Stupid is as…

Trapped. A haze of hair spray and starch.

Pressed. Those clothes don’t bend sugar, those clothes…

High heels. She’s walking on point. She can’t walk on point. Every step’s a fall.

This isn’t the house. Twice over. Different houses.

We’re led in anyway.

Bombed. A bedroom not capable of bedding in. A wire-emancipated box. And a long galley kitchen-cupboard. Dark. Dirty. Deserted. Disastrous.

Don’t fancy a bit of work?

It’s 30k over budget darling, where do you suppose we get 30k from?

She doesn’t get it. I don’t think she’s listening. I knock her on the head and it sounds like popping your cheek with your finger. A dull thud. Try it, now. Flick out your cheek with your finger making an “oh” with your mouth. A dull pop. That’s her. No-one’s home. She couldn’t find a buyer. It’s no fucking surprise.

Has this got central heating?

I think so.

So why are the radiators plugged in.

I’ll have to check.

What, that you’re fucking serious?!

Me and Jade look at each other.

We’re ringing around again. What’s the maintenance, what’s the ground rent, what’s the parking permit, what’s the walk to the station.

They all want to help. But the hands are tied. To an electric radiator. That they think is central heating.

Shafted

Oh, he’s smiling. And she’s saying,

Well, if you think it’s the right decision, for you.

But you know what it’s about. They’ve won. No flesh forfeit.

And the room is too clean for this sort of work. I want a warehouse and some rope. Dust on the ground and mud on the walls. I want a 1960s Jimi Hendrix soundtrack and some guy with a knife. I want rain hammering the corrugated roof and each breath to force a mist into the air that hangs, stuck and imprisoned in the stench of something gone decidedly wrong. Where’s the danger?

But it’s there, hidden in the shine off manicured hands, hidden in the sound of cufflinks hitting the MDF desk, hidden behind, worst of all, the words on the paper.

You see, we’d love to help but… it’s the technicality.

Big corporates hide behind words. On rules written deep and incomprehensibly into contracts.

They mislead you while showing you everything.

Then one day it shows itself.

And you’re fucked.

By words.

It’s someone’s job to do that. To make it hidden. To get them off for everything.

And in clean rooms with no pictures on the walls and a window clean of any spec of dirt, the world comes crashing in and you know the game’s over.

You can’t beat it.

And you pack your bags and go.

 

 

Home

Jade and I, we are possibly looking to buy a house. Because the landlord is selling the one we are in.

On Saturday we shall go and look at a flat. We will try and imagine ourselves in it. Living there. In a space that someone else has owned. Lived in. She is pregnant, so there is a high chance she procreated there, too.

So much life is in a home, that to usurp that, to make it yours, it is quite the spiritual, physical, and mental struggle.

To say this is truly mine. I wonder what ‘home’ is, when you are buying yourself.

The childhood home, it is always there, no matter if the parents or parent has long moved on. The childhood home is more than a physical thing. A childhood home is somehow immortal.

But a home we buy together, how does the conversion happen? How do we make it us?

I suppose we shall find out.

Larkin, as usual, is cynical:

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,

Shaped to the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back. Instead, bereft

Of anyone to please, it withers so,

Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,

A joyous shot at how things ought to be,

Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:

Look at the pictures and the cutlery.

The music in the piano stool. That vase.

Art/Poem

The need to remember, and to mark, and to ensure longevity of the rememberance, is a pretty common human reaction to tragedy.

And so marking 1,000 days since the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is not surprising in any way. And roping in Simon Armitage to write a poem is just as predictable – the McCanns are exceptionally savvy media operators. They know, or have the money to pay people who know, how to ensure a headline.

But is the 1000^th day any worse or better than the 999^th, or the 1001^st? It’s doubtful. But it’s a nice round number for the papers. It’s an excuse for a story. And no-one would begrudge them the space.

But Armitage himself, what is his motivation? Art can indeed be inspired by something tragic; the Costa Prize was won by Christopher Reid this year, who penned poems in tribute to his late wife.

But to be effective, it has to be personal. It has to show its emotion, engage in the subject. For Armitage to write an affecting poem, that would make a difference, inspire, have an impact, he would need an emotional attachment, a personal touch.

The poem he has come up with is the opposite. It is detached, impersonal, struggling for a sense of direction or purpose. Perhaps he meant it this way, perhaps it is a poem not about Maddie, but her parents, how their lives have been left. It is effective, as that, perhaps.

But you don’t feel pity for the McCanns if this was the intention. It doesn’t give you any feelings for them at all. It is so restrained, so seemingly uninterested, that it doesn’t let the reader in.

And if it is meant to make you feel the loss of Maddie, make you feel sorry for that small girl lost or dead, it doesn’t work either. She has no narrative here, perhaps purposefully. But in not letting her into the poem, the reader can’t get her out of the poem. She is not real, and therefore we can’t be sympathetic.

Aside from that, as a poem ist is very juvenile. The imagery is clumsy and doesn’t gel, it is obvious and stale. It is not gritty realism nor is it metaphoric. It is nothing.

And so as a piece of Art it is completely unsuccessful. And as a rememberance poem it doesn’t do it’s job either –  to act as fuel for rememberance, to keep the fire he talks of burning.

In my opinion, this poem has no fuel, it has no impact. And is a well-intentioned failure.

Judge for yourself though:

The Beacon

Dusk, doubt, the growing depth of an evening sky,

dark setting in as it did that night,

the forever vastness of outer space

reflecting the emptiness here inside,

shadowing, colouring, clouding the mind.

But somewhere out there there has to be life,

the distance only a matter of time,

a world like our own, its markings and shades

as uniquely formed as a daughter’s eye,

distinctly flecked, undeniably hers,

looking back this way through the miles and years

to a lantern cupping a golden blaze,

its candle alive with a fierce blonde flame

for the thousandth time, for as long as it takes.

Weekend Retreat

We joined the exodus. And we followed them back.

Devon for the weekend, darling, I have a place near the sea…

Yeah mate, so do we, Jade’s parent’s house. So haha to you.

And I bet you buying that cottage in the village of twenty cottages is really contributing to the local economy. You know, how you go there twice a year. And some poor bugger who grew up there can’t afford to buy there because of the cash you show, inflating the prices.

We trail the BMW four-wheel drive cruisers in both directions. They sit in the outside lane demanding attention, nicotine blotched faces illuminated by the sat nav. It’s ghostly, translucent.

A walk. It’s mostly deserted. But the seaside towns throb and the pubs are full of Helly Hanson and Berghaus. Gastro pubs and gastro fish and chips. There’s a different market catered for. It’s a weekend matinee, and in the week you get the old china out and mark down the prices. Change the name. It looks the same. But they don’t like it, like that.

The road shifts and undulates with traffic as silent cars of silent people pass as they try and ascertain whether a weekend in the country is enough to compensate for a lack of anything actual to say.

Let’s get out of the city. To my condo my the sea. We’ll find, something, there.

Our Fiesta struggles to keep up and our legs ache from walking and the scowls of the others follow us on as they turn off to Richmond. To Barnes. To Strawberry Hill.

You know they never left. Not really. The idea, it was always only that for them. Playing the game. Keeping up.

Us? We just like walking. And the sea. We go for that. There’s no agenda. We are not looking for a stamp of approval or a band aid.

Football

It’s a lie to say that boys are not petty. We are petty. We are picky as well. And stubborn.

Pettiness is generally put down as a female condition, wrongly. Some men believe themselves above it. And so say it’s only women who are doing it. These are men that have an affair and say it was “just sex.”

No shit Genius, I sort of worked that out from her positive pregnancy test and negative IQ. That doesn’t justify anything.

And then the man says don’t be petty.

Cunt.

Anyway, I was telling you about how men can be petty.

We have a football email list of people who like a game of five-aside on a Wednesday. You get a game if you are one of the first 10 back after the person who books the pitch (generally Will caus he’s a hero like that) emails everyone on the list.

Yesterday, for the first time, this relatively simple method went wrong. After snow, the first ten were decided so when the email came around about the booked pitch it was reserve spots up for grabs. I grabbed one four minutes after the email went out. First.

Come yesterday and the usual drop outs, a member of the list decided that he had got back first and was entitled to the reserve spot I had got and that he should play.

I deliberated. Should I say something? Is it worth it? I decided yes, not through pettiness, but mainly because I wanted to play football and that was my spot.

So I emailed around. And I mentioned that I had got in first actually, apologies, bit embarrassing, but I would like to play please.

Said list member didn’t like this. He was first back, he said.

He wasn’t. And a couple of people pointed this out.

He was still not happy.

So Will sent him a picture of the emails.

He was still not happy. He sent his own picture of him replying first.

It was photoshopped. He had actually taken the time to photoshop a picture.

Well fucking hilarious. We have had an hour of cirngeworthy shit. Self-assessments. Because he was being an arsehole.

See I told you men could be petty.  I wrote this blog. So a big high five for pettiness.

Period

Yeah so I was a bit miserable yesterday. It’s all a bit embarrassing. But, at least there’s an explanation.

I had FOAL.

FOAL is like PMT, but is less based around hormones. Some could argue that a certain percentage of PMT is not based around hormones either and is in fact women just being nasty because they have an excuse to be so. But say that and women, especially women with PMT, get very upset. And nasty. It’s a revolving door you can’t get out of. A revolving door with just you and a woman stuck in it and she’s shouting:

“Why don’t you just fuck off and die… but don’t because I want a hug… but I’d rather hug my own shit than hug you, you utter…sexy, sexy man, let’s get dirty… you’re such a cunt, why do you have to make it about sex?”

And so on.

FOAL does not involve blood. There are no adverts of men with FOAL bounding through a park saying how comfortable and safe they feel because they have ALWAYS looking out for them. There are no cramping pains with FOAL. FOAL does not need a tampon.

FOAL does not rule out sex. Some would argue that neither does PMT. To those “some” I ask you to reassess your libido and your sexual tastes. Blood is never sexy. For a reason. If you find it sexy, you need to be put on some sort of register.

FOAL is not exclusive to one gender. That’s right, FOAL is bisexual. Some of you may find that uncomfortable. You are homophobic. Please, go away and grow up.

You’ve probably had FOAL. I get it once every so often.  Jade calls it my man period. And it is, pretty much. But one women can have too.

So don’t worry if everything feels like utter shit. It’ll be gone tomorrow. It’s just FOAL. It passes.

We all get Fucked Off At Life sometimes.

Monday

Hello.

I would like to apply for the position of.

Oh, you read my CV?

No, it’s not a familiar name. I realise the other girl’s auntie is head of content.

No, I understand.

I don’t even have the school.

You’re right, that does make it difficult.

Well, I’d rather not.

Well, for a start I’m not gay and secondly it’s just not something I, erm, do. Especially to get a job.

Right, yes, we can call it my portfolio, but still no.

Speaking of which.

No, I didn’t think you’d want to look at it. I brought it though.

No, you’re right, it’s not really about experience is it.

Well, its like thatching isn’t it? A craft that people like to look at and want preserved but don’t want to buy into.

Who wants a thatched roof? Same with writing. How it’s written doesn’t count, just get the text out there.

Yes, I am a bit of a throw back.

Sentimental? I’d prefer ideological. A purist. Seems a shame to waste all those thatchers.

No, you’re right, that’s the sort of analogy that takes up advertising space.

Who reads anyway?

Exactly, it’s a difficult position. The clients like them like that.

Well, thanks for your time. Appreciate you talking to me.

Yes, I did realise it was because you had to, not because you wanted to.

Response

I’ve made you all so curious,
About my little secret,
And now you’re all imploring me,
To tell you and not keep it

You tell me you won’t say a word,
It’s just between you and me
But people! Take a look at yourselves!
You’re as bad at secrets as me

For if I tell, then that’s permission,
For you to tell as well
And then the whole world knows the secret
And the whole world goes to hell

Because each time the secret passes
From one person to another
It gets embellished and expanded upon
And the story’s now another

That isn’t really anything like
The truth of what I told
And now some chav’s got hold of it
And now the story’s sold

To the News of the World, it’s centre spread
And the story’s gone astray
Some pouting bird has got her tits out
And says my mate, she lay

And where the story’s come from,
I’d have to try and explain
My mate, he’s proper angry with me
I won’t get told again

So NO! I will not let you have it,
I won’t give in to you
This secret is one that I’ll keep hold of,
At least til you have a secret too

Poem

I have a little secret, now no-one I can tell
Not even one hint at revelation
At no price will I sell

For a friend I am to them, who told me of the story
A sad tale it was you see,
Painful and quite gory

Details, details, details, I’ve got them all a plenty
All the little scraps of info,
And yet they don’t content me

I have a little niggle, it spreads from eye to mouth
My voicebox it is itching,
My friendship’s going south

My God! I’ve got to tell someone, I can’t take knowing alone
It’s eating at my very soul,
Now where’s the fucking phone

I’ll only tell a single person, a trusted friend that’s it
And then the burden will be lifted,
My mouth thereon is zipped

Hello, it’s me, you’ll never guess, I KNOW! What’s that about?
And the secrets gone forever,
Of that I have no doubt

And I knew that from the very start, I knew the one makes two
But I know my friend, they will not blame me,
Caus they tell secrets too