A slip of growing twilight behind the curtains, Tiamat's 'Judas Christ' album on the stereo(bought for £1:99 from Oxfam down the North laine) a cup of tea and a pot of low fat strawberry yoghurt in the fridge, and the whole of the bank holiday weekend off from work.
Walking back to work from lunch, an oddly familiar figure catches my eye. I have trouble recognising people I see every day if they are out of their normal habitats (Prosopagnosia...) but have no trouble recognising people I have seen on television it seems. I recognised Kiruna Stamell immediately (she was in the last Ricky Gervais thing and also in 'Cast-Offs' on channel 4 a few years ago - oh yes, and she was in 'Moulin Rouge too I think'). I did that classic double take, which you always try not to do when confronted with people you have known previously from some performance capacity. At first you think that you may know them. I have waved happily at Caitlin Moran before, thinking she was a friend of Sarah's before realising with horror that I knew her from her writing in The Times. Another time I almost went to say hello to that annoying actress who is in Eastenders, (she was smug and grumpy so I won't mention her name).
Anyhow, I looked back, realised it was 'that woman from the telly' (I had to google the spelling of her name when I got back to work), had that surreal shift of perception when two-dimensional people are now three dimensional and walking down the same street as you and you realise they're real, and went back to work and took some calls about financial products and wondered what it was like to be an actor instead.
More twilight outside, and Tiamat sounding like some gloomy prog-goth band, a dreamy drizzle of an album, like falling asleep on drizzly afternoons on days where the weather is as gloomy and bank holiday weekend-ish as it is today
Friday, 4 May 2012
The Boy Between
A boy kneels on a bed looks out of the window. The ink-creases on the quilt of his bed look like blood. Beyond the pencil window frame is an even vaguer pencil landscape. Poplar tree smudges, a bluster of an imagined autumn. The taste of his room is of apples and attics, and on the wall above his bed (not even a pencil mark yet for this) is a poster of a sci-fi show he watches every Saturday afternoon called The Lost Ship.
To get the pose of the boy right - or at least vaguely accurate - I used the self timer on my camera and leant against my own windowsill. Not even a pencil autumn here. My curtains were closed and it wad night. I look at the photograph of myself afterwards. A 40 year old man in the attitude of a child. I still stare out of the window in the same way.
I don't know who the boy in the drawing is. Tempting to say that he might be, I don't think this is quite true. Yesterday afternoon, while between calls at work, I thought - suddenly and with a startling clarity - that I was creating another childhood.
Or recreating one?
I am not sure I can do anything that isn't autobiographical in some way. The ink on my fingers is the ink on the creases of his unreal bed. Creeping Sunday shadows, and windows open to cold skies, though whether it is autumn or spring I can't tell.
Yesterday it felt like I was chipping away at something, a bit at a time, then in a sudden shatter, that something shattered like ice, and now in the paper is a hole - no, a window - into this other place. A window looking onto a window, and a boy between.
To get the pose of the boy right - or at least vaguely accurate - I used the self timer on my camera and leant against my own windowsill. Not even a pencil autumn here. My curtains were closed and it wad night. I look at the photograph of myself afterwards. A 40 year old man in the attitude of a child. I still stare out of the window in the same way.
I don't know who the boy in the drawing is. Tempting to say that he might be, I don't think this is quite true. Yesterday afternoon, while between calls at work, I thought - suddenly and with a startling clarity - that I was creating another childhood.
Or recreating one?
I am not sure I can do anything that isn't autobiographical in some way. The ink on my fingers is the ink on the creases of his unreal bed. Creeping Sunday shadows, and windows open to cold skies, though whether it is autumn or spring I can't tell.
Yesterday it felt like I was chipping away at something, a bit at a time, then in a sudden shatter, that something shattered like ice, and now in the paper is a hole - no, a window - into this other place. A window looking onto a window, and a boy between.
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Evening Fragment
The kitchen.
Summery sunlight on the roofs across the Mews.
The flat smells of clean washing.
Voices from outside; children, their parents.
Mouth too hot from too much hot chilli and jalapeno flavour Branston relish.
A quarter of a can of diet coke left.
Conversation with Andy about how we don't enjoy listening to new albums.
Evening birdsong makes me think of old railway tracks through woods
covered with grasses.
Summery sunlight on the roofs across the Mews.
The flat smells of clean washing.
Voices from outside; children, their parents.
Mouth too hot from too much hot chilli and jalapeno flavour Branston relish.
A quarter of a can of diet coke left.
Conversation with Andy about how we don't enjoy listening to new albums.
Evening birdsong makes me think of old railway tracks through woods
covered with grasses.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
