« Hayley makes me think | Selection » |
Rhubarb and custard
Hayley rings, the day after her deadline for moving out, asking me for the number of the Man with Van who moved me. A couple of days later, and after some pleading, I walk to hers, my hot feet moaning at the prolongation of their shift after twelve hours at work. In the lift, there is a poster requesting "no spitting".
Her new place is spacious, with a living room showing off views to the rise up to the postcardy bit of Bristol, but has the bleakness of a recently eviscerated flat. She has no sheets on the bed. The lightbulbs stare autistically at the white vinyl flooring, working together to dissuade a woman who wants everything to be done, rather than to do it, from making the flat her home.
We make plans for a decorating party which will never happen. She'll lapse back to her boyfriend's, which is already her de facto home address. We share a bottle of Pieroni. I listen. I give her the couple of grams for which she said she was going to pay me.
Resolutions for henceforth: money from Hayley in my hand first; only then the handover. At times, she's a taker.
Looking at my leaky bank account the other day, I calculated that, in the last thirty days, I have spent eighty-seven pounds on bus fare.
I wrest myself from Mel's arms at 7am to look at an electric scooter on ebay. I trump all bids with four seconds to go, the slowness of Mel's phone's internet connection working excitingly to delay my hurdling over the others. The scooter arrived when I was out, and was taken in by someone in the same block as me.
When I collected it, he wanted to take a picture of me with it as "some people claim it's not been received. Let's have a nice big smile." I felt like some starlet being ogled in a soft porn photoshoot, certainly the first time in my fifty-seven years that I have felt like a starlet in a soft porn photoshoot. "They're actually illegal you know. I know they're everywhere but they're illegal on the public roads."
"It's not a scooter mate, it's full of weed." My joke, intended as a stopper for his hectoring mouth by making him think that he'd been harbouring fifteen kilos of cannabis in his flat overnight, went unnoticed, and he finally released the scooter to my possession.
I "assembled" it, in a manual operation at the limits of my engineering skills involving no fewer than four screws and an Allen key. It looked tall, black, and daunting. But today, under Mel's supervision I took it up and down our close. I think it's going to be jolly good fun.
I told middle daughter about it, saying that I'll feel happier once I've got a helmet. "You'll have to go into a shop for that. You and mum have bequeathed us very small heads. I can't get that sort of thing off the internet."
I can't remember the last time that due to my impatience to get everything off, my trousers, pants and socks ended up in a sort of rolled up sex ball on the floor. I fucking love it, when all the preliminaries are disposed of, and the murmuring collapses into an abandoned, inelegant undressing. Then afterwards we sat there in this sweaty Ready Brek glow of love. I'd made us a rhubarb crumble shortly before this episode. It was quite tart and Mel enjoyed more than one mouthful.
I won't mention this to Trina when I see her though. It's my brother's fiftieth in July and I was going to use the day to present Mel to my clan, but the care home in which my brother resides under benevolent control has changed the date for the barbeque to one which clashes with a family do for her.
So I've invited Trina instead, who is glad to come. I don't know if I'm prolonging her frustration by doing this. I know what it's like to feel corroded by unrequited attraction, and how the friendliness of the desired one can add more hurt. But she gets on well with my mum, and I need a drinker-in-arms to rescue me, once nightfall comes, from my family's teetotalism.
Feedback awaiting moderation
This post has 7 feedbacks awaiting moderation...
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
George Szirtes ditto
Infomaniac [NSFW]
Laudator Temporis Acti
Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder
The Most Difficult Thing Ever
Quillette
Strange Flowers
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