Wed 15th January 2020

Hardly any money, hanging on till payday again, card refused at the monocultural pub full of dependently rich students, wondering how I will drink, and pay my rent.

Tonight, on the bus home from work at The Big House, a bulky black man was sat opposite, playing gospel music on his phone. He turned it off. I said "that's good music brother, don't turn it off." "Are you a Christian?" "No but that's good music. We should try to lift ourselves up, overcome things. You carry on playing that." I never used to use the word "brother" like this before I came to Bristol.

Then Hayley texted, saying she's got her own flat. A sparkler lit in my head. An old rave track, called Jump For Joy¹. Say jump, say jump for joy. She just needs furniture. We can do that. I look forward to scavenging, kitting her flat out with free furniture, buying fairy lights, lamps. We're going to make it her own; not tell The Abuser where it is; send him down a vortex of neediness. He'll have a key, but it'll be to my house.

I rang her, knowing it would go to voicemail because The Abuser doesn't want her to have any outside contact, so her phone always has to be on silent, but knowing that, maybe in the toilet, she would read it.

1. My first ever footnote in fifteen years: I don't mean the well-known 2Unlimited track with the same name, but this one by KC Flightt. It's fucking dreadful, but at the time (1990), it sounded great.

2 comments »

2 comments

Comment from: Scarlet [Visitor]

Good news! Very pleased that Hayley is to escape the abuser.
Sx

Thu 16th January 2020 @ 08:19 Reply to this comment

Comment from: [Member]

It is indeed. She’s so tough, but tough people need some gentleness in their lives too.

Thu 16th January 2020 @ 09:03 You are currently replying to this comment

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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

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Jump For Joy

2 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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