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Archives for: "April 2020"

Untransfigured Night

Thu 30th April 2020

I'm back from an unplanned evening walk, deliberately following darkened streets and alleys, the underpass with its anti-shooting-up blue light, until the sky opened to a lambent half moon in the park, like a Bristolian Verklärte Nacht. The couple there… more »

9 comments »

Just Say No

Mon 20th April 2020

In what I hope is a kindly indication that I might be rehabilitated once my compulsory re-education is finished -- it's a course without a specific graduation date -- Cath offered to run some of my stuff over to Hayley's. Thus I was able to attend the… more »

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Chez nous

Thu 16th April 2020

Monday night at Hayley's. She fashioned a crack pipe from a Guinness can, stabbing it with its folded ring-pull. She wanted us to go to her friend Harry's flat. She put lipstick on, straightened her hair, and wore this little skirt I'd not seen before.… more »

3 comments »

Cover up

Mon 13th April 2020

My drinking is coming to the attention of my live-in landlady Cath, now that I don't have the omertà cloak within pubs. The betraying sibilant gob of a tin of lager as a housemate occupies the adjacent room. Yesterday I bumped into Cath in the… more »

2 comments »

La peste

Mon 6th April 2020

I work at the hospital thirty hours a week over five days, so there's nothing particularly leisured about my week; yet the virus has quietened the din of consumerism. The showy jobs which most of us do are now admitted to be useless. On the ward, I went… more »

13 comments »

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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Archives for: "April 2020"

Untransfigured Night

Just Say No

Chez nous

Cover up

La peste

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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