Commute Salute

On the Holloway road I sleep by the train line. An intercity line. At night I hear the trains creep. The creeping, sleeping, sleeper trains. Lugging purring, heaving bodies to the city like corpses to the morgue. At indeterminate instances the whine and squeal of brakes reminds me I'm wide awake. At others it is this easing off of metal, this acceleration of steel, that nudges me towards unconsciousness. When I rinse my breakfast dishes, up early with nowhere to go, I see white shirts crushed in standing packed carriages, awaiting another day of the slaughter, and I say a little thank you.

Laws of Drinking

1) Evian backwards is naive

2) Beer backwards is vomit

Vole

Help me to love you as you deserve

For I am stupid and slow of wit

Help me to love you without reserve

For I know cupid is full of shit

Rising in Estimation

At tonight's gig a woman says, go on then, what card am I thinking of? I look at her cynical eyes and without a second thought tell her the four of diamonds. Wide open they split and she freaks. I can't really do this stuff, but when I can, it's pretty good.

Lint Removal

There is nothing more embarrassing than dumping a handful of change in a pretty girl's hand and realising that change contains pocket fluff. I don't know what it is about that fluff, but as you both stare at it, if you're me, a hideous need to unpick it from the coinage will overcome you and will you find yourself pawing at her digits in a bid to save face. And even though you know that there's really nothing that wrong with a bit of pocket fluff, you can't help but feel that, deep down, there really is.

Day Broke

Currently my world is one long breakfast buffet. When did these get so popular? What happened to ordering? There are some things in life that just should not be ladled, and sausages are one of them. Equally, I do not want to scoop grey scrambled eggs from the bucket of 500 dead chicken babies. I order some poached eggs and they arrive like a beached Portuguese Man-of-war, stringy whites lying around the plate in limp pools of water. My orange juice is churned, the grapefruit is stewed and flies are buzzing over the cold rubbery toast. I pack it in and head out, and as I leave the maître d' wishes me good morning. I wish for one too.

Taking it Literally

Tend is a word that I often overlook. I rarely concern myself when I see it in a sentence. Unless of course it's the following sentence from a book I'm reading called Modern Chemical Magic, 'Drop a blazing sponge in the mouth and close it quickly. This tends to extinguish the flame.' And if it doesn't?

Facts of Life

When you come down to it, cheese on toast is just very low tech pizza.

Up in smoke

It was on Jonny Carson that it all fell apart. The air conditioning wreaking havoc with the balance of the smoke as the cancerous particles stubbornly refused to cling or to curl into those delicate hoops, and cloud after cloud dispersed in the mechanically cooled breeze. In still air he would direct these smoky bands with a sure hand and float them in a variety of directions with his gentle steer. Today though he couldn't even cough out a semi-circle, and openly, the audience mocked, derided, choked on their own guffaws. He continued in despairing vain, sensing with growing certainty there was no way home. Jonny Carson, now laughing, covered his mouth and shielded his moistening eyes from the audience. There are some things you never live down, and those are the things that never let you live.

Big Questions

It's twenty to one in the morning, I'm in a council flat in Holloway and I can hear seagulls out of the window. Sometimes I have to ask myself, what's going on?

Luckily, I have one

I'm eating a fish finger sandwich and all I can think is, man, I need a woman.

Complex God Complex

This is what I'd like on my gravestone...

'There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.'

Maybe that sounds big headed. But I don't mean it that way. 

I'm just trying to get out of bed each day.

On Hampstead Heath

He towers above me

In his van

The Ice Cream Man

Artificially tall

Elevated and looming
Pathetically small
I stand there choosing

From flavours like

A Wassup or

A Screwball

These are not 'Walls'

But a cheap imitation

In which they change just enough letters

To avoid a lawsuit

Hence

Magnum

Becomes

Maestro

And

Feast

Becomes

Festival

And though his sign says

You can't fake a flake

Make no mistake

He has

What does Jamie Oliver taste of?

'So you put your ingredients in, shake it, and it gives you a Jamie Oliver flavoured dinner.' -- Lady in Pret, today

It bothers me

It bothers me that someone has decided the most appropriate way to package, sell and display sandwiches is within a triangular container. It bothers me that they experimented with various sizes of containment and felt a three sided configuration would offer both the maximum degree of presentation and the minimum consumption of space. It bothers me that this was somebody's life, researching, developing, creating these boxes, dismissing all varieties of cubes, rhomboids and trapeziums from the equation. It bothers me that there are those out there still refining the solution, still improving the design with the integration of cardboard with plastic, with the addition of easy-peel tabs that crack open the box with minimal ease. I don't know why this bothers me, I just know that it bothers me.

To Pay the Bills

I'm doing a gig on the Thames tonight, and as I leave the DJ is playing The Delfonics, Didn't I blow your mind this time, didn't i? And as I step off that boat, I think I can safely say, no, I didn't. In my experience, the minds of a boat full of engineers don't blow. They suck.