the woman who always finishes your sentences, but filling in the wrong blanks

so you're saying... and i was cycling down the canal with this guy, and then this other guy popped up... and she says "... and you ignored him!"

and the end of that sentence was not that. it was obviously "... and i became a completely stupid jelly-fish who other jelly-fish would laugh at in account of the totally ridiculous wobble that was generated by the encounter. as if it was the first time it happened and all..."

orange light

how often can you say that the orange glow of the sunset illuminated everything with acute clarity? not very often, you can't. and this time it didn't either.

what's wrong with this story

look around. the shadows hold empty spaces. the mirrors reflect no lights. sternum tightens.

out there

somewhere out there there is a man waiting on a train, slightly heady from the third pint, a girl walking down the canal, past the zillion footballs buried in the deep. a moorhen whistles and a cat pricks up her ears, tom coming. out there someone is wondering where i am and imagining what i am doing and dreaming of the landscapes in my head. someone dusting his old hat and shining his boots ready for the journey back to where out there someone is me.

health and safety at work

"please would you all make sure that the connection between the gas pipe coming from your cylinder and the heater itself is secure and that there is no gas escaping"

dream diary

n and i are staying in the flat at night. there are noises and strange lights. we both think, but don't say, that the flat is haunted. where she staying is a basement flat, but i live upstairs in my flat. we're both huddled downstairs. through the slightly raised window you can see lights and shadows from the outside. at one point the window lights up with a complicated pattern showing a big pyramid and the alphabet. this prompts n to finally speak: i don't want you to freak out, she says, but... do you think policemen used to live in this flat? i know, somehow, exactly what she means: either that they died here or they killed someone here, she's talking about ghosts. this makes me get completely hysterical, and for a while i am shivering and raving and saying there's someone there, even though i haven't seen anything to suggest this, just shadows fleeting past the corner of my eye. then i go upstairs to my room and try to calm down.

i keep hearing noises but convince myself it's the wind. then i go to the loo and, bam! there's a man there. he's semi-transparent, so i know it's a ghost. he's dressed in blue overalls, is bold and has a beard. slightly paunchy. a little like that autopsy guy on the telly. but, i know this, he's...a plumber! now i completely go crazy, although i'm not scared of him, i'm scared of the idea that forms in my head of someone living in my attic.

i run downstairs. n catches me at the bottom of the stairs and sits down with me trying to find out what's wrong with me. silently the guy comes and sits next to both of us on the steps. n doesn't see him. i say: who are you? he says: i live up there. i say: you do?!? and i wake up.

i wake up to the unnerving notion that perhaps, one day, a plumber died in my attic while fixing my boiler. a long long time ago.

sample saturday

fox walks past long tail and some say abnormally long legs carried through bin bags brimming with summer things. i left the place of an old time friend her lips telling me a story that doesn't chime with marriage on the way but leaves a flavour of what may be. a red-clad beggar tells a story so tired it lies down on the sidewalk for a while before it makes its way to my ears which listen but don't hear because what is there to know. and then the only man to be found throws a bagful of empties onto his neighbour's garden and smiles at me as the glass shatters tunefully, as if it all make sense, which it probably does in another dimension and who am i to tell. and the fox walked away a long while ago, and now he's gone and he's taken all the knowledge with him, that's what happens on a saturday night after schmoozing the bouncers, drinking the margaritas and downing that steak, if you will call it so.

lovely evening

the second old lady two nights running says it's a lovely evening, lovely i say. on the bus kids joke and get concerned about the lady snoring in the front seat. ogling the quirky lass in her retro specs. tiny lights shining in every corner. balcony waiting for midnight fresh air and sleep.