them: Are you the telephone account holder?

me: Who's asking?

them: We're your mobile phone company and we have some offers for you. Can you confirm your name?

me: Yes. I can confirm that i've got one.

them: What is it?

me: You're phoning me to make me some offers and you don't have my name?

them: We have it, but we can't say it.

me: Is it a magic secret?

them: Er... No... data protection.

me: But i'm constantly being told to keep my details to myself, and now you want me to give my name to a stranger.

them: what about your address?

me: Perhaps I should just give you my bank details and password.

them: We only ask for that if you decide to take up the offer.

me: I was joking. You were really going to ask for my bank details?

them: I hate my job.

me: Can't you work somewhere else?

them: No one last here very long.

me: I take it that whatever you were going to offer me is some kind of rip off?

them: You're not going to give me any of your details are you?

me: It's unlikely. I could give you a false name if you like?

them: Don't worry about it. I think i'm going to resign.

me: Yeah?

them: It's depressing being told to fuck off all day every day.

me: Well, best of luck mate.

them: Cheers, I'm Andrew.

me: I'm... aw you nearly got me then.

Them: (laughs)

me: Right, fuck off then.

Them: (laughs)

WE HANG UP.

(This is from memory.... so may be inaccurate in some ways.)

the past just hit me like a thousand butterflies with angry faces... I just remembered.

It was only four years ago..

I was with some friends on a holiday down in the west on the coast. A hired cottage that was quite lovely and scenic/romantic. and they were all pairing off. I felt alone and awful. The person there who was supposedly mine was so far from being mine i needed semaphor to say good morning. So we gave up on each other. but everyone else, in their rapturous happiness, thought we were fine... and getting on with it. (what was the 'it' - love? possprobably - that's a new word formation, gentle reader.)

But the dog shite strewn streets of my home are where my romance truly lies. The single note loneliness. The beautful failure. The ability to lose at every turn - with alarming precision.

Memory surpasses a pain in the pisser and launches itself somewhere deep in the urinal tract.

I'm thrown back. Too many years to count, to the age of twelve. I'm dreading being thirteen. I'm playing in the park.. someone talks to me. His dog only has three legs. and the he claims that he was once someone quite famous, a pro sportsman. But they have a look, that man and his dog, of people who have lived...

I wonder now, with these memories swilling over the edge of my pint glass mind, whether i have the look of that man (or his dog.)

Do I have the look of a person who has been somewhere. And come back.

Time is an only child. Memory is an ingested oyster. Death is present in the cradle.

I've said too much.

Why is it that whenever i try to say something straight i end up writing some sort of prose poem.

spin in the void and look in holes for the answer. The answer is there.

But that man in the park came back too randomly. Direct recent memories are more telling.

That weekend in the holiday cottage. My best friends then but not now.

What a circus.

I alienate myself from all those that get close.

Because they might find out that my nudity is no more interesting than theirs.

I don't know if i could stand that revelation.

never mind.

Am i the less deceived for that?

(get the reference?)

Before someone drags my drunken bones through a corridor and down a flight of stairs and out into the yard where they rightfully kick the breath out of every idea I've ever had...

Before I get the mice from next door to empty their pockets...

Before I examine the curve of the sky through a sock...

Let me tap dance with Marvin Minsk, a real eccentric.
He only reads science fiction novels.
He said:

"I don't get it with regular literature. It's been going on for thousands of years. And it's just people coming in and out of doors. Sometimes they go some place. Fall in love. Kill someone. It's a very narrow spectrum. But science fiction is about EVERYTHING ELSE."

I like the fact he says 'everything' else rather than 'anything' else. It makes the possibilities feel endless.

So I came back simply to say this? Not quite.

I came back because everything feels like it's falling apart, and i'm grasping, trying to hold on to something.

cheer me up.

Had a few drinks the other night and was feeling naughty... Sounds silly now but I decided to see if i could get to the end of the garden and back without any clothes on... was around midnight... slipped my gear off, opened the back door, had a look round - seemed pretty quiet... made my run...

got to the end of the garden (30 secs, it's not far.)

At which point some fucker let a firework off nearby... the whole area was lit up like a musical. I hid behind a tree. Wondering if faces were now looking out of the surrounding windows. All rather nippy too... thought what the fuck... ran back...

All felt rather marvellous.

Give it a go yourself, gentle reader.

his name is Paul and he constantly looks through his window. I don't think i've ever been past his house without him seeing me. I usually give him a wave and i think he smiles back. It's hard to tell. He's such an ugly bloke, no hair or teeth and a mono brow, that when he smiles it looks like he's just eaten a spider.

He's normally fairly civil but just recently he's taken to knocking on my door and asking me odd questions. He normally wants to know what day the council are picking up the rubbish. But i think he's just lonely. And with a face like that who can blame him. I must have told him that the the council collect the rubbish on tuesday about fifty times. Yesterday he asked if i'd been having problems with the squirrels. I said no then asked him if he had been having any problems with them himself. He said 'no.'

It's like a Samuel Beckett play down this street on a bad day.

Paul has got a wife called Janie. She's friendly, polite and has hair like Harpo Marx.

Don't know why i felt the need to share all this. Think i want confirmation that i'm not going bonkers.

Aren't politicians a smug pompous waste of space?

They're like teachers in that they will never admit they are wrong about anything.

Anyone who wants to run this country, shouldn't be allowed to. That's my conclusion.

Been meaning to have a go at this for a while. Not sure i have much to say but i'll give it a go anyway. (making utterances lets us know that we're alive, or at least not dead.)

I watched the story of the iceman last night and found it very moving.

If you don't know:

About 15 years ago a frozen body was found high up in the Alps. At first it was thought to be an unlucky climber perhaps from the ninetheenth century, then it was realized to be a lot older... 5000 years old (imagine the time between now and the life of Christ... now double that time and add some more..) The body had been lying on the mountain since the beginning of humanity, and because of the freezing conditions it was virtually intact. The body was examined and found to contain many clues pertaining to the history of man. He was wearing clothes, including strange straw filled shoes. He carried a copper headed axe (he knew how to smelt copper), food was still in his belly, he carried a paneer (sp?) very similar in style to the modern day ruck sack, his coat contained the blood of three other men, his arrow heads had the blood of four more..

was this a prehistoric serial killer?

Probably not. The man in the ice came from violent times. deducting his state it was clear that this man had been running away. But from what?

Lodged deep in the ice man's shoulder blade there is a razir sharp flint arrowhead. He had been shot as he made his escape.

What made him need to run away into the icy coldness of the mountains.

We'll never know but:

a settlement from around 5000 years ago had been found in another nearby area. In the corner of this pogrom there was a mass grave filled with the bodies of women and children... also men with six or seven axe marks in their skulls.

It is perfectly feasible that the iceman's village was ransacked by another tribe. He may have fought and killed some of the attackers but took an arrow in the shoulder then made his escape.

He climbed up into the alps knowing that his life had been torn apart. He lay down on some rocks, fell asleep and died. The ice covered him quickly and 5000 years passed.

until he was discovered again still in his sleeping position.

Don't know why i wanted to write about this. Except that sometimes it seems the essential nature of humanity never changes. And there's bugger all we can do about it.

There's a first entry.