fyi

Three o'clock in the morning, eating cheese on toast and really rather drunk is not the best time in the world to start your eight week course of anti-malarial tablets.

It seemed like a good idea at the time though.

flux

I watched the sunrise yesterday. Old friends and a bottle of whisky and there it was. Erupting from the water, molten gold spilling over the sapphire sea. 

I'm packing again. Well, I should be. My home, job, place in the universe are all in a state of flux. Questions hang overhead while great voyages and adventures lie just around the corner. I need some manner of space. Downtime. Breathing room. Call it what you will.

It's not going to happen though. 

Life doesn't have a pause button. Only fast forward.

Deep breath. 

It's all just going to move faster. 

Before I know it I'll be somewhere else.

Even if I'm still here.

confined to memory

I remember the night. A flat party of some description. Bell Street - it was the first time I'd ever been there, but not the last. If I wasn't drunk it was because I couldn't afford it. Thirteen years ago. There was a lot of banter. It was mostly a theatre crowd. It may have been a cast party, I'm not sure. If it was then it was only twelve years ago, not thirteen. 

Furniture wasn't necessary. A bunch of us sat on the floor. She lay on her back with her knees up, chatting away. She was conducting. The conversation in our group centred around her, she guided it. She shot down my lame attempt at chatting her up with a smile. 

We flirted anyway. Kind of. Circular banter, that went round for the joy of it. It was almost like a contest. Almost. Maybe it was for her. It might have been for me too. It was fun chat. That sort of vivacious conversation that gets the head and heart going. We introduced ourselves. 

Her name was Fiona. One of maybe a dozen Fionas I knew at that time. She was from New Zealand, so she was Kiwi Fi. 

We both did theatre, but never the same show. Our circles of friends overlapped. We worked together on a committee. She was incredibly bright, witty and fun to be around. When I think of her, I think of that night we met in a flat on Bell Street. 

She took me aback. 

It's so clear, that night. I remembered it again when she dropped me a line a few months ago. A brief electronic chat. She seemed well. 

She died this past weekend. 

The world is poorer for it.

There's a tribute to her here.

a word on pictures

Due to indecisiveness I am now using both flickr and picasa. This is hardly newsworthy I suppose, and certainly not the sort of reflective chronicling I do on this page, but I thought my faithful dozen or so readers should know. I like picasa for its file management and flickr because it's quirky and the photo quality is far superior. Its file management is, sadly, rubbish and unintuitive. 

So I've broken it down like this -

Party, people and events shots are going on picasa. It's easier for people to browse and whatnot.
 
Arty, landscape-y, abstract-y pics will go on flickr. Because they look better there. And context is less of an issue. There may still be people shots, but probably not portraits. Unless they're particularly arty, landscape-y, abstract-y or some combination of the three.

I'm updating both sites today with shots of France and the wedding I attended. Have a look. The flickr page allows you to comment, so please feel free. 

Preferably more frequently than you do here. 

waiting somewhere.

Delayed flights bring all manner of reflection and observation. Humanity drifts by, most of it generally impatient, waiting for a call on the loudspeaker or staring at the departure board. Some catch up on work, or read. Blackberries abound, laptops (like the one I'm typing this on) slowly drain their batteries. The sight and sound of someone shuffling a real deck of cards is pleasant, and has the ring of timelessness and antiquity. 

It's all some manner of escape. Some form of being somewhere else, of building a wall, of avoiding the grubby, anonymous sterility of their surroundings. They're somewhere that's on the way to somewhere else. Occasionally, there's a look of impatient excitement. They're on the way to somewhere special, perhaps for some special reason. It's nice to see. As refreshing as the sound of cards shuffling. 

I've travelled a lot recently. Well, relatively. I've driven thousands of miles round-trip, crossed four countries. Somewhere special, for something special. I haven't quite taken it all in yet;what I've seen, what happened. There's no respite. Reflection happens infrequently or all to often. You see more in it than what was there in the first place. 

And so I sit, waiting for the plane to board. My headphones are in and my fingers tap the keys. I've built my wall and I'm safely not here. 

I stare in the mirror and see more in it.

Too much. 

small note

I am in the South of France. I'm leaving tomorrow. I don't want to leave, but that's the way it goes. 

One of the greatest weddings I've ever attended took place yesterday. The memory already gives that warm feeling - a glow of comfort and fondness. I played my part. 

I want to stay here. 

But I'm looking forward to home.

not much

laugh and the world laughs with you.
bitch & moan?
you bitch & moan alone. 

That's about all the chat I can summon. I'm older since my last post. I've taken a lot of pictures. I've been to London and back. 


improving moods and sea mammals...

The seals seemed happy. I think they might even have been frolicking. 

We sat out on the deck of the beach bar. I had a beer. The others had drinks of more than one ingredient. Mixers, spirits, fruit - that sort of thing. 

I kept it simple. 

I don't always. 

The clouds hung low but the breeze didn't chill. It was mild. The deck heater helped. 

And a little further up the beach, the seals seemed happy. They frolicked. One slid from one pool to the other, slipping into the water with barely a noise. The other posed, flexing on the high wall, aware of us watching. He looked awkward when he changed position, uncomfortable out of water. After he posed he dropped into the water with a belly flop and a tremendous splash. 

We laughed, for a moment, before he shot like a bullet into the other pool, as graceful as his friend. 

Between their escapades we talked in relaxed tones. The banter ranged, but nothing deep. The shallow questions, tame and easy. No urgency, nothing pressing, no weight of the unspoken suspended in the air. No deeper than the seal pools, and just as contained. No need for the wild, just to unwind. We sipped our drinks and decided it would be a quiet one. 

It isn't always. 

They quieted down, their evening play complete. We finished our drinks and wandered out into the still night.  

501...

This is my 501st post on this blog. And it's a link post. I know that's a bit of a cop out, but that's just the way it is. I'm kind of in a bad mood. Kind of grumpy. And this cheered me up for a bit. So I'm sharing it. 

I hope you enjoy. You should. Aquatic mammals are cool. You have to be Norwegian, Inuit or Japanese not to think so. 

St Andrews sits under a cold, grey duvet today. That's not why I'm grumpy. It's just why I'm not wearing shorts and flip-flops. 

this morning

The Sox dropped 3 of 4 to Minnesota. 

That's the first thing I knew this morning. I checked on my phone, still in bed. More asleep than awake. The birds out the window chattered against a dull grey backdrop. It was 440. 

I went back to sleep. 

St Andrews is trying desperately to skip Spring and get straight to Summer. Mornings like this don't help. There's a lazy chill thrown to shore by the sea. 

The sun's come out now though. There's a new restaurant around the corner to try. Lunch beckons. 

I'm writing, editing and selling the odd bottle of wine. 

The Sox lost. I can live with that. 

It's a long season, and the better for it. 

disc

I bought a frisbee this morning. It's purple. I don't own many purple things, unless you count red wine. And that varies, really. Several shades of red and purple, depending on its age and grape and all manner of variables. But some of them are definitely purple. Grenache tends to have a purple hue. Pinot Noir not so much. 

I bought the frisbee because they never tend to last the winter months. I don't know what happens to them in the meantime. Lost in a season of disuse. I wonder if there's some graveyard of winter frisbees; some dilapidated pile of multi-coloured discs dusted with a fine layer of snow that will never melt. It's an odd thought, I suppose. 

Though I've had odder. 

Last night the wine flowed along with the beer and the whisky and the gin. The guitar strummed and many a string broke. The Guinness tasted good, as did the Springbank. Our banter drifted along happily. The bar was hot, but not too hot. We never waited long to get served. 

I caught a pretty girl's eye and then, later, she caught mine. There was nothing in it. Just noticing, being noticed. 

We got home, three flatmates, in time to open a bottle of wine and finish a bottle of whisky and banter more. Heavier this time, deeper. We paused occasionally to watch drunks wander home, clad in ball gowns and black tie. Placing bets on the couples, watching the spats, laughing at the hapless. We may have been as drunk as them, but we'd won already. We were home. Memories and the future both thrown onto the table, talked about loosely, as we were loose. 

This morning my flip-flops slipped on and my face felt a touch numb. 

I remembered summers, stumbling down to the beach. Heads pounding, maybe a tad dizzy. We'd throw the frisbee around like lunatics. Diving catches, great leaps, acts of heroism for girls that weren't there. The sky so blue and the sea cold and inviting. The pop of the first beer bottle opened rang out and we'd take a break, slick with sweat. We'd try to remember the night before. A night like last night. Then the disk flew again and we'd fall, rend the skin from our limbs on the course sand close to the water. 

Breathless, bleeding, soaking, we sat again and sipped. Hangovers evaporated, sweat stung the eyes. We clinked bottles and cursed work and weather for making life anything but that; what we had then. 

So I bought a frisbee this morning.

white space

It's not a hangover. I didn't drink enough for that. There's no pain or sense of displacement. Just a touch of weariness and discontent with working all day. 

I find it's days like this I want to write. I want to write everyday, obviously. But days like this in particular I miss just writing. No stealing a sentence here and there, in the midst of pretending to do a job. No looking at my desk at the end of a long day and ignoring it, killing the guilt of not writing with a glass of wine and Scrubs reruns. No excuses. An espresso, a cup of tea, a pint of water and the endless patter of the keyboard. The screen filling with words, white space consumed by more and more black characters. Looking at my word count, knowing my place, the story's place, and knowing when my day's work was done. Not looking at a clock and longing for time to speed up. 

The sun's been around a wee while now. New flip-flops, old shorts and t-shirts and my summer uniform's in place. There's a chill in the shadows though. A bitterness when the sun slips behind a cloud. Tendrils of sea mist, the haar, drift in from the water, cooling the sun-soaked streets. Folk hug themselves and wish they'd brought jumpers, jackets, anything. They feel deceived as the sun turns into a silver disc, veiled in the fog. 

It doesn't come until after lunch, the haar. Sitting on the beach with a bottle of whisky as the sun rises in the east. Maybe a beer or two. The sky's clear then, as the fiery disc rises from the water in the distance. It's all the clarity to be had, and I drink it in with the whisky, with the beer. The tendrils of mist are yet to come.

I'm not hungover. I'm not even tired.  Just a little weary, and a little discontent. 

reunion pint.

We sat in the bar, drinking beer and talking rubbish. He was drunker than I. I wasn't drunk. I was tired, my legs hurt and I needed my bed. Our glasses clinked during the pauses, toasting the reunion. Every few minutes one of us would say 'decade', or 'ten years', or 'so young' and then shake the head and look into the middle distance of nowhere. We talked about an ex we shared, late nights, drink and drugs and where the hell everyone was now. We talked about where the hell we were now. 

It was talk to start. The words and the stories merely vocabulary and grammar. It took time. The memories returned slowly. Vague, incomplete, more emotion, instinct and hunch than recall, than seeing what was. But they came back to the surface, one leading to another, connected, and all the feelings that were returned. Some were alien, encased in an amber of youth, petrified and strange.

We laughed and ordered another round, incredulous at our lives. That with a beer and words we realised we lived, that it was full life, that none of it could have been predicted. And that there was so much. One memory leading to another, to another; twenty years of living in ten. 

The rest of the pub needn't have been there. It was irrelevant. Talk of sports and gossip lingered in the air around us. 

He switched to coke. I stayed with beer. He grabbed a cab. Home to his wife and child. 

I shook my head and wandered home to an empty bed. 

I didn't go for a run this morning.

tweet.

I like sleeping with the window open, even if there's a bit of a chill. Especially when the rain falls. The breeze gives the rain drops a pleasing hiss, like a needle on good vinyl. A proper acoustic crackle. It helps me sleep. It's pleasing to wake up to. The hush of the wind in the window reminds me of the sea, or holding a shell to my ear. 

The current Belfry is an attic room. The ceiling slopes on all sides and it's easy to feel removed from the world. This can be a good thing, from time to time, but the noise from outside provides an anchor to the world without distracting me or drawing me to it. The gardens below don't generate much noise. There isn't much to spy or eavesdrop on. 

I woke up at about 3... it felt like 7. I didn't even notice how dark the room was. It could have been dawn. 3:04 on my phone. I battered my pillows and tucked my duvet a bit. Couldn't check the Sox score. Sleep drifted back now and then and then it was 4 and my eyes shot open. It felt like 7 again. More pillow battering and more fiddling with the duvet... considered briefly stapling my eyes shut. Can't remember if I actually slept or drifted or dreamed. 

Five rolled on and I got up. And I listened. I listened and finally worked out what I was hearing. Like an image coming into focus, white noise becoming music. Birdsong, actually. The light out the window was pale, the haar thick, and through the sea fog came an orchestra of birdsong. I wiped my eyes but there was no sleep in them. They sang in force, heralding the coming Spring. I smiled. 

Then I shut the window. The needle slipped from the vinyl and I slipped back to bed. 

I woke at seven, not at six. 

Every once in awhile, get drunk and watch The Goonies

A few beers with old friends in the old local, the one where the bar staff are rude, downright grumpy, but the beer tastes good and slips down without effort. Then wine with dinner and banter about the past, silver-lined memories and the ghosts of great times. The wine tastes amazing, more-ish. It's not expensive, just good, honest and makes the food taste even better. Nostalgic reminiscing brings The Goonies to the DVD player. The Goonies brings chat of treasure maps, and adventure. 

Another bottle of wine gets opened and the guidebooks come out. Our own treasure maps. Tracing lines across the highlands; there are castles, snow-capped mountains, lochs and ruins on the doorstep. Another coast to explore. It's decided. 

The next morning sees an early start, fuzzy-headed but hearts clear. A whirlwind tour of the highlands - tiny daft roads barely big enough for a skateboard, camera and notebooks in tow, Rob's on the music, Sarah's got the map.

Adventure calls all the time; you just have to answer it.



I started thinking about my next cup of coffee before I took a sip of the one in front of me... I was quite tired. I'll tell you all about it sometime. One of those mornings where your brain doesn't know why your body's so awake. Still... wasn't this bad. Made me chuckle.

return of the red pen

I'm editing again. The last resort of a blocked writer. My manuscript sits in a large, purple binder. The binder still looks new, though I bought it six or so months ago. It should be battered, corners bent, scratched and smudged. Dented, even. Falling to pieces perhaps. 

The pages are battered. Though dusty, and unread for far too long. 

I have a red pen. I stole it from work. Already there are new marks on new drafts. Drafts I planned to send to agents, drafts meant to be perfect. 

They're not. Yet.

unused books

There's little to talk about at the moment. We're stuck on a seasonal precipice, storm after storm hammering on, each calm that follows a touch warmer than the one before. The wind is so constant that its absence leads to a change of step, a sense of unbalance. There's nothing to lean against while walking. 

I strolled around the bookshop yesterday. The hardbacks caught my attention. I studied them, felt the texture of their dust jackets, pondered their design and tested their weight. The dry whiff of the unopened and unread the drifts through all 'new' bookshops pleased my nose. Used bookshops smell warmer though, with leather and wood and dust lingering longer in the air. The memory of loved pages, thumbed ritually, lingers as well. 

I didn't buy a hardback. Eyes closed, I imagined a different dust jacket, one with my name on it. Just for a moment though, a split-second daydream before wandering over to the poetry/drama section. My two Complete Works of William Shakespeare both sit in a box in a garage in west London. I grabbed another, a paperback, an edition I don't have. Desert island reading indeed; can't be without a Complete Works for very long. I found another paperback, a tome on writing poetry, another book that sits in a box in a garage in west London. I liked the weight and bought both.