Well and Good

With music on and the windows open it sounds like the playground directly outside one of my windows is full of revellers losing their minds to my impeccable playlists. Or with no music on and I'm reading a book it's like they're whooping every page turn. Tonight someone was shouting let me out, let me out, let me out, and I kept turning the pages and thinking either he should accept what the moment has brought him and think about what he can learn from it, or someone should let him out, though I can't imagine what he might be stuck in, there being no cages in that particular playground, last time I checked. And I haven't checked the others but I assume the same is also true for them. After three more pages he'd stopped, and I took a break from The Golden Ass's ancient ultra-violent whimsy and went for a walk.
Between the playground gate and my front door there was an upturned shopping trolley. I thought about getting under it, to see if being under it might cause me to want to not be under it any more. The playground was empty of screams and people. But I remembered I was a pillar of the community, with a gleaming history, having so far had the sense to not get caught committing any of my many despicable crimes, and mustn't ever be seen doing something not immediately explicable, or they'd take away my squash licence and interrogate my chauffeurs. I carried on to the Polish shop, and took a milkshake to the cemetery.

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.

The Plans Upstanding

The next thing has been applied to the old thing and now we wear better shoes. I can't say I'm qualmless. Lucky something new found me right after I wondered aloud what I might fall into. I was going to get a career demolishing orphanages with my pelvis. But I accepted a new bar job. But only because there's less paperwork. And the bar is new so it'll be a while before I can be the cause of its ruin. And this might not terribly happen. And soon I'm going to try and sell you a book. I'm going to get zesty. Maybe you should get some goggles or something. I hope you will also sell me your output. My pillows are full of malice, for example. I'm trying to be polite about it. It's possible you're excited about the forthcoming Swans album. We could endure it together. I'm generally busy on Thursdays.

Bafflepig Surplus

We've started paying the TV Licence again. We don't watch it. We're the maverick idiot platoon. They haven't thanked us, they've just stopped threatening to fist us to death. They were sending two letters a day and they all said things like if you don't give us cash now then Graham Norton might have to start paying for his own snacks. Obviously the guilt became unbearable and every knock on the door caused nauseating premonitions. So it's worth it just for the relief. I have requested itemised bills so we can know where our money is going. We don't want it spent on anything twatty. But they have other incomes so I imagine it's hard to pinpoint exactly who's paying for what.

The Hype Fist

Also I wrote a book and so far have tricked three people into reading it. It's full of pauses so you can put it down without too much trouble. It's very small and short so it can fit in most things that carry things. It will be available somewhere from soon and everywhere from never. All of the words in it are words you will have heard before and many of the situations similar to situations you've experienced or will experience. It will not destroy your life. It's not a compilation of bits of this blog. I can't tell if it has a plot. It just needs a small amount of tidying up and a front cover and then what? Then what? Advice welcome. (Sought).

Lionlike Unwifed

Next door like to scrape and knock. It happens at night and in the morning and they take a break when you leave the house. If you're lying in bed it sounds like someone you've wronged is at the back door. It's good to have a detailed fear. After a million tiny wallops there won't be a wall left. They'll get brick dust in the soup. We've drawn circles and times for when and where we think the first head or hand will burst through. There's good odds and a webcam and I think I might get rich.

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.

Lugubrium

We went to a small drinking-music place and three and a half hours later I went home and everyone else including the local MP went to get their faces clobbered by shield-wielding flourescent brutalists or their ribs rearranged by the batons of those special beserk officers they have nowadays, the ones with no number on their shoulders, shield or helmet, I think they came from Cardiff and must've been told it was a war they were off to and nobody should be left un-screaming in surprise agony especially the ones walking home in high heels trying to avoid the action, they must be crushed, and then it was on the front page of a national newspaper but I couldn't face reading the article because it was all anyone was talking about all the time afterwards anyway and every new person had witnessed another unspeakable thing.
Walking through it before it became what it was there were maybe two hundred people milling around between lines of police confused about their presence waiting for their shift to finish without getting a breezeblock dropped on their head and Everybody Loves The Sunshine was playing from somewhere and it's impossible to be rioting while that's on so no one was.

Hoof Hoof

Asleep in the duty hutch dreaming horses I woke up to two of them looking through the open windows and I went whuh and they trotted off in the direction of everyone else. Which was troubling because although I am not a horse-wrangler I supposed I was supposed to make them leave. So I got out of bed and followed, and they were blurry and brown and part mammoth. And hungry. So I didn’t get close. And the whole camp was sleeping and I thought probably the best thing to do is not startle them into galloping over a marquee and chewing some child’s shins off. So I kept my distance and sent my thoughts out to them. And my thoughts returned with the message: GESTURES. So I moved round to where they could see me and waved my hands at them like they were vans. But they just stared and chewed and went further from the exit. They live up the road and I walk past them twice a day and I hoped I hadn’t accidentally invited them round to watch the sun rise. They were acting so welcome.
I woke up someone who isn’t allergic to horses and pointed at the horses and said is this unusual? And they said let them eat and they will go away. And I did and they did. And the following day was another green boiler full of screaming kids and I fell asleep in a hot hammock at 5pm.
Before the horses I’d been up all night with someone else’s face waiting for a diagnosis at the post-fiasco retina shop. It came over the phone and was good. Or do I mean prognosis, or both. We’d thought the victim might be losing a retina because of the wet red mess where their eye used to be. And the doctor saying the retina might be detached. But it was just wolf-crying and they were sent home with eye-drops and opiates and a list of things to do to the eye which included putting a grain of rice in there. Waiting for all this took a mountain of time and before the drive back I had to wire my mind to the moon to keep my lids up. So I had a cold can of muck and when I got back in the shed I could feel the brain jittering around in its holder, sweating thoughts through the third eye and murmuring how can a fizzy drink be so ruinous.

Face It In The Morning

The flat's on the eighth floor of an eight-floor building. The Spar is at the bottom just by the side entrance and sometimes in the afternoon I buy only half the beer I know I am going to need to drink that day so that at the halfway stage I have somewhere to go, and maybe some rain on the face and an impulse purchase. Sometimes when I go to do this I leave the door to the flat unlocked in the hopes someone on the same floor might wander in, in their socks, with a glass in one hand, holy macaroni just seeing who's around. I never leave the ground floor side door unlocked though because there is a don't-let-the-burglars-in notice. There was a theft recently because someone'd propped it open while going to Spar. When they returned with their bags all the flatscreens had gone and they were left with rectangular light patches on the walls with two holes where the bracket screws had been.
Once when I got back the lights in the hall were off and I couldn't remember whether or not I'd switched them off before I went out, so I didn't know whether to be worried, so I was worried and started composing plinky unease-themes in my head while I was taking my coat off, and I went through to the kitchen and the TV was on, I couldn't see it but I could hear a local weatherwoman predicting slight chances of everything for tomorrow, and I thought anyone who's intruded here will have the upper and the lower hand and will be able to completely outwit or overpower me, whichever is needed, it won't be hard, so I got a big Japanese knife out of the drawer and held it in an unusual way that I thought might make me look like I knew how to wield a knife, and I got to the front room and the adverts were on and all the shadows were in their usual places and nobody was there.