We Had Plans To Ignore You

A selection of cold slurpers and a device that drapes a fine frozen mist over my head and neck and someone playing the soothing end of the Nick Cave spectrum on a nearby marimba if at all possible buttercup, I said in sweltering German to a foamy-bearded waiter who'd come to repair my mojito. I didn't tell him that the largeness of the ice cubes had led to a horrifying inconsistency of temperature within the drink which jeopardised the entire 23 remaining hours of my holiday, because I didn't want to sound out of touch with world events.

Much Crudity

Hack a kebab off my shin, I've finished reading Gargantua and Pantagruel. It took nigh-on longer than it might've done if I hadn't been taking frequent breaks to wonder when I'd get round to finishing it. I enormously recommend it if you like all the stuff that goes into and comes out of human holes and heads. Or books by 1550's French doctor-monks. Or books, or heads, or holes, in general. While that was going on, I was working on stuff, and taking frequent breaks to wonder about the differences between "finished" and "done". I don't know anything more about those two things now than I did when I started thinking about them, but the thinking about them has definitely helped with the avoidance of doing what I keep saying I want to do.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Throwbloke

We went to see a man use words good and he did and it was good. Loads of other people were there and we all went woo and pointed at him and he carried on being good. Everyone agreed it was agreeable. He put the words in an order that made them rhyme. I can't remember his name. We drank four thousand great ideas. Afterwards we maybe burgered ourselves senseless and the morning was full of non-negotiable tasks. The birds all had megaphones and the sun was cacophonous. I bathed in Baileys and washed my hair with black sambuca. At work nobody knew I was thinking in rhyme and cleaning tables in italics. A soggy man hollered about the great words in the play he'd just seen and yeah right. You must. You absolutely must. Total completely something. Absolute triumph. Large red wine and a lime and soda.

Screaming at Millionnaires

Football fans serving drinks to football fans at the football stadium before the football match. Good view of the pitch from the bar. The match starts and they close the doors and bring the shutters down over the windows. There are three screens on the wall. If the game was being televised we could watch it. They guess what the score is from the noise of the crowd. We eat tiny triangular sandwiches. Their guesses are confirmed by texts from people on the other side of the shutters. They talk numbers and money. It's not the big league. If it's not a draw they'll either win or lose. At half time it's two-one in a good way. The doors open and a gammon-faced man-cloud billows towards the bar. We've lined up fifty pints in preparation. We can't serve drink while the players are on the pitch. It's also a rugby stadium. They say the rugby crowd can buy drink whenever they like. They down four pints at once and have a special corner for dying in. By full time it's three-two in a bad way. They buy shots and go home.

The Old Sense

That whiskey, there's a woman's face advertising it too. She's got something about love written on her in gold and her photo is black and white so you know she's from the past. I don't know who she is and neither does the internet. The adverts mainly appear in what used to be the chasm of despair but is now quite a nice road. Its buildings were designed by war-drunk architects who thought that the primary effect of all new structures should be to induce a whitewater flood of hopelessness in anyone who lived in, glimpsed, walked past or smelled them. So if they were bombed into chunky dust like their predecessors then nobody would really mind. Then in the nineties the IRA exploded the Manchester Arndale Centre but accidentally got the Corn Exchange too and all these architects got together and said sorry to Mo Mowlam and asked her to do something and she did and that's why things are better today. They didn't bomb this road in Bristol but it was recently niced up by loads of people who can paint massive things and some people who put fabric round trees so it's alright now and people take pictures of it and can even be seen openly enjoying themselves.

Guarantee The Consistent Freshness

Samuel Beckett's face is advertising whiskey. Maybe it's not his face. It definitely looks like his face. Drink yourself clever, it seems to be saying. The actual slogan is something else. Something about a bard. Would you really call him a bard though? Maybe it's a coincidental face. A lot of old wiry white men end up looking similar. But it's got the same glasses and hair. It doesn't say his name. It's like you're supposed to see it and think wow the literary lookalikes agency is winning some major contracts, and then go and get yourself a bottle and hasten your own death. If a smart ghost endorsed it then if I drink it I'll become one of those fussy-tongued bon-vivants I've heard so much about. Not just a guy who enjoys a special offer like when they were hard-pushing Jameson's. He's come back from the dead to tell me about a liquid. He wouldn't do that if it wasn't good. It's a strange niche to go for. But it makes sense that it's only up at the bus stops.

A Simple Excuse Me

The new Stella glasses arrived. They're big news. They have a gold rim and a red logo and a stem and a flat bit on the stem with magic on it. And if you put one round each ear you can hear Belgian angels getting to know each other. Stella already has these egg-shaped glasses with lovely mess all over the outside like something you'd give a dying prince for Christmas. Sometimes a manly man asks for a pint and you get one of these glasses down from the shelf and before it's under the tap he's halfway to tears and begging for a normal glass in case anyone sees him and concludes he's significantly less heterosexual than he was before he drank from a fancy thing. We're not giving the new ones out yet.

A Whole Portion

What've you got that's local?
Nowt.
That's weird for a country pub.
For you maybe. For me it gets a bit less weird every day. And it wasn't that weird to begin with.
It's not right.
Most things are from somewhere else.
I thought you were supposed to support your local breweries.
There aren't any.
There's one in Hawkshead.
That's too far to be local. Go and stick your tongue in the lake.
Er no thanks.
It's surprising what you can get used to.
Is the food local?
It's prepared locally.
Where are you from?
I got here via Preston. Are you having a drink?
I want a local ale.
Howabout one that tastes nice?
What would you recommend?
None of these. They all taste like shoes.
With a real ale you've got to have a full pint or two to really know what they taste like.
Last time I did that I vomited into a cattle grid.
You weren't doing it right.
I never do.
It's a bit quiet in here.
It's the modern world. They eat and leave.
It might be the music.
Public Enemy are the people's champions.
It's a bit irritating.
There's nothing I can do about it

All Straws Final

A queue sometimes forms. Of squashy red and orange people and their little gobshite squadrons. The queue eliminates waiting-time-based arguments at the bar. Which is handy because they all look the same out of your eye-corners and you have to decide who's next by who's being less of a cunt. And when they're hungry that's very hard. Then they find out we don't have Foster's. Sometimes you suspect that they suspect you of having previously had Foster's but removed it when you heard they were coming. I don't know why they're so angry.

The Beth Gibbons Forehead Approach

We ran out of some stuff and told people we were out of some stuff and the most miffed asked questions that revealed a lack of understanding of the information delivered two seconds previously, even though the information delivered two seconds previously was very clear and delivered two seconds previously: It is all gone. You have as much of it as we do. There is none of it left. Where it was is now where it isn't. I mean everywhere is now where it isn't, but where it was is where its where-it-isn't-ness is most apparent, what with where it was being where you'd look for it first if you didn't know that that's now where it isn't, like everywhere else always is except the depot and your stomach and the other places it gets delivered to, if there are other places it gets delivered to, I haven't checked. The bald wet red folk have demolished it all by eating half of it and leaving the rest for the crows, or are they ravens, I'm not an expert.

The Roomy Shoe

Can we come in if we're a bit wet? Yes. But if you get any wetter I'll have to ask you to leave. They all had hot chocolate and ate fruit and hooted kayak-related technical terms at each other and laughed. One of them was particularly not good at doing something while also doing something else, they said.
They got in their boats and went away. I mopped up. The remaining customer returned from the garden and saw the floor and said Jesus did they all piss themselves? He left and no one came in for the next five hours.
I thought about going over the road. There's one road in the village and you can, if you like, go over it. That's what there is to do. On that side there is another pub. It has an enticing outer shell but the unbearable typeface used in the under new management banner tells you the inside is probably full of blind people being lied to by their dogs. There's a shop, but it doesn't sell newspapers and I've heard its sandwiches described as catastrophic. Up the road a bit there's a different shop with a big sign on it I can't quite make out. Something to do with a barn. I haven't been up there, either. I went to the post office next door and asked them if they had what I wanted and they said sorry we sold out this morning.

Discomfort and Basic Errors

One bar was playing some music and the other one was playing some other music but louder and we were on the shared terrace so you could hear both musics, the quieter one being better musically and the louder one being a lot worse musically but a lot better sonically or at least louder which is often better except when you want to hear the noise someone else is making with their mouth or have your own mouth-noise reach the holes in either side of their head uninterfered with. There were roughly thirty five brains close enough to be capable of being annoyed by what was happening, the continuation of it happening and the continuation of nothing being done to stop it happening, but there must've been maybe a consensus that no one minds it happening enough to ask anyone capable of stopping it from happening why they aren't stopping it from happening, even though if surveys were issued privately to or vox pops harvested discreetly from each individual the majority of them would use the words asunder, tension, understand and collapse. We went somewhere else.

Your Prospects Are Slugs and It Hasn't Rained In A While

In the pub opposite the coach station waiting for a coach, a man sat down next to me and I borrowed his lighter and he asked me how my weekend was. I said great thanks and asked him how his was and he told me it was shite and why's his real ale so fucking expensive then started going on about foreigners and how it's their fault this country's gone to shit they drain the system send em all back and I said what're you going to do to change it and he said I've just bought a house in Bulgaria.

He went away and was replaced by a man shouting into a phone about the fucking cost of his pint and the traffic and the expense and the foreigners and the expense and the traffic and the cost of his pint and the foreigners and the expense and the cunting eternity it takes to get anywhere in this fucking dungeon. I wrote a very long text on my phone and he finished his conversation and sat staring at me while I made my message longer and longer and sent it and put my phone down and looked up at him. He went scuse me mate are you drinking Stella and I said yes but I'm not getting another because they're three eighty and I don't have many three eighties left and he said do you want mine, I'm so angry at how much it costs I can't bring myself to drink it, and I said well thanks very much cheers yeah thanks a lot and he slid it across the table and stood up and went over the road to the station.

Protect What You Value

The beach for the weekend. The far away award-winning one. We did good beachtime things and at one point walked to somewhere and arrived somewhere else and came back. There were large ancient things to look at and the sun was very close. My sardines were controversial. An iPod crept out of my pocket and crawled into the sea. The loss makes me wince, a day-long wince broken up by roaring laments.
I went to the job centre. They did not throw me any kind of welcome back party at all. No jelly. No hats. They are full of questions and can no longer afford to dish out plastic envelopes. It's the cuts. Their questions include where have you been, why did you go there, who were you there with, when did you get back, why did you come back, who are you back with, what are their names and dates of birth, what is the relationship between you and them, describe it, how many rooms do you share, how long will it last and what makes you think this, have you ever looked out the window together and said nothing, do you think that other people think the relationship is unlike how you said it is, what are your hopes for the future, do you often go around the house barefoot, do you ever catch yourself staring, was there a time in your life when you considered going into the ice-cream business, do you know any other people, really know them, would they give you a kidney, what have you forgotten.

Many Thanks

Men queueing for the toilet will talk about men queueing for the toilet. A bright afternoon in the park and we were lining up to squelch into the darkness. The women in the women's queue were not outraged and one crossed over to say here is a taste of the gender-biased amenity-planning medicine we all have to swallow though it's only you who are sick. Banter was muttered.
I shuffled up. The trench was big enough for two and there were three of us at it, harmonising, I thought of previous privacies and noted the lack of phone numbers and appointment times written on the walls. No one washed their hands.

We finished our drinks and went back to Matt's and had more drinks and a curry. Went to the pub over the hill. Music was playing outside and a man on stage was trying to co-ordinate a mathematical hoedown. About twelve people joined in. We sat on a wall drinking gin. The pub began closing and we went to another one down the hill through the tunnel round the corner. We met some people. A woman drinking red wine sold us pills. We talked giddily about things important at the time. We speculated that the only effect the pills would have would be a jagged sense of loss and some unusual bowel mischief the next day. This would turn out to be true. We sat on a bench and drank pints and shots. Upstairs was dancing in a small room with chewy air and doof-doof music. I shook my birthday maraca. Maybe there was some Jagersomething. I had another conversation in the toilets about toilets. I was wearing black and white trainers Leo had found on the street and beginning to wonder if maybe whoever had lost them could be here right now looking and so for the rest of the night I tried to catch people glancing at my feet and made sure never to refer to myself below the knees.
We drank more and talked a bit louder and then went home to our houses, why can we say home to our houses but not house to our homes, there was no one to ask. Another thing Leo found on the street was the blue security-style jumper I was wearing which smelled quite remarkable which was good for keeping people away but I worried if maybe the shoulder patch things were a bit flamboyant for two thirty in the morning in St. Paul's and coupled with the long hair which is always a physical weakness I began hoping I'd make it back to the couch without being killed with a hammer, and I didn't see any people or hammers and when I lay down my teeth were heavy.
I woke up tremendous and bought a pastry full of fat magic and ate it walking and no one asked me for any money.

Ship Jumping

The sinks never emerged. We drove to Wales. In the morning we moved some things from one place to another. When they were all in the other place there was some debate about whether they'd needed moving at all. Out of these things we then assembled bigger things. It went on for days. I broke two drill bits because I am not a real man. Also weeded a path. Twelve tons of woodchip didn't arrive. Evenings we drank. Eight a.m. we stood in a circle and made decisions. There were a lot of other people there in training to become better at what they enjoy. I slept in a bunk bed and became itchy. Lunchtimes there were classic soups.