BOX IT UP - ANOTHER U.K. XMAS

Artificial intelligence – I expect she needs me – Roy and his tears in the rain, though these might all have dried up – 5000 queue up to fight outside Next on sale day one – a pair of suede brothel creepers – windows rattle in their jambs for the night of hail and rain – Magnificent 7 t-shirts and tequila slammers – The Quizmaster in his element – tea at The Ritz and the rock and roll dexterity of a black cab through London to see the lights before home – puke on a railway station platform -

23/12/06 - BBC Radio shortlist my script ‘In The Company Of Giants’ for the Alfred Bradley Bursary Award (more on the 15^th January) –

Stopping early evening, the motor warmed, at Warrington Services off M6 south Manchester – frightening: armoury of race hate and forgotten souls designed like a mini-housing estate not motorway services by the name of Poplar 2000 (where did the ‘u’ go?) – a five cowboy sculpture designed in semi-circle looms out of halogen darkness, ten-gallon silhouettes without amenable features, just attempts at eyes and mouths – why they there? – is this frontier territory, recently pioneered land? Do they move? – the bright bright shop is full of yuletide fakery: snow, tinsel, a plastic snowman on the till counter and two heavily overweight assistants in Santa hats watching over the sweets and coloured drinks and the rows and rows of porn mags some in black plastic wraps other plain to see for e.g: Euro Filth, it’s rounded font in cheap vivid green bordered neon yellow (glow in the dark?) – perfect placement for truckers and long-haul businessmen staying in the nearby Travel Lodge night alone, because the pay-for-view porn in there ain’t up to squat – And the public toilets, ones to avoid even with Virgil holding your hand – clean enough in a disinfected way as you enter, but the racist graffiti is almost demonic in it’s hatred and stupidity; the cubicles are covered in it, black marker on doors, paper dispensers, toilets seats, even on a urine-stained tile on the floor and all aimed at Muslims – insults of the worst kind, showing the perpetrator’s base level of intelligence, prime ignorance , even to the point of defacing Hillsborough Disaster Justice Campaign stickers that have been stuck on one cubicle door and have been used as just another surface for hatred, altering history to suit prejudice – when I hear voices in another cubicle, I get out of there; whoever wrote this shit is likely to take offence at my mixed blood -

Black Eye Friday

Darkness before dawn permeated by the trotting feet of birds on the roof and the occasional glimpse of them dropping from the sky – still they chatter less than some and when they do they open their mouths for a reason – maybe it’s xmas, maybe it’s just me, but I am craving silence like milk or water – the opportunity to be still, necessary, to hear something beyond the gabble –

Succumbing to a nightmare – I am looking to buy a house in Australian and then emigrate – I pay a visit (along with a few other prospective buyers) to a new development out in the country: dry scrubland, unidentifiable birds, the odd lizard, red earth – to what is at first a number of dilapidated properties in the process of renovation, detached blocks dotted throughout the landscape and connected by a single dirt track – we are shown the one closest to completion: the location of the swimming pool blah blah etc etc – I am at first enamoured of the place and start to make those little plans for decoration in my head – then we are guided towards other parts of the development, larger building to be converted into flats, municipal looking outhouses and sheds, some in better condition and located in a shallow valley surrounded by dense foliage, a pretty enough place – I ask what the site had been before it was purchased for this project and the lead salesmen, a chubby man in a poor fitting shirt, says ‘oh some Castro types, fascists, had it for what they say was training; they used to do some bad stuff here.’ I wanted to tell him that Castro wasn’t a fascist but he waved me over to a hole in a breeze block wall: ‘Come look at this,’ he said. He pointed a torch in there illuminating a dark and damp square room and on the far wall some neo-political graffiti with slogans about purity and the extermination of various races and religions; there was a green Star of David daubed there and blackened with age, some weird stick-man type Aborigine being poked with a stick of some kind that had sparks coming out of the end, a cattle-prod, and another slogan that said ‘killing Arabs with thanks to Camus.’ The group of five or so potential buyers looked upon the place now with horror and when we turned back the entire development, the whole place had taken on a sad and bleak air; the peeling paint and dark windows were now replete with unseen horrors. People muttered; a woman shed tears and her husband put his arm across her shoulders shaking his head. The chubby man explained that he and his business partners were attempting to make good history, to bring a new meaning to the place. They had hoped of course that none of this would have come out, that the condo could have been completed and a new light could have shone on the location looking forward to the future. But something had a grip on him now and he mentioned that there was a grave pit over at the far edge of the site that they had plans to build either the local school on or else a supermarket and restaurant complex.

Buster Keaton on a sunday afternoon, some crushed velvet curtains and an awkward silence that swift departs to laughter –

My shopping in the supermarket today comes to the value of £6.66 – does this mean anything? Have I just purchased Mammon or a share in Hades? The guy behind the counter eyes me as if I knew this was what I was dealing with and I may have brought damnation down on him.

If you absorb the comic-book – what does that mean in future life?

5.35am - keeping waterproof clothes near, listening to nothing but the wind hollering – spirals of sound fretting and hassling the roof – trees glisten, slimy with the deluge, slick skinned – then the occasional silence and to be grateful for the minutes of respite from the rain – when it comes again it’s noise on the flat roof is like the popping of hundreds of embers; an odd comparison to make, two opposing elements but there it is crackling over and over, the burden of my anticipation outweighing any chance of sleep – the land has turned silver by day, fields awash, sheep and cattle stranded on fragile spurs – and in here it is like existing in an echo chamber, some facet (faucet?) of water torture with our lives placed up on tables or any other available space off the floor – and yet oddly the air is so sweet and cool, maybe some airborne part of the mountains has been washed down with the waters and perfumed the air below?

Sitting in - waiting for the flood to come – imminent here - across Cumbria there are severe weather warnings – heightened senses, the rain hammering on the roof, waves of it coming at times almost silent then streaming across in the gales, rippling feet above my head – the drains are already backing up and swathes of water are forming across the highways – the river level at present is half what it was three nights ago when the first flood warning woke us at 4.30am but it is still early and the water has yet to make it’s way down from the uplands – the river can rise about a foot an hour – sandbags are out in doorways and porches in some forlorn hope that they might stem additional damage – meanwhile the silvery slicks trickle on in nearby gutters, the cacophony of accompanying noises there: the constant enraged sigh of the river; the metallic echoing of rivulets finding drains and forging themselves in there; the barrage of swaying trees and the background roar of storm sound in the atmosphere – it’s all I can do to keep my mind distracted and fill the anticipatory anxiety -

Discoveries -

The pencil marks are wearing thin on the blue paper – ready to light? I cannot mourn the passing of Augusto Pinochet, nor should anyone. Those that died before him as a result of his orders are still howling in limbo at the lack of justice forthcoming in their name (including the missed opportunity Jack Straw had to extradite him to Spain – foolish appeasement – they manage to get away with it every time these Fascists: how come?) and now he has finally escaped trial – that is a sadness we should all be aware of –

the sun attempts to shed it’s light through the tunnels and dank cellars of Chile, hunting out the truth if it can -

let me dream instead: replicate some Jacobean parlour – the semi-grand furniture, the hearth-tinted red wine (seeing the flames through the liquid), the stained tablecloth with the crumbs of three courses still residual, the foppish hair and louche attitudes of writers and libertine ne’er do wells – a testy marriage of art, the past and the witty present - Jeffries and James devouring cakes and pomegranate molasses now; awaiting the impromptu cabaret provided by sons and daughters of the hostel owner – and still warm by cold morning, the London wind in the chimney, poor teeth aching and fit to fall out – and the toast is to liberty and the downfall of the tyrannical forefathers (even as the East sees a new one rise) -