Sun 11th November 2012

The horrible militarism of Remembrance Day is over. Men who don't often drink were in the pub, talking at a performance volume. Paranoid, aware that we are simultaneously watching them and ignoring them with silent disdain, they dance round homosocially with international lager.

It stinks, even through the plastic, a bitter smell, a bit like piss. "Be careful with this," he said, "it's fucking strong." I started trying to cut it and it was sticky and wet; all of these should be good signs.

Well, I've had three [Really? Just the three? - Ed.] doses of a centimetre each now. It's nowhere near the best stuff I've ever had, which was made in a university.

"I know you've heard all this before," the student said," but honestly, don't do more than a centimetre." Everything about them came across as genuine, so we reluctantly obeyed. We were soon gasping, our hearts racing with a surfeit of chemical energy. After wasting the best part of the high on an infuriating detour to an ATM for someone who told us after we'd done it that she needed to get some cash out, who wouldn't accept our offers of a loan of a tenner, we danced for hours in a right-on Lancaster community centre where men in jumpers refrained from chatting up girls as that was considered a sin against feminism in the Macrame Belt of Lancaster in the 90s.

The cynic in me thinks he's thinking: "Hmm, I've got a keen customer here. Let's water it down a bit and see if he notices." I'm going to be straight with him. I only want the best stuff and if it's not available, fine. We're not addicts, we're connoisseurs, hedonists. We're not doing this as a paid version of self-harm; we're doing it to heighten our sensual, sexual, and artistic lives.

Round about now Trina will be arriving in Helsinki to spend a few days there with a friend. It's so liberating, not having to think or analyse my feelings about her. This afternoon I popped into the pub where Kitty and I were the other night, for what was necessarily a single pint due to the prohibitive prices: 3.40 for Thornbridge Jaipur.

I bumped into a couple of friends who were asking me where this made-up girlfriend is. I said "She's not going to get into Penthouse any time, but it just works for me." I wish I hadn't said that. Makes her sound like some lumpen over-sexed tart.

6 comments

Comment from: Homer [Visitor]

Agree with you about Remembrance Day. J’s facebook timeline was full of illiterate paeans about respecting soldiers, without any awareness that if the man in the street wasn’t so blindly pugilistic there might not be so many wars.

Mon 12th November 2012 @ 08:01

Comment from: [Member]

Well said Homer. The atmosphere in the country gets quite oppressive. Debate is silenced, and no questions are allowed to be asked about why we can’t afford to keep libraries open but can spend billions on war. Every single media figure has to be seen with a poppy. It’s turned a genuine vote of thanks to those who saved the country from fascism in the last century into a load of imperialist jingoist crap.

Mon 12th November 2012 @ 08:41

Comment from: The Unbearable Banishment [Visitor]

Over here it’s called Veterans Day. A proper respect is paid to the men and women. The other 364 days of the year it’s as you describe. Why, oh why, does the U.S. have bases in the European theater? Close ‘em all.

I haven’t had a recreational chemical in quite some time. At one point, I was a walking pharmacy. Things never got out of hand. I enjoyed myeslf. I kind of miss a night out of that ilk.

Mon 12th November 2012 @ 11:51

Comment from: [Member]

“At one point, I was a walking pharmacy. Things never got out of hand.”

Yes. Things never get out of hand here either. I look after my children, I have witty, sexy friends and confidantes, I work for a counselling organisation, I am in a book group, I’m not a bad cook, I read good literature, I enjoy myself in a civilised manner and go out dancing to soul, funk and other black music, and for over a decade I have volunteered at the UK’s foremost contemporary music festival. The popular idea (from people who only know about them from the media) is that rugs are so overwhelmingly controlling in one’s life that it makes it impossible to do any of these things. They’re not necessarily, although I do think speed is more civilised and sociable and gentle a rug than coke, which turns men into bigheaded arseholes.

The popular image of the rugtaker is the threatening wastrel, the dependent scruff who is doing them to postpone addressing real problems. I wish people could understand that rugs can make an evening brighter, make sex dirtier, make dancing more sensual, make a chat more open and voluble. They’re not, in my case, an eraser for distressing memories. I also wish this current lot I’ve bought was a bit better.

Mon 12th November 2012 @ 14:51

Comment from: young at heart [Visitor]

yep!!

Mon 12th November 2012 @ 18:54

Comment from: isabelle [Visitor]

Hope all’s well, posts keep disappearing, or maybe you’re going a bit incognito…

Sun 18th November 2012 @ 13:13

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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

M / 59 / 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

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6 comments

looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

Rummage in my drawers

The Comfort of Strangers

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

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