Coffee Beens

The problem with going solo for coffee is you have no-one to save a seat for you. When you swing through the doors, you're on your own man, the others? They have teams! They've got one man on queue, one man on sugar and cream, one taking a leak and the one guy all over the sofa area, just waiting for an early mover. You're queuing away all by yourself, ordering your coffee, trying balance your muffin on your book with your sandwich all the time moving down the line, musn't hold up the line, by the time they've made you're latte all the window seats are snapped up and you're left sharing a high chair with the broadsheet reader. And you can't take a bathroom break can you? Of course not, who are you gonna trust? There are vultures circling for any sign of a vacated four-legger, so you have no choice but to drink the full bucket cup of steaming hot coffee as fast as you can, pack up your stuff and pray you make it to the urinal. Real peace in a cup.

Checked Out

They’ve changed my flight gate again. I went to 21, it changed to 19, I went to 19, it changed to 21. So I'm hedging my bets at gate 20. I checked in online this time, it took me 34 seconds and it's great- until I get to the airport. Everyone in front of me has these lovely plastic perforated boarding passes, but not me, oh no, I'm sat there with a folded sheet of cheap A4, decorated with so many fonts of various colours it looks like a bad church newsletter. They call my flight and I get in line, stewards slicing people off one by one with a tear of the ticket and a 'thank you Sir, enjoy the trip'. I get to the front and present my self-printed no-perf smudgy barcode of a boarding card and they unfold it like used toilet paper. They look from me to the ticket to me to the ticket again and call a supervisor. She whispers something quietly and they all look at me. After a pause they swing open like turnstiles, 'move along please.' Next time I'll walk.

The Humbled Meek

I'm watching the God channel late into the night because I can't sleep and I need reassuring. This is not reassuring. Slick white men and power-dressed power-hungry women reel off God's spiel, enticing me with their all-beckoning drawl to swallow their answers and assurance, their guaranteed twelve steps to heaven. They know the Truth, they own the Truth, and heck, they sell the Truth. They have websites on the Internet, and after their names, after their names they have the word 'ministeries'. That's a long word, so they must be legitimised. They wear shiny shoes and $50 haircuts and their teeth are white and their clothes aren't creased like my clothes get when I collapse at two am on the floor sobbing like a goddamn son of a bitch because of this hole, this black empty hole of despair, that rises up and drowns me when I am alone in the dark, and I have to put the tv on and watch it for a while to calm myself down. They have gold watches and use words like prosperity and blessings and showering of gifts for the faithful and I want those things, but I need Faith, and To Believe, and all I have is Fear. And if I have Fear, if I am Afraid, then I Do Not Know God, and I Do Not Love God, but for a limited time only, if I call this number and buy these cd's then I can get a free book. And this book will Make Me Love God, because I Must Love God because God is Good. And it makes me choke, it makes me choke. This is salvation of the fittest and it leaves me cold.

Snack Attack

After a recent mass in Scotland I went and had tea and biscuits with the father and a few friends of a friend. Now let me tell you, I haven’t had biscuits like that for a while; there were jaffa cakes, wafer fingers, bourbons, those marshmallow and biscuit chocolate covered things which I had totally forgotten about, it was like the greatest hits of biscuit! I would go to that church every goddamn week! I made a point of congratulating the Father and tea lady on their quite frankly astonishing selection. Actually I did this over and over again until they got a bit worried and started looking at me funny. And then I left. But still... they were some GOOD biscuits.

All I see is Edges

What is it with puzzles? And puzzles and old people? Puzzles are nothing more than a seemingly endless supply of identically shaped pieces of blue sky, or green grass, designed simply to distract the old folks as they wait to die. So I was a little perplexed when a friend bought a one thousand piece monster on holiday with us. And even more perplexed when I found myself, three days later, tipping the pieces out on to the table. Let me tell you something, starting a thousand piecer? Gee, that's a bitch. A bitch with cupcakes. Finding that first matching piece... hmm you're looking for a piece of blue sky among nine hundred and ninety eight other pieces of... blue sky! It was fair to say progress was slow to stationary, but after an hour or seven I had amassed the cloak of a man and the crotch of an angel. I thought it best to continue. Hours and hours in front of the table I sat, I got back ache, my long distance vision went all blurry, my insomnia took an impressively large turn for the worse. I started to dream I was doing the puzzle in my sleep, I'd shut my eyes and see nothing but pieces fitting one by one into the scene, and wake to find nothing had changed downstairs. Friends joined in, we came up with our own slang and puzzling terminology, we slapped pieces down with a twist and slam, we smacked edge after edge in the face, came up with systems and puzzley chaos theories. I would stand feet away and pounce on pieces in instinct, others would swear by large mugs of coffee to open the mind to 'the edges', innocent babies began to be wildly accused of missing piece consumption. Whisky and cigars became the mere fuel for our puzzle lust, and finally, with five of us crouched around the table, sleep-deprived, snapping and irritable, we approached the final pieces. We laid these like bodies into a grave and agreed to never speak of this again. But to perhaps form a monthly club, and perhaps next time we could do something from the renaissance period?

Park Life

It's summer in the shitty and beautiful tanned women drape their arms around pasty thin american white boys in long shorts and baggy shirts. I sit on a bench not wide enough as they kiss and canoudle next to me and watch me write. A fat girl rollerblades on the grass, falling down and picking herself back up while a dark haired instructer with steel pecks oozing sex shouts in her face. In despair she drops to her knees and sobs, telling herself how unsuitable this is anyway, and why is she doing this anyway? and fuck it, why should she lose weight just for him, and them, and why can't they just leave her as she is now, and this is what her mum used to do, and she's all covered in sweat, and it's dripping off her forehead, and fuck it. I want to tell her nobody looks good in full protective body gear anyway.

Free Entry

I'm drinking my carton of Ribena and I'm bored so I'm reading the small print. It's some blurb about their current competition where you can win a car or something, which is great because I don't drive, I just really like Ribena. So anyway, in the spiel they have one of those 'No Purchase Necessary' clauses, where they tell you didn't have to spend that 45p on the drink, you could have just written to them and they would have opened a carton for you to see if you won. I think it must be the law or something to do that as its always on these things, always on Mars bars and McDonald's promotions. Who's job is this? Who gets paid to sit there and unwrap all this chocolate? That's the greatest job in the world! What, so I just sit here opening Mars bars? Ok. Let's see, oh another loser. [munch munch munch] Ok what
about this one... oh no! another loser! [munch munch munch] You gotta be really reaching if you actually write to one of these anyway, I mean a stamp is about the same price as the chocolate bar anyway, and how can you trust them? I'm sure there is some fat fat dude, sick to death of Mars bars and Ribena but bopping it round in his new Mini Convertible with a lifetime's supply of Bovril.

Location Location

Where am I? I have taken one too many plane trips, train trips, long walks, short hikes, car trips with picnic blankets, car trips without picnic blankets, car trips to collect picnic blankets. I am by the sea one minute, in it the next, climbing down a valley, swimming in a lake, alone in a forest, until I cannot keep up with the pace of this shell of mine, this little pink holder of my world that changes its location faster than its socks. I close my eyes and see a small path before me, a grassy, gravely trail that leads around a corner. I follow it, I walk along to see where it leads, and as I tread, as I place one foot in front of the other, soft sleep overtakes me.

Whine and Dine

i'm in a restaurant not feeling too rested. the waitress slams down a plate in front of me making my cutlery jump in surprise. i have no idea why, but she is being a total bitch to me. she gives me nothing but black looks and contempt. well... and the food i order. i ask for the bill and she narrows her eyes and spins her heels. i must have done something.

‘enjoy the rest of your day,’ she says as she hands the bill over.
‘ok,’ i say, like it was an order or something.

Drinking Contest

I hate pub quizzes. I think of myself as pretty clever and there is nothing more damaging to that illusion as being outsmarted by a bunch of drunks. Where do these bums and dropouts pick up all this extraneous knowledge? Far as I can tell they spend their lives creating bar stool sculptures of their ass cheeks, not cramming the Britannica and taping University Challenge. Maybe the labels they constantly peel off bottles contain some secret source of knowledge, or perhaps alcohol gives a lucidity to the drinker far beyond that of the sober. Is that's why it's so popular; sure you lose all boundaries in social interaction and vomit on your mother, but you gain fresh insights into the world cup team of '82 and can name all seven of The Bangles.

the phone is off the hook

A man sits down across from me with a guitar and a broken voice and begins to play. A beautiful, clean melody, a paen on the sacrificial love of friendship. His voice is cracked, weathered and tarnished, each word a struggle, each note a stretch. Where was this song born? And what was it telling me? Because I for one was trying to sleep. All the while my subconcious had been composing this, scribbling notes in the deprivation of daylight. The song even rhymed. Rhymed! How did it do that? And now I was being serenaded with it. And as the guy finished, as he played the last few notes, my phone rang, and the real shattered the illusory. I lost it all.

The last I ever saw of her

A girl came up to me last night and pissed herself.
A guy turned to me.
'You’re in there,' he said.
'What?' I replied.
'Urine!' he shrieked, 'There!!!'

They Become Dull

On the side of the carton I am drinking milk from is a warning: This product contains milk. How long have I been surrounded by idiots? They walk too slow. Stop suddenly. Hesitate. Disembodied voices are their guide, announcements are obeyed without question, constantly heeded as they are cycled endlessly. They stare slack-jawed in loose incomprehension at the ticket barriers, bewildered at any possible connection between their paper ticket and the little slot. I push past. At the show they come in, bellies wobbling, hanging over their belts like sacks. Most are crippled in some way, their spines spelling out various letters of the alphabet, as healthy as can’t be. The men sit, tighting their cheap grey stained trousers at their thighs, displaying white socks and yellowed ankles, the ladies sit clutching their bags and clucking like hens at any small unsightliness. And above the heavy breathing comes conversations of the scrambling of eggs, the stitching of fabric, the spreading of cream. In the corner an old grey woman is crying at the loss of her husband. What am I going to do now, she asks, I don't know what to do now. The others tut, as if dealing with a child. There's lots to do these days, one replies, sometimes I don't know how I ever managed to have a job.

We Create Memories

I start off the day watching big choppy waves crash and spray over the sea guard, cars splashing through the overspill, the rocks, sharp and jagged the previous day, obscured beneath the swirling mass. It's 9am and I walk by the sea in a pin-stripe suit and pink shirt, three girls gulping white lightning from the plastic bottle double take at me and back to the bottle. I take one more look at the splashing sea and get a cab to the airport. Forty minutes later I'm flying over the green blue sea, leaving the island to it, unsure as to the difference I made. That evening I find myself in Putney. I approach a table of twelve, one of whom is a down-syndrome kid called Charlie. He wears a green bowtie and an ice white shirt, not a crease to be seen. I'm ten minutes in and these people love me, they scream, cheer, clap and ovate. Now I move my focus to Charlie, and he becomes the Magician, the star, with a little assistance from me he performs miracle after miracle, basking in his new found glory and wonder, almost choking with laughter. Finally the card he signed 'charlie' on in neat curly letters appears in a bottle, everyone at the table signs it for him, I put a big sticker on it for him and he leaves clutching it. The father tells me he cannot thank me enough, and he is right, I have given this kid a memory he will never forget, a moment to treasure for his lifetime and that is priceless. Life is shit, but sometimes we get to light up the darkness, no matter how unworthy of that we may be.

Nudge Nudge

As I walked along the street today (or was it yesterday? no matter, neither is true), I noticed a woman at a bus stop, a non-descript plain-jane of a woman. Now, she was a long way off, a distance of perhaps twenty metres or more, and from this space she turned to me and winked, directly at me, she just snapped one out. I, caught off guard, thrown, halted in my walk, off balance and hesitating, I looked at her for a sign of recognition, for a detail or feature I could put a name or a face to. I came up blank, I knew not this woman from adam. I looked at again, and again she winked. I'm walking again now, getting closer and closer to her by footstep and it’s going to get a little awkward soon. I am no more than three metres in front of her when she turns full body to me, and winks solidly in my direction and I catch on. There is no eye contact, no light of recognition, just a blank, vacant gaze. And a twitch. And a wink. Winks and twitches, twitches and winks. This is a woman of nervous disorders, the wink no more than a part of a series of elaborate ticks and flinches that are so numerous they appear to be quieing. I sidle by.