I’m in Cornwall. (Not now. I’m copying out what I wrote in a notebook and then changing it). Seaweed skulks and mooches and
flops in the bay. (It doesn't, it just sits in water and on rocks, doesn't it, yes, there's no need to pretend it has motives). The sun squints behind clouds. (Maybe this is accurate). In Mousehole there are two headlines
either side of the swinging local headline display unit: Mousehole Man Recalls Role In Car Prank.
£20M Of Cocaine Found On Yacht. (Sometimes it's hard to know when exactly fun turns into crime).
I’ve come on holiday on purpose, I’m going to experience a thing or two. I’m sposed to be starting the finishing of the first draft of a
book, but two weeks ago when I gently placed my laptop back in its position
something inside the screen exploded and the only images it now displays are
meaningless. And how can I start the finishing of the first draft of
a book on paper when the rest of it’s trapped in a useless beloved machine, I
dunno. When the Greatest Hits of Motown is the only thing that’s playing on the
café terrace, there’s no way of knowing whether or not it’s stuck on repeat.
(It’s been stuck on repeat your whole life, this is just one more moment in
which to be unsure whether or not Diana Ross is still alive, and what she might
be up to, either way, right now.)
Things I haven’t brought with me to the café or the holiday
include a hat, suncream, shorts, flip-flops and the iPod charger, because I
left in a hurry, because I always have to manufacture a minor crisis, because I
dunno. I did remember to bring some books and my eyes, though, so that’s a
relief. (How long after we’ve invaded Mars will it take for someone to put on
the Greatest Hits of Motown? What sort of objections might there be? Will it
sound fresh, again, finally, over there? Is there a sound art piece that’s
every Motown hit being played simultaneously, like there was with all the
national anthems a while back?)
While I was walking to Mousehole this morning, to learn
about what vehicles they use for pranks and cocaine, I passed a garden full of
scarecrows with plates for faces and bottles for arms and bits of old rope for
hair and then one of them was a dolphin on a stick. (Half-hour interlude for
relocation here because Motown stopped and Simply Red came on, and while I was
scattering tables, shattering bowls and sinking boats in my desperation to get
out of earshot or die, I was regretting everything I’d just written about
Motown and promising, internally, to you and whoever else, that I’d never be ner-ner about a good thing again, because of brain-consequences, like after I
wrote about the bird foetus I dreamt someone gave me fifteen budgies, but they
lived with their feet planted in little pots of soil, and I said thanks I’ll
look after them, and the giver went away, and all of the budgies very quickly
one-by-one died quietly gasping, and I shook them all out into a bin bag and
held the bin bag to my chest and it started squirming, and I woke up with the
feeling I should stop being flippant about gestation.)
