Disaster Magnets

Everywhere was hotter than everywhere else. The bar's walls were tiled up to head height with patterns like illustrations of non-existent plants. We sat on a hundred year-old couch drinking white russians. Murky declarations floated off the tongue of the man opposite, through the blob of smoke above the table and into our perspiring ears. The Cunt has removed democracy in Europe, Berlin is dead, I have to say this quietly or my listening countrymen will have me crucified. He described what things were like and we described how they seem now. We asked about the tiles, he said the place used to be a classy something or other, before the tiles were covered up, abandoned, then rediscovered and polished when this place opened, the last proper old new bar in poor old dead new Berlin, soon to be devoured by the unstoppable crushing jaws The Cunt calls prosperity.

Nixon Affinity Brunch

Forgetful Martin came round, fixed a cupboard door and talked about roofing and memory lapses. I've found that if I'm worried about forgetting something, one thing that can help is to apply the meaningful end of a pen or pencil to some paper and make a shape or series of shapes that will evoke the thing to be remembered, and lacking the ability to draw anything that looks like what it's supposed to look like, I most often resort to aligning little groups of "letters" into "words" that describe the thing to be remembered, and, if necessary, underneath these "words",  other shapes called "numbers", that represent the "time" by which the thing to be remembered is to be remembered. Or if you're in the future you could chisel these words and numbers into the little yelping screen that lives in your pocket and abrades your thighs whenever a deadline looms large enough. Just some ideas Martin. He became a mumbling mist and rose through the ceiling, leaving a faint brown smudge and the smell of incompleteness.

Distraction

The circus is in town, so the Llamas are on the football pitch. They are near the goal. Ponies and horses are over by the halfway line. Camels are behind the hedge, keeping an eye on things. The elephants are elsewhere.
The whole show wurlitzed into town yesterday, five hundred fat honking lorries blocking the road for a good half hour and blasting our ears with sickly circus music and roll-up roll-up gibberish. According to the gossip of yesteryear: The Circus Folk Will Rob You So Thoroughly You Won't Know What Your Name Is Afterwards. The grapevines are bursting with tales that end with a Circus Type being chased away by One Of Us wielding a tent pole and screaming "NEVER!". Some exaggeration must've got in there somewhere. All that separates them from us is the football pitch / zoo. Which isn't any separation at all. The soundtrack for the week will be oompah-oompah and whinnying.