they've to got it got through before he returns

I would not be telling the truth if I tried to suggest that people do not communicate. Certainly there are people quiet with each other, like those two young people. She with thin shoes and skinny jeans and her legs crossed and holding onto a iced fruit drink, those ones everyone mocks from Starbucks. And I a little too old for her, she wears no make up and will grow up unattractive; but right now perfect. And him picking pieces of something out of his sandwich for a thing to mention, they don’t speak, have they fallen out, are they bored with each other. Have they just broken up, are they at the beginning or at the end of something or the middle are they waiting for someone, perhaps they will kiss for something to do, or no. cynic. because there is nothing else to do but kiss. He wears a rugby shirt in blue and yellow and she wears a band logoed hooded jumper, no they just look like that, hers actually says Annie 08 and his says Fiji and he probably doesn’t play rugby though he is quite tall and his back is very long.

What about these three, a middle aged man a grey haired old woman and old man probably his parents, they are pension able. When he (the middle aged man) is there they don’t seem to say anything, nothing of any length enough to be concern of anyone. But then the man goes to the bathroom (the middle aged man) and the parents (we think) talk to each other, they discuss, they have a discussion and it looks furtive and important. Then the son (we think) returns and the father (we think) goes to the bathroom. The mother (we think) and the son (we think) have a quick argument, fast, they’ve to got it got through before he returns, perhaps she is thinking [thank god father (we think)’s piles are bad at the moment] and son (we think) is thinking [I hope father (we think)’s piles aren’t bad at the moment], or perhaps it is the other way around – piles are a very writerly way to adjust the narrative don’t you think? They seem practiced, they mirror each other’s movements closely, comfortable, managed, measured. The father (we think) and the son (we think) are never alone together and now they are all gone, jackets and mobile phones (or umbrellas) in hand and we will never know.

There were other people in the café but I have not mentioned them. And we're all just waiting for a reaction from on high.

The problem with doing anything, and why we don't.

Two principles, Lambton asserted in his cosmography, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world, sphincter and explosion, magic and dullness, rot and purification, the fermentation is never-ending. He knew enough to invoke Asia and the more common European philosophers, and in this manner drew Penshaw deeper into thrall. The fermentation, he insisted, is the key; it stands in opposition to rebellion. In rebellion we have only death, we burn the land and celebrate the new, untrained and untutored growth that comes out of it. It is a false revolution, every revolution is co-opted by hope. Revolutions have always started in ideas and ended in fanaticisms of hope. Grandfather, Mr. Squashed Fly Biscuit, had docked beneath the burial place of our ancient kings in a river swimming with coal dust, and where had it got him? Hope cannot elide into despair, despite the time it takes. No, sincere hope of a reasonable strength in a stable person of reasonable intellect either bewilders or drives into irrationality. The perpetual cynic will survive the revolutions with an iron steadfastness. And it is difficult to argue with architecture. So I must ask, my reader, that you suspend your hope and allow us to continue in a perfectly practical manner.
Pretty Rosin almost choked on her dry roasted peanuts and laughed beyond all measure, the room brushed the hair out of its eyes and glanced over.
Lambton began to talk of his early life, that is to say, he talked about how he would view the things he was currently doing at the various future points he planned to judge himself from. Twenty one is unimportant. At the age of 24 he would find himself frivolous, and blush at the thought of occasionally affecting a cravat and stippled leather shoes, he expected that he would still smoke rolled-up cigarettes for reasons of poverty, but that occasional mistresses would provide him with exotic brands of filter-less cigarettes from the various European destinations available via budget airlines. At the age of 27 he would be satisfied with himself at 16 (which of course is his age now though of course not then), though the torturous naming-parties and inward-analysis that he instigated were tedious at the time and in retrospect, but the 24 year old would have to go. He disdained both’s attitude to sex, the homosexual phase having been well worked out and now part of the furniture. He must take care of himself and the hepatitis. His limited edition prints had doubled in value over the last six months and one of the mistresses had not only become pregnant and disappeared to Ireland via the Port of Liverpool (specifically for the irony) in order to abort but also given birth and had a child christened Oliver in the anglo-Catholic tradition. At 34 he was feted with a desk at the Guardian, its no longer existing not interrupting the point of this exposition; he type onto a screen one day: Two principles are in perpetual conflict for the possession of my world, me, and my past. At 40 he would be down to a single lung and make a hasty conversion to Anglicanism for the sake of his mother and a hasty conversion to liquorice-root chewing from cigarette smoking for the sake of the lung.
Lambton continued thus throughout the rest of his life, and in different ways he achieved many different things. In all those that mattered, he achieved nothing.

Poem on the Back of Jack's Face

Give me your lost ones
any day of the week
the ones who look to the sky
but shuffle their feet
Give me your mild, your meek
for they shall inherit
you'll find me among the helpless
and weak

Give me your burned
they've their lessons learned
They've experience in their eyes,
but, alas, no alibis.

Patrician Families

Watching breasts.
Spent all of 2003 watching breasts new breasts firm breasts slack breasts non-existent breasts. I formed bodies from breast components, they were my Archimedean solids, one for the shoulder, elbow, ear-lobe, cheek, nostril and ball of foot. They became breasts and breasts became them. I was an architect, in best modern taste, obsessed with curves. Each container I wished to smooth of burrs and round, mould and encompass in human constant y=sinxes.
The ratio of a river’s length to it’s distance straight (as the crow flies) from source to mouth is defined by π, with modifications based on the hardness of the environment through which it runs. From mouth to vagina via the skin is surely ruled by the same calculations. If you could take a route straight down the esophagus, with a cutting through the gut – no detours, no taking a racing line down the small and large intestines but burning straight through with some burning beak - it would be much quicker.
Π and Sine is what I was after all along. I thought it was the roundness I was looking for, a depression, a dimple a press on skin relates to the amount of vitamin C you have been taking in recently? When, as a smoker, you go to the dentist, hey find it difficult to make you gums bleed - they have to push and scrape the probes vigorously to confirm that you are starving your mouth of oxygen. But it was the intrinsic inhumanness of curves.
Sitting in the conservatory of a pleasant villa in northern Italy - LIE, seaside cottage while the wind howled - LIE, the wind was audible periodically and he was in a suburb of a large post-industrial conurbation - BETTER.

Cisterns, Part 1

This piece will be posted in 2 parts.
Any comment/critique would be helpful, as this is destined for the man.

Scene 1

A long, thin, white bathroom with yellow net curtains which dim the already pale light coming through a tall narrow window. A bathtub runs lengthways along the room, the toilet is below the window on the right of the bath, there is a sink to the left beside the door. A young man and a young woman are present, he in the bath, smoking, she sitting on the toilet in a dressing gown, also smoking. The bath-tap is running. She has a expensive bottle of Vodka, he has a cheap bottle of Whiskey. They are both dead.

Alexander. Shit day.
Pause. The sink gurgles. He stares at it.
Alex. Here’s to that!

He drinks deeply, lays the cigarette carefully on the rim of the bath, holds his nose theatrically and submerges himself, splashing water around. Lilja walks to the far end of the bath, turns off the tap, and returns to sit on the toilet before he finally surfaces with a gasp, reaches for the tap, then stops and looks angry when he notices it is already turned off.

Al. Ahhhh…
Lilja. Why must I be such a… (she smokes)
A. (He lies back) Makes life worth living.
Lil. …a pessimist about everything.
Alexander. (mocking voice) Dearest, could you pass me the towel?

He laughs to himself, and reaches over the bathtub to finish the Whiskey, braces himself on the bath and pushes himself out, he gets his towel himself, you pour him another drink, he carries it to the sink. Lilja goes over to the bath, checks the temperature, then gets in.

Alex. (Squeezing blackheads) There’s this computer program
where you load in all your pictures, everyone does,
and it somehow compares them, analyses them,
works out which ones are of the same person, or
a building or whatever. It links them all together and
builds like, an average, what it looks like from all
those different perspectives. It didn’t matter if it was
a massive digital photo from yesterday, a scan of a
third-hand photocopied newspaper story or a
Renaissance sketch. In the example, they did the
Sagrada Familia, remember, I went there? And even
used movie footage. Then they stuck them all
together and it was weird, all these webs of lines
where, like where all the repeated memories of this
church had ¾ somehow the bones of it coalesced from repetition
¾ and, punctured reality. (a worldwise laugh, Lilja turns on
the hot tap.) I wonder what Gaudi would’ve thought’ve it…
Li. … no hot, again, they cover the whole bathroom in
hair and soap and rotting towels, use all the water, all
the fucking butter, ask me to proof-read, can‘t even
string a sentence together. (She thumps herself on the
thigh, you light a cigarette for her, she takes it without
making eye contact.)
A. Got hit by a bus, remember? doubt he could care less?
L. Couldn’t, you shits. Could-n’t care less. COULDN’T - CARE - LESS.

ALEX

But she was gone, and like a tidied table the room had relinquished all its charm --- it was too subservient. The was no other will, no human to crash knees, elbows and temples with in the dark. The baguette was dry, the consistency of breeze-bloc, and had broke his skin when he’d attempted to catch it. He was hyperventilating. Sucking down the last half of a warm can of flat diet coke he spluttered into calmness.

- - -

Later, downstairs, in the stairwell, the optician from downstairs was sitting on the stairs, holding an unopened packet of Players cigarettes.

Alex says nothing. "Hi," was the reply.

"Worried they might bite?" said Alex. Alex is a mess, he thinks he is dying of tuberculosis, though you’d tried to tell him it was all in his head. He didn’t sit down.

"Nah," replied the optician smiling pleasantly, "my girlfriend ‘s made this deal. ‘No sin un-shared.’ I named it. I want a cigarette, someone else opens the packet, want a drink, someone else pours it."

"Sounds nice," says Alex.

"She’s plucking out all my vices. Refining them. Wouldn’t have got engaged if I’d known this would happen. Your’s," he flicks his eyes to the ceiling, "your Zoe, she not got you off the fags?"

- - -

Alex walks away to the sound of crackling cellophane.

Two Thoughts

Digital Piracy

I had no qualms present as I thieved Sunset Blvd. and The Maltese Falcon from under the dead-eyes of it's starving creators via a loose swarm of like-minded buccaneers. There was not an inch of conscience involved. My eyes continued their involuntary act of descending a steep slope of snow, with a barely controlled flourish. Either for the sheer thrill of the ride and/or to bypass tedious scree, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

I was a new modern man with his fingers on the keys not giving a damn or a penny to/for the third generation black-suiters who wanted my ill-earned hard cash for what is, undeniably, old Bogart. Of course I had a dog by the name which was put down for mauling toddlers, or so I assumed from the euphemism my mother used. Whatever happened to collective culture anyway, it is as guarded as a dictator's tomb?

Hysterical Paroxysm

On a related note there I was treating her for the nervous ailment that had troubled her all these dark months since her husband put to sea, and suddenly I found the equipment all covered in a tepid sort of semolina. 'Aha! by Jehova and all The Saints' I thought out loud, stowing the vibratode in it's hygienic red leather lined beech box, I've heard of this but never seen the like; 'too right' said the wife. Nowadays you can get them in the Argos catalogue.

- "Tyranno" 1918

Smoked Fish

So there I was, surrounded by stiff tissues and trying to get to grips with the similarities between 'Scarborough Fair' and 'Girl From the North Country' when my head was flung around by the sound of a long reverberating squeak at the window. Dressed in only a white towel at the waist I gripped it tighter and faced the window cleaner who was 3/4 profiling his face and now focusing on only the dirty pane his length of rubber was strigiling. Had he turned as I did? Which of the two lyrics below is the most pleasing? I decided to leave the room for a glass of orange from concentrate and smoked mackerel, perhaps with some of the fruit loaf I knew I had left. I closed the window on the west-facing wall to help the cleaner, to give him a bit of resistance, and to hide from his ears the lines:

Remember me to one who lives there.
She once was a true love of mine.

Remember me from one who lives there,
For she/he once was a true love of mine.

A'wonder how many stories window cleaners; and gas men, telephone-line installationists, paper-boys, septic tank-diviners - what sort of stories they tell each other. A'wonder how many variations on the teenager wanking, the au-pair fucking, the cleaner sucking, the dog shitting, the husband throttling they come across and tell their friends in the work. A'wonder if they decide that the stories are boring and start to discuss the changing tastes in wallpaper and dado rails. A'wonder if they have physician-style tradesmen's oathes, or a butler's discretion, never to see and certainly never to tell of.

I'd finished the mackerel and washed down the oil with orange juice when the window cleaners knocked, they wanted paying. What I really needed was an audio recording of 'Scarborough Fair' and 'Girl From the North Country' and a working-class upbringing.

Your Guide To: Timepieces (unfinished)

Your Guide to: Timepieces


With the recent popular Interest, and a creative revival the humble timepiece has really made a surprise return to the spotlight in an age of convenience. With the recent media attention and a few high profile roles on both the small and even the big screen the most blatant puzzle is just where has the clock been for the past while? Once over there was one on everyone’s mantelpiece and now seldom are people sure whether they still have one or not. In this respect, it is a very welcome return to the once crucial and now understated tsars of timekeeping.
It seems only fitting then that this guide should chart the career of the clock and its various incarnations as a reminder for the most of us and a lesson to the new generation who are, perhaps, less familiar of a once perennial asset.
In my practice as both the Horologist Royal (1979-95) and more recently the maker of some of the counties most celebrated documentaries on the subject () I have explored the histories and historiographies of the relations between man and time, especially his desire to harness it.
-Professor R. Jim Tindall

Chronicling the humble beginnings of the timepiece has proven difficult for historians and horologists alike. This is due, in part, to the lack of written evidence on the subject prior to the second century and as a result led to the very popular belief, held in the thirties, that nothing happened at all until time’s invention. Revisionist scholars have dismissed those works of such great thinkers like Pierre Distanne and Carlos Verdana in the light of current researches suggesting that time existed long before its invention by a young gentleman




Grandfather Clock…;
Grandmother clock
time's
Cuckoos live in the belly of some clocks- distressing?