March 2011
2 posts
The Last Few Moments of Eloisa July
If you listen closely, you can hear it: the lullaby hum of the city. The rush of traffic speeding its familiar way home along side-streets, the deep and constant whirring of fans blowing thick, hot air from buildings overhanging the roads. Lorries reversing, high-heels clicking, dogs barking and the chatter and blur of people conversing.
Sunday evening in Paris, the last day of summer, and...
Watchword: Dalliance
n.
A frivolous spending of time; the act of dallying; dawdling; an archaic word for amorous toying; a flirtation or romp.
Theory of a visit to a sentimental pilgrimage*
This is a jetty. I like this jetty for a lot of reasons, here is one of the more practical: it sits lower to the water than most, which seems especially important when sitting or lying upon it’s surface. Squinting, needing glasses, or both, allows the entire landscape (as well as oneself) to appear flat and level like a pancake, whilst the sky takes on new and gigantic proportions.
It...
On adopting an archaic and comforting sentence...
- whilst, never while
- amidst, not amid and amongst, not among
- in lieu as opposed to instead
- forthwith, not immediately
- portly or the less extreme plump, rather than overweight
The Marvel and Mystery of Mamata
In Nepali, Mamata means affection, and if any word could sum up the character of this particular girl, affectionate would be the one to do it. From the moment I touched her arm in greeting to the moment - four weeks later - I plied her fingers from my wrist to leave the clinic for the last time, she never left my side.
“Some children here…maybe we can help.” confided S., a...
Notes on the Faintest of Memories
There was a storm that night. We walked slowly and purposefully from our tents in the kind of tightly clustered grouping that only adolescents can pull off inconspicuously. This journey was made through what I see in my memory as an apple orchard - this may be a romantic interpretation on my part, it could just as easily have been somewhere else, but it was outdoors and green and soft...
February 2010
1 post
December 2009
9 posts
Grey-suited knees
The middle-aged man in the opposite seat touches his grey-suited knee to my own, and when I look up he smiles before moving away. A few moments later, his foot brushes my left shoe - he doesn’t move this either and I shuffle myself a little further into the cushion of my chair as if trying to vanish inside of it. I realise I am neither interested nor outraged, yet I feel awkwardly aware of...
Late night coffee shop observations -
The rain is coming down so hard and so fast I am beginning to wonder if the city will have floated away by the time I come to leave the quiet and bustling (is this a contradiction or can a place possess both of these characteristics?) cafe in a few hours time and make the familiar journey back home. It is the kind of rain which comes down evenly but with purpose - large drops, streets flooding;...
Semiotics
Lecturer: Let's start at the basics. Take roses - in our culture, what do roses represent? Love, romance, celebration...
Man 1: Guilt?
Man 2: Or hate? You don't have to love someone to get them flowers, just guilty enough to chuck 5 quid down the drain.
Lecturer: Right, okay, what can we take from that? Other than there being a lot of bitter men in here today.
Thirteen to (realistically) sixteen.
Memories of my early adolescence have become a hazy cloud of facts which (when listed) represent trying to grow-up as quickly as possible and the desire to find oneself in a particular identity:
Listening to and idolising any and all female singers in edgy but accessible bands with lyrics alluding to death and despair.
Applying copious amounts of make-up with friends - this was done in various...
Serial Puzzle Solvers
Serial Sudokuists hop from one tube to the next, grabbing up discarded newspapers and thumbing through quickly to the puzzle pages. They are the kinds of people you don’t expect: filling their squares with numbers drawn in pencil and then pen, the train doors rattle open and they disappear out onto the crowded platform to find a newer, better fix, leaving the newspaper on their seat in...
Notes on obsessive behaviours
The man adjacent to me has purchased two tuna sandwiches, and a warm can of soda. He has coke-bottle spectacles and a mop of frizzy, unruly grey hair. He wipes down the seat and the table before sitting down. Once settled, he uses a new napkin to clean the sides of his tray, then carefully places his meal and his drink on both knees and wipes down the underside and top of the tray too. When this...
November 2009
13 posts
She walks, she talks, she acts like a woman but...
Boy in leather jacket: “Come on, let’s look at this objectively…I mean, look at her eyes! She’s got cat eyes!”
Boy in corduroy jeans: “Cat eyes? She does? Well, she can scratch me up anytime.”
Defining the recipe to successful sleep patterns.
I have tried the following:
writing
counting sheep
different positions
(upside down
on the floor
underneath the radiator)
meditation
warm milk
classical music
ginger biscuits
Something to cheer the deepest recesses:
Three very old men with oversized spectacles and sporting that mismatched assortment of modern and old-fashioned clothing which appears to be a common thread for this particular demographic of OAPs. All three are purchasing two large and bulging packets of butter mints, lined up one by one on the conveyor belt in their shiny packets; each man paying separately with a fistful of pocket change and...
The car is alarming!
A middle aged lady with an accent I couldn’t quite place addressed me in a whispered giggle as we walked past each other in the pouring rain:
“He’s asleep in the car and the car is alarming!”
The stuff of ridiculous movies and a huge thank...
Sitting in a little café in Chelsea hiding from the kind of rain only England can produce, at an unfortunately placed table right next to the counter housing the sugars and milk, a tall blonde lady with three Gucci bags and a suited man by her side (presumably there to make use of the credit cards) spilt a few flecks of cappuccino foam onto my sweater. Not an issue in itself, however apparently...
Bus, man and wife.
At first I thought—I hoped—that the couple on the bus were just going to the hospital as a one off, a last check up perhaps before an all clear. The stop before mine is the largest hospital within a 10-mile radius, and on the way to class I often see people sitting in the seats near mine with casts on their limbs, or bellies bulging with the promise of a baby. What I see now however tells a...
Collection of anomalies:
- the cheery man behind the sandwich counter wearing a giant sombrero - a suited woman eating fast food from a brown paper bag whilst sipping slowly at a large glass of red wine - the word nomenclature overheard three times within the space of an hour - finding my black hair elastic wrapped around my ankle instead of my wrist - iced tea in entirely korean packaging which tastes oddly and...
How to ruin someones life with a haircut:
Girl 1: ...So Jessica ruined my life, pretty much last semester. That spazzy haircut!
Girl 2: I know, what was she thinking?
Girl 3: At least it had a chance to grow over the summer...
Girl 1: No, it was still awful. Frizzy hair and fat ankles!
Girl 2: I know, right? I think I would have died.
Girl 1: I wish she had.
Girl of milk and honey.
A young and small framed blond woman with loose curls and a blue t-shirt masquerading as a dress reminds me of the visuals I get when reading Nabokov’s Lolita. She is barefaced and has the intangible beauty of a model but the body of a child—no hips to speak of and awkward honey coloured limbs.
We are all staring shamelessly when out of her bag she pulls a plastic-bottled pint of milk,...
Day to day notions of camping include:
- thick, hefty zips being zipped and unzipped - the sound of the rain when falling on particular surfaces - the smell of bonfire night and the aftermath of fireworks - a serious lack of pots and pans prompting one pot, one dish meals - waking up cold in the middle of the night when the air has a bite to it
I met the best little boy in the world.
Man: When you were in Mummy’s tummy you moved a lot! I think you were practising your dancing.
Boy: No, dad. I moved a lot but only because I was practising my fighting.
Man: You were fighting in Mummy’s tummy?
Boy: A bit. Some dancing, some fighting, but I did try hard to stay still when she was sleeping. It WAS hard though. I wanted to be a jedi.
Man: Don’t you want to be a jedi anymore?
Boy: No. Star Wars is for babies!
Man: Oh, sorry.
Boy: That’s okay.
Man: What did you do in school today? Did you learn reading or do some maths?
Boy: Nope, I played! Oh, I did learned one thing. Guess what, Dad?
Man: What?
Boy: Everyone says oh my God in my class. Everyone does it! Everyone but me because…because I say oh my gosh instead.
Man: Why do they say that do you think?
Boy: Dad, I really don’t know, I’m only four! Where’s my apple? Wait, is it super duper crunchy?
Man: I think so.
Boy: Oh good. Dad? You know what’s really really really good?
Man: What’s that?
Boy: A spaceship. A spaceship is really really really good, I want one in my garden! Guess what?
Man: What?
Boy: Umm. I’m learning to build one!
Man: Really? Will it have an alien inside?
Boy: NO! Dad, you know that’s just a story, don’t you? I’m going to tell you a secret now.
Man: Are you?
Boy: Uh huh. Guess what, Dad? Guess!
Man: What?
Boy: (in a whisper) There is no…such thing…as aliens! Can I have another apple now?
October 2009
3 posts
Train truths.
A man talking on a mobile phone tucked beneath giant foam headphones and a green woolen hat: “Do you remember that couple that wanted to take you back to the house for a threesome? No? I would have taken that up, they were…What? Yes, they were. She was absolutely gorgeous!”
September 2009
6 posts
Aren't memories odd?
Tesco’s cafe.
A plastic pot of red and green grapes with a reduced sticker and three of the fruits squished in the middle; they were growing mould.
(I ate around them, but is it worth is for 11p off the price?)
A giant shoe on wheels the size of a small car, and people dancing in costumes outside of the window.
We used words like surreal and performance art to describe the ordeal.
I...
Old Habits
There is a nervous looking lady perched in the seat two past mine on the bus. She is reading an article entitled “Monk’s Habit?, printed in the kind of magazine which has advertisements for stair lifts and life insurance, preparing its readers for the start of the end. She moves her index finger down the page in a critical manner, however every so often her mouth turns up into a grin,...
Avoidance is all in the attitude.
Wholemeal spaghetti with a small spoonful of homemade green pesto, a glug of best olive oil and a couple of grates of hard cheese might just be the best lunch I’ve had in awhile. I eat it cross legged and watching the second season of Mad Men on the floor of my bedroom, slowly and with much deliberation - spoon in my left hand and a mismatched fork in my right, I twirl each piece of pasta...
An elderly couple sitting in a cafe and speaking...
“We were coochicooing and you were grabbing our finger…you did have a form of dyslexia at school…and when you were taking violin lessons? You played for awhile, the cello has such a nice sound but the violin…shame you gave it up in a way. You just knew, you know, when people watched you play…you could have made it. Yes, so I think we were really foolish then, so laid back...
July 2009
1 post
The Consequence of Words
Imagine if you will - let’s say in fifty years time, just to put a marker on it - the following scene. You are in an old age institution, perhaps you are living there yourself or perhaps you are visiting a friend. It doesn’t really matter, all that matters is that you are there; you are in the building and you have said Hello to the nurse and you are walking down the narrow corridor (the walls...