Category Archives: life
well, i never kept a dollar past sunset.
One of those mornings when you feel as though you’ve got the streets of Hackney all to yourself, but for a couple of shadows. When the sun is shining and you’re lucky enough to get the best seat in the coffee-house. When all there is to do is read the papers and buy flowers and hatch plans for the night-time.
i bless the rains down in africa.
Growing to realise that you can only comprehend the potential vastness of consequence by the actual vastness of consequence. That damage limitation is determining your every move. That characteristic thinking can cause uncharacteristic things to happen. That one strand of pain can’t hurt you anymore, but another has nostalgically taken its place. And that you are watching it all unfold from above. That’s when all that’s left to do is laugh and drink and read and admire the view.
when the triumphant rain falls.
Familiar streets and familiar faces.
Puddles, pints and bricks.
Blue skies and grey skies and night skies
– in all senses of the words.
it goes to show you never can tell.
When you write for a living [and artistic depiction of any means falls so far from what you are good at], you don’t expect you’ll ever see your work/words gracing a gallery wall. And then there came the London launch of Intern Magazine at 71a to prove my assumptions wrong. My words, on a wall [and, of course, free beers for all]. Meet the talent, join the debate.
the moon is hanging in the purple sky.
June is imminent, which can only be a good thing [despite the weather’s attempt to convince us otherwise] as it promises a crop of delights. John Power is paying an acoustic-clad visit to my hometown [for me alone, surely], there’s another flirtation with The Stone Roses to be had on some big London plain, plus an inevitably brilliant reunion with that little-known Somerset farm at the month’s end. Even my anorak’s excited, frankly. Meanwhile, I beg, do walls get any better than this?
but the key was mine (i keep a spare one every time)
Pipelines, super-sized Sunday roasts (thank/you/Jesus), rush hour headphones, friends like you wouldn’t believe, breakfast beers, trainers, rum carafes, Neal Street, fresh garms, still snowing, back to Big Hands (William, it was really nothing), porn star martinis, champagne sorbet, giggly mornings, train journeys, hope, side streets, cava in bed, dearest Manchester, new girl syndrome, this is for lovers (running away just for today), lock, stock, and two smoking barrels. That’s about all life’s saying these days.
and his friends. But this is not one of those hangovers where you write the
day off to darkness. It is the more interesting kind, where destroyed
synapses are reconstructing themselves, sometimes missing their old paths
and making odd, new connections. I remember things I haven’t remembered
before – things that do not come out of the ordered store of
memories I call my past.
these days i sit on corner stones
please don’t confront me with my failures;
i had not forgotten them.
I’m still in Berlin, avoiding real life and having an all-round lovely time [wish I was making up (but I’m actually not) the fact that as I write this I’m sitting on my hotel bed with a bottle of beer by my side and the sight of snow falling on the East Side Gallery through the window] [this would all be well and good if not for my frequent tendency to feel melancholic about the fact that there are an insatiable number of bloody brilliant cities in this world that I have neither the fortune nor wherewithal to live in]. In the spirit of renewal [and since I’m still on holiday/gin-fizz time] I’ve decided to share the following points with you. I’m not sure what I should call them; they might be my new year’s resolutions [if you’ll forgive their untimeliness – I didn’t have the plainest of sailings into the year]; perhaps they are promises to myself, borne out of the lessons taught to me by upheaval; or maybe it is simply an unashamed piece of didacticism. Whatever. They’re being said. In fact, they should be etched in stone [or just scratched in the sand].
ONE. Use as much energy as it takes [and I mean as much as it takes – all your might] to totally ignore the fact that your confidence is in tatters, even when your confidence is looking distinctly tattery.
TWO. Take a leaf [or several] out of your best mates’ books. Not only because they’ve got your best interests at heart [unlike you and your probably/sometimes/most-of-the-time neurotic brain] but also because they’ve got it so much more sussed than you.
THREE. And on that note [I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again]: the good people are like magnets. One of my finest quotes, I’m sure you’ll agree [it actually led to another friend once saying, ‘You’re my iron filings!’ which is evidently hilarious]. It’s a phrase I’ve been banyding about for years and a rule I’m sticking to: surround yourself with the good ones.
FOUR. Now, forgive me while I go all mercenary for a moment, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t see this point as a crucial part of my current/future/forever-and-a-day contentedness. If a pair of shoes [or, in my case, a pair of 1962 Adidas Originals Sambas] cause you to emit involuntary noises and to squirm inside with delight, bloody well get ’em bought. Don’t hesitate. Oh and also, buy a new make-up case. And spend disportionate amounts of money on loungewear. All of these are game-changers and will bring you no end of joy.
[I can’t believe I’ve reached my fifth and final point. The way my brain is thought-training at the moment, I thought there’d be a lot more; perhaps I’m not as disastrous as it would have me believe. Anyway, I will leave you after this one. There’s a lounge downstairs with even better views and a gin-fizz with my name on it.]
FIVE. If you think something seems too good to be true, you can bet your Sambas it is. Never let anyone convince you otherwise, not even for a second.
