It's late. The clattering train. The chattering passengers. The tired faces. The drunken tramp – who smells. The lovers – who should get a room. The bored student listening to his music and leering at the women. And me watching them all. Happy and entertained by them. And always unaware of how they all see me.
A man walks into a bar and says, “Ouch”, it was an iron bar.
He goes up to the bar and says, I’ll have a “wool setting”.
The bartender says, “I can’t do that, I’ll crease up.”
The man says, “is that irony?”
“No,” says the bartender, “our barmaid Alanis Morissette, handles that”.
“It’s Unfortunate”.
“Yes,” says the bartender, “would you like to order a beverage?”
“No, I’m waiting for my friends the Scotsman and the Irishman.”
“Is this some kind of a joke?”
“No. But I’ll take some of these peanuts, they look like they would go with my suit.”
“Well they are complementary.”
“Is that the best you can do?”, says the man.
“Well I thought it was excellent,” say the peanuts.
“Look, can you move out of the way,” says a horse, “I’d really like a drink.
“Okay,” says the Englishman, “but why the long face.”
“Because I’m a horse”, whispers the horse.
“I can hardly hear you,” says the bartender.”
“Yes, I’m a bit horse. And I’ve got a frog in my throat.”
“Well let him out and see what he wants,” says the bartender.
The frog hops out and jumps on the bar and says, “I’m a prince, one kiss from a beautiful maiden and I will return to my true form”.
Alanis Morissette, on hearing this quickly grabs the frog and sticks it in her pocket.
“Oh, you seem a bit desperate,” whispers the horse.
“Oh no,” says Alanis, “just think of all of the money I can make from a talking frog”.
“I know, tell me about it, my mate the panda will be along in a moment, I’m only friends with him because he gets all The Cure and Kiss albums at knock down prices.”
“Oh he’s not coming here is he,” wails the barman, “with his big pauses, I hate the way he can never finish a sentence.”
“Look, I’m a member of Greenpeace,” says the frog, “and I resent you whaling in public. Also I don’t see what’s so wrong with probation, everyone deserves a second chance.”
“Probation,” whispers the horse, “did somebody mention probation – don’t tell me the eagle is coming tonight, he talks in such convoluted sentences, each of them having such long claws.”
“No, he’s not coming, the jump leads aren’t coming (in case they start something), the fonts aren’t coming (we don’t serve their type in here) and Shakespeare’s not coming – he’s bard.”, says the bardtender.
“You know who I feel sorry for,” says Alanis, “it’s the life-timers, the complete drunks who seem to always be here no matter what time of the day or night it is. Like that male rabbit.”
“Yes,” says the bartender, “the buck stops here. You might feel sorry for him, but what about my regulars when the neutron comes in? I mean with him there’s always no charge.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t have to pay,” asks the Englishman?
“Yes,” pipes up the positron, “I’m positive”.
Just as he’s saying this the dog walks in and says, “I think I’ll have some water”.
“Water, why not a proper drink, is something wrong?” says the bartender.
“Yeah, I’m feeling a bit ruff.”
“Anyway,” says the Englishman, “my friends don’t look like they’re coming. So maybe I’ll leave.”
“You can’t go without a drink,” says the barman, “why not have one for the road?”
The Englishman says, “no”, and tucks his tarmac back in his pocket and adds, “Well I would stay, but this place is a bit of a zoo.”
Two men are sitting on a bench in the park on an incredibly hot summers day. They are both wearing woollen suits and sunglasses. They even have the kind of hair that screams, “we are secret service operatives doing something dodgy”.
There is no sign that of contact between the two of them. The suggestion being that these two people wearing identically inappropriate clothing just happened to sit down next to each other. They have a newspaper sitting between them, the one who didn’t put it down will pick it up before walking off. But before any of that can happen a single red balloon goes floating past them both.
They both break they’re thousand yard stares they’ve been practicing and look at it float gently past. The one closest to it jumps out of his seat and goes after it. It’s floated a reasonable distance away by the time he’s able to catch it. But when he does he doesn’t head back to the bench. He just starts walking away.
Suddenly the seated suit jumps up, “Er, Simon, you’ve forgotten your paper.”
“No Jonathan,” says the balloon carrying Simon, “it’s your turn to take the paper today”.
“Oh sorry,” says Jonathan, “getting up and taking the paper. It was that balloon, it completely distracted me.”
“Yes,” says Simon, looking rather quizzically up at the balloon he is holding, “me too”.
“Shall we try the museum tomorrow?”
“Fewer balloons”
“And less hot.”
He walked in, swaying slightly, he was late. He had said he would be, he always was but he always said. That was something she supposed. At least he always said. He walked across the bedroom and kissed her on the cheek. She stirred and turned to look at him. She hadn’t been asleep quite, but she had been dozing. She opened her eyes and that’s when she saw it. A single long golden hair on his jacket.
Of course it didn’t mean anything. Nothing concrete. It was just a hair. It could have been from anywhere. But it was then. It was in that moment that she knew he had been cheating on her. That he had been doing it for years. All of those meetings, what were they for, how could they all be work related? Now she knew that they weren’t that they were simply a cover. He had been having affairs for years. Maybe just one, one affair that had been going on all of this time. No. That would be worse!
She asked, “Had a good evening?”
He answers, “Boring, like usual. You?”
“Yes,” she answers, “pretty boring, like usual.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, “can’t be fun stuck in evening after evening while I’m at work. Maybe you should get a hobby.”
And it was at that moment that she decided to cheat on him. Maybe it was over between them. It probably was, she thought. But before it was officially over she knew she wanted to have some illicit fun.”
The thing about spring,
is not the birds that sing,
or the cows moo-ing,
or the rappers with their bling,
no it’s the warmth that makes the ladies show their skin, that’s the thing.
Ahem. But of course I mean that with total equal rights being considered. Men may also wear less clothes if they so wish. And it should be that the women are choosing for themselves to wear fewer items (or less sizable coverings) out of their own free choice* because say it is warm rather than because some man made them do it – bastard.
* Not that any one, man or woman, really has any free will in all likelihood.
He pushed the soil through his hands, and then he remembered what he was supposed to be doing. He found, by moving his fingers, the roots within the soil, and grabbed hold of them and started shaking the clump. The mud fell out in giant clods and smashed on the floor. He was making a mess, so he stopped and went to the side wall to get the broom.
He lent against the broom and looked over the whole of his land. It seemed to stretch on for miles. In fact it did. There wasn’t another soul for miles around. He was totally alone in this world, because of the way that he had chosen to live. He had chosen to live this way, without anyone. He was thinking this, as he was about to go back to his work. When he was shot dead.
It was dark as Karen left the school. She had been working late, as she always seemed to end up doing at the end of term, and she was very tired. She walked past the giant window of the lunch hall and stopped to look in the window. Or rather to look at herself in the reflection.
“It’s night’s like these,” she said to herself, “that are giving you those bags under your eyes”.
She turned away from the lunch hall and carried on walking. The cool breeze, announcing the oncoming winter, swirled along the path and right inside her collar. She gave an involuntary shiver.
The wind was picking up and so Karen picked up her pace too. She started walking more quickly and yet the wind was whistling down the path with such a force that she could hardly hear her own footsteps. Let alone somebody elses.
Up ahead at the end of the path there was a little area between the lights for the path and the lights of the car park where it was totally dark. And on a usual night Karen hated walking through it. She carried a torch in her bag which she usually took out and used to get through the inky blackness. But tonight the wind was so strong and getting stronger that she felt she couldn’t simply stop and rummage around in her bag. She had to just plow forwards. She had to. She stopped just for a breath on the edge. Just on the edge she stopped. And then her foot went forward, disappearing into this space. As her foot disappeared she reassured herself one last time, took a breath although it was hard in this wind, and with that she stepped into the black.
black
black
black
black
black
The other side.
She exhaled. She kept running forward though. And as she did it she pulled her keys from her coat pocket and pressed the button for her central locking. She did it early like this every time, even though it allowed for a chance that somebody sneak into her car, but when she got there it looked empty. She got in, locked the doors, gunned the engine, turned on the lights, and turned up the music. She was safe.
He put his hand to his other wrist and held it between his thumb and fingers. He knew his thumb had it’s own pulse and this wouldn’t be accurate. But he had to do something. He started counting but he soon realised the situation was useless. He couldn’t feel anything. No pulse. What did it mean?
He held on for a moment later and suddenly there was something. A beat. He was alive.
Steven recoiled as he read these words on the wall in front of him.
“Life was fun”
Life had been fun for Steven. It was true that life had been fun. But now that wasn’t the part that upset him. It was the idea that it could no longer be fun. That life had been fun once but that time was now at an end.
But that was the situation that Steven now found himself in. It wasn’t the sign’s fault. The sign was merely stating fact. The sign was presumably talking about someone else. And yet it seemed so relevant to him.
Life had used to be fun. People had used to call him Steve. He had used to ride a motorbike. But he couldn’t buy one now. Now it would be so middle aged. But what had made people start calling him Steven. That was where the change had come. That was the change and he resented the hell out of it.
Steven was his father’s name. Not his. People should know that. But… And yet… He couldn’t tell them. He couldn’t explain why he wanted to demand to them that they saw him as young. All he could do is hope. Hope and be annoyed.
It had been a way of hiding for so long. A way of fading into the background. And then, and then, something happened. What was it? 9/11? No it had already started before then. Suddenly the beard had started to make him stand out. He had tried to ignore it for a while. In fact he had been so good at ignoring it this was the first time he’d thought about it since the summer of 2000. He used to always think about it in the summer but his level of denial had become so strong that he hadn’t even considered it for the last few years.
But now. Now he knew. He had known Jen had hurt him by leaving. He had known that. He had known that it would hurt. But now… Now he was having to consider this. Now he was considering shaving his beard.
He tried his old stalwart in moments of crisis, “This beard is part of who you are, if people wont accept that then you shouldn’t accept them”.
He listened to the words reverberating around his head. But he knew that while he liked the beard he liked hiding more. And now that the beard was so obvious to people it was time for a change. That, and he fancied a shag.
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