Saturday Night

So I'm sitting in this bar in Bath so tired I want to rip my eyes out just to get some shut-eye. The girls are all dressed up but I've just come from work so I have to borrow eye-liner and mascara from a stranger to feel at all comfortable. My clothes are still too shitty for the place I'm in and I feel desperately unattractive (okay, that's an exaggeration) though the girl in the barbie-pink crop top makes me feel less so.
So in the hallway of this bar I watch all the girls in their little mini lycra dresses, some so short you can see their cheeks peeping from under the hem. A group of unattractive young males are gathered in a corner. One (seated) is poking his finger at his friend's fly. After a while the guy just undoes the fly and lets his cock out - semi-erect (which is rather disturbing) and smallish - in front of everyone, like a child, as if it's the most normal thing in the world to do. A drunk woman with a bob and large teeth sits down next to me and asks if I'm 'alone tonight.' Although I say no, that I'm waiting for friends, she still threatens to 'adopt' me and so, fearing I may smack her in the face, I get up to find my friends.

Monday, 23rd September 2009

Cleaner

The man who cleans the Severn Beach Line train has grey hair cropped short on top but in a rat tail at the back. He wears a gilet with holsters for his cleaning solutions and sweeps around your feet with an extended dustpan and small brush. He has blue eyes and wears glasses. He trails a clear polythene rubbish bag containing emptied coffee cups and chocolate bar wrappers behind him. He also has a moustache. He doesn't talk.

Monday, 21st September

Further Musings on the Train

A painted alien on the bridge over the track smiles at us. It's hot in September and I have my feet out of my pumps so I can stretch my toes. A stout lady in a blue shirt, wearing sunglasses that shelter her eyes, is holding a lead being pulled taught by a scruffy grey mongrel excited at the commotion caused by the train and the vibrition of the platform. A boy and a girl are sitting in a car park cross legged and facing each other. Fit basketball players, arms dark and toned, are wearing loose vests. They are with a girl who looks stunning in a blue backless sports dress, texting on her mobile phone. Three Sikh children run into their house making star shapes in the air with their arms. The smallest in a bright magenta top with her hair pulled back.

Monday, 21st September 2009

Elderly Couple Waiting for a Train

"An elderly couple ask if they can sit down and the woman next to me apologises for not noticing them.
When seated, the elderly woman says to her husband, who has a face that is gentle and lined from similing, 'I shall miss this place Rog, I shall miss it.' and again 'I shall miss this place...' until he replies,
'yeah.'
She talks of some relative who has arranged to have them moved.
'To the Straights,' Roger says.
'Yes,' she replies and then, 'where're the Straights?'
'You know when my father came over to Fishponds?' Roger asks.
'yeah...'
'That was the Straights'
and then missing any poetic intention her husband might have had, she starts talking about their new garden and bedrooms and how it will all be fine, awaiting his agreement after every line but she is really only reassuring herself and when the train comes and they stay on the platform I really hope they were supposed to.

Monday, 21st September 2009

Acoustic Singer, Looking for a Guitarist for Open Mic Nights

'I never look at the ads in Tesco. But for some reason I did and there was this ad: 'acoustic singer looking for a guitarist to play open mic nights.' So I contacted her and she's coming along,' he said smiling.

'Put her on next to fill time before we put the good acts on,' I replied.

She walked into the room in a grey flat cap with a large pendant round her neck and muttered to herself in the corner. Then shouted encouragement to the man on stage.

'So what do you do then, just solo stuff or do you need a guitar?' he asked her.

'oh I just make it up,' she replied.

He slid his hands deep into his pockets, 'you mean you make it up on the spot?'

A smile tweaked the sides of my mouth.

'Yes I just open my mouth and it sort of comes out, it's a gift from God,' she said.

'Right,' he said, straight faced as I shook with silent laughter.

'On you go then.'

What else could he say?

She walked to the stage took the microphone and with the lungs of Lulu belted out:

'I LOVE THE LORD AND I'M NOT ASHAMED TO SAY IT, I LOVE THE LORD, OH YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, I LOVE THE LORRRRRRRRDD...'

I tried to take photos but I was shaking so much that I couldn't. The audience were hiding in each other covering their faces. I had to leave, it was overwhelming, my sides hurt.

Then I thought, while standing in the toilets pulling myself together;

she wasn't actually that bad.

Friday, September 11th 2009

Canteen: Out, Out, Damned Spot.... or The Case Of the Metaphorical Jizz

The boys flock to our table, arms flailing like characters in A Clockwork Orange.
One, in a waistcoat, gets particularly excited. He goes from swinging his hips like he's got an imaginary hula hoop round them into a full pelvic thrust directed at our table. His groin hits the table and a fittingly phallic candle falls from the centre. The flame is extinguished and wax sprayes over the table and me. Then he just leaves and the wax will not come out.

Tuesday, 8th September 2009

Sainsbury's, 3pm

At the supermarket there's a toddler with short blonde curls waddling up and down in the bouncy way toddlers do wearing a pink princess' dress. She's holding a foil helium balloon that says 'happy birthday' on it and the ribbon is too long, so the weight trails along the floor behind her and I wish, just for a second, that I could dress up as a princess and do my shopping around the aisles of Sainsbury's with a balloon and people wouldn't look at me and think I had discharged myself from a mental health unit, they would think; isn't she gorgeous.

Sunday, 23rd August 2009