Untitled

I was having a shit when I heard the first sirens. Even though they weren’t that close or particularly loud, they startled me and I instantly knew it was something big.

There were layers of sounds – high and low pitched, filling the air outside the window, and in the distance, voices. Shouting, screaming. A state of mass panic just outside the house. I was focussed on it and pulled up my pants to go see what was happening. I opened the door and saw the orange hue. A warm glow over everything. It was beautiful for a few seconds until I realised it was all burning.

The flames weren’t separate from each other – like lots of fires all over – it was as though the whole world was engulfed in a great inferno. One thing – one event seemed to have occurred so quickly that no one even had time to run. A small blond girl in a black and glitter Hello Kitty T-Shirt ran past me, I had to turn away. When I did I was faced with a guy about my age with burning knees. I had never pictured what burning knees would look like – but there they were. He had on shorts and a t-shirt and all I could think was, it’s December? Why are you in shorts? Then I saw the squash racket still in his hand – melted in. Further away, the fire trucks and ambulances lined the top of the hill on the main road, like a barrier stopping anyone from going down into the main town. Maybe that was the centre. Where it had hit. Whatever it was.

The emergency services people were running back and forth, organised, professional, which for some reason was surprising to me. Everyone else was on the verge of insanity. It seemed that they all collectively realised that The End had come and there was nothing they could do about it. Not one goddamned thing. Yet this realisation was irrevocably mixed with the human survival instinct of; we can’t fight, but if we run we may survive. But there was nowhere to run. I walked up the street – feeling the air on my bare arms get hotter and hotter, thicker and blacker, and stopped in front of the steps of the college.

The noise was deafening, people trying to escape, trying to find each other. I was thankful I was alone in the world. A huge roar like a jumbo jet inside your ears was coming from – everywhere, and getting closer. I breathed in long and deep, closed my eyes and tried to make my last thought a good one. And in that moment – in all the terror and chaos I realised, damn...

I forgot to wipe.

Been caught stealing

New writing. Check it out HERE.

We were about 11 years old and the manager was threatening to break our legs.
The 3 of us, me and my 2 – older but apparently not wiser – cousins, had been frog marched into the manager’s office by a security guard who didn’t really have to excel at his job that day. We were right there in broad daylight trying to stuff the toys into our jackets, at the front of an aisle by the checkouts in the local supermarket. We may as well have walked in there in black and white striped shirts, masks, and bags with SWAG daubed across them.

Blender.

Transworld has re-printed a nice little article on the legend that is Neil Blender. HERE.

You Bette.

Seeing as I walked back into work just now and was greeted straight away by ‘Wind beneath my wings’(swear to god) coming out the radio, I’m going to update you on my ‘End of year Xmas sounds of the moment' list to distract myself:

This is amazing despite the presence of Dame Dash:


This is exactly what you’d expect/want from Grohl + Homme + J P Jones:


This is fucking epic:



And this is the only album this year with a track named ‘Kevin Spacey’:



Add into this mix a cocktail Lu and I co-invented, called ‘The Footspa’, this book:



and some of these:



And it made for good time off.

Operation Ivy quote of the week

Music is an indirect force for change, because it provides an anchor against human tragedy. In this sense, it works towards a reconciled world. It can also be the direct experience of change. 

You know who you are

It’s funny. Funny weird not funny ha-ha - how you rich are so inherently disassociated from the issues of those you secretly consider to be beneath you.
It is also in equal parts amusing and repellent, the way in which you feign interest in the life of the lower being, the worker, the servant.

It is at times difficult to settle upon which motive is the least devious – the one where you could care less about us living or dying, or the one in which you have no awareness of our existence in the first place.

Trying to be enlightened – to acknowledge your malice but then accept it and forgive, leaving it behind like an empty coffee cup for someone else to pick up, this quickly becomes an endurance test. At worst it descends into an occasion for hatred and arson. Darkness and murder.

I match your indifference, your inability to connect with other humans. I invented insincerity. And every false toothy bullshit smile you spray over people is just a poor imitation of something I started a hundred years before you even knew my name. You cannot even afford me the credit of your character, your mannerisms like every other pie you stick your fingers into – are stolen, inherited. Or by some other means given free to you. No work needed on your part.

You have done enough damage with your small needles, pin pricks time and again over the years, to create this circle. Bringing me all the way back round to hatred. Back around to anger and irrational thought.

But you have no knowledge of this. You never have – or will. Your life is too bright for you to be able to see. All that reflected sunlight. You are blinded by that which shines down only on you.


For Lu.

stitched up by Stevie Wonder

Seriously, I could have done better than this myself, while still under anesthetic.

Boogie Down Bronx

I can't remember much of what I did when I was 16, but it wasn't anything like this.