All entries for Saturday 22 January 2011

to distract me from the seventeenth century

I'm listening to Sigur Ros, having made compulsive lists of all my tasks for the weekend. And subsequently all the dinners I know how to cook..worryingly there's less than a week's worth of variety and 3 of them involve pasta. I think Takk.. is my favourite album, though perhaps predictable. Hoppipolla is playing, and the sun just burst through the clouds in a wonderfully sort of staged poetic moment. It's been a while since they washed over me, swirled around the walls of my room in that way only SR can. The sun tends to shine through this little gap between two buildings, where all that peeps up is chimneys - it reminds me of that scene from Mary Poppins where they're all running around on rooftops. I think that's in Mary P.. I always used to dream I ran along the rooftops. Today, all I feel like doing is going for a long walk in the fields, but it's too cold and I have too much to do. So now I feel a bit caged and restless, full of toast. I finally bought some strawberry jam - so now I have 3 varieties of toast at my disposable which frankly permits an unprecedented feeling of choice.

Yesterday A and I went to the hospital. When waiting outside on the benches, this little girl was waving her arms and legs around in her pram and squeaking loudly - we concluded it was possibly an attempt at K Perry's 'firework'. The other patients didn't seem as amused.. probably because they'd had to attempt Coventry's already-puzzling road system before breakfast, nurses being axed at local clinics - 'sorry, cuts'.

Better go read Hester Pulter. Only 6 weeks of C17th reading left, focus on the horizons..

: 22 Jan 2011 14:02 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

darren and the cheesegrater

Darren - a supporter of the green party with a terrible secret, who has a particular penchant for ice cream. The conclusions Rebecca M came to of myself, having read an extract of free writing. Not necessarily true - though I do like ice cream. Wouldn't go as far as 'penchant', though.

I was deeply enraged by her choice of washing up liquid. Sticky yellow puddles that smelt like a motorway convenience, and doubtless contained more poisons than a medieval apothecary. She kept using the stuff, too, as if delighting in my ill-masked agitation. Washing again and again, swirling the sponge in careless circles and watching meditatively as the suds rose up and out of the sink, some even wafting up into the kitchen ether and making for the kettle. I tapped impatiently, hoping for her to register my distaste and put down the soapy weapon, maybe even carry the remains of her stew out for the compost bin I had so lovingly fashioned. I’d even painted a ridiculous floral pattern over its sides to try and appease her contempt. I think only carrot peel had made its way there so far. I continued to tap, gazing wistfully out onto our small lawn. The hydrangea needed a trim. Maybe I would take the cuttings over that evening, walk the long way over the fields by the abandoned mill. Such blue sky, a rather plain tapestry. The stars would be out. How I longed for the nights when we’d lay on our backs, pointing out the Five Sisters and competing for the best vision. Some night’s we’d stay until sunrise, until the fieldfare began to dart from their grassy houses and our shadows were short by our sides. I think those fields were privately owned now, it was hard to say. Much had changed in their docile town. Yuppies invading from all over the south, “thirty minutes to London by high-speed rail, near excellent schools…”. Apartments sprung up like molehills in the golden fields. It seems so fruitless to long for the past. In the discontented present, my remonstrations failed to impact upon her, so I decided to make a start on the Viennetta I’d weakened to on my way home that afternoon. Each of us has to resort to consumerism from time to time, I told myself. Especially when mint ice cream is the object of desire.

Now, the inanimate object. A cheesegrater. It's what I always thought i'd picture if Derren Brown asked me to imagine an object. Probably wouldn't throw him, but is nice to imagine it would.

Only vaguely could I hear their impatient conversation from my shelf. Darren hated that washing up liquid. Mind you, I hated it too. It made all my grates wince whenever that bitch tipped it over me, a giant sticky net oozing into all my pores and running through me. Then the scrubbing, oh how I feared it. The little pieces of cheddar, only so recently acquainted, now scraped from me in a violent shunt. Ohh, the mere thought made me want to rust over and be forgotten. My shelf was looking a bit rusty, maybe even dusty, now I think of it. Ever since Darren got into all this vegetarian business so many of my peers had been relegated to lower shelves. Most notably Steve, haven’t heard him leave in at least 2 years now. Still see his wires spilling out onto the bottom shelf from time to time mind you. Expect she’s put a stop to his recycling machinations. Time was I thought we were all headed for the workshop, twisted apart and reformed. Through the small crack I noticed Darren tapping the way he always did now, eyes tracing the flight of suds as they freed themselves from the bowl. Now he turned to the window, eyes heart and mind longing for the green space outside. Once he’d even taken me out there, placed me on a wooden table under a sunny evening sky. Various aperitifs I seem to recall, even olives. I think there’d even been parmesan. Oh, what was he doing now..making his way over towards us. Ah, the freezer, a chilly blast rests on my metals. He does love his ice cream, that Darren.

: 22 Jan 2011 13:46 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem