The wind picked up & the air became wet & in-between trying to light the cigarette, the boy, turning this way & that, trying to catch the flame, started on some convoluted tale about how he had lost his girlfriend, got thrown out of his flat, & about how someone had stolen his hair clippers. … Continue reading Liam & Stan & Oliver.
09/09/19 A fan of numerology? I suppose, post-event, I am. Although the science just doesn't add up, I'm always happy to find frisson and thrill in the noticing of numbers when and if they appear to credit such a sensation - which, I admit, is often. (The same goes for words/the appearance of people, et … Continue reading Run As Fast As You Can, Bear.
17/08/19 Yesterday, on the way to pick up Spanish Iain, a pigeon suddenly slammed into the windscreen with a dull, solid and terminal thud. The bird came out of nowhere and was gone, over the roof, before either of us fully realised what had happened. Of course, there was nothing to be done and Malcolm … Continue reading Run As Fast As You Can, Bear.
15/08/19. The strangest coincidence today. A man turns up for a haircut. He's off on holiday to Cambridge later in the day. "I've never been," I say. He says that he used to live there when he was a teenager in the early 1980s. He begins to regale me with Cambridgeshire tales from his youth. … Continue reading Run As Fast As You Can, Bear.
12/08/19 Home, eventually. Exhausted. The communal hallway is busy with stacked chairs, a tall floor-lamp and a box of crockery. Why? No mail of any interest. The flat hasn't burned down, been broken into, or flooded. The spider plants thrive, but the palm has mostly turned brown. Why? I cut off the offending fronds and bin … Continue reading Run As Fast As You Can, Bear.
11/08/19. Short on time, the brilliantly monikered Esprit de Corpse finish the evening with a frenetic set. Jarvis is a great frontman, rather like a (more) ghoulish John Cooper Clarke; greasy two-piece, bubble hair, scuffed Cubans, yesterday's eyeliner, candle wax flesh. Bent beneath the polystyrene, he wrings the Telecaster's neck and spit-kisses the mic, "WHYDONCHAKILLME? … Continue reading Run As Fast As You Can, Bear.
