Something At Least

The underpass has been turned into a bath, with cement soup for water and just enough room between its surface and the tunnel ceilings for a human head to gasp and remember its swimming lessons, when Mrs Fuck Knows kicked it into the leisure centre swimming pool on primary school afternoons, for it to do spluttering widths in the shallow end while at the bottom of the other end the kids with gills were having underwater conversations before wrapping their mouths around black bricks and shooting into the air like buttered dolphins, and landing, on their hands, on the edge of the diving board.
Fill the pool with cement, Mrs Fuck Knows, I used to think, and we'll see who can follow your strict incomprehensible instructions.
So far nobody's surfaced in this particular bath. The lack of fanfare surrounding the project makes me doubt that it's art. But it follows on from all that fog that hovered around one end of a footbridge a couple of weeks ago, which I didn't see but was certainly a big fan of. I'd go as far as saying that that was the best thing I haven't seen all year. Its only flaw, which no-one seems to be willing to talk about, is that it didn't appear on any of my ways to and from work. Unlike Giant Public Bath of Wet Cement. Also unlike Never Open Bagels and The Pickled Athlete, though neither of these are really works of art, which isn't to say they're not putting any effort in.

Up Sticks

In the West Wing episode called Shibboleth, the word shibboleth is introduced by the president, explained by the president, and spoken at the president by a man who's been dragged from a river of screaming cheese into the big office, so they can check whether he's the type of man who'd know about and be able to pronounce the word shibboleth, and therefore be worthy of receiving help, by hearing him almost not say it, but then, after a kind of bollock-churningly inevitable hesitation, say it. Rumour has it this episode was written by a man being hassled into agony on deadline day by the chuckling ghost of his English teacher. And your trust in the until-then much-better-than-good-enough quality of the writing is replaced by a worry, with fifteen and a half more seasons to go, that the whole thing might end in a gutter of songs and hugs and star-spangled handshakes. But it improves.

Briefly Very Excited

People came to the opening night. This was pleasant. There were a lot of them. I mainly sat behind the table of free stuff and gave out the free stuff and talked to strange faces. None of these faces said "it was all great except the writing" so I got away with it and that was a relief. People must like mesmeric horrible things as much as we do. Pumpkin and popcorn soup was served in shot glasses and Demdike Stare played uneasy goodness. None of the locals came in demanding the free booze.
It's open til the fifth but I had to leave to spend more time with the Job Centre in Rusholme. I'd been neglecting it in favour of working on things I actually want to work on. But when I went there today it didn't seem angry. Just disappointed. I think that's why it kept recommending jobs in faraway places.
On my crawl towards the Job Centre I went into Oxfam with my copy of Roberto Bolannnnnyo's 2666 and informed the nice girl behind the counter, when she looked up from her book, that instead of catapulting it into Blackpool Tower I've decided to give it away so that someone else might squirm through its stunningly tedious first half before doing something better, like eating a pot of Copydex. Perhaps she could put it next to Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on a special shelf labelled "The Latest Disappointments". I'm reading Richard Brautigan instead. Much better. And looking at a deeply unsettling but beautifully illustrated calendar. Approach with caution if you are under the age of eighty five or are on anything hallucinogenic, or plan to be during the next six weeks.