If you’re going to get wasted, get wasted elegantly
Keith Richards
Francis had spent the evening single-handedly propping up the bar, figuratively and – in must be said – financially.
Now, in recognition of his sterling efforts, the bar was returning the favour and kindly propping him up.
“I think you might have had enough, sir. Might be time for you to head home?” said the landlord.
Francis tried to fix him with a level gaze, which was not easy given the slight sway that the bar seemed to have acquired.
"Enough?" he asked. "Dear boy, I'm only just beginning."
He finished his drink. "One for the road?"
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
81. Get a child with mandrake root
On Wednesday, Jeremy pooped a homunculus.It looked up at him from out of the pan with unconditional love in its tiny eyes, like shining, hopeful currants in a gingerbread man's face.
"Mama?"
"No, Dadda," said Jeremy. "No, wait - nothing."
The homunculus burbled and splashed around merrily.
Jeremy slowly pulled up his trousers and gingerly prodded the little creature in the head with the loo brush.
Could he just flush it out of sight and out of mind round the U-bend, like his late goldfish?
He bloody knew he shouldn't have done all that mandrake last night.
Sunday, 21 February 2010
80. It started with a kiss
Plagiarism Week - Day Seven + 2, paying tribute to Sarah and Marko’s glorious pledge to kiss in front of a London monument every day for 100 days. Amazing. The picture is one of theirs that I’ve borrowed.
It started with a kiss.
No, really.
An incredible kiss. One of those perfect midnight kisses. A kiss in which creation seems to hold its breath and wait until you’ve finished. One of those kisses in a which a single, silent, stolen second will say more than a million poets chained to a million typewriters for a million years ever could. A kiss in which two people connect without anything to dilute, pollute or refract, sheltered together in a bubble of their own making, and time and tide and the rest of the world can go hang themselves for the moment.
Like your feet have left the ground. Like you’re going to melt into the other person. Like there are balloons in your chest being twisted. Like time has slowed to a trickle and you don’t want to do anything too sudden in case you break the spell.
And you kiss in front of monuments and it seems like they're a monument to your kiss. And you kiss down back alleys and it seems like they're protecting you from the eyes of others'. And you kiss and a falling star could destroy the city and you'd never know nor care.
And you know no one’s ever kissed quite this before. And you know no one ever will.
And when you stop, you’ll feel like you’ve woken up in a different world to where you started, having travelled somewhere between the mundane and another place far more glorious and delicious entirely.
One of those kisses.
It would also end with a kiss, but that was months away.
It started with a kiss.
No, really.
An incredible kiss. One of those perfect midnight kisses. A kiss in which creation seems to hold its breath and wait until you’ve finished. One of those kisses in a which a single, silent, stolen second will say more than a million poets chained to a million typewriters for a million years ever could. A kiss in which two people connect without anything to dilute, pollute or refract, sheltered together in a bubble of their own making, and time and tide and the rest of the world can go hang themselves for the moment.
Like your feet have left the ground. Like you’re going to melt into the other person. Like there are balloons in your chest being twisted. Like time has slowed to a trickle and you don’t want to do anything too sudden in case you break the spell.
And you kiss in front of monuments and it seems like they're a monument to your kiss. And you kiss down back alleys and it seems like they're protecting you from the eyes of others'. And you kiss and a falling star could destroy the city and you'd never know nor care.
And you know no one’s ever kissed quite this before. And you know no one ever will.
And when you stop, you’ll feel like you’ve woken up in a different world to where you started, having travelled somewhere between the mundane and another place far more glorious and delicious entirely.
One of those kisses.
It would also end with a kiss, but that was months away.
79. Hand Not In Glove
Plagiarism Week - Day Seven + 1, paying tribute to Grant Burford's Lovesgloves photostream. I spotted this one in a little square near my home.
On Sunday, her boyfriend disappeared.
This was typical. She had turned her back for two seconds and he’d vanished, leaving behind nothing but one of his stupid, massive woolly gloves.
They had been having a pleasant day in the park, she had looked away to put her tissue in the bin, looked back, and all that was left was his right glove, waving toodle-ooh in that inane way of his.
Had he run away? Had he been kidnapped? Had someone thrown a ball and distracted him?
If he were right now, he would probably blame it on aliens. Bloody aliens.
This was typical. She had turned her back for two seconds and he’d vanished, leaving behind nothing but one of his stupid, massive woolly gloves.
They had been having a pleasant day in the park, she had looked away to put her tissue in the bin, looked back, and all that was left was his right glove, waving toodle-ooh in that inane way of his.
Had he run away? Had he been kidnapped? Had someone thrown a ball and distracted him?
If he were right now, he would probably blame it on aliens. Bloody aliens.
78. Encyclopaedia Panicka
Plagiarism Week - Day Seven, tipping the hat to Ben Partridge's Random Article blog, taking whatever is thrown out of Wikipedia's random article generator and writing a story about it. I thought about doing the same but it seemed a bit too close to what Ben is doing (plus my random article was rubbish), so here's a beginning about searching for a random article.
NB: I was going to set up the fictitious article on Wikipedia but they deleted it almost immediately, so you can see it on a seperate blog via the link halfway down the page.
Ross Norris had always assumed that boredom and laziness was the cocktail that was going to be his downfall. A warm, rich, somnolent cocktail, it must be said, like Horlicks, rum and warm cream. (A cocktail that boredom had, in fact, led him to create one afternoon. Not bad actually. Like malty opium.)
School had shown it, university had shown it, five years in the real world had shown it. He really should have learned his lesson by now, but this morning’s collection of overdue credit card bills, unpaid council tax, unemptied bins and a teetering Everest of missed deadlines suggested otherwise.
Today, however, Ross Norris’s singular capacity for procrastination was going to save his life.
At his desk with nothing to do – or, more accurately, nothing he wanted to do – and no one fun to do it with, Ross found himself poking about some online encyclopaedia. It was the kind written by its users and policed by well-meaning busy bodies. The moronic marshalled by the pedantic. In his more misanthropic moments, he viewed as a strong argument against democracy. The current prime minster: 8,000 word entry; Mr T: 16,000 word entry. Or maybe things were better that way round?
There was a ‘random article’ button on the home page. He hit it.
It took him to Ross Norris.
Ha! What are the odds? He seemed to remember some Aussie folk singer sharing the same name. Bit odd, but it would be even odder if it never happened. Even if it’s 3.1 million to one, there’s always the one. He decided to read a bit more about his namesake.
Hang on, this wasn’t right.
“Ross Norris is a media coverage analyst.”
What the fuck? That was him.
He skipped through it. It was a potted history of his life. Someone must have pieced it together from his CV. Company policy? Those bastards in IT! This was exactly what they’d find hilarious.
No, wait, there was stuff in here that couldn’t have been on a CV, about school and his best friend and things. Nick! That gimp. It was probably him. This was exactly the kind of thing that someone with the near permanent surfeit of time and imagination that Nick Nolan possessed would do.
But it still didn’t feel right. It wasn’t embarrassing enough for it to have come from him. And Nick didn’t live in London; there’s no way he’d know that much about his job. Or, Jesus, his gym membership, where he drank, where he played football, which bus he caught he caught, the coffee he bought every single morning – Christ, it even mentioned the barista he’d been pathetically flirting with was the last three months.
Norris suddenly felt like he had antifreeze in his veins. His desk was swimming in and out of focus. He looked around the office but no one appeared to be paying him any attention. That didn’t make him feel any less vulnerable. Was there a way to work out who’d written it? He looked at the top of the page. Nothing there, maybe –
Hang on. It didn’t read: “Ross Norris is a media coverage analyst.” It read: “Ross Norris was a media coverage analyst.” And then there was his date of birth: “b. 28 July 1981; d. 22 February 2010."
Fuck. That was today.
NB: I was going to set up the fictitious article on Wikipedia but they deleted it almost immediately, so you can see it on a seperate blog via the link halfway down the page.
Ross Norris had always assumed that boredom and laziness was the cocktail that was going to be his downfall. A warm, rich, somnolent cocktail, it must be said, like Horlicks, rum and warm cream. (A cocktail that boredom had, in fact, led him to create one afternoon. Not bad actually. Like malty opium.)
School had shown it, university had shown it, five years in the real world had shown it. He really should have learned his lesson by now, but this morning’s collection of overdue credit card bills, unpaid council tax, unemptied bins and a teetering Everest of missed deadlines suggested otherwise.
Today, however, Ross Norris’s singular capacity for procrastination was going to save his life.
At his desk with nothing to do – or, more accurately, nothing he wanted to do – and no one fun to do it with, Ross found himself poking about some online encyclopaedia. It was the kind written by its users and policed by well-meaning busy bodies. The moronic marshalled by the pedantic. In his more misanthropic moments, he viewed as a strong argument against democracy. The current prime minster: 8,000 word entry; Mr T: 16,000 word entry. Or maybe things were better that way round?
There was a ‘random article’ button on the home page. He hit it.
It took him to Ross Norris.
Ha! What are the odds? He seemed to remember some Aussie folk singer sharing the same name. Bit odd, but it would be even odder if it never happened. Even if it’s 3.1 million to one, there’s always the one. He decided to read a bit more about his namesake.
Hang on, this wasn’t right.
“Ross Norris is a media coverage analyst.”
What the fuck? That was him.
He skipped through it. It was a potted history of his life. Someone must have pieced it together from his CV. Company policy? Those bastards in IT! This was exactly what they’d find hilarious.
No, wait, there was stuff in here that couldn’t have been on a CV, about school and his best friend and things. Nick! That gimp. It was probably him. This was exactly the kind of thing that someone with the near permanent surfeit of time and imagination that Nick Nolan possessed would do.
But it still didn’t feel right. It wasn’t embarrassing enough for it to have come from him. And Nick didn’t live in London; there’s no way he’d know that much about his job. Or, Jesus, his gym membership, where he drank, where he played football, which bus he caught he caught, the coffee he bought every single morning – Christ, it even mentioned the barista he’d been pathetically flirting with was the last three months.
Norris suddenly felt like he had antifreeze in his veins. His desk was swimming in and out of focus. He looked around the office but no one appeared to be paying him any attention. That didn’t make him feel any less vulnerable. Was there a way to work out who’d written it? He looked at the top of the page. Nothing there, maybe –
Hang on. It didn’t read: “Ross Norris is a media coverage analyst.” It read: “Ross Norris was a media coverage analyst.” And then there was his date of birth: “b. 28 July 1981; d. 22 February 2010."
Fuck. That was today.
77. Definitive
Plagiarism Week - Day Six, in homage to Chrissy Williams and her Learn 100 New Words blog. I thought about using some of the ace words she's found, but then I looked up beginning in the dictionary and seemed to be a story in itself.
Beginning noun.
1. Entering upon existence or action 
The beginning of their love
2. The point at which anything begins
The beginning of things between them was probably that evening in October when torrential rain had flooded the Tube and he’d stubbornly insisted on sharing his umbrella while they waited for a bus
3. An origin or source. A first cause, a first principle
And, looking back, that slightly pathetic £2 umbrella, which blew out God knows how many times, and his ridiculous insistence in trying to keep it over her head, despite not being remotely big enough for both them, sparked the beginning of their love
4. The first part (of a period of time, of a book, a journey etc); the earliest stage of development
In the beginning, she remembered, they had been gloriously, recklessly happy – exciting and slightly scary times, poor and in love, full of loud music, late nights and long kisses
The beginning of the end the first clear sign of the end of something
Antonyms
1. ending. 2. end.
76. Drawn only for the curious and inquisitive
Plagiarism Week - Day Five, a tribute to Edward Ross’s always outstanding 100 Moments From My Past, Present & Future, with further apologies to Laurence Sterne, and Philip Larkin, I guess. Quite emphatically not based on a true story.
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