« Boring family | Looby and Trina on Tour » |
All by myself
Kim left this afternoon and the real comedown, of her not being here, is added to the pharmaceutical one, after three days fuelled by plant food and the poor man's Pepsi.
On the first night we finally stopped taking anything at about 11am, dozed for an hour or so, then dragged ourselves out round the pound shops and into a pub, her and my holiday venues of choice. We bought some sherry and blanketed ourselves up in the living room, a cosy bundle of her crocheting and me reading the LRB as best as I could with my weakened eyes, which were mixing text up as a plea for a few hours off.
I broached the sleeping arrangements and she said what I'd hope she'd say, which saved some effort on my part. In the middle of the night I looked across at her, one arm squared behind her head, the other symmetrically arrayed across her stomach, her beautiful eyes and mouth and lips and face lifting and sighing.
Next day, we moved downstairs and resumed our positions in our bedded camp in the living room. Serendipitously, an email arrived from a previous occupant of that bed. "Bit of a long shot", she ventured, and said she was coming up from Manchester to see a band in Lancaster who were supporting Hazel O'Connor. I googled for them, didn't like them, rang her to tell her so, and asked her what she was doing before or after. She said she'd skip the main act if I fancied coming out.
Kim was fading and didn't want to come out. Bryony was waiting outside the theatre and I pinched her bum as a greeting. We went for a pizza and wine. The conviviality, the light, the clear perspex chairs, the feeling of familiarity of a place in which I was employed as the washer-up thirty years ago. Everything felt bright.
I talked about the Walsall project and Trina in a way that I'd normally censor as too voluble and "big". I told her about my misgivings about me and Trina living together. She said that "sometimes one must compromise," something I can't agree with in this context.
I kissed her goodbye and bought more sherry and came back home. Kim was already in bed. I was soon fast asleep. Today, we linked arms and walked into town to buy postcards and a reviving Lancashire hotpot in a pub before she left.
I went to work at Really Late, then went round to Kirsty's to have a chat with her and my daughters. They've been to their set's co-ordinator to complain about disruptive members of their class. We planned Halloween a bit. I've got a lab coat for Fiona to be the evil doctor.
Now, by myself, there's a pile of demands for money I haven't got and threats of court action, and one from my mum enclosing a fiver, money she hasn't got either.
2 comments
Hazel O’Connor - I bought that single of hers, the one with a really great sax solo in it
I can’t stand it! That headache-inducing treble-y programmed drumming with a identical pattern in every song of BANG BANG BANG BANG–God it’s like someone hammering a dustbin lid next to your earhole.
Form is loading...
looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person
M / 60 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].
"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.
WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.
There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic
I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008
The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek
Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner
La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes
Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to
mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards
the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity
would be able to use the word again.
John Whale
One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010
The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011
Rummage in my drawers
The Comfort of Strangers
23.1.16: Big clearout of the defunct and dormant and dull
16.1.19: Further pruning
If your comment box looks like this, I'm afraid I sometimes can't be bothered with all that palarver just to leave a comment.
63 mago
Another Angry Voice
the asshat lounge
Clutter From The Gutter
Crinklybee
Eryl Shields Ink
Exile on Pain Street
Fat Man On A Keyboard
gairnet provides: press of blll defunct, but retained for its quality
George Szirtes ditto
Infomaniac [NSFW]
The Joy of Bex
Laudator Temporis Acti
Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder
The Most Difficult Thing Ever
Quillette
Strange Flowers
Trailer Park Refugee
Wonky Words
"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006
5:4Bristol New Music
Desiring Progress Collection of links only
NewMusicBox
The Rambler
Resonance FM
Sequenza 21
Sound and Music
Talking Musicology defunct, but retained