toledo

In Poe’s Pit and Pendulum, a prisoner is subjected to
Inquisition tortures in a Toledan cell, overseen by
Unseen eyes. When you buy the convent marzipan
A chirpy, but invisible female voice conducts
Negotiations via a revolving wooden trapdoor.

They are running short of Spanish nuns. Novices are
Imported from Sri Lanka, the Philippines or Bolivia.
The holy immigrants stand in convent courtyards,
Chatting and smiling shyly as secular first world
Tourists drift past, soaking up historical ambience.

The city used to be a mescla of Visigoth, Jew, Moor
And Christian. Until the Reconquista banished every
Heretic trace. Save in the architecture. Only now do
Craft shops boast of their fine Damesquado, an art
Secreted through time by beauty, in spite of doctrine.

Religion saturates. A bent-double nun is guided out of a
Cab by a novice who smiles and corrects us assertively.
Mosques, synagogues and churches blend into one. A sign
On a restored house in the Jewish quarter welcomes Jews,
Palestinians and other Arab visitors to pass through its doors.

advice for large egos

Every now and again, take the spotlight away from yourself. Turn it round and shine it on the world. You will find it a relief, I promise.

macbeth 7

My friend is playing Lady Macbeth. It's many years since I've directed anything. I have my own strong opinions about the way the play has been directed. But the lines are as good as ever. They go down like a bloody mary on a sunday lunchtime. The director drives us home in his Bentley.

macbeth 6

The theatre director has been asked to attend second interviews for the position of assistant director at the RSC. Three other directors interview him. He learns that the play he would be assisting on if he got the job would be Macbeth. One of the directors asks him how well he knows the play and he says he’s directed it, so he knows it quite well. Another asks him how he’d feel assisting someone else on that play. He says it would be fine. Someone asks how he’d feel if he didn’t agree with the line the director was taking with the play. The interviewee sighs. He says his job would be to assist, not to commentate. If the director wanted his opinions, he’d offer them, but the job would be about realising the director’s vision not his own. The three interviewers glance around the room. They don’t believe him. They suspect strong opinions could represent an insuperable objection. It does not come as a surprise to learn a few weeks later that he has not got the job.

macbeth 5

Lady Macbeth is on stage. It’s a West London pub theatre. The stage is tiny, claustrophobic, underground, with pillars, nooks and crannies. Entirely appropriate for a six-actor version of the play. Banquo has provided Lady Macbeth with a dress from his shop. The dress doesn’t fit as well as it should. Banquo owns a shop in Kent and has had walk on parts in Coppola movies, but he cannot act. Lady Macbeth is talking about giving suck and dashing out the brains of children. Footsteps from the pub upstairs rattle through the roof. Not completely out of place. Then the strains of the jukebox drift down the stairs. The audience probably don’t notice it, but the director does. The song is Just Like a Woman.

macbeth 4

In Tender is the Night, Nicole Warren is married to a doctor. Who is supposed to have cured her. After an incident in a hotel in Paris where she’s staying, she has a relapse, and breaks down. Her husband, the doctor, enlists the help of the hotel manager to stop the incident turning into a scandal and to help him get Nicole out. The name of the hotel manager is M. Macbeth.

macbeth 3

The student is working in a shoe shop. It’s in the King’s Road. He’s the manager. There are two other people working there with him. They fight to play their favourite cassettes. Someone likes the Inspiral Carpets. He has his Velvet Underground. Who loves the sun. Who cares that it makes plants grow. The afternoons roll on towards infinity. All three people working there feel like they’re imprisoned. If a customer happens to walk in, they walk out immediately, sensing they’ve walking into a morgue by mistake. No shoes are ever sold. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. One day the manager remembers the student he used to be and decides to become a theatre director. There’s a play he needs to direct.

macbeth 2

The tutor sits across the room from the student. The tutor has the essay in his hands. The tutor says it’s a good essay. A very good essay. It’s original. He should think about getting it published. This doesn’t mean anything to the student. The tutor asks where the kernel of his argument came from. The student masks his smile. He says it just came to him as he was reading the play. He doesn’t say that it should be obvious, and he doesn’t even offer a clue as to how he learnt that the doctor’s scene will tell you all you need to know. Something he learnt in a small house where roses grow all year round. The essay will be passed around like samizdat, eventually lost by a hatmaker in Greenwich.

macbeth 1

A young man walks into the empty theatre in Fulham. He arrives towards the end of the day. At least a dozen young men have preceded him. He is faced by three strangers, all male. They tell him a bit about the job. They seem nice enough. It’s not paid but there’s something about it. They ask him to show him what he’s prepared. Most before him have taken centre stage, spread their arms, strutted their stuff. This young man says he’ll just need a chair. He turns the chair around, sits down facing the limited audience, and throws some lines away. He doesn’t realise, but the three-man audience have been waiting for him all day. He gets the job. He is the doctor.

insensitivity

Something the muleman might have said: Is insensitivity not so much a symptom of individual decadence, more a symptom of a diseased society? Which leads back to the sensitive flower, Macbeth, and his doctor, of whom, more anon.

recuperation

It had been one of the longest short breaks in my life. Billed as four days by the sea, it involved much of everything: drink, drugs, skinny dipping, sex (not for me), dancing, barbeques, being lost in nowhere, and famously smelling like a pig. It had also involved sunburn, windburn, a destroyed stomach, and profound exhaustion.

Getting out was no easier. I staggered back to Jorge’s flat after a bus journey from Hunteresque hell. The after effects of that morning’s caipirinha, consumed only a few hours ago, kicked in savagely. (I had dropped a half bottle which the kids had given me on the rocks, as we talked in the language of drunks about sealions and London.They didn’t care. Just fixed another one.)

I had been less than a month in the country. Could not speak the language. Had no money left, and nothing to do. The days before laptops and email. I prepared my classes and read the play again. Fiends never called, both presumably recovering from the same ordeal. Jorge was away for the week. For four days I lived off pasta, water and tea. I went for walks around the Ciudad Vieja and sat in the sixth floor window bay, legs dangling over the edge. looking at a church spire and the oblique view of the Cerro.

When Jorge got back, he asked what had happened to me. When I told him I’d run out of cash he got annoyed and said there were pesos in a pot in the sitting room. I had known about them. I hadn’t needed them.

Starting from a point where I felt almost exactly like I do now, eleven and a half years later, those isolated days in Jorge’s flat had cleansed me. That first visit to Polonio might be part of folklore, but the secret time that followed it at the end of that week was just as important.

different forms of tiredness

Dizzy, dirty, head-swimming.
Dull, leaden, heavy-footed.
Satisfied.
Brain baffled.
Warming, limbs-aching.
Homeward-bound and heartening.
Catatonic.
A warm bath is all it takes to knock you out.

I am under the influence of the first, as a french woman I don't know says Bon Soiree in the dungeon. The first is habitual to travellers and over-exposure to foreign tongues. Mr Poe will conduct me to my drowsiness.

three in the madrid morning runes

Three bars, two restaurants, wined, beered and whiskeyed, and I am only just beginning to feel the first warming quivers of drunkeness. At which point I have to leave before eight am cameraman duties.

Would this be a good sign or a bad one?

job number 107

The Royal Albert Hall, Autumn 1991. I am wearing black suit trousers, a red blazer, and a false bow tie. On stage are two men wearing large amounts of body fat, and nappies. Every couple of minutes they grapple with one another, slap each other around a bit, then retreat.

The job is an usher in the Royal Albert Hall. In spite of the dress code, it’s tolerable. My friend Rebecca with the Irish boyfriend fixed me up with the job. When she’s there, she makes me laugh. She’s very easily shocked. Apart from the proms, the job has also permitted me to see The Flaming Lips, middleweight boxing, the awards ceremony for the RCA, and far too many fusillades during the 1812.

Tonight is Sumo night. The Hall has been transformed. The Japanese have taken over. They’re there in force, with corporate guests. The extras are sushi packs and cans of Sapporo, at that point in UK history one of the most desirable beers available. At the end of the night I find several unopened cans and hide them away. The atmosphere is carnivalesque: there are few better sights than obese men slapping each other around in the shadow of the Hall’s epic organ.

I am on duty on a lower tier. I have a view of the whole Hall. The scale of the Hall alters, sometimes it seems vast, sometimes compact. Tonight is a vast night. I look up to the left, at the boxes. In one, overlooking the stage from the right, two tiers up, I spot two European women with two Japanese men. One of the Europeans is blonde, the other dark. I cannot make out their features.

A certainty grips me that these are people I know. There is no way of telling as they are too far away, but it nags at me. My enjoyment is spoiled. I want to leave my post and go and knock on the box door, which opens from the inside. If I leave my post it might jeapordise my job. If the box door opens and I find what I suspect I might find, dressed up in my red jacket and bow tie, non-cathartic humiliation threatens.

I do not go to the box. Perhaps I do not go out of fear of losing my job. Perhaps it is because I am not sure that these really are people I know, and I don’t want to make a fool of myself. Perhaps it’s because these really are people I know. To confront this, to confront them, to open the door, would be too much to bear.

The night ends, the box empties, the wrestlers vanish. I steal some beer and cycle home.

the craic

The Irishman says he lives in one of the most beautiful places in the world. He talks for Ireland. About the friends he has in Indonesia, France, Italy, Ireland, London, Thailand, Nepal. He talks about the Cockney boys and the Indonesian middle weight boxing champion. He talks and he talks. He loves his food and he can't remember if he's been to Madrid two or three times. His nose was broken as a kid in Cornwall. He thought about joining the RA. He's made a small fortune. He's run stables and slept in fields. He has an arched eyebrow. Sold out of suitcases, owned and lost shops. He's fitted so much into his span it's a wonder he's any energy left to talk, but talk is an art he's learned in the pubs and the fields and the mountains, it's something he'll never lose. If you ask him what he'd miss if he went into exile, he'll tell you he doesn't know if he could live without the craic.

flaneur

Typing away in La Biblioteca Nacional, natch, it crosses my mind that we are but the descendents of the flaneurs, the benjamins and their ilk. The attendants walk past, hands behind their backs. Green folders with papers from Zamora, Zaragoza, Valladolid. That unequivocal madrid light invading the walnut hues and parquet floor, dictating tone. Machines for capturing the retina. Ten hanging lamps, dropping twenty metres from the cieling to annoint the desk clerks. Cataluña, Castilla-Leon, Cantabria. The wealth of a culture incarcerated in a few folders. Downstairs, a picture of Borges, looking unsympathetically opaque.

karmic ciudad

Do places carry Karma? Getting off the tube at the wrong stop by mistake, I found myself back at the top of Hortaleza, and the birth of the euro and the travails of New Year 2001 came flooding back. Here I am again, not quite in the mood for poetry. Madrid now has a double niche, occupies a clear karmic space. Not that ich bin nicht fond of the place. Ich bin. I like the medieval chill, the cinema frenzy, the cheap wine, the ease with which the city opens up to the foreigner. Maybe there will be a fourth time, and my theory will be shown to be tripe. Talking of which...

The first time, pre-karma, early 1990s, I met a red-bearded Californian artist who loved Douanier Rousseau; whose paintings had been bought by Dennis Hopper; who tried and failed to pick up Madridlenas; with whom I shared the horrific experience of consuming tripe, dressed as lasagna. An experience which may have been a premonition I should have listened to.

la aguila

La Aguila is an arts centre. Used to be a brewery. The lift has a mirror that stretches to Portugal. The cinema has leather seats. The projectionist can be seen through a glass window. The banos belong to the poshest of hotels. They show old classics and obscure moderns. Including something about the real Corleone, whose workers took on the mafia. Easier going than Requiem For a Dream. And the cost of all this artistic luxury? Nada. Zero. You do not have to pay.

the artist's ceiling

The artist's ceiling is a long way up. Attached to it are nine large striplights. Composed of four bulbs each. Or maybe three. Making twenty seven lights, or maybe thirty six. I can't remember, although she knows exactly.

The artist took a photograph from someone else's ceiling. Of a dark brown table, surrounded by six dark brown chairs, placed over a dark brown wooden floor. The artist called it an 'armoire' or 'escudo' or 'coat of arms'. Although in fact it is a picture of a table surrounded by chairs above a floor.

The artist denotes the beginning of the Western tradition of representational art at the moment a shroud was placed over the face of the dead Christ. The marks left on that shroud took us down a wayward path from the Dark Ages through the Renaissance unto the border which is the present.

The artist had a picture of a monkey standing on its hindlegs. It reminded me of the anteater in The Pantanal. Which, when approached, went directly to biped mode. Hissing and clawing like a little man. Fear renders animals human.

The artist made a good fish stew and played Davendra Bernhardt on her Mac. The Columbian composer, his wife, the French nurse, the Belgian artist and the French artist and the Spanish artist all drank red wine. The artist had a bottle of white wine. It was the same white wine they serve in Rebatos. I tasted it to check. It tasted like vino de la casa.

the wig shop

The artist tries on a short dark wig. It's too shiny. He looks like something out of The Beatles. He tries on a long dark wig. It's too long. The Chinaman tries to persuade him to buy a brown wig. I think about buying a flexi-snake or a teapot.

sitcom idea

Gather together a collection of warped, neurasthenic Europeans. Living in a magnificent palatial fortress on the edge of Madrid with views over the mountains. They are all artists with their curious projects (to deify the mandible nut; to excorcise Satan from Limoges: to swim the Baring Straight in a toga etc). The lingua franca is English. They all speak it in mutant fashion. They are jealous of one another. Wary and bitchy and opaque, indulging all their national traits. Allow to stew and see what occurs.

aviation

Has got something to be said for it. To move from the unprepossessing surroundings of a former kitchen in London to a Tienda de Vinos in Madrid, (in fact a back street restaurant like the ones they used to make) before the night is out, has something to be said for it. From black coffee to cepas revueltas. Roll-ups to pescadillo. Pine to some deep dark nut colour. Cruel cold to kind cold. None of it possible without the assistance of a plane.

faisalabad

So they held on for a draw.

job number 234

Job number 234 was film producer. Or film production manager. Or driver/ cook/ agony aunt/ runner/ financial officer/ co-ordinator and when I was lucky, writer.

There was one quality which I brought to this role which was invaluable. This quality was frugality. The art of making £5 into £50. The thing about money is that when you're not short of it, you don't realise how far it can go. It's easy to forget that money is just a resource, like rainwater. Sometimes it comes in bucketfuls and sometimes it seems like it will never come.

On the film, it was obvious it was an expendable resource, which, if not treated with due respect, would run out. In which case we would have had to go native, hunt bats and rustle cows, gather nuts in May.

forty

Depends on who you are and where you are.
Is a word I've never known how to spell.
Is a night I hope you are spending in your own bed, wherever that may be.
Is a day I hope you are spending with friends. And family.
Is still the anniversary of a Presidential execution.
Will always be a time for the Top Gun.

Is an age you beat me to.
Is twice the age you were when you were twenty.
Is a time of great sadness and great beauty.
I imagine.
Not having got there yet.
Is neither young nor old.
Leaves more up its sleeve than you imagined.
Is some kind of achievement.
Is a time for all who have been lucky enough to have known you to acknowledge that luck.

Comes but once.
Alters nothing.
Retains its sense of humour.

Deserves a big cake.

pie and mash

On Bethnal Green Road. White marble table tops. White tiles on the walls. A stack of pies. Two large metal vats, one containing mash, the other a form of gravy. You can buy:

One pie and mash.
One pie and double mash.
Two pies and mash.
Two pies and double mash.
etc.
Up to four pies and a vat of mash.
Although no doubt if you asked for thirty pies and ten vats of mash, that wouldn't be a problem.

The mash is smooth and tastes more like smash.
The pie is a meat pie. The most basic mince in a pastry shell.
The gravy is pallid, grey-green, with hints of parsley.
Chirac would not approve.

The clientele all know the woman who works there. She asks a girl why she's got a plaster on her chin. The girl's not sure why she fainted. She wasn't drunk.

They only serve pie and mash. They don't serve anything else. It keeps you warm on a cold day.

life expectancy

Born in Zambia your life expectancy is 39 years, and I would be living on borrowed time.
In Japan, it's 81, and I'm not half way there yet.
In Neolithic times 20 was a decent average. Not leaving much time to discover your inner child.
Classical antiquity, in spite of busts of bearded ancients, had only upped that figure as far as 28. Sufficient time to discover your inner philosophy.
By 1800 the figure was creeping up to the life expectancy of a Zambian today.
By the early 20th c, a half century was your target.

+++

Futurologists predict that soon we will all live to 150. And before that generation is done, immortality might be available upon request. Which may well be the death of humanity as we know it. Already it seems as though there's too much time, too many days to amble through aimlessly. The day must have come when the great struggle for the survival of the human species was won. No more need to procreate fanatically. No more worry that in your 20 year span, you'd see the whole fragile order of man obliterated by killer bees, werewolves, dinasours, aliens or some arachnid virus. Which allowed time for stargazing, carving ideograms on walls, turning twigs into telephones, drugs, recreational sex, cooking and circuses. All the joys of modern living.

Now mankind is here and we're stuck with it. But sometimes the suspicion dawns that the whole order of things has been misunderstood in the quest to live longer, further, more comfortably. It's forgotten that humans are the impoverished species, the most conscious and damned of them all. Our earliest ancestors longed for the chance to escape the shackles of evolution; welcomed their saviour death; rejoiced at the notion of being reborn as a butterfly, an ant, a cheetah, a snowy barn-owl; any one of a million species whose spell upon this earth is more vibrant, as valuable, less problematic than our own.

wires

Weird the way the nomad travels in a tangle of wires. Wires for this, wires for that. Like the camel's reins. Or severed roots.

looking ahead

The quiet times are important. The hum of a radiator;
The brightness of an unfamiliar bulb. Starkness of
Another's space. All grant a quietude. Not of thought
But of spirit. You are less yourself in another's home.
Still, that lessness is not to be sneered at. It lends the
Mind a space of non-belonging in order to reflect.
On time slipping like sand through sun-tanned toes.
Of the meaning of that sand. It's hardness, the last
Thing left when even rock is rendered nil by waves.
Sand slips and slithers. Children dig holes to other
Worlds. Footmarks left behind. Crabs make homes
Within its grain. Angels count the number of these
Grains. Everything shall be accounted for, in the
Course of time, which slips through sun-tanned toes,
Like sand. All of this passing, all of these marks, can
Be guaged in quiet times; read in mute foreign walls.

symbols

In the film The Constant Gardener, the lead character at one point holds up a large book, and comments on it. The book is Amnesty International's annual report.

By doing so, the film is defining itself as one which is not only knowledgeable on the issue of human rights, but also one which is wiling to proclaim and educate its audience about where to go to find out more about this subject themselves. The book is a badge the film wears with pride.

The film's plot deals with the issue of pharmaceutical companies using citizens in the 'third world' to test products which are being developing for global usage. The approach and denoument become predictable with film obeying its (commercially determined) genre diktat. What was more interesting about the film from this perspective was its portrayal of two things: the english, viewed through a Brazilian lens; and the way an englishman reacts to bereavement. The lead character seemed, until the demands of plot began to hero-ise and anonymise him, acutely drawn. He reminded me of a friend I used to have who worked for the Bank of England. Liberal, enlightened, diffident, wary of connection.

The second key english character is the woman he marries, a wealthy liberal activist who is killed for investigating the pharmaceutical companies. She owns a flat in Chelsea. Which is where the Amnesty annual report resides. A badge of her right-thinkingness. In her aspiration to saintliness (perhaps to atone for the sins of wealth she has inherited) the young activist behaves with a selfishishness which is later justified in the context of the global cause. One of the weaker aspects of the narrative is that it is not quite brave enough to be true to this selfishness, and ends up re-inventing it as the price of saintliness. She does not tell her husband that the man he suspects her of having an affair with is gay - because she wants to 'protect' him. etc etc. As a result of which he must ultimately (and willingly) give his own life to 'find' her again, in death. (A most Kleistian romantic vision, which may have appealed to a sun-kissed Brazilian mind.)

As the martyred woman is transformed into a saint, it is to be assumed that the Amnesty book is a mark of her saintliness. The film's refusal to confront her self-serving nature had to be maintained, as much for the protection of the Amnesty/ Oxfam/ liberal shibboleths as its own romantic narrative demands. (Though these may be one and the same thing).

I have encountered, through a privileged insight into the organisation, a very different understanding of Amnesty, one where the organisation is seen as insensitive, lacking clarity of thought, and indulging many of the weaker aspects of the British (administrative) culture. Just as the film, to my mind, declined to embrace the complexity of its central female character, so the received perception of the Amnesty imprimatur fails to recognise the complexity of that organisation's truth.

What does all this mean? That we have a tendency, in art, in politics, in all things, to simplify. Reality is too complex for most narratives to bear. We resort to looking at the symbols, rather than looking at what lies behind the symbols.

The film includes a sequence describing the husband's despair when he revisits his dead wife's Chelsea home. This sequence achieves the cinematic language and brilliance of City of God. The English reserve cracked open. The emotion which lies behind despair, which the english so often fail to penetrate, is released. Perhaps the Brazilians understand that emotional despair cannot be rendered in anything other than the most poetic of language if it is to be realised at all. A language which demands a more complex use of symbols (which is the language of film, image succeeding image, each one a symbol of the film's ultimate ambition.)

little things

Watch The Constant Gardener. Feast of well Nigh(y) everything. Liked the flamingos. Came out about six. No food. Sample delights of Brixton. Pattie. Shop shutting. Oh go on then. Got the lamb left and the vegetable. I'll take a lamb. One pound fifteen pence. Worth every penny. Walk out the shop. Pattie in paper bag. Fat feeling pattie. Open the bag. Find the bonus extra pattie. About which not even a hint had been dropped.

the walls

Show no sign of falling down. Maybe they need a haircut.

in the interim

A Californian freak who acts out like a cross between Bolan and Morrison, dances like a daddy-long-legs, shakes his hair like one of us, presumably can be caught scratching the old chin from time to time, sings covers of a Manson song, and, more to my point, a Caetano song. My little grasshopper... The Astoria, venue from hell, surges the waves and rises to a crescendo. whilst a big-booted baldhead tries to shepherd the band off-stage.

In the workshop, your host Ricardo gets a thespian horde to remove their shoes and contempate abduction. The mission is poorly executed when the wrong Matt is removed from the room.

Ms Derry concocts a gin-what-d'chu-call-it with a rosemary of lime and all is about is as well within a sectarian world as it could be.

An investment banker buys a cappucino in The City and expains he's got a deaf brother.

Krakatoa trembles in miniature. The waves act up like Gina Lollabrigida.

how to freak someone out on the victoria line during rush hour

Sit next to someone who reads over your shoulder.
Take a pad of paper and marker pen out of bag.
Write the following words in large letters:

YOUR MISSION
IS TO IDENTIFY
MATT
AND REMOVE
MATT
FROM THE ROOM

Leave the pad open and offer no explanations.

poem to be read with northern accent

Mr Blue's bath
Makes me laugh.

the landor

Is one of Brixton's better pubs. It underwent an upgrade about ten years ago when they stuck canoes on the cieling. It used to have two pool tables but last night I noticed it only had one. Heywood used to hang out there, Mr C too. It's neo-Clapham, uber-Brixton.

Other notable Brixton pubs, (2 of which featured in YFP): the Duke of Edinburgh; The Trinity Arms; and perhaps the finest of all, The Effra Tavern.

friends

Should be given every opportunity.

honesty

Will be the death of me. Which might sound strange coming from someone who sometimes behaves in such a dishonest manner.

multan

Out in the desolate wastes of a city on the edge of nowhere, there is incredible tension which I cannot access.

a duvet in brazil

On Saturday, in Campo Grando, Mato Grosso do Sul, a man called Francisco Anselmo de Barros wrapped himself up in a duvet and set fire to the duvet. His action took his fellow protestors by surprise. They were campaiging against the construction of alcohol factories in the Pantanal. In a note he had written: 'Who knows if this isn't the only way to stop this? The boat is sinking.' He is still alive, in hospital with 100% burns, but the doctors say he is unlikely to survive.

cocaine

Brixton memory §2.

The dealer lives in the room next door. He gets in at five and plays house music until eight. On a Tuesday morning. The dealer doesn't pay rent but the house belongs to him. He keeps cocaine in the fridge. He bounces bags the size of tennis balls off the walls. The dealer has screaming rows with his girlfriend several times an hour. He's vulnerable and insecure and a low-level bully.

One night Sedley takes me round the corner for an Indian. When I get back the dealer's gone. They'd been watching him for weeks. They'd have broken the door down if it wasn't for the fact someone answered the knock. They handcuffed the tenants and raided his room. The room next door to mine.

A year or so later I see the dealer on the tube. He's wearing a suit and reading the Financial Times. He doesn't notice me.

+++

I never lasted too long in my Brixton residencies. Many friends have lived here for years. I got dealers and drunks and when I lived in Trinity Square the last Brixton riot took place round the corner. I'm fond of Brixton. It's got a lot going for it. Just never seemed to quite work out for me.

barry

Brixton memory §1.

The kitchen contains a fridge whose smell is so fearful it can never be opened. The kitchen is a formica hellhole. It belongs to the unterworld. Barry has taken to living in the kitchen. He has a dirty beard and wears dirty clothes. He drinks dirty cans and he too smells of dirt. Barry sits in the kitchen and his words echo up the stairs and through the house. The words are always the same. They are: Fucking Fuck. Fucking Fuck. Fucking Fuck. Barry doesn't talk to you. He repeats his mantra at you. There is something more than disqueiting about Barry. There's something so depressing you don't want to think about it. But you can't help it. You go to bed and his words rise through the floorboards. He never sleeps. He's always there. He always will be. He's Barry.

ragga mamma

Oh yes tis a weird and wonderful world when you find yourself giving tips to Ragga Mamma and her friends in the afro-carribean Cinderella. Who shake your hand at the end of the night and say you've given them plenty to think about. Who ask you what you normally direct and you dig into the memory chest and try to remember names of those writers you once thought you might shepherd across a stage.

Ragga Mamma had grace and poise. She knew she was the focal point of the earth's spiritual energies; she wore the mantle with pride and danced like she meant it.

thin walls

Someone's been moved into the cell next to mine in the dungeon. It's a she. I've never seen her. But I hear her. She resides thre on her own. She never puts the phone down. Finishes one call and starts the next. Always speaking to people she doesn't know that well. Conversation starts with a bit of false bonhomie, and then it's down to business. It sounds like she's after something. She talks assertively, with points to make. Her conversations always end with: if we could do that, that would be great. She grates. Maybe she's just ambitious. Hard working. She'll be a shining star in her chosen constellation. These are the calls that made her. To drown her out I find some baroque music on a channel called Magnetic FM, which employs a robot for a presenter.

winchester

Mr C got a text from a woman he didn't know, quarter to 11, asking if it was OK to talk. They talked. The woman kept asking him about his relationship to Essex. She didn't talk about Nietzsche at all. Connectivity was not achieved. Which had been the object of the exercise. Not exactly unlikely. Hard to pull off. In Winchester, people live within their own minds, they cannot cross the borders and enter the minds of folk from Eastleigh, or Southampton. Even Martyr Worthy is a challenge. It was a second successive Saturday night with Mr C. No talk of communism or capitalism this time. Just Bath Olivers and detox tea.

on the cusp

Onset of flu.
Eyeballs half baked.
Base lines coming
Through the cieling.
Words of warning
In a half tone
Murkiness. Dead
Bay leaves spider-
Crawl the mirror.
TV screen blank.
Carpet strangely
Still. Green plimsols
Paired up. Footsteps
At front door. Keys
Jangle. Never
More, they mutter
As the door slams.

Midnight arrives.
Saturday comes.
No turning back
Clocks or time or
All that comes to
Pass, because there
Never is; there
Never can be.

The voices res-
Onate through floor-
Boards like never
Before. Spectral
Voices, hiding
Sounds of other
Voices, trying
To break through to
Take me back. Like
Polanski's walls.
Hands reaching out
Saying do not
Forget the day
We danced or laughed
Or screamed or drank;
All of us. And
People fall down
Drunk on the floor
Or coil in love
Or lust or smile
At the secret
Joy the space has
Brought them and we
Smile back knowing
It is a strange
Magic we've blessed
These walls withal
Through the strangeness
Of our own strange
Perishable
Magic. Trembling
Through the atoms
Of this the home
We have brought to
Life.

wiskey nacional

An August Montevideo night. I only remember the month because it was days after the Filtro shooting. Which happened on a night when I was drunk along with everyone else in Lobizon. Danny with a smile as big as the Plata, saying this is the life.

Which wasn't the night I'm talking about. The night before they flew. I can't remember who flew with who, all I know was that chancho was still there. I barely knew him. He'd been in the country a week or two, sandwiched either side of a trip to Peru and back. He'd had a row with my boss and nearly got into a fight at a gay party and his spanish was better than mine even though I'd been in the country nearly six months. None of which matters.

He had a journalist's nose, even then. Digging out a story. We had a bottle of whisky nacional. Home brewed in Salto or somewhere. The cheap shit. I liked it. Two glasses stocked up with ice kept you going all night. It was fuel as much as alcohol. Maybe he'd bought it to take it home or maybe I'd bought it but when the party finished we stayed up. Kept drinking. There was a story at the bottom of the bottle and the journalist was going to get it before he caught the plane home.

Drink a bottle of wiskey nacional with someone and you might regret it for the rest of your life. You'll probably never want to do it again. You could say things you'd never say under any other circumstances.

If you're lucky it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

suitable fare

Oh great, there's a documentary on Pol Pot!

despedida

They're letting off fireworks in the street. In my honour? One doubts it. Just another portuguese celebration; Vasco de Gama's dog's wedding anniversary.

I can't see them, just hear them. Big noise for a little place. Potuguese don't normally come across as excitable Latins, but it's in there somewhere, lurking behind the seafood porridge, the dowdy waiters and the port.

I thought about going tonight, getting drunk, avoiding reality. Decided against it. Was also worried that I'd go doolally (we all love that word) if I stayed in on my own, finish the mescal, but I don't think it's going to happen. Si quieres que tengo mi cabeza together, lo puedo hacer. Instead have watched Channel 4 news, walked down to the local shop to splash out on fruit juice and tuna, and cooked myself some classic mystery food; spices and capers and bay leaves from the garden and other good things. Tasted OK. Had an appetite.

The fireworks seem to have stopped. Quite disorientating, a cacophony without a focal point.

stratford east

In the plays an autistic child punches a girl he likes; a brother kills his sister and assumes her identity; racial barriers break down on a slave ship when a witchdoctor heals the first mate.

The kids stand and take their applause.

I sit on a stage with director, another writer, the Meth, and a well-known TV intellectual. Everybody concludes the event has been a resounding success. A few kids tell me their play was better than the ones which were chosen. The ones who were chosen seem unlikely winners; reserved, keeping any excitement at bay.

The TV intellectual says I'm familiar, asks if she knows me from somewhere. I tell her she doesn't. She asks if I get asked that a lot. I tell her I do. Always have done. Never quite known why.

random thoughts of a friday morning

Bleak House.

Cheltenham, 1974. A strange sense of bewilderment. Not the end of the world, but not the world as I had imagined it would be. People seeming to want to take pity on me, and me in my eight year old head neither wanting their pity nor feeling it was anywhere near the mark. Being faintly surprised by the way these adults misread my little face. Perhaps understanding for the first time the way in which people cannot do anything more than map their own emotional globe onto each and every problem they find. Sitting on a wide old white-bannistered staircase whilst some kindly soul ruffled my hair and told me it would be alright, with them unable to hear me thinking that these weren't the words I wanted to hear.

Dole. Someone read these pages and said the mention of the word Thatcher had a violent reaction on them. I apologise for mentioning her again. Thatcher won her second term on my twenty first birthday. It was as though hope had been eclipsed for my twenties. I expected all that came to pass. To be poor, to be on the dole for years; to work in shoeshops and mince pie factories and on building sites and so it came to pass. I was peripatetic, unsettled, and lived within that circumference where you don't expect the breaks, and don't get them. The Anglo was the first time I ever got a job which paid me to do something I wanted. If I ever think of myself as a walking disaster area, it comes from those years, finding myself in another rented space, hostage to housing benefit, increasingly bewildered by the way security was so fickle, and the simple things were so impossible to realise. There was no simplicity available; there was nothing but never-ending London murkiness.

I have known only one thing that's as comparable to the stressfulness of life on the dole. Constantly feeling under that Thatcherite regime you were about to be caught out. Even when you'd done nothing wrong, you invented things in your head. Your whole idea of any kind of security tied to forces beyond your control. Dedicating hours of your life to being in places you don't want to be. Dashing from pillar to post to get to your sign-on. It's another institutionalised way of living, which caught up with me. It was a relief to know that would never happen again, when the housing benefit was stopped and I had little option but to leave London and write a book. But even as late as 1993, I arranged my flight times to Montevideo around my signing on in Bournemouth.

Decades. Writing this I realise what a lost decade my twenties has become. It culminated, at two poles. One was the pool table in Basingstoke, described below somewhere, one logical extension of the grit of life that gets caught under your skin. However, fortunately for me, it also culminated in climbing a statue on election night in Plaza Independencia; in a mazy walk to the port from the Mercado (also documented below) and perhaps, above all, an out of season trip to Polonio, the place where they set the beach on fire, where I learnt how to say: Yo Que Se. Somehow I had hung on in there and it was true, silver linings were out there, all that belief in the inevitability of bad luck was wrong. I got lucky.

My thirties were a very different decade to my twenties. Not without their own issues, of course, as is well known, but they seemed to make more sense, and if things seem to make sense, then it's likely you'll be able to take more pleasure in them (though that is not always so). So much so that that sense of never-ending London attrition receded, for a few years in my thirties I even had some cash to spend. But when I look at the art, it's strange how people tell me that I put so little of myself in there; for the twenties was the era of Mickey Valid; of Macbeth and the doctor; of the Jungle of Cities. (A stage in Wandsworth so small the leading man falls off it, half cut, but that's another story).

Forgive the somewhat discursive nature of this morning's entry, dear reader. I woke this morning early, full of confusion, and shall be doing so again. It helps to take the space and impose some shape, which is what words can do. I could write here now til the cows came home, for it soothes me, but I must away to Stratford East to see the teenager's plays. Don't get me started on being a teenager.

efficiency

You just kind of know don't you, that when you begin to work with someone and they make a big deal out of being efficient and have folders and files for everything; what it means that in point of fact they are all over the shop and barely know their big toes from their little toes; let alone where to file them.

cottage

Inside is musty. There's a damp hum, which has a warming air. Although I was just a kid, too young to judge the age of an adult, let alone a sofa, I could feel the age of these things, their connection to another age, to time.

There was always a fire in Winter. In Spring the apple tree must have blossomed, but I don't remember that. Summers were warm. Playing cricket in the large garden, shirtless. Throwing apples at the red pillar box across the road. Climbing the giant tree, spying golden fields, the wealth of a child's perception.

Christmases were always special at the cottage. It was special to have to go somewhere. To feel the crisp cold of the country. Frost on the lawn, your breath misting over window panes. Giant socks at the bottom of the bed. I'd try and stay awake, having worked out the facts already. See the ghostly form of my giggling parents tip-toeing into the room, Father Chistmas by proxy.

Christmas morning was the time. Grandfather up and about. Mother cooking. Presents under the tree. Father smoking his first cigarette. A sense of energy, which the kids must have fuelled. Something exciting was about to happen. The world had other worlds within it. This was just one of them. I'd gaze out the window at the bright, lunar lawn, coralling my anticipation.

doldrums

When the wind's gone out of your sails, and there's no direction home -
You don't want to go begging with a pot in your hand.
You want them to come to you, hamper in hand, saying, come on, let's eat.

enemy

A man catches my eye. He's staring at me as I breeze by on bike down Brick Lane, mid-morning. I recognise him. It makes me smile.

+++

The Garage was a mongrel space. Half designer boutique, half discount warehouse, half fashion, half street, out of place on the King's Road but out of place anywhere.

Full of human flotsam. Iranian exiles: shoplifting wives and control freak former bourgeois under the Shah. A couple of giggly Italian girls who smiled and sighed. Gigi, the troll-faced beauty with his mariachi tresses, constantly bewailing a universe that had banished him to this hell. Until Saturday came around and he had a wodge in his pocket. Ros, the only one who got out and made it, used to smoke weed with Marvin Gaye. Tino, the gay Italian count. John, the Scottish pill-popper whose ex-wife was a film producer. Freddie and his crew, the street boys, who brought shotguns in to show off under their well-cut overcoats. And us, white middle class shirt sellers, exploring an aesthetic named dorian grey.

The boredom was intense. The fights were sometimes savage. There were stories of stalls which made thousands, made their owners rich. There were stalls which were dead even before they'd got their stock inside. There was music coming from at least 12 different angles. All there was to do was the quick Guardian crossword, the alert reaction if by some chance a punter came past, a bit of star-gazing (Kylie; Nigel Kennedy; Bros, our finest customers; that guy out of that band whose name you'll never remember; once, famously, Debbie Harry); and chat to your jetsam neighbours.

In the first few weeks, I tiptoed round, feeling out of place, finding my feet. Speaking to the odd neighbours. Sedley was a bit more gregarious, less inhibited than me. After all, he was a London lad.

Freddie had a corner stall. Corner stalls were prized. They had magic commercial properties. He was aloof. Gigi got on with him. We sort of nodded at each other. I thought I should make an effort. As was my style. I'd go and talk to him, clumsy conversations. About what he wanted to do, where he thought it was going. Freddie has a high pitched, squeaky voice. He never gave anything away. One day, he flipped. He told me to fuck off. He said I was spying on him. Got scared I was going to rip off his clothes, his ideas, his corner stall, his way of life? He told Gigi he'd kill me if I tried anything.

I backed off. Went and sat two stalls down. Freddie glared at me for a week. Gigi tried to intercede. Gigi didn't like men not getting on. There was enough trouble in the world with women, men needed to stay cool. Not that he did. It didn't make any difference. Freddie and I ignored one another. He'd talk to Sedley from time to time, and when his mates came down, they'd talk to me. His sister was a performance poet and we had a few chats about art and all that jazz. But Freddie and I were enemies, and the ice never thawed.

We were only there six months. Cleaned up at Xmas and then moved on to other dreams. I went back to the Garage in the New year and sold leather jackets for Gigi on odd days. Then that was it. A year or so later The Garage had gone. Now it's a Conran emporium.

I used to see Freddie around. At Portobello, Spitalfields, here and there. He carried on glaring at me, though he'd probably forgotten who I was. I didn't forget him. Never been too good at accruing enemies. Freddie was a sore thumb in the consciousness.

+++

Maybe he did remember me. Because it was him, glaring at me today in Brick Lane. Not with undue malevolence. Just that beady eyed look of his. Which made me smile.

asexuals

About 3% of the human race are asexual. Which means they have no desire for sex at all, with male, female or a.n.other. One would have imagined this would make life easier, but apparently not. Asexuals feel marginalised, isolated, misunderstood. They seek out asexual communities and wear PROUD 2 BE A t-shirts. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

snippets

Fewer than a hundred people have smashed everything and wreaked desolation. They are not part of the same universe as us.

The Mayor of Evreux

+++

The high moral ground...the pure white flame of unconditional support to an ally in the service of an idea, have their disadvantages. They place your destiny in the hands of the ally. They fly above the tangled history of Sunni, Shia and Kurd. They discourage descent into the dull detail of tough and necessary bargaining...

Sir Christopher Meyer, DC Confidential

+++

Burning cars and dodging cops is a lot more fun than playing video games.

Mounir

what the campesino was overheard saying under the influence of mescal

Potosi, some boliche somewhere. Tourists all around talking about the shortage of proper clothes shops in this dirt-poor city. Indios in ponchos and wild dogs harrasing decent fee-paying visitors. Can't get a decent windcheater for love not money. A few locals wearing sandals and talking turkey. One of them's talking from the heart:

No tengo plata.
No tengo casa.
Amigos son flaky.
No me importa.
Tengo mi cabeza.
Tengo esperanza que ustedes no pueden matar.
Ya se lo que soy.
A la mierda con esta montana de plata que no serve a nadia. Da me un trago mas.
O que me mata o que no.

(verbatim - forgive any poverty in spanish text - corrections welcome - we do our best on muntant butoh, but know our editorial limitations)

on writing

Last Saturday night, not this one, I found myself annexing a pad of paper and a pen at four in the morning. I chiselled the odd word onto a page. Sharp lines and square rounds. In the end, it helped me to get by. I remembered, as I did that, another night, when I had taken, for the only time in my life, too much acid. On that night, my brain had come to the conclusion that it was more likely than not that the night was never going to end. It reasoned, quite effectively, that I had trapped myself in some grotesque unter-world, peopled by nintendo freaks and the destruction of time as I knew it. In order to lend myself hope that the night would end, I again picked up a pad of paper and wrote, knowing that the knowledge of an increasing number of marks on the page determined the existence of time, and with it hope. My writing was rewarded by the onset of dawn and light filtering through the fir trees. I had no idea as I was writing of what the dawn would and indeed, a few hours later, did bring, but the point is - the writing did the trick. It kept me sane.

And so it hath continued. I frequently wish that writing brought me some kind of profit (by which I mean leeway to subsist), and it consistently fails to do that. In my grandfather's world (the australian brummie grandfather, the L in my initials) that would mean my writing is a redundant, indulgent pastime. However, it is a mistake to confuse the instinct to write with an instinct to subsistence, or even wealth. It might be, within our culture, that some can carve a living out of writing. But writers do not write for profit. Not on the bottom line. Levi Strauss argued, quite beautifully, and with a logic I have no time to investigate ahora, that writing originated from the need to control, demarcate and administrate (power). He might be right, but from my perspective, writing is enamoured with the quest for an idea of sanity and a desire for survival. If the reader will forgive me quoting Thomas Aquinas: Jamais me pagas ni un sou, mais jo se que para sobrevivir en este mundo rado, tengo que escribir.

mercado

It's nearly new year.

The weather's warm. My flesh still enjoys the sun. I'm a novelty, todavia. A man highjacks a girl, flirts with her. Medio y medio y mas medio y medio. The insouciance of knowledge. Maybe have a snack, some chinchulin, no need for the works. The sun is kind. A dress. An angle. A mazy walk. Throw an art deco bracelet in the brackish port water. Hug your knees. Round specs. Cast the past into the vast ocean's deep. Face the unknown. The sun is kind. The alcohol dissolving into the blood stream. Risk. The bracelet sinks to the bottom. Finds its new home. Knows its lustre may be lost but its metal will survive us all.

extract from yellow fever pages

In big letters on my packet of Amber Leaf:

SMOKING KILLS

What are they trying to do, advertise?

saturday afternoon

Saturday afternoon. Spring warmth. The Mercado finding its feet. Medio y medio, cervea, pamplones, chorizos, asado de tira, mollejas, que rico, todo esto.

Snapshot memory of police in the Mercado, once, driving people out, drunken revellers, beneath a Birmingham clock, metals doors slamming shut, grills ablaze, los asasdores dressed in white, ducking behind counters.

In Plaza Matriz, protesters group beneath banners and slogans. Folk memories. Fighing the oppressor. Scaring the right.

They are marching against Bush; against the Yankee; against the Free Trade Zone of the Americas; against poverty; elitism; old sores; because they know no other way to make their case; because they are bored; because a friend told them to; because they resent their parents; because they believe they have to; because it's Spring and it's good to be out on the streets of a Saturday afternoon.

The march barely knows where it's going. Peaceful, festive even. Maybe some drunken liberal tourists spinning out of the Mercado tag along; walking off meat and alcohol, amazed to find themselves in this peculiar, Ciudad Vieja nirvana.

The masked men aren't part of the crowd. Who knows where they've come from. They shatter windscreens, shop windows, the mood. Is this the underbelly? Is this some militaristic PR conspiracy? Who are these salvajes, que se veia en sus rostros una gigantesca ira? They provoke riot police, they provoke the wrath of rain, they vanish into the parts of the city the tourists never visit.

They might be step-brothers of the Parisian immigrants, they might be the true sons of no-liberalism; they might just be the angry and disenfranchised runts of any litter.

Bush isn't here. He's in Argentina. The flame burns itself out. Left and right alike regret the rioting. The government stamps on the ghosts which tickle bourgeois paranoia. The left wing majority don't want the cage rattled now, when there's work to be done. The upper classes wonder if this is the sign they feared, the moment to buy a gun; off-shore cash; fear the worst.

Bush doesn't even know about it. He's heading back to Yankee land. The sun sets over Ciudad Vieja. There will be dancing til dawn. Jorge Suarez will not get an early night. Summer's coming; there's more to life than politics.

communism

Amongst other things I suggested, perhaps tongue in cheek, that recent events had made me re-consider the merits of communism. A red rag to a bull.

come and see mr c (in Rebatos)

A teenager becomes an old man in the space of two hours.

Why are some films famous and other films are not?
Cultural imperialism and marketing budgets. (Which go hand in hand)
Treptower Park makes more sense after watching this film - the last flowering of Soviet cinema.

A fierce-eyed girl dances on the tree stump in black boots; the loopy-faced boy laughs. We are invited to share the things they will see. Two hours later all of us are haggard.

+++

In Rebatos, the conversation flickers from one thing to another. Totalitarianism; Uruguayan social democracy; Foucault; the hydra of capitalism; the impoverished dreaming of capitalism; the calumunies of communism. The miners strike and the gulags; the Eastern front and the broken mills of Bengal. Nietzsche, of course.

There is only one who can improvise so fitfully yet passionately across the great divides. Who'd argue in favour of that thing called capitalism one minute and denounce it with venom the next. Only one who'd insist we watch Klimov's masterpiece of a Saturday night, fireworks in the background.

Nowhere better to riff than Rebatos, where the waiters shake your hand and the tapas will be hard to beat in Madrid. We sat at the bar. As I left I saw a crowd colonising the corner seats, branching out onto neighbouring tables. Smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and talking nine to the dozen. Every one of them a ghost.

Long may Rebatos play the familiar tunes, serve the same specials, top up wine glasses before they are finished. Let us hope Mr C and I shall come and see one another there again, sooner or later.

funny games

In the play, the prisoner of love has his tongue cut out.
Unable to speak, he uses his hands to communicate to his lover.
His hands are removed.
Unable to speak, unable to use his hands, the prisoner dances to show his love.
His feet are chopped off.

+++

Why is this funny?
Maybe you don't find it funny, maybe you think its sick, in which case this is not your ballpark.
I find it funny.
Why is this funny?

- Just because something terrible happens to you don't mean it ain't got any reason to get worse.
- The joke is that the more you want to give of yourself, the more you're likely to lose.
- The pathetic would rather be comic than tragic.
- Theatre isn't real.
- People will react against these events by saying they're not funny. They'll even think: I know I'm being baited, I refuse to rise to the bait, but I still don't think it's funny.
- It's funny because other people's misfortune is not our own. The bigger the banana skin the harder they fall, the funnier it gets.
- It's funny because sometimes there's nothing left but a sense of humour; it's the last, indissoluble vestige of your mind's individuality.

+++

There maybe more reasons and it may be I haven't put my finger on the real reason, in which case please accept my apologies. It's a piece of theatrical sleight of hand. My only note for this production would be: I wish it had been more brutal. Then it would have been even funnier.

four images

A kid does some kind of kung-fu dance move against a pink/blue background. Another looks on, back half turned. As though the fate of the dancer is of concern, worthy of study, of delight; and yet the watcher, chooses their angle carefully, keeps out of the dance. A birthday present from Mr Blue.

A row of pillars stretching into a blue sky. Palmyra. The blue is transcluscent. The pillars are captured at such an angle that they seem to be constantly falling over.

An ornate frame, like something out of a Wild West bordello, encompasses a photo of a girl sitting on rocks. A large dog, short-haired, black flesh, ears pricked up, stands behind the girl, looking out to sea.

A sepia photo of a man with a pipe sticking out his mouth. Looking contented enough with the world. Neat hair, suit and tie. A posed photograph, the sort that used to get taken before cameras were a common household currency. A man probably younger than myself.

argentina, 1996

Sitting in the cafe, the local TV channel shows a baker talking. He's saying he's not sure he can afford to keep on making bread. The cafe's in Mendoza. Mendoza is a vale of plenitude. The air is dry-cleaned by the Andes. The parks are green. Mendozans patrol the street at a leisurely pace, eating afternoon ice creams.

People are keeping half an eye on the TV. As they drink coffee, eat bifes de lomo, gossip. We watch the people watching the news as we drink coffee, have some kind of Mendozan snack. My Argentinian is good enough to pick out snippets. Get the jist.

Things are not what they seem. Don't get fooled by that balmy dollar-peso equation. There's trouble in store.

The trouble takes its time coming. Five years or so. Then the levee bursts and the country implodes.

a pool table

It's in Basingstoke.
It looks like any other pool table.
No one's playing.
A lot of people are watching TV.
Some people are bright, approachable.
Most are near comatose.
It scares the fuck out of me. Even though I am in no danger and barely know how to play pool.
The mortality rate is higher than being a pilot in the first world war.
Fending off the hun coming out of the sun.
Or the Wykehamist from the sepulchral mist.

por que no estaba

I get home after cycling back from Dalston.
The front page story is that riots mar the opening of the Americas summit.
It brings a smile to my face.
A smile that has been a long time coming.

At the theatre, a man who looks like he has too much money to spend on cycling gear is left speechless.
And the play? Now there's the rub.

Conversation with a shadow figure over beer. A man who doesn't remember me. For I too am a shadow figure. Shadows can barely remember their selves. The shadow figure might hold the whole compendium of secrets locked within his features. Then again, so might I.

with a view of the Tasman sea

In Australia, the cockatoos wake you up with their sceeches. The steers are aggressive. There is much fun to be had from: driving the truck; pruning the trees; enormous bonfires. In Australia, the world is a long way away. There's no one in the vicinity. Letters are commonplace but not effective. Nice blue airmail letters, which fold out once, twice, three times, and then have a fold on the back. However, Australia is so far away that it's hard for people not to forget you whilst you're there. Australia has maroon tiles in the bathroom. It has a mini-kettle and a mini-fridge. It's made up of units and to all intents and purposes it feels like a motel in the middle of nowhere. With cockatoos to greet you at dawn. There's not a great deal to do at night in Australia. You try and write a diary, but there's nothing to write about. When it becomes too desperate a process you throw the diary in the bonfire. A national tradition.

They have strange crimes in Australia. The animals in the zoo are killed in pairs. Bodies pile up in suburban gardens. Backpackers vanish in the bush. Apparently they have strange wildlife too, but you don't see it. Except in the zoos.

There's a lot of sky in Australia. It presses down on you. A big hand grinding your shoulders down, jabbing at your head. It makes it hard to walk straight. So you walk around as though bent. Like an old man. Even though you're barely a young man. Your feet sometimes sink into the soil. Australia needs people. It's got too much land and not enough people. It will imprison you there if you give it a chance. It will pin you down like a butterfly.

altiplano

Five in the morning. A bus out of 1976 pulls off the road onto the gravel. People troop off. The air is sharp. Women in bowler hats walk past. Men in ponchos. In the fields a man wearing a hat and a poncho tends a few sheep. Sheep that look like goats. The mountains loom. Cut into their sides are the terraces the Inca built. Unused for four hundred years. Vestige of a culture and an idea of wealth. Gone to seed.

There's a little hut selling coffee. A hut out of 1936. It's hard to choose which is more joyless, inside the hut or outside. The hut has half a hint of warmth. Outside has a hint of stark beauty. It feels dusty. High plains dust. A veneer like perfume. In spite of the cold.

The odd car pedals past, bound for the capital. That's about it. There are places where you wouldn't mind breaking down and there are places where you'd hate to break down. This is the harshest place in the world. The road is made of femurs and skulls. The sky radiates. The mountains yearn to fly away. The dogs are rabid. Hope is a sheep that looks like a goat.

nngh

This morning I found the shreds of the leaf caught in Treptower Park. In my pocket. Took the leaf out into the garden and cast it to the wind. From Berlin to Vauxhall.

Why should this be an nngh thing? Well... Why is that leaf now partially blowing in the south london wind, now feeding the soil and the plants in the back garden. The leaf doesn't know. I don't even know. Somewhere back there in the midst of time someone might have caught a leaf in Vienna or Brussels or Cairo and brought that leaf to Berlin in their pocket. The chain of causality is impossible to break, and it is no doubt a part of it than on the day the leaf is liberated, photos of a bouncy kid who looks like he's dancing with some fletcheresque hand movements arrive in the cavern which is this machine.

Hope you like the bib. Also green for a while. Also from Berlin. You should go there someday.

green plimsoll on varnished plank

The green plimsoll was bought as the cheapest shoe in a Brixton store, for a game of squash against Mr Blue. Maybe the one I nearly put his eye out, maybe not. It’s always sat around, that plimsoll, never quite knowing where it belongs. Right now it’s just in front of the TV, with a water bottle in front of it. Maybe it should be framed and put on the wall.

improvisation

Did an improvisation with the kids yesterday. Asked them to play the prophet. Improvise a scene from their future. Kids being kids you get a range of responses which vary from the melodramatic to the extreme to the poignant. One was killed in an alien invasion. Several were assassinated in the war against terror. One was bored in a big house, watching TV and having affairs with the gardener. Another wanted to be a playwright – tried to dissuade her from foolish instincts. There were no politicians, no footballers and no transvestites. I liked the little kid who’s going to become the first market gardener on the moon. He had a whole scenario: pumpkins, aubergines, string beans, jumping beans, all being harvested in giant greenhouses on the lunar crust.

surrealism

Been accused of late of noodling the brain of Rochester. She might have a point. Surrealism is no more than the retreat of the recondite. A place of last resort. No great art could ever come from Surrealism. It’s wellspring may be the most creative font in the phsyche, but rather than confront the floodtide, it hides behind a sofa of images.

dayglo green christ

Watching Exorcist 3. George C Scott, in all his under-rated glory, in pursuit of the gemini killer. Hey, what's life for? Not quite the disco days of bloggery, but the curtain drooping. Have eaten pasta, watched Paxman, drunk Earl Grey tea, avoided mental activity as far as possible. Look no fireworks, rhetorical flourish, categories, no nothing at all.

categories

good - cup of tea
irony - plumber
good - sleep
bad - head
irony - looking after yourself
good - coffee
(a liquid principle being revealed)
bad - wrong time of night
bad - 253 bus journey
good - helping Guy decide which is his best route to wealth and media domination
in which context:
good - reality TV shows
really
good - humour
bad - sitting alone on the pavement
irony - sitting alone on the pavement
irony - return to Noyale's
good - keeping it together
bad - keeping it together
good - self expression
bad - self expression
(complex section, there was bound to be one)
good - projecting the way you feel
bad - projecting the way you feel
let's do some more goods
good - the libertines
good - the wheatsheaf
good - money
good - smiling
bad - agents!
good - new socks
good - a glass of milk every now and again
bad - lost causes
irony - possibilities
irony - age
irony - the carpet moving

That'll do for now. the dancer was trying to establish clear criteria in her life. Finding herself somewhat inept in the world beyond considered movements in defined spaces, she thought it might help to categorise all aspects of existence. This, she hoped, would assist in the process of living.

bad - late!

rain

It's here. The rain. Villagers throw hats in the air. Old ladies waltz with young turks. The rain is the only bath these people know. It tastes of everything. Food, drink, cleanliness, dirt, refreshing, demoralising. Fat drops fall on their heads. Run down their necks. Spring like vines from their eyes.

best men

I was unconventional. I had three best men. I wanted people to share.
It was a mistake. Maybe diluted the principle.
All three best men found different ways of dissolving.
We were young.
I thought this morning as the rain dribbled again on the back garden that were the process to be repeated, I'd remain uncoventional, and forego best men altogether.

coffee solo midnight por que

Now of course words are not enough. Thay fall flat at most glitches. But they remain a start. And what is the use of foregoing words and entering the narnia world when reality is pressing down on you like a wardrobe. To attempt to go to narnia under these circumstances would be bad concsciouness taken to an nnth. Perhaps it depends on your own pesonal reality. Whether the wet rain is a pain or a pleasure. No point expressing anything when your own personal expressions jusitfy the old Jesuit tricks, but still - coffee can be beneficial to someone trying to take the mote out of their eye, make out woods from trees.

night at theatre with lewis and kemp

Strange when it works. When a full house in the round laughs at a well-written piece of work When you walk out in the interval and stand on the step, looking down at autumn leaves caught on a wire mesh in the unseasonable mild. Strange to want to go back in and then find that the writer has been bold enough to risk the unexpected, been encouraged to do so by the commissioners, just about pulled it off. To see your friend, farce-troosers left behind, stroll on in modern dress, jeans and a black shirt, wearing his specs, sounding like himself. Curiously effective to see the stage manager slam the doors of life, 293 times.