Month: August 2007

Making faces at the bus-stop.  I like to burble at the sparrows and tell jokes to the neighbourhood cats.  They feign disinterest but I know they’re cracking up inside.  Poker-faces.  That’s what cats have.  Yet they’re no good at cards as they’re too easily distracted by making your hand into a tunnel, or spinning your chips so they shine in the light.

The Cortina doors are rusty and creak when they’re opened.  I think Elvis should have oiled them when he did his first post-humous tour of Basildon in ’78.  Cortinas were big then.  As were the neighbourhood cats.  It was tougher in the seventies.  There hadn’t been years of Garfield to acclimitase people to obese pets.

There’s an old tape machine that likes to chew up tapes.  Some people say it’s because it’s an old heap of junk.  I like to think it’s exercising its musical conscience.  Supertramp and Dana are chewed,  the funny compilation tape my uncle made of Polynesian folk music for my christmas present once is not.

The Cortina has a body in the trunk.  It is not mine.  I do not know how it got there.  But it has made a new home inside the spare tyre, and talks to me on long trips.  It talks about highways it could have been on.  And fishing.  And where ghosts go when they’re tired.

I’m sitting alone in a Ford Cortina.  Waiting for my mojo to turn up.

The Susan Hill book turned out ok, even if there was a sudden ‘oh shit, I better introduce who the murderer is’ a bit too soon for my liking (I’m a big fan of the old Scooby Doo / Agatha Christie style of un-masking). It was also one of those annoying thrillers that the publisher pads at the end with the first chapter(s) of their next installment. It’s something I hate more than celery and as any fule should already know from this blog, celery is not so much the devil’s own vegetable, as a vegetable designed to perform oral torture on oneself. In. Oh. So. Many. Ways.

Life is in a bit of a holding pattern, prior to all kinds of mentalism. Change has been a near constant for the past decade. Which brings its ups and its downs. And its ramaladingdongs. I don’t think denial figures greatly in the catholic ouevre. In terms of being explained. Not experienced.

Anyhoo. One of my last Saturdays in Cambridge. For who knows how long. And my abiding memory will be of change. Of Eastern Europeans – one of the girls from AMT coffee riding around on her bike, two russian Hiltons arguing over a swiss roll in Marks and Spanks; kids playing football in the playground outside, screaming and swearing at each other; CB4 ‘tourists’ fighting each other on the late night train home to Bury/Newmarket; an Asian guy watching telly through an open window; Spanish girl on a bike gibbering away on her mobile; one of the neighbours vacuuming his car for over an hour; a new block of flats on my route to my local gym; kids on mopeds racing each other; Co-ops; organic butchers selling frozen rainbow trout; gay couple trying to get the other to wear the sunglasses; brutalist hairdresser.

Work is…. well. One of the beauties of t’internet is I can’t really talk about work. It’s like Fight Club. But with more salty snacks.

Needless to say, Monk Quixote is buried at the moment. I feel confident that some interesting stuff is ahead, perhaps once my ‘home’ ‘working’ environment is finally sorted. When all is said and done, there are a lot of Reasons and Stuff as to why Shit Happens. And more often, why Not a Lot Really Happens.

I started reading a Susan Hill novel today. Now. She may be a lovely human bean. And talented. And kind to animals. And possibly, just possibly, a fan of 1930s motorcycle goatboy fanfic. But. There is simply no excuse for the words ‘ectoplasmic fog’ and ‘dreicht night’ in the opening three paragraphs. Not enough to make me burn the book. But oh so close.

The last few days have been weird. I keep persuading myself I have no focus, which is my main excuse for never finishing a . Sentence. I mean, novel. Writing, that is. Not reading. I’ve read an appalling number of novels I should have stopped. But what I forget is that I’m stubborn. You don’t run marathons unless you’ve got a mule gene. And yet I’m easily bored. All the running paraphenalia (kit, logs, spreadsheets) induce a state of hypnosis / euphoria / disengagement. Which combine to create small periods of OCD-intensity activity. Sadly (well, for my literary career) most of this energy is currently entwined in lycra. Well, not mine, but I digress.

Running. To run. To gambol. To pootle. To sprint until one is sick. It’s just glorious. As are my legs. Shame about the rest of me. But anyway. Running. It’s brilliant. And despite all appearances to the contrary, easier to do than writing. For me, at least.

And yet. When it goes well. It’s better than running. Putting words together is the best high. Words put a grin on my face. Running hurts shins at my pace. Sigh, that was a reach. I even enjoy the corporate writing I do. It’s like acting – putting on a voice. Obviously I don’t get to swear, or do the. Short. Sharp. Self-reflexive difficult to read shit that I do on here. With or without puns. But it’s just fun. The flow of words. Feeling them whistle past your ears. The an-a-to-mical source of the sound (to quote my favourite lyric ever. Although the irony is I can’t remember it properly).

Which leads me to the conclusion that Marks and Spencers Vintage Cava is the new absinthe. I can’t account for the short sentences otherwise.

I’ve just finished reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which, disappointingly, is nothing to with the history of secrets or flan or the Da Vinci Code, but is instead about Gregory Peck. I kept reading the character Henry as Peck’s performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mocking Bird, although they are moral polar bears apart.

Anyhoo. As usual, none of that is relevant. Except that the chilli-induced dreams I had last night featured a death. The death of my youngest brother. And in my dream I was suddenly overcome with all the emotion that I have big-brotherly shielded from him all this time and howled like a banshee. The grief I was experiencing in the dream was simply incredible. When I woke up it took a few moments to return to my usual flatline state. And realise that he wasn’t, in fact, dead.

Which leads to duende, the gypsy curse. Spanish lore has it that it’s the struggle with the duende within oneself that brings out la pasion – in bullfighting, flamenco, firework throwing (probably). My brother has it. Dogs have it. Cats don’t. I don’t. I guess it’s the mischief gene, crossed with selfishness and vanity. Fires the soul.

I feel a bit flat at the moment. I haven’t written anything all week. Plans that seem so firm from one day seem somewhat less firm after days of inaction. Decisions are smudged. Which can only mean one thing. Breakfast.