Pearskin

Obviously I've been forgetting to ring Forgetful Martin a lot and noticing things I forget in my own life and doing nothing to help myself remember them. It's never too late to not improve. Part of my job is to tell people to enter rooms, and press a button that enables the entering of the room, and I can forget to press the button up to forty times a day, and go home stinking of quizzical glances, thrown my way when the room-enterer, having pushed the door and found it unforgiving, comes back to my desk and wonders whether I'm doing it on purpose. Sometimes a crowd of unlikelihood enthusiasts gathers, between the desk and the doors, while a white-gloved man taking notes on a clip board shakes his head in business-as-usual amazement.

Blubberguts

I get emails from Honda. They're glad I bought one, and eager to know if I'm also glad I didn't spend the money on something else, like a degree I might actually use, or a small holiday on an unmapped island, or enough sardines and gas masks to last through what's coming. I haven't read any of these emails, only guessed what they want from their titles and first lines. I don't need to get any more involved in the life of the person they're intended for, who isn't me, who lives a few thousand miles away under a similar name and nearly identical email address. I've been sent his friend or business associate's vacation snaps, featuring a baseball stadium in China with directions and a let me know what you think when you get there. I responded saying I keep telling you people I'm not him, though Google has a little pop-up flag that insists I'm in the intended recipient. I've been invited to urgent-sounding seminars and asked what I thought of the synagogue last week. Now it's a needy car dealer and a Chinese baseball nerd. And I don't want to tell Google it's lying when it says all my messages are for me, in case this either triggers a global knowledge crisis or it says it just doesn't care, try telling someone and see if they believe we could ever make a mistake. I wonder what deluge of astonishing treats intended for me the other guy might be enjoying, while he remarks to his rabbi that his recent Honda purchase has been remarkably hassle-free.

Realms of Annihilation

I wonder when's a good time to talk about the decomposing cat, in the rain, on the grass, its skin the colour of the pasta we overcooked, extremely visible from the covered picnic bench ten feet away, on which we ate all our dinners for two weeks, while on the empty campsite around it we worked, with shovels and sacks, and occasionally argued about who should pick it up, and nobody picked it up.

I wonder when's a good time to talk about the gruesome 1978 cover of Renata Adler's Speedboat, with its blurred brown humanoid staring at a frozen grey boatless sea, beneath a John Updike quote that's been trowelled on under the author's name in a nervous font that has something up with its A's, but I couldn't tell you what, and Updike always comes attached in my mind to the most unpleasant book title anywhere, ever, which is Rabbit, Run, which I tried to read once, but something about the sound of the title's syllables and the big pompous comma, like a fingernail in the eye, made me stop. And all the bits of this cover's text seem very slightly too close together, and very slightly off-centre, and this ocean of hogwash rested in my hand the whole time I was reading the book, which was very good, and I nearly removed it, the cover, but kept thinking then what?

If I put it in the bin, someone else might see it. If I bury it, a child could accidentally or on purpose dig some of it up. The proper thing to do is to feed it to a massive snake.
I just left it. But now it's over, I really think something should've been done.

Eventually Direct

(You needn’t go on about things you loathe all the time, it’s garish.)

I sat on a bench on a bit of sea front between one road and another and listened to a man play a harp, good notes in a fine order while the sea sent wafts of white noise in approval and the seagulls kept their beaks shut for once. It was all a good accompaniment to Jose’s horror, which had intensified to the point where I thought I could smell it. A young man in an old man’s clothes went past pushing a walnut-faced dog in one of those upright-canvas-bag-in-a-wheeled-frame things in which your gran might carry home her bargains. The dog was facing him and he was staring at it not for the first time that day. He pushed it yapping past the harp and before he turned the corner asked it: why are you being like this?

Facing west now (it's important to let you know in which directions this was written), trying to find things to say about the view, get some visual sauce on this introspective pile of uncertain nourishment, but I can’t so I won’t, but I will type it up and submit it to the Telegraph’s travel-writing prize and be utterly furious if it doesn’t win five hundred quid.

Last night the train from St Ives to Penzance went as far as St Erth before going backwards. I should’ve paid attention to the unboldness of the numbers next to the stations after St Erth, in the timetable, which indicated a change should've been made, if Penzance was where you wanted to end up. But I was busy with Jose and had no interest in why some numbers were bold and some unbold, nor why the unbold ones continued in an unbroken chain to the destination. Logic or curiosity might’ve prompted some easy research. But I’m on holiday so I have a lack of both. 

We hurtled backwards while the sun disappeared and Jose piled on the horror and I said to the conductor I’ve stayed on by accident and he nodded like you’re not the first. By the time we were going forwards again the moon was up, looking sunburned.

Why Would There Be A Button for That

Apologies to anyone who witnessed the scattershot gobbledyhate of yesterday. It published itself while I was waxing my toes and having it deleted caused me a great deal of relief. Basically it was a cavalcade of reputational besmirchment. My hairdresser will never speak to me again and the daytime regulars are exuding frosty auras. The phone hasn't stopped being silent and my housemates won't look me in the eyes. The rain avoids me and the forks all refuse to be wielded. My clothes have stopped fitting and the man in the shop is pretending he's sold out of samosas.

Additional Seating Upheaval

A funny conversation happened near me the other day, you should've been there, I've forgotten it now, it was a right laugh. When I got home I was chortling myself rabid and made everyone pause the HBO drama and listen, by the end of it they were grinning and snorting and I was foaming at the eyes but I couldn't manage to get the punchline out, they said I should relax but I couldn't, and they had to airlift me to hospital, all the ambulances were busy at the aquarium, and when I woke up I couldn't remember the punchline at all, or really what the story was about or why I found it funny, and everyone who I'd told it to, as soon as they'd heard my lungs had been replaced, ran round to re-tell it to me hoping that the re-telling would dislodge the punchline which surely must still be up there somewhere, and they re-told it and re-re-told it and did different voices and mixed up the order and changed the locations but nothing dropped into my head, and they began a campaign to find the people I'd overheard, but no one else was really interested.

Mouth Isn't

Everyone puts their money in the box of flashing lights. They soon run out of money. They get some more money and because the box hasn't given them their money back they put more money in it. It's a laughing matter. Eventually the maximum amount of money that the box will ever give back if it feels like it which it nearly never does is less than the total amount of money everyone has put into it. At this point they put money into it in small amounts although they have agreed not to. One person tells another one off for doing it and hours later the person who told the other person off is at the box again doing the same thing. Sometimes a person who hasn't put any money in the box comes along and starts putting money in the box. Then everyone gathers in a hush to see what will happen. What will happen is that this person will put all their money in the box and leave. The behaviour of the box is very predictable and no one can predict when it will become unpredictable. It doesn't ask any questions but it does offer some choices like whether or not to associate flashing lights with disappointment. It has never pretended it doesn't do what it does.

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.

Church and Destroy

No more moving about except in postcodes that begin with BS. Kyuss are playing tomorrow. Most of them. Afterwards we will not be washing our ears.
The bus left Wales without me. I had to make some hasty rearrangements that involved four hours in Cardiff. I ate a pasty and thought about where my life is going. After I'd finished I thought about where it isn't going. That took a lot longer and I almost missed the bus. Almost missed the bus is another way of saying I was on time for the bus. I wanted to be more dramatic, I don't think it worked.
Bristol has sprouted a new bakery round the corner from our house. A pastry-based euphoria lives in my mouth.

Outsourcing

From now on the Sea Lion will take care of the small stuff. He lives behind barbed wire and his best days are ahead of him.

Polite Demands

How Can We Help?

In order to continue improving our service we want to know what Helpful Banking means to our customers.

* Tell us about any instances where we've been particularly helpful.
* Have there been any instances where we could have been more helpful?
* We're constantly looking for new ways to help our customers.
What could we do to help you?

You could help me by making sure the branch opening times listed on your website are exactly the branch opening times in real life.
I went to the Ambleside branch today, to deposit some cash in the account of a friend, Mr Dan Bown. That's Bown, Brown without an r. He didn't write the Da Vinci Code and is sick of people mentioning it.
If he had've written the Da Vinci code, he wouldn't need me to put any money in his account.
It was 3.55 p.m.
I was strolling.
"The bank closes at half four," I thought.
"I have loads of time. It's not very far away."
There was a fine drizzle in the air and some small dogs in the park.
I'd just finished work.
I wasn't too cold or too hot.
I wasn't hungry or angry or in a rush.
I withdrew a hundred and twenty pounds from one of those "cash machines".
I thought: "After I have put a hundred and ten pounds in Dan's account, I will purchase a can of ginger beer, open it, and pour its contents into my face. This will be lovely and marvellous."
But I didn't do that.
Because when I arrived at the Nat West, Ambleside, the door was shut.
It was in such a state of shutness that at first I didn't think it was a door. I thought it was a bit of the wall with a lock on it.
Shocked to my very balls, I searched the area for a way in.
The only one that presented itself was the window. I would need to glue a diamond helmet to my head, take a very big run up across a busy road, and launch myself helmet-first at the glass, cash in one hand, printout of opening times-as-stated-on-the-website in the other.
But where was I going to find a diamond helmet at that time, in that town, and for a tenner?
All my tears came out at once and left a puddle of sorrow on the pavement.
Naturally, passers-by assumed I had done an accident with my nether-parts, and gave me a wide berth, as they say, in some cases even turning around and walking in the opposite direction, muttering and flabbergasted.
Imagine this in detail, please, for it is one of those instances in which you could have been more helpful.
It's not your fault, of course. It's a communication breakdown, isn't it. Someone hasn't bothered to check, or someone else hasn't bothered to inform someone else.
Possibly they are getting round to it this week, but don't think it's of maximal priority.
It's not going to hurt anyone.
But what about your customer Mr Bown?
Now he's sitting at home, in London, muttering and disgusted.
Disgusted at me, his friend, because I haven't done what I said I was going to do.
In effect, your website has turned me into a cack-hearted monster of betrayal.
And Dan can't afford any of those things he thought he would be able to afford today.
I don't know what those things are, but I'm sure he would rather be having them right now, than right now not having them.
So I'll return to the Nat West, Ambleside, tomorrow morning, and put the money in his account then.
But could you tell me what time you actually open? Because I don't want to start weeping on the pavement again.

Thank you for submitting your comments.

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.

Much

Another year slides off the face and into the bin.
The bus ticket was one pound of money and fifty pence of despair more than I had imagined the upper limit could possibly be even in this new modern world we currently live in nowadays before I jogged to the bus and got on board. I regretted the jogging, and did an impression of the driver saying to me the number he'd just said, and before I'd finished he was saying yes, yes and looking at me like you're going to pay anyway, so just pay, I have to parade this robbery machine around the local area all week and say that price to people every day, and every day I discover that there isn't a way of saying it to someone who hasn't heard it that doesn't result in their doing an impression of me saying it to them but in a much more sarcastic voice than I had in fact said it.

Seasonal Illumination Jamboree

Every day I wonder why half of all job adverts are written by people who can't spell, then proof-read by bats. If you didn't know what a spelling mistake was, and were wondering where to find one, they're all at the Job Centre, having an orgy, shoving unlubed apostrophes in places conservatives say they shouldn't. Then you have to beg the person who made them for a job.
The thirty-something potential employers I've applied to are all waiting for someone who isn't me. Their signs and adverts say wanted, in capital letters usually, and I meet all the criteria and am available now, right now, and I've even had a wash and my knees both point in the same direction and I can go all day without despairing. I'm a modern human and here's my CV. But no matter how many times an hour I phone them sobbing why not me, why not me, why why why why why not me, nothing changes. I've had more success with companies who haven't seen my face or heard my voice. "More Success" means one interview in six weeks.
There is a local monster and it knows exactly what to say and how to act and speak and dress and move in order to extract all the vacancies from the small cloud of hope that sometimes drifts through town in daylight. I've never seen the monster, but I think when I do I might have to break its fucking femurs.