april rules of thumb

If you put your washing out in April and leave it overnight it will probably rain.
The first time you leave your washing out and it gets rained on it might be your flatmate’s/ partner’s/ pet’s fault.
The second time you leave your washing out and it gets rained on there’s no doubt about it, it’s down to you.

all lost in the supermarket

can no longer shop happily
came here for the special offer
... ...


Mackerel fillets
Sealed to the bone.
Grey-gold flesh straight-
Jacketed, taut
Energy sapped;
Just a bundle
Of moribund
Flavour waiting
To be consumed
Digested, ex-
Creted into
Ocean waste.
This is the fate
Of the shrink wrapped.

night buses

Living in Peckham, beyond the realm of walking or taxis, night buses have become a curse and a salvation. Several nights a week, I find myself negotiating the complexities of nocturnal travel, having acquired a propensity for timing journeys to ensure that the last regular bus or train is missed.

I don't mind night buses. I also have to concede I am have no objections to waiting. People say to me that London is forever in a hurry; but when you've passed the witching hour, there's no point in being in a hurry. Patience, a quality I once had in abundance, needs to be extracted from the bottom drawer.

Music helps. Tonight, Bach, Elvis Costello, Pernambuco traditional, Pulp, the great Em Ward and others, turned a kamikaze bus journey into another soul mission. You feel a bit stupid bopping on the bouncy buses, but there's nothing wrong with stupid every now and again.

One day I'll fulfill the dream, which I possessed for a while, of being able to stagger/ stroll/ amble home. Along the river, he recollects, night cormorants swooping past the pier, the Tate acting as a beacon. Or through the cathedral close. Or down 18, waiting to find the old pooch in Plaza Independecia. I treasured the times I could walk home, innately recognised the beauty of being able to use my own steam to find my way to bed. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the quirks of the night bus; the lights that sing an alcohol tune; the old friends you collide with; the guys who brood and the girls who chat.

Whatever gets you through the night, as the man said.

your grandmother would apreciate this

friends who are about to marry

Are not dewy eyed. Laugh readily at what is to come. Hold their breath. Embrace the foolishness of that which they will do. Hide their romanticism. Save it for later. Have been through the hoops of love and are singing on the other side. Keep their idealism close to their hearts. Laugh at their partners, in a gentle way. Stumble occasionally. Show misunderstanding. Let their belief in fairy tales be subsumed by their delight for flawed reality. Which, they have, all four of them, discovered the hard way, is the real thing.

exile

The bus is your last hope. Not that you have much hope. Someone who might have been here a fortninght nudges you and says catch this one. You catch it. This is not your city. You are in La Paz or Delhi or Kinshasa. The bus goes past symetrically lit corridors. A nowhere land. You sit back, resigned to your not belonging. It is part of being in a place where you find yourself. You rely on your instinct to take you to a place called bed. You are so close and yet so far.

co-incidence of circularity of existence

a wish

That it should rain for a month from the day after tomorrow.
Then that the sun should shine all Summer.

national icon

the advisors

In some things they were wise and knew much
In others they were not and knew little
When they spoke on the things they knew well
Their wisdom radiated. When they spoke on
The things they knew little, their wisdom
Rung hollow, like a damaged cowbell.
The value of their words maligned by an
Over-enthusiasm for their blazing talents.

the fire of 1613

They were in the bear pit. Not wanting to fight. Talons
Withdrawn. All of them. Generations and generations of
Merricks. Innocent though tarred with the guilt of blood
Shed in a time and country they had never known. Some-
One swung a hammer, and the bear pit caught fire. A
Thatched roof singing spiss in a late Summer shimmy.
The rain reneged on its contract. The flames fanned by a
Misplaced mistral. The fire burnt for thirty days and thirty
Nights and then it burnt some more, slow burning now,
Flickered menace, a reminder of warmth, the evidence of
Change. When it was burnt through you could not say there
Was nothing left. Like burn marks on skin, there was the
Implication of a form whose meaning was forgotten, or
Beyond any obvious reading. Survivors picked their feet
Through the ash. Foreign breezes sallied forth. Newcomers
Would never have guessed the games (of cruelty, laughter
Tension) that this site had encompassed. If they had
Lived to tell the tale, the bears might have bungled their
Way through the tealeaves of this labyrinth. Chased each
Others tails a laughing. Cavorted in the mismaze.

dirty old river

wake up call

The phone rings. My hand stretches out of an in out sofa bed sleep. It picks up the receiver. Presses the green button. I say hello. There's an international fuzz on the line. A man starts talking. I don't recognise the language. South East Asian, perhaps. He talks for thirty seconds. I say hello, repeatedly. He ignores me. He starts to sing. The song's rhythm is jaunty. The words pass me by. Then the words change. He sings in English. He sings: Strangers, Don't be talking to Strangers. Strangers, Don't be talking to Strangers. He hangs up, abruptly.

at moussaoui's trial

They play the last recorded call of a banker, about to meet his death.
A man tells how his son called him from a jet that would soon strike the
Towers. The judge advises prosecutors not to overplay emotional
Evidence, for fear that on appeal, the death sentence might be revoked.
Should the case be 'overly prejudicial'. The defendant had been arrested
For traffic violations, a month before the attacks. The failed conspirator
Watched the planes strike from a prison cell. Had he been guilty of murder,
He would already be dead. Execution might seem a suitable compensation
For a man photographed in winterproof gear at Brixton station. His fate
Will resonate with those whose agonies go unheard in the court of law.

in transit

An actress says that he is failing to understand how everything he thinks is so little is so important in what she shall do when she comes to play her part.

+++

A coffee cup is forgotten.

+++

Risks are taken. The memory of a theatre dreamed of, one where every moment flirts with an edge. The edge of incomprehension, tedium, disconnection. On the other side of which (edge) lurks revelation, fascination, absorption.

+++

A silence lasts forever and for a moment it's as though this might be the vortex that the whole show collapses into.

+++

A song lingers in the mind.

+++

A plastic sacks walks like an animal.

+++

A head shakes with life.

+++

Loss is enclosed in a spider's web.

+++

We have all been there. We shall all go there.

drama

What is it? It is people, usually, in an enclosed space, perhaps a room, perhaps not, sensing across that space, a spiral or a vortex or a labyrinth or tangents or the ghosts or tremors - of possibilities. Lives lived as they are and as they might otherwise have been. It is the eyes connecting, disconnecting, acknowledging, contemplating. Beyond which it is the mass of those brains, lurking behind the eyes and the facades, all of them ticking over, chasing private dragons, taking their toll.

This is why I enjoy creating one-off, ephemeral pieces of drama. The drama in the room reverberates around the drama on the stage. In a dream world, which might be the world I currently inhabit, every show would live and die in the instant of its creation, crystalised through the senses of the audience which still chooses to participate.

latest chapter in californian culture clashes

Move over Brecht and McCarthy: FBI interview former Smiths frontman

+++

Still ill, what kind of a message is that?
An accurate one, I would suggest.
Shoplifters of the world unite?
The bomb that will bring us together?
Would you call yourself a delusional fantasist Mr -
Morrissey.
Mr Morrissey?
Possibly.
Girlfriend in a coma - there were times when I could have murdered her... Is that line in any way biographical?
Possibly.
Possibly?
Probably not.
You English, Mr Morrissey?
Well, she owes me a living.
We're keeping tabs.
I rather hoped you might be.

etc etc

slim snappers

four months

The child wants to move forwards under its own steam. It lies on its belly and tries to crawl. Some of the parts work. The knees bend and push. The hands grip and stretch. It’s hard to do it all at the same time, to co-ordinate. Yet, the child wants to move. It lies on his belly and tries. Strains and furrows his little brow and the effort is intense. He fails again but hasn’t given up. He will be back. It cannot be as difficult as it seems. One day, he knows, he will crack it.

waiting for ket at oxford circus

the knight's pawn

Fischer assessed the board. He knew that there was a reason he was better than his opponent. Than any opponent they could throw at him. The reason? A strange kind of courage. Which would burn itself out, no doubt, sooner or later. It was all to do with a fearless flair, a willingness to place his pieces in the line of danger, to make moves that encompassed a level of risk that more conservative players, which included every other player in the world, lacked the nerve or the imagination to take. One day, the balance of risk to result would collapse. His judgement, which was the preservation of an instinct as much as the cultivation of a strategy, would slacken, like an old golfer’s swing. All the same, he knew that he could never have acquired this level of talent, this perhaps unsurpassable level of talent, had he not realised that the risk inherent in making the move was correlative to how effective the move could be. This realisation, and his capacity to sustain and impart faith and play, or live, by this realisation, was what had initially separated him from the ordinary chess players, and then from the extraordinary, and now from the very champions themselves.

Fischer’s belief in his own genius was not arrogance. To believe anything else would have been false modesty. All that truly scared him was the knowledge that one day his nerve, this instinctive nerve, would wither. In this realisation he committed himself ever more wholeheartedly now, knowing the nerve was still strong. There is no move on the chess board that does not encompass risk. The minute this is forgotten, the game sinks to the level of the predictable. Fischer could not abide the idea.

When his chess nerve finally failed him, he retreated, and then compensated in the cruder game of political diatribe.

amongst wrestlers

Gorgeous George’s manager’s there, so’s Adrian. Adrian’s
Preening his fingernails at the camera, saying he’s going to
Cause you harm. In the ring. Big Daddy’s playing the straight man.
‘There’ is a hanger in West Croydon. An air extractor churns
Against the fifties roof, affecting sound quality. It’s the sort
Of place where giggling children might have trained to duck
And cover. Duck and cover. Teachers screaming. Stop playing
The fool. Imagine your bones are Halloween X-rays. Kenzo
Nagasaki sits on a crash mat, a knowing look ghosting his
Transexual lips. They’re all going to get it. In the ring.

A Peruvian serves pizza. An artist talks of the art deco
Bravura that was New York. Before it was neutralised by
Gamma rays. Chavez jokes about Dick Tracey, says
If the US invades, there’s no more oil for anyone. He
Muscles up like a wrestler in his tight T-shirts. Shares
Show pony instincts. War’s a vaudeville act. Waged with
An eye to the gallery. Pity the submarine commanders,
Skulking wraiths, with four options come the hour the atoms split:

1: Put yourself in the command of the US, (if it’s still there). 2:
Head for Australia. 3 Retaliate. 4 Use your own judgement.

wit and wisdom of Josef Stalin

If a child doesn’t cry, the mother doesn’t know what it needs.

On scientists political meddling: Leave them in peace. We can always shoot them later.

Beria rushes to call Stalin after the successful explosion of USSR’s first atomic bomb. Stalin picks up the phone and says:
I know.

On death: One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.

tubal question

wilderness