Yesterday's Mistakes

We saw a sparrow foetus in the pub. In the garden, by the hedge. Some people were screwfacing away from it and some people were, having heard about it, sprinting towards it. It fast became a must-see foetus. And I don't know if it was a sparrow or not, but sparrow foetus sounds a lot better than boring old non-specific bird foetus. And if it's not a sparrow then it must be something like a brown shrieker, lesser privet bellower, or beige nuisance, which are the three species most commonly spotted in that hedge, from the nearby tables, at which we've all spent entire months drinking oceans of booze a pint at a time, listening to the high-speed metallic quarrelling of these birds without ever finding out their proper names or what it is that makes them so angry. Maybe it's that we'd been ignoring their foetuses. No more. It lay in the sun with a crowd exuding scrutiny at it, pointing out each feature with a my god or a fucking hell, eyes, gob, hands, are those hands, they're not sposed to have hands, while the other crowd, a few yards away, groaned as it heard each new detail, and became a support group for people who didn't anticipate this kind of thing landing in their Sunday roast, especially if they'd opted for the chicken. We love nature.

Unheard-of Side

In a right-angled cavern south of everywhere, a mercilessly average film projected itself at our heads. Bees were in it so how are you going to really complain. It featured a distressingly competent actor playing identical twins with beards and coughs. And one pretty soon ended up pretending to be the other and some people realised and some didn't. And there was a plot and some vengeance and it was all in Spanish. Which probably was because the financial backers had had it all filmed in English like anyone with any sense would've done but then grew worried about recouping their dubloons and had shown a rough cut to the local ombudsman and he'd gone fine yeah guns and money I get it. But: If an English-speaking-and-hearing audience is going to leave a screening thinking they haven't been filmically nobbled by this then we're going to have to re-do the whole thing in Spanish so as to hang a thin and arty and therefore more valuable gauze between the audience and its common sense. But we'll show it in the multiplexes rather than the art-sheds. For extra because so basically I'm not very sure. But I've booked it all now and it's too late to stop. And in the taxis afterwards they'll wonder what it thought it was, and in beds they'll curse and shrug while dreams of better things run through them, and you might almost make your money back.

Till It's Finished

We were asked to play some songs to some people in a pub, an interesting pub, a stinking crisis arena where men go to perch on stools and bark at each other and wait impatiently for death or a fight or the guy who sells stolen meat to come in and sell some stolen meat. We couldn't say no and we didn't. They put us upstairs and moved the pool table over so there'd be room to waltz and heckle. We soundchecked and were fucking okay. Our friends arrived and the men began slurring with delight. We drank and played some songs. A dance-off erupted. We ran out of songs. We were thanked. We attempted to get the equipment back home in a taxi. The taxi informed us it long ago stopped picking people up from this particular pub. The non-payment. The abuse. The fluids. We waited a minute and booked the taxi from the nearby supermarket the guy who steals meat steals meat from. Everything was fine.

Finger

Three rolls of new carpet arrived and were immediately left in the hall for a week, taking up all the space and fulfilling, brownly, none of the functions of a new carpet except the smell. We would get back from work having forgotten about them and open the front door and they'd lurch at us, softly begging to be nailed to the floor, or however it is you install a carpet. But that's not our task, we'd say, patting their rumps and shaking our heads. Until the landlord gets her shit together you're just three colossal air fresheners.
And every night there'd be a long face to long face about the staggering untogetherness of the landlord's shit. And phonecalls and promises and apologies and Polish lagers, which on a weeknight is reckless and not to be encouraged.
And after three or four we'd sit on the floor in the hall with our backs against the carpets, reassuring them that any future spillages will be dealt with promptly, efficiently, and possibly erotically, but we can't promise the boiler won't piss its pipes off again because of the aforementioned widely-strewn condition of the landlord's dutiful cack. And you ought to be aware of that. And we'd sleep and wake up and work and forget and get home and there they'd be. It wasn't a satisfactory arrangement for anyone.

Booking Form

I wrote a thing on paper and put the paper on the bed and went in the other room to enjoy a few cold premium yeah go on thens and a fucking adequate sandwich. Two hours later everyone was dead. No, water came from the ceiling like in that film about terrifying damp patches and turned the paper into paste and the ink went into the bed and my mattress was full of nonsense and we mangled the landlord. A drunk plumber arrived and laughed into his toolbox and we tried to forget about everything. I slept on the couch and woke up to find my upper left eyelid'd become a little sausage and everyone I saw at work offered remedies: punch yourself in the other one so at least they match, wash it with boiled salted water, rub a gold ring on it. A gold ring? Yes a gold ring. Are you a fucking warlock? No my gran swears gold rings are good for it, she's always having trouble with her eye-flaps. Could that be because she keeps mashing her filthy jewellery into them? Could be, yeah.

Minimum Fuss

A bench by the fountains and the sun for breakfast. A sweating egg in a black leather jacket landed on my right and pointed a camera at the crow on my left. He asked permission for its picture and wondered about its habits. I ate a cheese and chicken sandwich and believed I mustn't move. The egg told the crow it had great feathers. It nearly moonwalked. He compared it to a jackdaw but needed it to know he didn't mean jackdaws were better. It bobbed its head and blurted yeah and flew away. He leaned in and showed me his pictures. I nodded and said decent. He looked at me. I chewed through the silence. He compared the rear of a passing woman to the rear of his girlfriend in the mid-seventies. I got the feeling they were no longer together. I didn't want him to ask me who's removing my trousers these days and he didn't. I chewed.

If You Don't Count The Duplicates

We saw the oldest thing we will ever see. It was some white powder at one end of a clear plastic tube. White powder from space and the past, back when the past was an enormous now and space was wall-to-wall everywhere. The tube was on a stand in a perspex hutch. Other perspex hutches stood to its left and right, housing their own big and small things from the universe. We were in a fucking museum, is what I should be saying. Until that moment, the oldest thing I'd ever seen was a group of kind and intelligent South American blobs using telepathy to tell me all about the mushrooms I'd just eaten. I could tell they were South American by their hats. So this powder being there all warningless and tiny was a nice surprise. A lot of very young people added fizz to the experience through inexplicable roaring. I don't have the official figures but I think there were four million of them, and it was my birthday and I forgot to get a vasectomy again. There ought to be booths for this kind of thing. Maybe I'll do it myself with a craft knife and a couple of bulldog clips. It's important to think about the future. I've been practising, which is why I haven't updated in a while. I've reached no conclusions. I still have a job.
The Pulitzer Smackdown is going fairly well and people are being nice about my efforts. For which I thank them. A lot of the stuff there is good. And are you well?