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.

Okay But We'll Have To Discuss

Here is what to do on Monday December 1st in Leicester: See Buddy Wakefield in a large old bright arcade. He's been on tour for the past three hundred days. He'll big you up. He'll redeem all your coupons and put diamonds in your cupboards. He has lasers for eyes.
Local support will involve three voices voicing a three-voiced thing I wrote. I can't be there to see this happen but I am excited about it and maybe you can go instead and tell me how it went, please, thanks.
Buddy is also in Bristol on December 3rd at The Birdcage, and most of the other places in the UK afterwards. Have a look at the tour. See him. He's good.

 

https://factoryroad.net/shop/products/buddy-wakefield-ticket/ 

Dichotomous Ramification 1

I was thirty. We went to Lisbon, for pastries and balconies and hills. On the balcony you could eat a box of pastries and look up and down the hill. It was a loud urban hill paved with taxis and mosaics, which they swept at night with water, sending the cartons and papers down the gutters in a stream that stopped for the traffic lights and left behind the phrase "glistening cracks", which I disappointingly haven't been able to construct an unforced-sounding sentence around this week, but maybe next, maybe next.
Pessoa has a statue sat getting polished by photography outside a good cafe. There was an empty chair next to it and sometimes there seemed to be a queue for the chair, sometimes there were fifteen art students drawing pictures of the statue and the statue's photographers. I sat next to it and poked it in the eye.
Across town his house is mostly now a tall library, but they still have his room and his books and you can go in and look at the margin notes and lie on the bed and crush the hat.

Minimum Fuss

A bench by the fountains and the sun for breakfast. A sweating egg in a black leather jacket landed on my right and pointed a camera at the crow on my left. He asked permission for its picture and wondered about its habits. I ate a cheese and chicken sandwich and believed I mustn't move. The egg told the crow it had great feathers. It nearly moonwalked. He compared it to a jackdaw but needed it to know he didn't mean jackdaws were better. It bobbed its head and blurted yeah and flew away. He leaned in and showed me his pictures. I nodded and said decent. He looked at me. I chewed through the silence. He compared the rear of a passing woman to the rear of his girlfriend in the mid-seventies. I got the feeling they were no longer together. I didn't want him to ask me who's removing my trousers these days and he didn't. I chewed.

Gentleman Practice

They told him he'd be doing a show at their gallery/house. There'd be an invited audience and musical support and a keg and fine times and popcorn. They hadn't told him that sixteen people from a variety of universes'd spent months disgorging their art into a whole big actual situation based entirely on his words. He'd been in a car having not the foggiest, with one of the pillars of the gallery/house next to him, driving, every day somewhere else and every night a gig, while the gallery/house behind them hoarded all the look-at-thats. When they finally got to the gallery/house it was late and he didn't want any tea. He had a look at what was stuck to the walls and hanging from the ceiling and settled on the floor and began to realise they all existed only because of his words. He'd sent sixteen people into various raptures and crises and puzzlements and they'd emerged thank-eyed and gladstruck, some of them through side-doors they hadn't known were there until they pushed, and the next night quite a few of these people and their friends turned up to look at the look-at-thats while fractured drones and glistening kicks crept into their ears and fifty mouths gobbled popcorn hot out of cones and yes pleased ale out of any available vessel until a writhing silence erupted and it was time for him to speak.

Home to Great Fanfare

From the balcony I saw two hundred bald white serious heads nodding in unison. They were there to see an original line-up. The air was full of flabby doom. The song ended and the singer said there are concentration camps... being made, and another song started and the heads all agreed with it, in the smoke and lights they looked like they might hatch. The singer did an impression of being electrocuted which caused a lot of aggressive delight to surge around the room, but I didn't feel like if it repeated itself any more I'd understand it so I left. The support band had been really good.

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.

Giant Incisive Brain Attack

By following instructions and also doing things I wasn't instructed to do but which needed doing I filled the kitchen with astonishment. The guy who'd had the job before me was so bad at it he'd broken his leg. I was invited to spend eternity in the corner with my sleeves rolled up. My fellow scrubbers would be Harry and Giuseppe. Harry walks very slowly and makes large metal noises by hurling trays into the sink. Giuseppe talks very quickly in twitching crippled English about how mad Harry is but how he's also a good man but he's mad but he's a good man yes a good man but mad. These are the only comprehensible words that come out of his mouth although he's always talking. Everybody else has given up trying to understand him or to help him make himself understood. I didn't go back.

Shrubs For The Small Formal Border

An old man said you know things used to be different round here, it wasn't like it is now and it isn't like it was then, back then we had an unalterable allowance of things and the differences between these things were very carefully monitored by scrupulous hawks and if the differences became too great we had to dig a big hole and put the differentest things in it until the children stopped crying which is why them hills are so big. Similarities were very rarely mentioned, it was differences we cared about and if there weren't any we'd make some up using a calculator if necessary and let me tell you it's awful the way this country's being handed over to the
It was a dreary monologue that needn't be repeated.

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

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 Shirt On Him

The box of flashing lights made a noise like a boiling zoo and its lights stopped flashing and everyone stared at it and stared at each other with their longest faces and stared at it again and someone switched it off at the wall. Speculation built. We had to get a man in. He arrived early and we posted him through the slot and he furtled about with the innards and dropped out through the bottom with a snort and a chime and dust on his arms and old money shards on his face. Should be right now, he said, and we gave him a bowl of soup and he went off over the bridge on his electric wagon.

Up Sticks

I watched some music in a big field full of mammals. The coverage of it in the media was nothing like what it was. When the last band came on I was wearing my hat and I got excited and threw it in the air like at the end of the first world war. If everyone else wearing a hat threw it in the air at the same time that would've been something to see. But no one else did. There were a lot of people and very few hats. So it wasn't.
A DJ brought in a classic at the end of his set and the MC went who remembers this one and me and this other guy turned to each other and shat our hearts out because we remembered it and were happy, we made a single prolonged and ragged mouth-noise and the MC went yeah this one's goin out to all the oldies and we realised that the first time we heard it was a very long time ago and we were older than everyone else or they were strangely reluctant to admit to their knowledge. After that he played some other classics and when each one came in we turned to each other and made very loud noises with our mouths. Then he stopped doing it so so did we and left the tent separately.

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.

Two Books

I read this one about a man who had a bad time and it was quite good, the characters were nails and the author twatted them on the head repeatedly until he'd got his point across. Some of the words were in a funny order which was delightful and there was a lot of repetition. The front and back covers were wider than the pages they were covering but folded over to create inside flaps for the adulation to go on, so you could use the front cover-flap as a bookmark during the first half of the book and then when you arrived in the second half you could use the back cover-flap in the same way until you reached the end.

While I was reading that I was also reading this autobiography of a woman who knew a woman. It was written by the woman herself but from the perspective of the woman who knew her. The woman herself had asked the woman who knew her to write her own autobiography but the woman who knew her wasn't ready so the woman herself wrote it and then died. She arranged words in a way that made people flip their wigs. The front cover was a photo of the woman and the other woman but it didn't say which was which but eventually it became obvious that one couldn't possibly have been the other.

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.

Jumbo

Do you have the variety of prawn that I want that isn't any of the three varieties of prawn on your shelves? I want the big ones full of nice bits. I've forgotten where they're from. They're not the Thai ones that you have. I can taste the air miles. No I've never been. I hear it's full of sin and disease. Are you sure there's none in the stock room? Maybe you have them in a sort of backup pond? Maybe they're being delivered as we speak? I can't start dinner without them, the wife's hell-bent. As am I. Well if you don't have them I'll have to take the inferior ones. It won't be the same. We'll end up arguing and I'll say something about settling for second best. We'll be tense for days. It'll put me off my heron-slaying.

Smashing Bloke

He had himself made into a chair?

Yeah he insisted. He wanted people at the funeral to sit on his lap and talk about how they knew him. He was smirking.

Easy Life Top Beats

It's half past bollocks on the millionth of January and all the headlines end with question marks. Hunger's turned up unexpectedly. It's odd how they put the food court next to the seafood hall. When you open your mouth for the pizza or the pad thai the fish wriggle off their stalls and float up your face-holes, shaking ice-flakes to the floor. A hundred tiny puddles and not one yellow cone. Outside it's brighter and people walk past by themselves. A man is bothering a bus stop. The stop has people in it and the man is on a two-step ladder and is making loud Jesus-based noise with his mouth. Someone walking past points at the ladder and goes hey is that a stairway to heaven? The bus stop chuckles and a thigh is slapped.
A white van approaches. Black string is trailing from its back doors and at the end of it is a black glove. It's waving at the sky and tickling the trees and removing hats. The man has his back to it. When it passes him, the glove grabs his neck, drags him off his ladder and forty feet to the corner before it lets him go.