitions and have parachuted in a few people they know, including Teratogens, who has universes seeping from his East Midlands fingers all the time and at night stores his eyes in a jar of unfathomable syrup.
It all starts in London the first week of August. Everything's very nice and you should go. The brief mentioned fun so I bought a scalpel and some exotic glue and put a lot of fun in there. But then I had to remove it all because it didn't look like fun, it looked and smelled like a baffling accident. I then put some words on the envelope using a biro.

National Poetry Month is all over the USA in April and as part of it The Found Poetry Review assigned the eighty five Pulitzer Prize for Fiction books to eighty five people. Each of the eighty five people then made thirty poems out of words they found in their book. One poem from each book will be posted on each day of April. I am one of these people. How the fucking hell this happened I don't know (I mean I asked to do it and they said yes and then I did it), but it's happened now and there's nothing we can do about it. I was assigned Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I changed my name to Chutzpah Limey and polished my butchering goggles. Now there's these thirty squirming blobs on my desk. They're a bit twitchy, I've given them all haircuts and I'm going to have to dress them properly. I'd be grateful if, if you look at them, you could tell me when their flies are undone.

It was after reading Brooke Valentine's blog just now that I thought I should stop wittering on for a minute and maybe deliver some information. She's good at drawing and cutting things.

Thanks for reading.

The Crack of Now

Okay fine. One thing and another. Six twenty alarm clock. Shaving. Sandwiches. Shoe polish. A couple of thousand steps. A pastry eaten on the uphill. Squirrels having parties in bins. The large room with one wall mostly window. Some rectangle photocopying and photocopied rectangle distribution. Beeping. Buzzing. Breakdowns. The skills matrix. The success register. Did you have a good weekend but don't go on about it. A meeting in the small room. What's happened and what'll happen and what mustn't happen again. Nods and pledges and I should iron better. Visible indications of group morale updated quarterly. Right angles. Looking busy. Banana skins in wastepaper bins. The union. The clock. The post all sacked up ready for four. Maybe going out later for the maximum daily intake and after that who knows. Cakes, donations. Behavioural adjustments. Continuous improvement. Shared goals. The team information board. Inbox management. Fixed-term. Have you seen my mug.

Sufficient Clarity

What it is is it's a bewildering life-enhancement arrangement situation's totally re-booted my crikey unit and I haven't had a chance to re-register my interest in whatever it is this is until just now, hi. I filled out a spleenful of forms and sent them off to all three bureaucracy distribution capitals, which I needn't name for your benefit, thoroughly sick as I'm sure you are with the return addresses below the seals of the ogre-hair envelopes that contain the foghorning bold already-known unproofread news concerning whatever it is you've haemorrhaged this month. Come round for some cheesecake, is what I'm saying, and we'll bother ourselves senseless about nothing of any consequence and maybe I dunno touch each other on the upper arm once or twice, christ we can dream. Yeah, so yeah.

Regards

Instead of a tremendous fuss we shared a sandwich. The straighten-up machine looked at me like finally, what fucking took you so long. And I thought that's odd because your function is to always have the answers. And here you are emitting surprise and pungent relief. Maybe you want oil.
We crunched and gulped and wondered at each other whether it's the better standard of graphic design on the packaging or a genuine improvement in the quality of the fillings that has led to the furtive ballooning of our appreciation of the Tesco meal deal. A combination of the two didn't occur to us. I put my empty bag in its hatch.
It sniggered. All the straightening-up I'd never got round to. Jesus. And with all my training as well. But now.
Somewhere a swamp hog claps its trotters.
While it glockenspieled my vertebrae I thought about the man I used to think I was going to be. The sudden lack of a depthless future exploded in my wardrobe. The machine said the problem with most people is they're not hardcore. I told it to get its tickling implements away from my fancies. The real problem is I don't know how to recalibrate. There's only one button besides the on-off switch and I'm still unsure what it does, although I press it more than a few times a day and believe there must be a consequence.

Fact Is

Scarcely credible at first. Fevered blather, I thought. Dropping from his chops like the spells of a sick wizard. Told me he was all set to sue the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Hyper-Specific Tinnitus and Related Inconvenience.
Can't be done, I said. Flea's swapping cheese with Radiohead now. God knows the power of those two combined. Drive a mournful juggernaut straight up your guts. Never tango in this town again.
But total unconcern.
Ball's been rolling for decades, he said. Calm as a dead dog. And there's a peculiar extra feature.
He waved me towards his head. I leaned in. Round the side he said, ear to ear. Quizzed his muncher and he nodded. So that was it, flap to flap we dallied.
Rum future brewing in the man, I thought. Imagined the swift sink into gathering tics, erratic hours, lengthy corridors. How long before I'd start opting not to visit? Poor tosser. And with little Stanwix on the cusp of the academy... But you know: Wind. Caution.
And he held his breath and put out his hand. I followed suit. And what I then heard fairly scrambled my marrow.
Tinny and gruesome it sailed from his canal to mine: Neh-neh-yer message on the pavement, neh-neh-neh, neh n-neh-neh neh wave meant.
Feather daggers up my spine. I withdrew. Advised the unwiseness of tricks. Law-dodging. Hollow gold. Nodded my finger. But back in he beckoned me.
So I went ear-to-ear again and it hadn't bloody ceased. Neh-neh-n-neh-n-n-neh answers jer-jer-juh jer-juh-belly dancers. Incontrovertible. Obscene.
I stood up. Eel-mouthed. Molten. He laughed his hat off.
You've got them downright spatchcocked, I said. You'll not even need a lawyer. You'll be a bastard made of money.
A stammering set about me. An urge. Shameful, but I have to tell you now as I had to ask him then: How do I get in on this? I must have the method!
He drew his chin to his chest. Waggled his cabbage.
Can't say it's worth it, he said. Worse than the Meatloaf poltergeist. Man of your constitution'd be smashed into paste within the week, lucky I wasn't mangled gormless myself. But Stanwix.
He inhaled deeply.
The injections and the talking cure'll cost us half the settlement at least. I'm not sure why we bothered.

Within Working Days

A thing continues not to happen. It's up to me how often it hasn't happened because I find out whether or not it's happened by checking my email. So lots. For a while I was checking it fifteen times a day. Although I hadn't heard the new message ding I thought one might've snuck in while I was thinking about all the insurance I'd have to get for all the stuff I'd be able to afford if the email contained the right kind of news. And then I started imagining I'd heard the ding while staring into the potato cupboard or rearranging the cobwebs in the bedroom. And I'd hurtle to the computer but the thirteen thousand unread emails hadn't turned into thirteen thousand and one. And I'd leave the house and trudge up hills and waddle along ridges and plod down slopes and pinball through copses and springbok over trenches under overwrought javelin rain, hearing the ding come out of passing cars and handbags and tanks twenty times a minute thinking one of these must be a sign, and I'd get home and towel off and microwave a plate of the dauphinoise of the week and kick open the computer, drooling, and the number at the top of the leftmost tab'd read thirteen thousand and one, and I'd click on it, and there'd be an email from someone I'd never met, asking me to throw woe at an overlord to raise its awareness of a disease bonanza or boring old massacre, and I'd eat the dauphinoise thinking things are bound to get better.

First I'd Heard

There's a new cash machine in the neighbourhood and it doesn't charge one ninety nine. It doesn't charge anything at all. It made the news, obviously, and in the queue we lamented all the one ninety nines we've slaughtered in the name of cider binges and new crisp flavours and emergency unnecessaries. Who did we think we were? Who did they think we were? Who did anyone think anyone was? A feeling of relief slithered round the postcode and the mayor stood by the machine for an hour at dusk to wink at people and pat them between the shoulder blades and say petitions work, petitions fucking work, and we all smiled and punched him on the shoulder and wept.

Never Everlasting Anything

So I told her basically I'm a pie and there are two more fingers in me today than there were last week. Which obviously was already a few. Not even counting my own. So I'm not really going to have the time to… and my filling is delicious, but why doesn't one of us just get a fork? So it's a pre-employment questionnaire thing they sent to check I'm not diseased, or that whatever diseases I do have are not unfavourable, economically. Well for example like wanting to devote the majority of your waking seconds to doing the thing in the first place, I'd say. But she… yeah condition, alright substitute condition for disease and then tell me I'm wrong. Elaborately-packaged records and holidays in historically significant postcodes, mainly. And she'll just want to appreciate landscapes all week like she's the Ordnance fucking Survey. Well at the end there's a space for previous convictions, confessions and dubious misc, and I wanted to tell them about my butchering the dreams of other people, frying them up in tears and spice and serving them on beds of hope gone cold, which, y'know, I'm still fairly sorry about, but I just can't seem to stop doing it. Like I don't even enjoy it anymore, but I can't stop doing it, and they should probably know that about me, even though it's a night-time thing and won't affect my work, at all. But she said it'd abominably decrease my chances of success, and therefore of terrific holidays and elaborately-packaged records, and then I supposed that this kind of damage-limiting dishonesty is probably why we're still together. So I left it blank.

Same Species Head Biting

Efforts have been made. But we can't get an ear into every mouth.

I'm not prepared.

This could be ideal.

You sound uninterested.

We emerged did we not?

I'll be wanting proof.

We can do a spectacular receipt. May we suggest you begin before we finish?

Well, waking up and having to shower. Couldn't the showering be done while the dreams are occurring?

Better hygiene is one of our priorities going forward.

And a reduction in things to look at and think about.

We express alarm at your estimate of the girth of our remit.

And is it alright if I'm not perpetually astonishing myself?

A morsel of gentle improvement is the suggested weekly dose.

Who's doing the measuring?

It's a sort of consortium. We will send you a notched stick to aid you in what people will soon be calling the getting the hang of things thing. Put it in, remove it, return it using the pre-paid envelope and relax.

I don't remember signing up.

May we remind you of the frequency and malignity of your episodes?

And everyone else I know can only remember a lack of consent.

We have lately been skipping it, in certain cases, in order to better quicklify things.

So what were you insinuating?

It was simple concern, sir. Perhaps there was a context issue. For which, in the event of the need arising, we will apologise.

Thanks?

It's a long game and we're in it to win it. This is a notion on which you might dwell.

Have I mentioned my pulverising schedule?

The post-dwelling remains will be far better spent. Might there be something else before we recede?

A red light in my mouth that flashes when I repeat myself.

A similar thing is in the works. It will be on sale as soon as we are politely distanced from all the chokings.

I didn't really mean it.

There's no need to tremble about innovation meeting convenience.