Thin Jacket

When pretending to read my work emails I mark a few as unread as if what with one thing and another I haven't had chance to catch up - people mate, yeah gone right off em, was experimentally enthused for ten years but lately it's been - the screen doesn't stare back and I move the cursor when I hear team player footsteps approach and recede. I maximise the ancient database thing and input one of the three reference numbers I've memorised. B2YG39X is my favourite.

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.

Under Normal Conditions

The taxi driver told me how much his taxi cost, and how much the other slightly bigger taxis cost, and said that all the taxi drivers who buy the slightly bigger taxis are people who think with their behinds. The rain and the radio made it hard to pick up his exact words. I was in the back seat, leaning forward, pointing my ear at the wall of transparent plastic, thinking this might sound alright but I wonder how much I'm making up. He ploughed on, hissing at inferior taxis and insisting he has completely optimised his life, except for he has to drive a taxi more days than he doesn't, but this is obviously not as bad as it could be, considering the taxi's compactness and affordability, second-hand but still young and he's going to take care of it and its not-blue not-purple surface which some people, if you ask them, really enjoy the sight of. As we joined the motorway he started talking about his banking habits, which were as admirable as his taxi-owning habits, and when he reached my front door it's possible I agreed to make a large deposit at his local branch as soon as it opened. I haven't done this.

Juvenile Dementia

The taxman wrote. We’d lost touch. I miss him. We’ve never been very close, but now he’s showering me with numbers. I’m not sure what he wants exactly but I’m not turning anything down. He’s full of remorse. I can tell by the lack of apologies. When he says calculations he means errors. When he says within fourteen days he means sooner than never. Maybe he’s joined a religion that requires him to make amends for everything he’s ever done.

Sweary Man Jackanory

Nick Cave is reading me a story. It's nice of him. We've never met. He didn't ask. He's doing it through the medium of seven CDs. It's a book he wrote about a salesman. It's very good. He's done a soundtrack with Warren Ellis, which is also very, as you might imagine, good. During the reading it swells at appropriate points. His voice is mixed so that narration is right here and dialogue is over there. The salesman hasn't sold anything yet.
Obviously the story concerns sex and death and Kylie. It is already much better than his other novel and I am only one and a half sevenths of the way through. His other novel was twenty years ago. It was dark and rich like Christmas pudding and like Christmas pudding I couldn't finish it but plenty of other people will tell you it's worth a purchase. Which, I agree, it is. You don't have to finish anything. You shouldn't carry on after you're done.