Return of the Magpie…

Following on from my previous ADHD related article Ooh look! There’s a Magpie and the generous feedback I received, I thought I’d explore more Filter Off writing with the intention to demonstrate the persistent nature of this gentle hysteria... 

FILTER OFF. I am so tired, crushingly tired. Fucking alarms going off all around the office. Shut the buggery up. Why are all these people shouting and talking such utter bollocks. It is doing my head in. The person next to me SHOUTS all the time. FILTER ON. I’m tired today, the office can be a slight struggle sometimes. FILTER OFF. I am drifting through the day. I should – STOP SHOUTING – really get on with work. Had to pause for a minute to keep my mood placid. 15 people in the same space all scrabbling for attention. We’ll all be out of work soon, unless we change things quickly. Should I go out and get some more Sushi. Or toast or both. Or go on a diet. Need to learn to type quicker to even hang on to the coat tails of my rapidly dissolving thoughts…. Crap mixed metaphor. 

 

Managed to go 4 seconds without accelerating downhill again. FILTER ON. And breathe. FILTER OFF. I wonder if this is a heart attack or a panic attack or an anxiety event or simply just another day in a shouty (Shouty McShoutyface) office. Sunak is up against it but he’ll weasel his way out. The Covid enquiry could be so much more. Do you remember watching the Buzzcocks on top of the pops? I loved their Mondrian style shirts. It is one L and two P’s. It is quite fascinating to observe these thoughts spinning off into the darkness of my imagination. Like Catherine Wheels loosely nailed to the garden fence, spinning off into the compost heap. I liked Langney Green, hopping over the wall to cut off the crucial 8 yards. [Stopped to check my WhatsApp, Instagram and FB accounts – Only one person liked my Harry Crosby tribute]. One of my favourite jokes is as follows. “The Leader of The Pedants’ Revolt – Which Tyler!” Now, don’t make me explain it… I remember hanging out of a window - I am Mersault, all Gitanes and Calvados FILTER ON. Mersault is the lead character in Camus' The Outsider.

 

I’ve given myself permission to ‘think quieter’ for the next 10 minutes. Might go for a walk around the block. FILTER OFF. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, I explored the ‘Sound is Colour’ website and nearly bought two sweatshirts and a T-shirt! Also discovered that Nick Cave is doing a solo gig in the State Theatre Sydney, must must must get tickets for that… Ooh look! There’s a Magpie!!

 

There is a picture of a bug-eyed marsupial (A Northern Quoll apparently) staring down from above…. It is hot in Sydney today. Sweaty, a fuck I’m hot but prefer it to cold sort of day. Been thinking about the outfits that the mini drivers in The Italian Job wore (inspired by a picture of The Prisoners in similar outfits for their recent Roundhouse warm up gig in Herne Bay). I’ve just realised I have barely spoken at all since being in the office. FILTER ON. Just had 15-minute work conversation – professional/focussed. FILTER OFF. I can’t work out whether to play my Telecaster or Rickenbacker when overdubbing new songs at studio on Friday. World Peace… that ain’t ever happening. Next year is the Year of the Dragon or so the Chinese printers tell me. San Pellegrino bottle collection growing on my desk. I despise Boris Johnson more than anyone I can recall. How did people fall for this arrogant little twerp? Chelsea are doing very badly indeed. Not much longer for Pochettino… God I need to lose weight. FILTER ON. I’ll stop this here and now as it is rather exhausting, and I can see the look on your sad and tired faces… 

Ooh look! There’s a Magpie!!!

What do all these poems mean?

Who knows... 

They are just hastily composed polaroids that will fade in the glare of the ever brightening sun. They will become bleached and distant until they completely disappear from view. A series of unread suicide notes, football commentaries, record reviews and postcards from the edge of the Tasman Sea. A handful of uncoded Enigma messages, a hidden cache of cassette tapes, badly recorded demos, morse-code transcripts from a ghost ship. They slipped under the radar, got lost in the traffic, flew south for winter and managed to lie low for the duration. 

They mean nothing. 

Unless they mean something to you... 

Day in the life... (September 2020)

Release

-- Being 

in love

with love.

Might just

be better

than being 

in love...

Meanwhile,

A man walks alone

on Curl Curl beach.

---- Modern Mersault

contented, passive

a low flame.

Sanctuary

release. 

Day in the life of... (September 2020)

 Blue Passport

-- Escaping heaven

in a VW beetle.

Midnight flit,

handheld torch

tracing a path 

along the 

Coast Road.

--- A new Mythology.

With a Blue Passport

in my hand.

A taste of liberty,

the guiding hand

of a God who

never existed.

Sun coming up 

at the end 

of the road.

--- We can't get any 

further East.

Aphrodite...

... We can't get any 

further East.

Day in the life of... (September 2020)

Onyx 

-- White crows arrive,

as the fret moves out.

The garden is yet to fall

to the clutch of the sea.

Grass stoached though.

An olympic white Fender

leans against the bookshelf.

Mustang ---

The notebooks red, filled

with black ink spider 

scrawl and sprawl. A long

black hair trapped

in the stapled pages. 

---- Tanned yet white,

long fingers stretch.

The songwriter looked down.

"Never can recall exactly

when this Onyx ring

came into our lives...

It changed everything"

Tea is ready, the fire is lit

and the whisky is 

just an hour away...

Stoach - To trample grass to mud (Sussex dialect).

Day in the life of a Poet (September 2020)

 Wild Poppies

-- In the lee of the 
Sussex Downs,
a field of wild poppies

explode in the heat

of another

Jevington morning.

a glimpse of

heaven, along 

the lane.

-- St Andrew's

door is open. 

The silence is

fractured.

--- The Sunflower 

Ceremony.

The faintest hint 

of Absolut ---

Some kisses 

mean so much 

more than others.

The Island of Pointless Romantic Gestures (Recollections #3)

February 29th - Bachelor's Day - Postscript

The years have skidded by, like clouds over the Sussex Downs.

Aphrodite moved out of her flat the day after she'd come to mine. She moved to Denmark Hill in London before I'd had a chance to even speak with her. Her friends were loyal and mine were dumbfounded.

Every leap year I would recall the whole day in painful and pointless detail. Every year I would make sure I had fresh coffee, croissants and flowers. I made sure my friends all had my latest address. I even tidied my rooms and if it was a work day then I'd either book it off or phone in sick.

Every leap year, I waited for her to come and to ask me the question.

I am home all day today. I have coffee, croissants and flowers.

The Island of Pointless Romantic Gestures (Recollections #2)

February 29th - Bachelor's Day

The sun had risen over Langney Point, the Unigate Dairy milk floats had spread all over the postcodes and retreated as slowly as they came and the morning paper rounds had been completed.

The faded green curtains shared a glimpse of the courtyard outside and wild spread white sheets inside. My bedroom was on the first floor at the top of the stairs and could be reached via the ground floor kitchen and front door.

Most week day visitors used to start arriving after midday, except Thursdays when friends and or others would come an hour or so earlier, dependent on how long the queue at the dole office was. Today was a Friday though - Friday 29th February.

Aphrodite and I had been together for just over 3 years (exactly 3 Valentine Days + 15 x 24hr in fact). She was beautiful, relatively tall, very blonde and what film directors used to call gamine. I was ridiculously lucky that she even bothered to talk to me, let alone that she was prepared to be seen in public with me and the fact that she was happy for us to sleep together was beyond comprehension.

Normally (unless she was at mine or me at hers) we'd wait until she'd finished her morning's writing and her brutally brisk walk to and from Beachy Head. I was sort of awake, that sort of not really awake at all awake. I heard soft footsteps on the stairs, the door opened and there she was captured in the door frame like a blonde Holly G at Tiffany's. Aphrodite stopped and smiled and raised a coffee and a smile.

"Happy Bachelor's Day, Boy".

She always called me Boy even though I was a good 4 years older than her. She flung my copy of 'A Happy Death' on the floor from the pillow (for a writer she was surprisingly rough with books). She cleared a small space on the bedside table and plonked the coffees down. She rustled in her battered BEA rucksack and pulled out a greaseproof bag that revealed two hot croissants.

"A morning picnic today, Boy". She said. At the same time dipping her head in for the most delicate of kisses.

"Wow, that very thoughtful of you. What's the occasion?"

She looked at me and gave me her 'you idiot' frown. "I've already told you. It's Bachelor's Day".

"Not another Clinton Cards thing is it? Haven't they made their money this month already?" I responded all kind of smug/glib.

The frown repeated. "Of course it isn't a corporate construct. It dates back centuries".

I took a sip of my coffee, noticing that she'd sat up and faced me, front on.

"It's a leap year day. On this day, women can ask men to marry them".

"Oh". I mumbled.

An opaque silence filled the book cluttered bedroom. The curtains were still revealing very little either in or out.

"Boy..."

"Don't".

She got off the bed, bent down and kissed me and then she walked out the room, gently closing the down behind her. I looked at her coffee cup, the untouched croissants and then through the small gap.

The sun must be somewhere over to the pier by now.

Depression

I think I've been here before but I'll go again anyway...

Sitting in a cafe (preferably The Spartan on Grove Road), hovering over an hour old cup of tea, with a Marlboro on the go. Fringe down, gazing at Kafka's words, ushering in a new darkness and whispering on the chill breeze that blew from the Town Hall to the Library. It's ok to feel this empty and this hollow because life will fill me up with joy and desire. It won't ever be like this again.

Or so I thought.

Albert, Albert Camus, everyone knows his name

Sitting on the windowsill with a copy of L'Etranger in my hand, half in, half out of my Susans Road flat watching the local boys returning from their football match...

Life as Sussexistentialist was wonderful. They were sweet, confusing but heady days.. The soundtrack was the MJQ and the guidebook was written by the former goalkeeper and Gitanes smoking French author Albert Camus. His novel L'Etranger (or The Outsider as it was roughly translated) re-calibrated the way I looked at the world. The simple act of lighting a cigarette, talking to a beautiful girl, making a meal for one and staring out at the traffic was now beyond the mundane. These were the actions of a man on the edge of society...

From the very beginning when Mersault (the hero of the novel) learns of his mothers death, through to the very end on the eve of is own death. He glides and skims through life, death, sex, drunkeness, arrest and being condemned to state execution, the sheer weight of the sun bleaching out the more mundane emotions and reactions of 'normal' people. 

All of which made life on the South Coast somehow far more bearable, knowing that others had felt the same way before.