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Showing posts from 2007
Fucking Wahey! Opened one of my bank statements this morning and saw that I had earned 21 pence interest in the last month from my sizeable investment. Slowly realised, being that it was early in the day, that my sizeable investment was entirely comprised of overdraft and so looked again. 21 flipping pence earned from Goodle Ad-sense - in my first month! I was mildly elated. I thought the first thing to do was to conatct the bank and demand an enlarged overdraft limit - what with my new source of income! Refrained. So - the four people who read this dribble - at least two of you or one of you twice or something (not sure of the maths; gift horse, mouth, spatula) must have clicked on one of the above adverts. Thank you. The other twenty clicks were mine. I know I agreed not to click on the adverts on this page but they were just so damnably enticing to me. So - thinking earnestly of selling out and creating a blog or website that will actually have some regular and considerable traffic
I turned eight on holiday in Norway. We stayed in a wooden cabin a short walk from the forest and a large lake. It seemed like every lake in Norway had a rowboat on the shore. I struggled to push this boat out into the water. I would spend all day on the water. I made a fishing rod from a stick and a shoelace. Worms were nowhere to be found and the fish did not like blueberries which were everywhere. Twice when I was sat on the boat in the middle of the lake a noise made me look to the shore and I saw the same big black wolf. It drank from the water then looked up at me as I sat on my boat in my straw hat. It winked at me, a big wink I could see from far away and then turned and walked off. No one believed that a wolf had said hello to me. “Really Bruce, wolves just don’t say hello to strangers in a nice way and I’m not even sure wolves can wink.” said Mother. When we drove away from the cabin and the forest I saw a big truck parked by the track. It had a black carpet on the bonnet. I
The first time we met was in London on a wet day and I had just been soaked to the skin. Grey water dripped from my nose and hands and my black suit was now skin-tight. I stood still and looked skyward but remembered there was nobody up there. I looked down at my wet shoes and then she was standing in front of me chuckling. “Don’t you know never to stand next to a puddle in the bus lane?” “Don’t you know it’s not safe to talk to strangers?” “Well, some strangers are clearly not dangerous. Those standing in their very own puddle rank very low on my list of possible threats.” “What about if I had a knife which I wasn’t going to use but now I’m wet and pissed off and some lady is taking the mickey and I decide that perhaps, right now, I want to kill someone and she’ll do?” “Do you have a knife? Should I start running?” “No.” “No? No knife?” “ No knife. But I could drip all over you and give you pneumonia.” She kept her eyes on mine but tilted her head to one side and pursed her lips. The
Sidney sits at his desk staring at the flowery wallpaper behind it but really seeing the universe in all of its suffocating infinity stretch out before him. He can see what he believes to be the Milky Way (it isn’t) not too far off and then other clusters of stars and suns and cosmic debris all of which he cannot name. He blinks and focuses closer in, on the moon, and looks for the one area that he can correctly name. He has to wait about sixteen bars of Beethoven’s ninth symphony until the moon rotates enough so that he can point it out to himself and smile. “That’s the Sea of Tranquillity, Sidney my boy.” He notes the ragged edge of the crater that someone once told him was made by a crashing meteorite. Sidney thinks the sea has been well named and watching it float past always makes his brain slow down. But it’s difficult to stay focused on such a large and near object when all existence pans out in front of him, without boundary, edge or horizon. He lets the moon slip from his eye-
Only the second month of the year and already bulbs have broken through the lawn. There is never any frost anymore and the old and bent pear tree is dotted with light green buds. The white, blue and yellow of the snowdrops, bluebells and daffodils catch the early morning sun as I tramp down the garden path to my car, their heads drooping downwards in a royal salute of my illustrious passage. I think that I might take a hedgetrimmer to the sarcastic bastards. Surely it is still supposed to be winter? Surely the weather conditions should be a much closer match of my mood? Out of the warm house, away from the smells of lightly burnt toast and smouldering incense sticks, at nine in the morning on the way to eight hours of correcting other people’s mistakes (people who are not paid as much as me and so do not have to care) stepping into blazing sunshine, no wind, light birdsong and the fantastic motionless dance of mocking flower heads. Where are the cascading sheets of rain blown in, aroun
Yo Bro! Check it out - Mum was tidying some stuff up recently and found some interesting stuff (check your email) - the most interesting of which I think are these two photos of our biological grandfather, Spencer. Pic one has himself and his sister at some social gathering - look at the stamp on the back of it. He looks rather smooth if you ask me. His brother, the Ratman Geoff, told mum that when he saw the pictures of you from Nippers that he could see some of his brother in you. Pic 2 is of him with mum in his lap. I'm not sure who the other lass is. Picture one is from 1937 and 2 is from 1943. Blimey, eh? Only taken thirty odd years to find the light of day! Peace out bredren!
The first fire I went to with Elaine all I could think about was that she had dropped her end of the ladder onto my foot. We raced through the traffic. She was sitting in the back of the cab trying to smile at Dan who refused to meet her gaze and lessen her worry. Her smile died and she drew her lips shut in a straight line. I watched her fiddle with the straps of her jacket out of the corner of my eye as we overtook a coach full of school kids and Matt gave them a loud blast of the siren. They cheered, we smiled, Elaine coughed. My toe had yet to fully heal but I had not told the medical officer. Despite any reservations I had about a crew member, a colleague, a compadre, the eyes in the back of my head and strong arms carrying me from harm’s way, not being able to lift their end of the standard 20 foot ladder, unlike the others, I did not enjoy seeing Elaine’s struggle added to by bitterness. So I would not allow Elaine to be silently persecuted with dismissive looks by a team minus
Stratton Cornwall EX23 3XX Customer Care Orange PO Box 486 Rotherham S63 5ZX 12.01.07 Ref. from your last communiqué: FS/Campbell/514813/IAP Hello Ian, I am writing to you today, very calmly and very collectively, only because I promised the Lord that I would wait at least two weeks before venting my spleen towards your company and the deplorable way in which you have treated my account. Had I written nearer the time of the blameworthy incident then you would have received a crumpled manuscript scrawled in thick red marker included in which would have been every known insult and swear-word known to man in four different languages, as well as several stick-figure depictions of what I intend to do to whomever I can get my hands on at Orange hierarchy. I hear you ask yourself as you sit in your office, ”What could we have done to force the change from such a normally erudite and polite chap into this raging, seething, still erudite, force of vengeance?” Hah! Like you don’t already know! H