Monday, 17 March 2008
Height Comes Before a Fall
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Quandry.
Friday, 15 February 2008
Punctuation Stations
Tight jeans. Tentative silences....
Public performances.
But nothing makes me twitch and itch and shift in my seat
Like a BIG EMPTY SPACE where an apostrophe should be.
An involuntary spasm
For the missing punctuation,
Yes I care about the commas
(I also like alliteration).
I want to be
Swaddled by semicolons;
Hugged by hyphens -
A brought up short by a fat full stop.
Like notes on a score
These insignificant specks that tell words how to behave
Have made me their slightly obsessive slave.
The pleasure that I treasure
In the meter and the measure
Gets its confidence from colons
And brackets make it brave.
Wednesday, 29 August 2007
Would you like salt with that?
When someone mentions the words ‘hoover’ and ‘unusual usage of’ in the same sentence my mind immediately constructs an elaborate scenario involving a visit to A&E and a story that the attendant medics can dine out on for months. Whether this is due to a brief but intense addiction to Loaded magazine 13 years ago or the fact that housework is more alien to me than bizarre sex stories is unclear. I did however - and I’m not doing myself any favours by admitting this – experience a slight frisson of excitement today when I inadvertently used said domestic cleaning device in a vaguely unorthodox way, and the fact that I am currently taking any opportunity to put off various work-related tasks has driven me to record it for posterity.
Despite failing completely to achieve any kind of salt/container interface I am sufficiently satisfied that I have a slightly cleaner kitchen, a lazy way to clean absolutely everything, and in the admittedly unlikely event of slugs having taken up residence in the hoover bag they are now well and truly toasted.
Next week: cutting my hair with a strimmer.
**filthy
Wednesday, 10 January 2007
Brain Drain
Missing: 28 years of accumulated memory. Identifying characteristics: paranoid fantasy; half-baked feminist deconstruction; lyrics to Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals (I’m not proud); no geographical knowledge whatsoever. Reward for information leading to its return: eternal gratitude. And a bun.
In explanation, I was in the local on Monday evening (start the week as you mean to go on), and ‘assisting’ Amy Tree and Karaokie Blokie with various games on that devious time-wasting contrivance, the pub quiz machine. More like a psychological torture device that charges you for the pleasure of mocking your ignorance, I quickly became disenchanted with the idea of feeding precious gin money into its sneering maw. Not, however, before I had seriously begun to doubt the existence of a section of my brain which is supposed to store information, some of it acquired at great expense over 3 years at university. At best I was able to assist with answers to the blindingly obvious questions, along the lines of ‘Who directed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier?…A) William Shatner B) Andy Pandy C) Nitrous Oxide D) Marxism’. More commonly, I would gaze quizzically at the rapidly decreasing timer as if the questions were in Cantonese, perhaps mumbling “I think maybe….” as if the act of speaking would summon something, anything, resembling knowledge from my mind, which had at this point turned its back and was pretending to examine intently something very interesting on the other side of the room.
I’m not saying I’m stupid. I have been known, on occasion, to make useful, possibly even engaging contributions to conversation, and hold down a job which often requires me to contribute some sort of intellectual effort. But the lack of ability to access anything resembling trivia, general knowledge or, that thing of which I am most envious, a joke, is starting to cause significant social problems. I would be very happy if someone could tell me the medical term for the inability to recall information on demand in a competitive environment, preferably in Latin so I can intellectualise it. And promptly forget it.
Tuesday, 9 January 2007
The Great Divide
*this is probably wrong
Monday, 8 January 2007
Winners and Sinners
My defects, failings and nasty habits are, I am proud to say, well and truly in tact. Suggestions for new and interesting vices will be seriously considered.
This was one of the many Sunday night work-induced insomniac thoughts that occupied me last night as I was slowly absorbed into my beloved memory foam mattress, a sleeping companion that knows the contours of my body more intimately than any lover (and is significantly lower-maintenance).
Another niggling thought was that, despite my anti-resolution stance, I must admit to feeling a need to do….well, something other than being-at-work or not-being-at-work. I decided that my sometime leaning towards making a mess on canvas (clear lack of confidence in the idea of calling myself an artist) should take the route of Vegetable Variations. Striking celery, inviting avocadoes, inexplicable onions; these mute models will be my new focus. And they’re perfect subjects – cheap, quiet, and you can make a casserole out of them when you’re done. This interest in depicting the mystery of fruits and tubers was prompted by a flashback (wobbly lines) to myself at the tender age of 15, explaining to my longsuffering mother why I needed her to acquire a colourful variety of veg which I would leave on my windowsill to deteriorate into a soggy, smelly and potentially health-damaging mess, to be documented by myself in a variety of media over the course of 6 weeks. Her growing concern as spores were gradually released and a foul smelling liquid was exuded by my motley collection of aubergines, apples and mushrooms can only have been assuaged by the fact that her eldest progeny was one step closer to teenage cliché – impenetrable sulks and wild mood swings would now be accompanied – joy! – by rotting food in the bedroom.
Snap back to the present: it occurs to me that I should make amends for these recently remembered tests of my mother’s fortitude by being a Model Daughter for the year. But doesn’t that sound a bit too much like a resolution?...