Odd day. Odd McBod. An hour long chat with someone I used to work with where I was acutely conscious that I wasn’t so much joining in a conversation as simply recounting my experience of their experience. And vice versa. I guess it’s fair to say neither of us are natural networkers.
At work I was called in to do some impromptu journalism, which was a lot of fun. All I had to do was look at people, ask them fairly mundane questions and stick a mic vaguely near where they were speaking. It was a lot easier than being on the other end of the lens. Except for the very first interview — I had forgotten I would need to keep a conversation going, particularly one that didn’t involve me either being cynical, sarcastic or telling a long shaggy dog story. I had to be nice. Urgh. And smile at people. And be reassuring. And listen. Urgh urgh urgh.
Then stuff. And nearly making someone cry. And nearly crying myself. But not at the same point, though for similar reasons. And cake. And being complemented on looking thinner. By a married man. And then impossidoku.
Walking up Gray’s Inn Road, I passed a woman in a blood red coat sat on the steps of the old funeral home. I think it’s an antique shop now. Her skin was translucent and her eyes, pupils shrunk to accusatory dots, danced with anger. Her shoulders and feet were pinched — someone was being given a hard time on the other end of the mobile inevitably clamped to her ear. She had a classic beauty. I wondered what this scene would have looked like fifty, a hundred years ago. I wondered why she was sat on the step — it would have been cold and wet — perhaps she’d been waiting a long time, or she was simply too angry to care.
Blood red coat and stone cold eyes sitting on cold stone on the phone. Gnawing a thought bone. Or something. Ta. Xi.
No writing.
