Spring Club Offers

I'm defending the house against furniture. The place I once ordered some from now seems to think I won't last a week without buying some more. Like it's bread. To entice me into another purchase of a lifetime they send me pictures of rooms it looks like no-one lives in. Small fluorescent paragraphs outline the tragedies associated with failure to spend. I didn't buy this sturdy and fragrant end table and now I have tuberculosis. / There's nothing made of oak in my kitchen, I have completely lost my mind.

As Well She Might

A sign went up. It had all the information on it except that what was on it was all the information available. So a lot of questions were barked onto our shoulders and shrugged at the future, to be converted into answers on the unspecified date mentioned before the apologies.
So there's a bit of leisure this week. Possibly too much. Can you have too much leisure, a child once asked me, and I said yes, and he said really, and I said yes, and carried on with the safety briefing.
And a cat has come to visit. It roosts on the kitchen floor staring at phantoms, wondering where its owner-operator has gone, unaware that its thoughts are visible. It hates hip-hop.

Monophonic Dreg Embellishment

Weather made sitting on the hill an option and I did it. I couldn't convince anyone else to do it. Sometimes I lie down on the hill. But not if I'm on my own. I fear getting kicked into a shallow grave by liberal toddlers. This time I looked at a book and watched some hot-air balloons and tried to ignore the sentence Eel-haired Roustabouts Lament Death of Pendulum, which was mincing back and forth across my mind behind the sounds of the words in the book I was looking at, because the death of Pendulum was being gang-lamented behind me by a bunch of somebodies. I didn't inspect the haircuts of the lamenters, but applied our location and the tones of their voices and their reaction to the hot-air balloons as they passed and the general subject matter of the conversation afterwards to my prejudices, mood, ego and residual bigotry to build up a picture of what was on top of their scalps that I was too arrogant to turn round and confirm.
On the walk home I sniffed around the local front yards looking for an excellent plank I could add to my bookshelves. People leave a lot of things on the pavements round here, you could find yourself a board game or some boots or the complete works of absolutely everybody. And there's a lot of wood and when it's not the wrong length or width I pick it up and then I have a new shelf to put books on and I take it home and put books on it and watch the books being on the shelf and the shelf being underneath the books, and the dirt on the shelves that I haven't cleaned and the dust on the bricks holding up the shelves, for days, it never gets less exciting than it is.

Call It What You Like

Sometimes you're an alarm clock as well as a postman.
Good night was it?
No one got hurt.
Sign there.
Your machine isn't sensitive enough. You can't even tell it's a signature. I might as well just be pressing a button.
But then there'd be no proof that I hadn't pressed the button myself.
There's no proof you're not a forger.
Impossible. It doesn't respond to my actions.
It can't be that sophisticated.
It wasn't at first.
Blimey.
I had to teach it who I was.
Was it very disappointed?
Your hair's looking less unacceptable than usual.
Thanks. I just had some of it removed.
I hope no money changed hands.
I did it myself.
By accident?
I wanted to look like a better version of me.
Not one that knows what it's doing?
You don't seem to be in much of a rush.
Time and a half today.
Divorce to pay for?
Your flies are undone.
I'm glad you've noticed.
I couldn't help it.

Fresh for Eighty Eight

I wake up at seven with my phone jumping up and down on my forehead deleting the dreams about slug-snakes in the garden and violence in the future. And I mumble to the bathroom about breakfast and freedom while the rest of the household goes one by one to work. My day shifts have vanished while the pub suffers refurbishment by pastel-brained interiorists. They're trying to sell it. It's a mystery how much the new paint splatters on all (all) the tables add to its value. I should've paid more attention in business studies. Then I could make the big, lengthy decisions. The biggest decision I make is how many cubes of ice to put in the ice well. Tuesday to Thursday it's about two hundred and fifty, and by Friday I'm usually optimistic and go for four hundred, but Mondays I like to gamble because it's always very quiet and I once got away with thirty, and when the evening shift came in at six there was only one cube left and I felt like a genius from the future. I couldn't communicate my exhilaration. It's harder to gamble with the lemon slice and lime wedge totals because you're better off just lasering up a whole fruit at a time, so every day you start with roughly the same amount and the way to enjoy an element of risk in that area is by offering people garnish where they'd not normally expect it, and they're usually happy to be asked and say yes, I will have some lime for my cranberry tremendous customer service arousal thanks, and you deplete your stocks at an unnecessarily fast rate, becoming insane with delight as the numbers approach zero and the clock approaches armageddon. Instead of all that I've been on the couch.

Now Snappy Sometime

Argos phoned for a catch-up. I'd purchased something and instead of it arriving when they said it'd arrive, what arrived was a voice, through a phone, saying there's been an error, and why not spend the rest of the week nailing yourself to someone who gives a fuck. So I did. Then I emailed to complain about the delayed arrival of the item and the tone of voice used to deliver the news of the delay, which I felt did not tickle my fancy nearly enough and sounded if anything delighted that I'd been catastrophically inconvenienced. So the reader of this email had picked up a big red phone to tell me how entertaining my whinge whinge bloody whinge had been, well done for writing most of it in lower case and would I perhaps accept a refund of the delivery charge and a tray of figs. I said I was embarrassed slightly, not expecting any kind of reply really, certainly not one so personal and after dinner. I wrote the email on a high horse in the library and was shooed out before I had a chance to remove all the bluster. So sorry about that, but I am still angry, but not at you personally, and did you say figs or fig rolls, because I find a fig on its own is not worth the effort. She said she'd check, and everything's alright, and she was also a fully-trained psychiatrist. Fully-trained, she said. Fully-trained? Yes, a fully-trained psychiatrist. It was Saturday night and I'd just found some lager in a bin. I told her I had absolutely no other problems at all, so all that fully training would be wasted on me. But can I tell you the story of the rug my housemate ordered and which right now my toes are enjoying, he ordered it from you, not you personally, last month, just by pressing the screen of his phone, and it arrived at exactly the time specified and was delivered by a vibrating man just happy to be alive. Touched the screen on his phone a few times, I said, and then made some coffee and chuckled for three quarters of an hour in his dressing gown, whereas I've had to use my legs to walk to the shop, fingers to find the item in the catalogue, voice and face to arrange delivery, buttons to transfer money, and still the only thing I've received is a knife in the arsehole. And she said well how about a ten pound voucher then, and I said yeah alright.

Testosterrific

The man came round to look at where we live and I pointed out the things about it that aren't good and he said he'd have a look at them. He looked at them and went away saying we'll be in touch soon and not very soon after that he didn't get in touch and we put eight hundred pounds in his bank account.

Hell Maybe

I'm growing extra heads. They're very small and pink and never say a word. I try to scrub them out and collar them off. They're bald and prone to weeping and huddling. I'd rather they shared some knowledge or went elsewhere. Maybe there's a pill. If not I'll have to get a neck transplant. Like some kind of guitar. And then there'll be talk, and constant jokes about fretting.
My thumbs aren't mutating and because of this I have been preparing food in quiet kitchens. The first pay packet will arrive just as I set off for a selection weekend elsewhere. If after the selection weekend I am selected then there'll be an evaluation week. If I'm of any value I'll be going back to France in January.
If after the selection weekend I'm not selected then I'm coming to stay at your house.

4

I used to think a lot of things were going to be fun, especially when drinking. The Pigpark is a prime example. Who wants to see that many pigs in a day? Performing such senseless dances? The mind clenches. That was what made me stop eating meat. Can't believe it's been ten years. I used to love your outrage and how it turned into fascination.
It might be nice to escape the hot rains and the fish at the portholes. Get my landlegs back. Feel like I'm in a cauldron sometimes. Good to have a house to visit, even if the beach is trying to eat it and the gulls burgle us blind. I'll let you know yes. I'm busy trying to switch jobs and get rid of the boat, I mean sell it, if you know anyone, I'll deliver.