Friday Feedback :: Handbags at Dawn

bulk :: 15st 1
gym visits :: 3
bananas :: 8
hate-fuelled violent fantasies :: numerous
promises to blog more regularly :: numerous

I have a very close friend who is not very well and currently undergoing treatment for the scariest, most serious of all diseases. You know the one. On Tuesday morning she came to London for a hospital visit in South Kensington, after which we met for lunch. Then we went to see Gran Torino, then we caught a tube to Holborn to meet some of her other friends for a drink.

On the tube, my friend started to feel unwell. We managed to find her a seat, but she was feeling really woozy and looked like she might be about to pass out. Also, she said: ‘I can’t hear anything’, which – although I tried my hardest not to show it – I found kind of terrifying.

We held on for a couple more stops and slowly made our way up and out into the late afternoon air, where my friend drank some water and tried to breathe her way to recovery. Unfortunately, it was rush hour in the middle of central London, so the streets were packed with commuters rushing at full speed and the air was putrid with petrol and general city stench.

We were busy trying to find a little space so my friend could gather herself, when she told me she thought she was going to be sick.

Outside of Holborn tube station is one of those large kiosks you often find outside of busy tube stations. This one sells handbags, scarves and other fripperies. We walked into the space between the back of the kiosk and the railing, and my friend leant over the railing so that she might be sick into the gutter if it turned out that she had to. She was fighting it, hoping it would pass, but bent over the railing just in case. I was standing next to her, my hand on her back, feeling scared for my friend and helpless, but trying to support her as best I could.

As we stood there, behind this kiosk, the guy who runs the kiosk popped his head round the back and shouted, angrily, ‘Don’t be sick there’. I shouted back that my friend wasn’t well and he disappeared up the front again.

As it happens, my friend started to feel a little better and we wandered further down the street so that she might further recover and make a call to find out exactly where her friends were. At which point I caught the eye of the kiosk guy and he shouted something else, something about people always being sick behind his kiosk. He was a thickset pugnacious individual and his manner was very aggressive. I was angry. I wanted to explain to him that his aggression was misplaced, that my friend was seriously ill. So I left her talking on the phone and I went back up to him.

I said, ‘My friend’s not well. She’s really ill, you know.' I'm not sure why I didn't say, 'She's got cancer', but I didn't. It may have been something to do with not wanting to cheapen her condition by even mentioning it to this pig-headed yahoo. Instead I said, 'It’s not like she’s drunk or anything.’

He said that he didn’t care. He said that people were always puking behind his kiosk and it stinks. My face changed to one of hateful rage.

‘Yeah?’ he spat, squaring up to me. ‘Come on then.’

I asked him what he was saying and he pointed out, quite rightly, that I’d made a fighting face, so he offered to fight me. I said I didn’t want to fight him. I told him I just thought he was being really inconsiderate. I repeated that my friend was really ill, trying to get him to understand that this was much more important than the possibility of a fleeting whiff in the street. Which was when he said, ‘Alright, she’s ill. So what?’

My face fell and I shook my head in despair.

‘Alright, mate,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ And I returned to my friend, who had heard none of this, and I tried to put it behind me.

But I can’t. It keeps going round and round my head, this guy’s lack of concern for his fellow man. I think of his face, his anger, the void where his humanity should be, and I hate him.

But hate is wrong. I know hate is wrong. It goes around, comes around, increasing in intensity, solving nothing. All these fantasies I have where I rerun the conversation in my head and pull a gun on this heartless boor or projectile vomit into his open mouth; fantasies of organising a vomiting flash mob to turn up to his stall and fill each and every last one of his handbags with puke; fantasies of swallowing a hundred laxatives and turning up at his stall at 6am and smearing every inch of his workplace with stinking, repugnant liquid excrement – they’re really not helpful. And I don’t know what to do with them.

I understand also that there is every chance he’s actually a perfectly nice guy, who just happened to be weighed down by the pressures of working in the centre of a hectic city filled with drunks and thugs and idiots. And I found myself wanting to know if that was true. So I did a strange thing. I went back to Holborn this morning and spied on him for a while.

As I spied, I considered approaching him again and asking if he remembered shouting at a sick woman on Tuesday, and offering to fight her friend who was just trying to take care of her. I wondered if he'd feel bad.

But I didn’t take the risk. He still looked like an obnoxious little thug to be honest. The kind of person who wouldn’t think twice about knocking someone to the pavement and kicking them into the gutter.

So I came home.

It was a very sad incident. If not depressing. And it left me feeling pretty helpless.

I'm still not sure what to do with the feelings it's tossed up. Except write about them, and share the sadness.

In other news, today I befriended a fabulous squirrel. Here it is with one of my nuts in its mouth…



Awww. Nice one, squirrel.

Now, have an excellent weekend, whatever you may be up to, and if you see someone in distress, for God's sake, be nice to them.

Feedback Friday :: Low

Dead blog, dead blog.

I’m not sure I can keep this up.

I’m having a bad time.

I’m pissed off.

Since I got back from Burnley on Wednesday, I’ve been in and out of London on public transport for reasons of work. And I know I’m not well mentally because I find myself despising people with a passion which is clearly disproportionate. I’m like Grenouille in Perfume. I even despise their smell. Everyone stinks. And they talk the most infuriating, banal, stupid nonsense. Everywhere I turn, smoke, farts, cloying scents, alcohol, Jesus Army, television, views. I posted Howard Beale last week. I’ve since become him. Minus the compassion.

And my online life has changed too. In spare moments, which are few and far between at the moment, I’ve been trying to write about my dad. My mum. My family. My childhood. And I can’t. I just can’t do it. What I’m writing is turgid, overblown, judgmental, dull. And I can’t do it. This is the first time this year that writing for this blog has not come easy, and it disturbs me.

Another thing that disturbs me is that every time I lift the lid of my laptop, there is a new comment from my resident loon. On average I’m getting two a day now. I didn’t want to mention it because I don’t want to encourage her. Or him. But it’s starting to do my head in. It’s starting to get really disturbing. In the middle of one I received yesterday or the day before was the line, ‘I’m scared of myself and who I am’. As well as the general overall freaky tone of the comments, what worries me is that I’m starting to understand what this person is going through.

I feel like I’m one step away from a serial killer movie.

Plus I’ve been trying to find somewhere to live on Gumtree and in the process I’ve been bombarded with Nigerian scammers trying to get me to transfer money to a friend or relative using Western Union, so that they can then steal it. This scam has even made it onto the news. As far as I can see however, it’s got to be a piece of cake to fake a transaction and catch these fuckers red-handed when they go their nearest money-wiring agent and attempt to pick up the cash. I’ve been trying to convince people at Gumtree or Western Union to help me, but all I’m getting is stock responses, unanswered telephone calls and morons who are basically doing a job they simply don’t give a damn about. And this fucks me off immeasurably. I’ve actually been trying to do something decent, trying to do a good thing, to help people, and I’m being stonewalled every step of the way. No one gives a fuck. Except the scammers. They work hard. But nobody else could actually care less. Fine. So be it.

And now I’ve got to commute into London. The writer I’ve been doing research for wants me to do more but suddenly he wants me to do it from his home, sitting in the same room as him. Why, I don’t know. Presumably so he can keep an eye on me, make sure I’m concentrating hard enough. He isn’t paying me enough, frankly, to enjoy this level of supervision. Plus he farts. It’s hideous. I’ve asked him not to but he finds my discomfort amusing. I despise him. I despise everyone. Even the research he has me doing has turned dull. I was better off writing financial copy. At least I could do that from the privacy of my own stench.

And on top of that, everywhere I turn there are fuckwits like Giles Hattersley, the writers of Scallywagga and the readers of thelondonpaper and frankly, I don’t know how long it’s going to be before I find myself a couple of semi-automatics and bring Hungerford to the city.

When did my life turn into this thing that I dislike so vehemently? How did that happen?

Wow.

It's amazing how quickly a little perspective can fade.

Anyway, how are you? No, not you, you psychopath. You. Doing anything nice this weekend?

Mumbleweeds For The Journey :: Oxygen

You may know this and know it well. Bully for you. Just in case you don’t though, this is a song that just made me weep in the bath. Wine helps, but still. Read it first:

I wanna be better than oxygen, so you can breathe when you're drowning and weak in the knees. I wanna speak louder than Ritalin, for all the children who think that they've got a disease. I wanna be cooler than TV, for all the kids that are wondering what they're going to be. We can be stronger than bombs if you're singing along and you know that you really believe. We can be richer than industry, as long as we know that there's things that we don't really need. We can speak louder than ignorance, ‘cause we speak in silence every time our eyes meet.

On and on, and on it goes. The world it just keeps spinning, until I’m dizzy, time to breathe... so close my eyes and start again anew.

I wanna see through all the lies of society, to the reality... happiness is at stake. I wanna hold up my head with dignity, proud of a life where to give means more than to take. I wanna live beyond the modern mentality where paper is all that you're really taught to create. Do you remember the forgotten America? Justice, equality, freedom to every race? Just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy, make up and hair to the truth behind every face, that look around to all the people you see... how many of them are happy and free? I know it sounds like a dream, but it's the only thing that can get me to sleep at night. I know it's hard to believe, but it's easy to see that something here isn't right. I know the future looks dark, but it's there that the kids of today must carry the light.

On and on, and on it goes. The world it just keeps spinning, until I’m dizzy, time to breathe... so close my eyes and start again anew.

If I’m afraid to catch a dream, I weave your baskets and I’ll float them down the river stream. Each one I weave with words I speak, to carry love to your relief.

Then I go and spoil it all by watching the video and realising that Willy Mason is actually about 11 years old. How depressing. Another young person with far too much talent.

Fucker.

Now listen:



Don't know why the last bit isn't on the video. The coda. Is it a coda? I don't know. I'm drunk. There's quite a bit missing though, including the first verse all over again. Probably 'cause the video was shot for $20. Good for him.

Fucker.

Comment Whoring :: Can you recommend a song with lyrics as good as that one? Preferably one I haven’t heard before. I know you don’t know what I’ve heard before, so you’ll just have to take a chance. Oh, go on. I'll give you a fiver if you come up trumps. And head. Glorious head.

Thanks.

Feedback Friday :: Old Kent Road Blues

bulk :: 16st 1
cigarettes :: 0
joints :: 2
alcohol :: some
runs :: 3 (which is quite good. I'm back in the saddle but not quite fucking the horse as I'd hoped. Next week maybe.)
swims :: 0
chocolate biscuits :: 60 (damn supermarkets and their 2 for 1 offers. Damn my lack of self-control.)
unsavoury thoughts concerning Audrey Tautou :: 0 (OK, OK, 40)

This morning - for reasons not really worth going into - I found myself on the Old Kent Road. Whenever I'm on the Old Kent Road, I understand afresh why it's the cheapest property on the Monopoly board. It's like the part of London that evolution forgot. As such, it seems like the perfect location for an existential crisis.

I was over the road from the Tesco. A pub called The Lord Nelson had what appeared to be two fresh bullet holes in one of its windows, each giving way to separate spider webs of shattered glass. Across the street a group of desperate-looking people were waiting for a bus. One of them - a man in his 40s with lank grey hair and an old suit - suddenly stepped out into the road and threw what appeared to be a stone at a passing bus. It came out of nowhere this act of aggression, and it was all the more surprising for this guy's seeming semi-respectability. Witnesses shook their heads vaguely and looked away. He stepped back onto the pavement, like butter wouldn't melt.

An old man on a bench, looking not quite all there, struggled to light a cigarette he had just constructed. He was in his 50s, grey skin, short spiky silver hair and beard, a can of what looked like Kestrel in a brown paper bag between his knees. I hung about by a nearby bus stop watching him. When he finally managed to get his cigarette going, he folded his arms and stared straight ahead of him, fag hanging from his gob, smoke dancing into his face, and I thought that thing that I think a lot, that thing that everybody who thinks about other people thinks a lot. I thought, 'I wonder what's going on in his head'. Probably nothing of interest of course, or else he probably wouldn't be sitting on a bench on the Old Kent Road drinking warm Kestrel at 10am.

But you never know.

I looked away and saw someone staring at me. A well-dressed young Indian woman. She had exactly the same expression on her face that imagine I had. A mixture of polite enquiry, patronising pity and outright disgust. She looked away. I looked away. I looked back at the old man. He was looking at me. He looked away. I looked away.

What the fuck am I doing here? I thought. And I went home.

So. That was the highlight of my Friday. The Old Kent Road. Like the freak carriage in the opening dream sequence of Stardust Memories. Sometimes South East London really brings me down. I'm sure it's less grim up north.

Keith is away for the weekend.

I don't know if it's coming across at all, but I'm feeling dreadfully sorry for myself. Thank God for chocolate biscuits.

Have a good weekend.

Loss

On Thursday night, feeling awfully sorry for myself, I typed the words ‘PABLO – BELOVED BLACK CAT – CASH REWARD OFFERED FOR HIS SAFE RETURN’ into a blank Word document. I added my phone number and a photograph of Pablo. Then I pressed ctrl and P, keyed in 20 copies and pressed ‘print’. As I picked up the first sheet to examine it, my mobile phone began to squeal.

Timing.

It was Ron, next door neighbour in Herne Hill, owner of three discoloured teeth and one fabulously untended garden which was until recently Pablo’s favourite stomping ground and miniature jungle kingdom. I’d already talked to him about Pablo going missing post-move. He had kindly checked his garden and promised to keep his eyes peeled. So when I heard his voice, I was optimistic.

Ron explained that he was with a young man called Tony. Tony had been going door to door in the area asking if anyone owned a black cat. He’d eventually been pointed towards Ron’s building. When Ron said yes, his ex-neighbour was missing a black cat, Tony burst into tears.

‘I’ve got some bad news,’ Ron said. My heart sank and my stomach turned. He passed me over to Tony.

‘He just ran straight out in front of my car,’ Tony explained. ‘There was nothing I could do.’

Tony was a cat person. He felt terrible. I felt bad for him. But I felt sick for Pablo.

I drove back to my old house. I shook Tony’s hand. There was nothing he could do.

‘It’s OK,’ I told him. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘I’ve got four cats,’ he said. ‘I know how it is. I’m so, so sorry.’

Tony showed me to his car. He’d placed Pablo in the boot. His car was a Skoda.

A fucking Skoda.

Pablo deserved better than that.

I was surprised by how light he seemed. At first I thought maybe he was lighter because the life had leaked out of his body; because the weight of his soul had departed. Then I realised he’d probably lost a bit of weight in the few days he was missing, roaming around Herne Hill wondering where his life had gone. A shock ran through me. Pity and anger and shame. I tried not to blame myself. I’m still trying not to blame myself. But I do blame myself. At least partially.

I’d never held a dead body before. I touched my mother’s face before they put her in the ground but I didn’t feel much.

I loved Pablo much more than I loved my mother. Probably because Pablo showed me much more love than my mother ever did. It was easy to love Pablo. It was impossible to love my mother. She made it impossible.

His body was still warm.

It had been a clean hit, thank God. He ran into the front wheel with a thud. None of his insides were outside - I don’t think I would’ve been able to face that – but there was blood on his face, already dried. I couldn’t tell where it had come from exactly. I closed his eyes, the way they do in films, with soldiers.

I wrapped him in his favourite blanket and placed him on the passenger seat of my car.

Stalled at the traffic lights near Dulwich Park, I looked down at the blanket and let out a low groan.

I missed Sally.

....

A couple of weeks ago, Sally and I ended up having quite a heated argument about her taking photos of me. ‘I really thought you’d be into it,’ she said.

‘Well, I’m not,’ I replied. ‘I’m really not.’

‘Well, why not?’ she wanted to know, and it pissed me off that she seemed to feel some sense of entitlement. Like I was some art project she had paid for with her body.

‘Because you make me feel like a freak show,’ I said.

‘But I think you’re beautiful,’ she said. ‘In your own way,’ she added.

I made a face. My face said, ‘Thanks for that. You certainly know how to make a person feel like shit.’ Then my mouth said it.

‘But I mean it!’ she cried.

‘I know you mean it!’ I cried back. ‘That really doesn’t help matters.’

‘But you don’t understand,’ she said, still digging a dirty great hole for our relationship. ‘For me you have a kind of anti-beauty that’s very attractive.’

‘Jesus, Sally. There’s no difference between that and morbid fascination. I am not an art project! I am a human being!’ I smiled but I was pissed off. ‘Seriously. You really do make me feel like a freak show.’

‘Well, you are a bit of a freak show,’ she said. ‘And that’s part of the attraction.’

I didn’t know how to react to this. I felt like Susan Sarandon in Thelma and Louise when she says, ‘Damn, Jimmy. What did you do, take some kinda pill that makes you say all the right stuff?’ Only in reverse. I just shook my head.

After which, things became rather strained between us, and as if by mutual, albeit tacit agreement, we began to see a little less of each other. Then we met up for a late dinner on Wednesday night, then back to mine. Everything seemed great. We laughed a lot and touched a lot and everything seemed easy again.

It’s amazing how quickly you can start feeling really optimistic again, no matter how wrong things might be underneath. If indeed they are wrong underneath. You never really know.

Or do you? Maybe you do. I don't.

At 4am I opened my eyes and Sally was sitting cross-legged, wide awake in the middle of my bed, her body twisted away from me. She had a little white vest on. She looked like a dream. My bedside lamp was on, blinding me. I squinted, shaded my eyes. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked. She turned off the light, lay down and pulled the sheet over her body. She said she was fine. Told me to go back to sleep.

I didn’t believe her. ‘What’s up?’ I said.

‘I had a bad dream,’ she said.

‘Poor baby,’ I said, snuggling up to her and experiencing a wave of tenderness. There’s a song by Counting Crows with the line, ‘And every tine she sneezes, I believe it’s love’. It was that kind of moment. Like she’d sneezed all over me. She turned her body away from mine and I positioned myself behind her. ‘What was it about?’ I asked. And just as I did, something fell from the bed to the floor. I jumped. Sally didn’t move, but her not moving was so precise, so deliberate, that it had more impact than if she’d jumped to her feet. ‘What was that?’ I said. I reached across Sally, turned on the light, angled it away from my face and sat up.

Sally continued not to move. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just my camera.’

I looked at her. She continued to face away from me but I sensed her eyes were open, waiting.

‘Were you taking pictures of me?’ I asked.

She turned to face me, looking furtive, guilty. Or not. I don’t know.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘God, you’re paranoid.’

‘Sally. Why were you sitting up in the middle of the night with your camera and a light shining onto my face?’

‘I told you, I had a bad dream. I couldn’t sleep.’

I shook my head. I did a lot of head-shaking with Sally.

‘What?’ she snapped. ‘I was awake and I was looking through photos on my camera.’ I stared at her. She stared back. ‘You’re being weird,’ she said. My mouth fell open.

‘Me?!’ I was aghast. ‘Let me see the camera then.’

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘You’ve showed me photos on your camera before. Show me again.’

‘So you don’t trust me?’

‘Sally. You look guilty. You look like you’re lying to me. And you must admit, it looks pretty suspicious.’

‘I’m not lying and I don’t care how it looks.’

‘So show me. What have you got to hide?”

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘I agree entirely,’ I said. ‘This is utterly ridiculous. You’re behaving like a child.’

‘Oh, fuck off.’

And with that, she got out of bed, pulled on her clothes, picked up her camera and left.

To my shame, I did a little pleading. ‘Please don’t go, Sally’ I said, and I sounded pathetic. I followed her downstairs, wanting to stop her, physically. I tugged at her elbow. She reacted like I’d stabbed at her with a cattle prod and glowered at me. I felt guilty.

She said she wasn’t going to stay where she wasn’t trusted. I said I did trust her. Honest.

She left.

When the front door closed, I came back to my bedroom and picked up my watch from the bedside table. It was a quarter to four. How was she going to get home? I got back into bed.

I picked up my phone. I put it down.

Then I picked it up again and started texting.

Then I shook my head, cancelled the message and threw my phone across the room.

I turned off the light.

I thought how she often flicked through the images on her camera and realised that her explanation was entirely plausible. Why the fuck would she want to take photographs of me anyway? She was right. I was entirely paranoid.

I thought about how I’d never met even got the chance to have her mum cure me of my heliophobia.

I thought how her eyes had flashed hatred when I grabbed at her arm, like she expected me to hit her, and she was daring me.

I thought how we didn't really know each other at all. I should never have touched her.

And now she was gone. With or without stolen snapshots. It didn’t matter. I felt stupid, like I’d fucked everything up.

I looked around the room, staring through the darkness.

I missed Pablo.

I placed the palms of my hands over my ears and pushed my fingernails into the scalp at the back of head until it really, really hurt.

Maybe he’d come back tomorrow.

A Poignant Moment Out of the Sun...

I just read something which made me rather sad, and which I thought was worth sharing because of that very fact.

Here, a teacher's thoughts on losing a student.