this is not worth reading.

been lying on the floor, reading bobbie ann mason's 'love life' and listening to mid-west emo.

writing.

not writing.

hastings' pier burnt down, adding to the towns bleak seaside-town character.

as germans might say, hastings is where you would bury your dog.

i saw a dog riding a skateboard today.

he seemed happy.

everyone who saw the dog seemed happy.

people who saw the dog carried on walking, looking back at the dog over their shoulders, sometimes walking backwards with big grins, sharing their grins with loved ones or strangers in recognition of a dog riding a skateboard.


when the weather is nice a man across the road sit outside his front door in a fold-out garden chair, with a portable radio on the table and a tankard.

once i saw him launch out of his fold-out garden chair to stroke a passing cat, but the cat ran away.

saw rvivr the other day.

there was a terrible imbroglio that keeps on flashing back in my mind.

i was just a witness.

still, keep on replaying it, thinking 'oh no', sometimes swearing out loud at passing thoughts.

I Am Very Likable

I am respectful of everyone.

I remember that everyone I'm interacting with is human, too.

I do things for other people, even if I don't know them.

I keep my promises.

I learn and use everybody's name.

I smile a lot.

I am myself.

drunk poem

Late train to Hades

Feet raised, eyes closed
We are always descending
A plateau? No.
We are always descending
Feet risen, a forbidden position
Not totally unaccustomed (you know this from sleep)
to always be descending

Dear DJ

Hello. This is the picture I promised you. I'm sorry it's not very good. I had the flash on and didn't realise. And after that I was just embarrassed. I hope you are feeling better about Dallas. Book is going well. I am at 50 pages in notebook form and about 1/3 through synopsis.

Celebrity Art Party

Questionnaire

1. How many times have you sworn since tuesday?
   
2. Have you ever lain in bed at night unable to stop thinking about something utterly embarrassing you did that day, occasionally reprimanding yourself out-loud?
   
3. Gliding across a dance floor, were those shoes a bad choice?
   
4. Are we all failed actors, unless we are successful actors?
   
5. What do you think of Julia and Dave?
   
6. Do you think it's going to burn all by itself?
   
7. How're we gonna get there? Take a train?
   
8. Enjoying your summer holiday, Iris?
   
9. But you obtain moral satisfaction from your work?
   
10. Delicious. Am I the first customer?
    
11. Do you take precautions in locking up the truck?
    
12. Could I sit on the veranda?
    
13. Were you the one who broke it?
    
14. She stood on a pedestal scanning the ocean?
    
15. Are shopping center's to towns, what cathedrals are to city's?
    
16. Are you walking back?
    
17. What does she do for breakfast?
    
18. Is it okay if I stay for a week or more?
    
19. 10 years in a movie what does it all mean?
    
20. Where will you ever arrive at?

Hi,

The latest issue of WTF PWM is up. The reason I tell you is that I have a story in it. Go and read it, it is very funny.

I have been writing some 'nature' poems recently. I was thinking of printing them as a chapbook or something and calling it 'South Downs Syndrome', but I probably won't. I'll probably just post them on here in like a week or something. [edit: did this, then decided they weren't very good. new regret.]

Also, I had a story rejected recently. In the rejection email they said "While I thought there was some good writing and observations in the piece I thought it lack any real incident." Is this what people mean when they say "form without substance"? If you would like to read a story where nothing happens then get in touch and we can make those dreams of yours a reality.

Thanks.

Sometimes I Read

A Goalie’s Anxiety at The Penalty Kick

I bought this from a second hand book shop in Balham the day England lost 4 – 1 to Germany in the Football World Cup. The shop keeper laughed out loud when he saw the title of the book. I turned to my friend who had taken me to the book shop and made a face as if to say, “get a load of this guy,” (although maybe not because I don’t think I’ve ever used that phrase). My friend asked me where I had heard of the book, after he read the synopsis on the back. Later we would discuss how the cover looks like the cover of an Adrian Mole book. It is a 1978 paperback edition, published by Quartet. As far as I can make out from their website, they have not reprinted it*.

On the back, the book is compared to L’Etranger. It’s an easy comparison to make. Both are short novels that deal with existential alienation and murder. But whereas Camus seems concerned with motive and consequence as well as alienation, Handke seems solely preoccupied with the emotional isolation of an ex-goal keeper, now murderer, Bloch. Bloch seems to have more in common with Michel Poiccard in Goddard’s A Bout De Souffle than Mersault.

Bloch seems to suffer from some sort of 'Depersonalisation Syndrome'. Handke combines Bloch’s inner thoughts and the third-person narration of the book to emphasise this. Here is an excerpt from towards the end of the books, where Handke makes use of Wingdings, or whatever the pre-Microsoft equivalent of Wingdings is:
“He repeated the look from left to right; this look seemed to him like reading. He saw a “wardrobe”, “then” “a” “waste-paper-basket”, “then” “a” “curtain”; while looking from right to left, however, he saw [chair], next to the [table].” etc...

* * *

The same day I bought the book, my friend and I went to a shop called Clapham Books. There was a shelf of Penguin’s ‘Great Ideas’ series. My friend made a comment which could have been, “Fucking love these.” I pointed to a copy of George Orwell’s Cigarette’s vs. Books and said “Yeah, this is really good.” Or something to that effect. He said, “I haven’t read this one.” I said, “No, I meant the cover,” as if that was what we were talking about all along. This moment has crossed my mind perhaps every day since then.

*Amazon tells me that Farrar Straus Giroux published the book in 2007

A short story neither by me nor translated by me, but that I really like and hope you like as well.

TRUDE MARSTEIN

Deep Need – Instant Nausea

Some sad human beings keep pumping the jukebox with money and putting on lousy music. Her glass is empty. He still has three or four centimetres left. For every beer she has drunk she has had to wait until he has finished his and each of them paid for their own beer each time. She cannot remember if they have had three or four large beers. “Have we had three or four beers?” she asks. “I’ve only had three,” he says. “So you must have had four.” She has long come to terms with his chat up line – “Do you come here often?” – but now it is irritating her again. She thought that he was being wry, that he was playing on the cliché, but he wasn’t. He was perfectly serious and waited for an answer and she had to say, “No, not that often.” She doesn’t feel like another beer, she can’t afford it, and she doesn’t feel in the least like sitting and talking to him; everything has been said, the conversation is going nowhere, And the last thing he said was that he liked the sounds in the bar. Must be compassion, she thinks to herself, but she can’t even muster that for the music. The simplest thing would be to say, “Let’s have another beer”; not only would it be easier to say than “Let’s go, shall we?”, but it would be easier than sitting there one second longer with an empty glass. “Shall we have another beer?” she says in a suitably interested tone of voice; she looks at him as she speaks, but then at once coolly looks away. “No, I’m just so tired,” he says with a smile. “I can’t manage another beer.” And then he begins to tell her about his nephew. Tells her that the boy could read fluently when he was four and now by the age of eight he reads Knut Hamsun. He’s an obnoxious boy, he says. She laughs, not out loud; she forms a broad smile with her mouth and forces air through her nose twice. He doesn’t laugh. She cannot fathom why he won’t have another beer. It crosses her mind that she has to do the dishes before going to bed. He suggests going to the cinema tomorrow. “Maybe,” she says. “I promised I’d go and see my father. I’ll ring you.” The barman comes to take away the dead glasses. They get up and go out. He stands outside with his hands in his jacket pockets. “It’s quite early still,” he says. “Yes, it is,” she says. “Do you like listening to music?” he asks. “Would you like to come to my place and listen to some music?” She hesitates for a few seconds, but without actually giving it much thought she looks at him, smiles and says, “Yes.” They start to walk. “Shall we take a taxi?” she says. “No, let’s walk,” he says. “It’s not that far.” She is wearing new shoes and they are beginning to chafe. He walks at an abnormally fast pace. Once he is almost run over because he charges across the road without stopping to look. Despite walking so fast, he talks all the way to his flat, first of all about social issues: about the advantages and disadvantages of immigration, about whether prostitution should be legalised or not and about the quality of Norwegian kindergartens vis-à-vis Swedish ones. Then he talks about himself, about the jobs he has had and his plans for the future. She has more than enough to deal with just keeping up with him and is quite out of breath. It is all she can do to say “Uh-huh” and “uh?” “You’re a bit shy, you are,” he says with a smile over his shoulder. “No, I’m not,” she says. “Perhaps you’re just not very talkative,” he says. Her heels hurt. It feels as if the blisters have burst now. He practically stops dead in his tracks in front of a door. “This is where I live,” he says. The key is already in his hand; he unlocks the door and goes in ahead of her. She looks at his back as they go up the stairs. He lives on the fourth floor and neither of them says a word. He has quite a cute bum, but his trousers are not up to much. She is not sure that she actually wants to sleep with him. In the hall she bends down to undo the laces of her shoes. “Please take off your shoes,” he says. He opens a door. “Here’s the bedroom,” he says. She can feel a pee coming on. The bed is quite narrow. There is a magazine on the bedside table. “It’s a bit messy,” he says. Two or three items of clothing hang over a chair. She stands there with her arms crossed, her weight on one leg and her head thrust upwards; she can feel that her sweater has ridden up and her stomach is visible. I need to pee first, she thinks. The bed wear is flowery, a pastel shade and the duvet nicely folded over. He leaves the room. She follows him. “This is the sitting-room,” he says. The walls are a burgundy red. There are green plants and pleated yellow lampshades, with reproductions of Van Gogh and Munch on the walls. He waves his hand towards the stereo system and three shelves of CDs. “I spend much too much money on music,” he says. Now a whisky, she thinks, a whisky first. “Where’s the loo?” she asks. Not content with pointing to the door, he goes right over and opens it, gestures with his arm into the bathroom as if showing her around. On the edge of the bath there are glass jars of pink bath salts and round, light-blue capsules of bath oils. Towels, also pastel-coloured, are arranged in neat piles on the shelves according to size. She has a pee a cleans herself carefully with moistened toilet paper. The floor is spotless; there isn’t a hair or any dust to be seen. She kneels down and peers under the bench; nothing to be seen there, either. There are cans of hairspray and bottles of moisturising cream on the shelf under the mirror. When she comes out, there is a CD playing. She asks what it is, but she has never heard of the music and she takes an immediate dislike to it. There is a diploma hanging on the wall, black letters on mint green paper; the paper looks old and faded. She reads it. It is from 1979, with his name on, third prize in downhill skiing. “I beat my brother,” he says. “We were competitive about everything. HE was the eldest and always came on top in everything. He was more popular than me, better at school and generally better at sport. But that time I won.” He points to the diploma. “My brother had a cold and came fifth,” he says. He moves something from the sitting-room table. “He had more luck with girls, too. I hated him.” He comes over to her. He is carrying a bowl with a spoon in. There is something brown in it and it has set; chocolate pudding perhaps. “When he died I realised that I didn’t hate him that much,” he says. “But it was absolutely fine that he was dead.” He goes to the kitchen. She hears him putting the bowl down on the steel sink unit before returning. “When did your brother die?” she says. “In April,” he says. He goes over to the sofa and starts arranging the cushions, systematically; he gently pats the square cushions into position, working from one end to the other. Then he goes to the toilet. She wonders whether she should sit on the sofa, waits a little, remains standing and then looks at the CDs. He returns so quickly that without thinking she says, “Have you already been?” He walks past her and positions himself on the other side. “He had dreadful taste in music, he says, “but he would never admit it. I played in a band for a few years, but I’ve given up.” On the shelf above the CDs there is a photograph framed in glass and held with clips, resting against a brass candlestick. Three pale, skinny boys with unnaturally twisted limps lying on their backs on a carpet. “The one in the middle is my son,” he says. “He’s got cerebral palsy. He lives in Tromso. I haven’t seen him for eight months, He’ll recognise me when we meet.” HE puts two glasses down on the sitting-room table. “Would you like a glass of Coke?” he asks. She says, “Yes please,” and moves toward the sofa to sit down. He goes into the kitchen and returns with a large bottle of Coca-Cola and sits down in an armchair. He fills the glasses, passes one over to her, lifts the other one up and, while looking at the wall, holds it in his hand without drinking from it. Set in one wall is a closed door. “What’s in there?” she asks, pointing. “My sister’s room,” he says. “We share the flat. She’s not here right now.” “When will she come home?” she asks. “Not until tomorrow,” he says. “Now I can understand the hairspray and the skin cream in the bathroom better,” she says, smiling. “I’m not one for one-night stands,” he says. “I like to get to know a girl before I go to bed with her.” She looks at him, doesn’t say a word. “If that’s fine by you,” he says, “that we don’t sleep with each other.” He looks at her. “Of course,” she says. “I hadn’t thought about it, either.” “No, of course not,” he says. “But it would be nice if you would stay the night.” She nods, smiles, takes a swig of the Coke. “You’re good to talk to,” he says, smiling. “And you’re good-looking.” He knocks back the whole glass in one and puts it down on the table. She can see by the way he bends his chin down towards his chest and opens his mouth that he is belching noiselessly.

Translated by Don Bartlett

New Wave Vomit have published a short story by me.

It is an excerpt from a longer thing I am working on. I've used the term novella. Perhaps you could also call it a 'cycle of mini-stories.' I don't know what I am going to do with it. Maybe nothing.

I have another, unrelated short story that is going to be published online somewhere else, but I'll make another post about that when it happens.

Recently I have been (re)watching lots of Eric Rohmer, reading Swedish autobiographical graphic novels and feeling nervous about certain life changing events.

Overheard
"I literally hate being groped"
***
"It's like kinda a cafe"

Weak Grasp
A middle aged woman walked past me
clutching a black bottle of wine
with a look of concern.

A woman my aged walked past me
clutching a yellow Beyond Retro bag
with a look of disdain.

I walked past three young girls
talking to each other
stopping to laugh.

This Poem is a Subplot
I went to London today
and thought
oh god this place depresses me
without a thought for outside circumstances

and I thought about all the nice, beige people I met
and how I would never be able to make friends of them

and I had a short telephone conversation
because it is hard to keep a conversation up
against apathetic monosyllabism

and I went home
thinking how London makes me feel
underwater in a bath in the middle of the night
with the lights turned off
and the curtains open, again
without a thought for outside circumstances

I Have Not Wished My Step-Mother Happy Easter Via Text Message Yet
Sleep deprived when I got off the train
I spent my morning and early afternoon doing things.
The library was closed.
I paid in a cheque.
I had breakfast in an expensive and empty café.
I bought two cd’s.
I walked a lot of places, doing nothing.

And now I’m hungry
and now my feet hurt
I feel like I am swaying slightly
nextdoor is watching QI on BBC iPlayer

A Writer I Admire
Recently, blog posts of yours
have come to me out of nowhere
(nowhere meaning my memory)
and I have felt embarrassed for you
wondering if you’ve deleted these post now.
Then I think of posts I have made
and later deleted,
and I feel a little less embarrassed for you,
and a little more for me.

But I can’t tell you this
because you do not allow comments.

I Will Never Submit To An Online Journal Again, Unless They Accept This
Submission is such a humiliating word

3:58pm after a nightshift
Music is coming from the other room.
I am on my third or fifth coffee
depending on when you started counting.
Around my eyes my face muscles
feel tired
like they have been on a long walk or
out in the sun for a bit too long.
Every movement takes me longer than normal.
I just massaged a sensitive lump
at the back of my head.
The sun is shining on me.

The sun has gone behind a cloud now.
I have taken one shoe off.
It is 4:05pm now.

Praying I
I used to pray to a god for
some reason. I would hold my hands
and say words to myself like I’m
saying now. The kind of words a
child would say. And then I would recite
the lords prayer as it was taught
with art’s and thou’s. I never learnt
any other prayers though.
If I knew what to pray for what
words to say and in which order
to say them, would that have helped
me in life someway?

Praying II
I seem to swear very little
except when muttering to myself.
Is swearing still considered shocking?
People did not like it
when I used the word ‘cunt’
even though it was fundamental
to the anecdote.

Why Can’t I Do This?
I just tried milk in my coffee
It was disgusting
I had to throw it away

Buff
As I sat there topless
eating breakfast
I noticed nodules of bone on my shoulders.

Later, I saw an outdoor swimming pool
and thought how nice it would be
to go swimming first thing tomorrow morning.

I then remembered my body
and decided I would start doing push-ups
as soon as I got home.

When I arrived home
I sat at the kitchen table
ate sweets
then masturbated.

Side Profile
When I sit in side profile
at my desk, I can see
through a set of French Windows
and through my kitchen over
the garden, park and railway tracks
to Prestonville and Sevendials
where buildings are built on
a slope, so from where I sit
sat in side profile looking
all the houses look like one giant interlinking mass
everyone an extension of the other

Sick People
People who don’t cover
their mouths when they sneeze or cough
are the worst people

Cold Hands
It was raining so
I took my umbrella but
it was also windy
and I forgot gloves, so
not only did my hands
get cold but they became
numb due to holding on
trying not to loose my grip

Comics (aka former glories from a past life)

Fact & Textbooks
I drew this when I was in my second year of university. It was about a boy in school called Pablo. I think it might've been used as a prototype for The Inbetweeners. When it was completed it was about 60 pages long. I released the first 20 pages as a self-published photocopied comic for free. I sent one of them to an ex-housemate. His friend also read it and said sometime later, "I read that comic you drew. About that kid going to school and shit? Well good." I made one copy of the completed story and did nothing with it.

Slingshot
This was a short, 6-page comic. It appeared in the one-off fanzine 'Holy Shit Bro', which I also drew the cover for. The premise of it was two boys played with a Slingshot and, after an accident, one of them was blinded.
My friends housemate said to me at a gig once, "I read your comics in 'Holy Shit Bro'. It was really good." I said "Thanks?" embarrassed and not sure how to accept a compliment. He then walked away quickly.

Eric & Amiee
This was a 2-page comic, which appeared in the OK Comics anthology. OK Comics is a shop in Leeds. It's about a bitter man who is in love with a page-3 model. This was the first time I ever showed my mum a comic I had drawn. She seemed proud.

""
This was going to be a generation-spanning epic, consisting of two intertwining storylines two decades apart. In the first and only issue Robin, who works at his father's bookshop (Capek Books), is dumped by his girlfriend, due to his girlfriend moving to Australia. While his girlfriend is dumping him he gets a pain in his foot. Later he goes to get his foot checked out by two different doctors: the first doctor licks his foot while examining it; the second cuts a hole into his foot and his body is covered by a swarm of ants. He awakes from a coma six months later. His girlfriend has now returned.
The second part takes place when Robin is a toddler. His father, who is a single parent, interviews babysitters at the bookshop and hires a half Italian woman who is studying part-time at a polytechnic. Robin's dad fancies the babysitter.
I released the first part as a self-published comic, limited to twenty copies. When I was photocopying it at the photocopy place near The Fenton in Leeds a Chinese couple came to my copier, looked at it and said "[something in chinese] manwha [something in chinese]" then laughed. It sold well at Orbit in London and I received an email from someone saying that it was recommended to them by the staff and they enjoyed it. I then put it online at ComicsNation(?).
I drew a twenty page follow up comic concerning Robin and his ex, which I published on my myspace blog. Never publish comics on a myspace blog.
This project took up most of my last year of university. The summer before I had been dumped by a girlfriend and this was a way of dealing with it while not dealing with it at the same time. I remember once penciling 16 pages in one day and then not being able to draw for another week. Because my degree was not related to comics in anyway whatsoever, I did not get great grades.

Maison de Mignon
Weird comic with a stupid title that was in the middle of "". No plot line. Two girls wearing face paint make a cake using an odd assortment of foods and a microwave. I think I thought I was Paul Pope.

Apelz
Largely a parody of manga-action comics this was a twentyish-page comic about a girl who is bored of her job and tries to restart her old high school band. Last year I rewrote this as a piece of prose fiction. It was an ill-concieved idea. It was rejected by a few online journals and I posted it on here, then deleted it. I have no idea what happened to the comic itself.

Oslonians promo-post two: The Prologue

I left my room for the train station two hours before I had originally intended, my reasons twofold: a) it had been snowing heavily the previous night and although it had now stopped train delays were beyond doubt, and b) for the past half hour I had been taking books of my shelf and putting them into my suitcase, taking them out of my suitcase and putting them on the floor – what would be best to take? What do I want to read now, what will be best for journey-reading? Sartre isn’t good for journeys. The front cover of First as Tragedy, Then as Farce has a plane crash diagram on the cover, could be bad luck. I settled on volume 3 of Proust and Barthes’ Mythologies. Probably not wise choices, but I’d already started reading both of them.

I walked down the hill, treading firmly against the smoothly frozen, slippery snow. Across the road, three guys around the same age as me were walking. I saw them, they saw me. We were parallel, then they were behind me. Snow splattered against the wall. I thought about how embarrassing it would have been if it had hit me in the head, but did not think about why they had decided to through a snowball at me, someone they did not know. It is the kind of thing that has often happened to me since I was a child. I don’t know why. I carried on walking.
At one point I was crossing a road and a man on the other side who was carrying two bags of shopping slid and fell onto his back. I ran across the road as a wine bottle fell out of one of the bags and rolled towards me. I collected the things that had fallen out as the man picked himself back up. I handed the bag back to him. Looks like it hurt, I said. Sorry, he said. Looks like it hurt, I repeated. Just a bit, he said. Thanks. I told him that it was no problem, and already felt good about the good deed I had just done. I walked away thinking to myself about a writing teacher saying how when we see someone fall over in the street we laugh because it is not us. When he told us this I thought to myself, I do not laugh when I see people fall over, I want to help them. A minute later I thought to myself how the more appropriate thing might have been to help him up off the floor. I laughed to myself about this, possibly louder than I realised, over the noise of my headphones.
I felt an air of smugness as I arrived at the station: the next train had been delayed; I was right about leaving early. My train arrived soon enough though and it was a quick, quiet trip without much human interaction.

When I arrived at London Victoria I located the Bureau de Change as I still had some cash to be changed to Kroner. Behind the counter was an east-Asian woman. I asked her if she had any Norwegian Kroner. She replied that they did not. I then asked her if there was another one nearby. She said that there was and pointed behind me. I looked behind me to where W.H. Smiths and a Caffe Nero stand were. Opposite W.H. Smiths, she said. I thought to myself, but we’re opposite W.H. Smiths. I said thank you anyway and walked towards W.H. Smiths to see if what she said made sense. As I walked in that direction it became clear that there was another Bureau de Change, obscured slightly by the Caffe Nero. The counter of the second Bureau de Change was on a raised platform. I walked up some steps and asked the man behind the counter whether or not they had any Norwegian Kroner. He told me that they did not. This meant that I would have to wait until I arrived at the airport to get the rest of my cash changed. I went down to the underground station and got the Victoria line northbound to Tottenham Hale. For the first part of the journey, there were two girls sitting opposite me who talked incessantly at a loud volume about being shit at their boring office jobs, not being allowed to go on facebook at work and getting drunk at bus stops in London. The only time they talked quietly to each other, I heard them mention something about glasses.

At Tottenham Hale, I called my girlfriend. She had just arrived at St. Pancras and I explained the route she needed to take to get to Tottenham Hale. It would be a while before she arrived so I walked out of the station and headed over to an industrial park opposite. I walked around an Asda for a while, not looking for anything in particular. In one section they had info-mercials playing on small screens. Many info-mercials were playing at the same time, all with the same voice over guy; it sounded like some horrible, demented stream of consciousness. I watched one info-mercials for something called a Snuggie, which was like a blanket with sleeves. They made a great deal about the fact that it had sleeves which meant you could do things like talk on the phone. I left Asda and went to the drive-thru Burger King across the road. I ordered a veggie-burger meal. It took a while to come because no one buys veggie-burgers from Burger King. There’s a reason for this, but I was willing to take a chance. I sat down and ate about half of the burger before my girlfriend called me. She was now at Tottenham Hale station. I got up to leave but when I got to the exit it was locked. An Asian guy that worked there came over and told me it was locked. He had keys. He tried opening the door but for about a minute it wasn’t opening. I thought it would be funny to be locked inside a Burger King and made a small nervous laugh. Then the door opened and I left. I still had half of my veggie-burger in my hand when I reached something called a Solar Compressor. A Solar Compressor is a kind of bin, which uses Solar Electricity to crush the objects inside the bin. The Solar Compressor had a heavy mouth, which you had to open in order to put your rubbish in. When I closed the lid I managed to get my pinkie caught in it. It hurt. Walking back to the station I kept on thinking the words “I caught my finger in a Solar Compressor.” When I got to the station I saw my girlfriend and went up to her and we hugged. I told her I went to Burger King because I was hungry. She said sorry for disrupting my meal. I told her it wasn’t very nice and I was more thirsty than hungry, which was true. We then went down to the platform where we needed to catch the train to Stansted. I caught my finger in a Solar Compressor, I said. What’s a Solar Compressor? she said. We both laughed. The board said that there was a train due one minute ago. The board then said that the train was cancelled. Then the board said that the train after that was cancelled. I thought this might continue eternally. We waited half an hour until the next train, saying to each other that it would be cancelled any minute. It had been two weeks since I had last seen my girlfriend and we talked a lot. When we boarded the train, most of the double seats were taken. We found two seats facing backwards in a table booth. Opposite us was a middle-aged man wearing a black woolly hat, which I thought was probably covering a baldhead. During the journey I felt self-conscious of his presence as we spoke and I found it difficult to talk properly to my girlfriend without feeling like I was censoring myself. Before he left, I half expected him to lean across and speak his opinion on something we had been talking about. But as he got up to leave he smiled. You’re both very lucky, he said. My girlfriend and I laughed nervously. He turned into the aisle before turning back around to us. Have a merry Christmas, he said. I thanked him and wished him a merry Christmas as well.

We arrived at Stansted just after eleven p.m. We located a Bureau de Change but it was closed. I said that I would never be able to change my money. We then found one that was still open. I asked the woman behind the counter if I could change my money into Norwegian Kroner. She asked how much. £60? I said. We have a deal on at the moment, she said. If you change over £250 then you don’t have to pay commission. £60 is fine, I said. I had already changed £180 into Kroner. After my money was changed we went to look for food. We still had another seven hours before the flight. We went into a spar and my girlfriend started looking through different kinds of food she could and couldn’t eat. We ended up sitting down next to a photobooth, the gigantic head of the passport photo model looming above us. We curled up on the hard surface of the airport floor. I took off my coat and put it over me like a blanket. What would be good is a blanket, I said. But then I would be restricted by not having sleeves. That’s what makes a Snuggie so great! The warmth of a blanket with the freedom of sleeves. And a Snuggie doesn’t fall off when you get up, because it has sleeves! Soon I could hear my girlfriend snoring. I lay next to her, feeling the bone of my hip press awkwardly against the floor. I waited until one a.m. then sat up and started reading.

At about three a.m. I went and got coffee from an all-night Prêt-a-Manger. I asked the woman serving me for a double shot without milk. I saw her put the cup under the espresso drip and then top the cup up with water. I saw her take a metal jug and pour something into it. I walked back to the photobooth, the giant symmetrical head on the side greeting me. I sat back down next to my girlfriend who was still asleep and put my coffee on the other side – it would still be too hot to drink. I started reading again. I took the lid off my coffee. I looked at it. I wasn’t sure if it just had a crema head so I tried some. It had milk in. I got up and walked back to the Prêt-a-Manger. The woman was asking someone else what they wanted and after the customer told them she turned to me, recognising me from before. Er, I asked for no milk, I said. She acted like this was to be expected, perhaps she had realised while she was doing it but couldn’t be bothered to make another one unless I requested it. She didn’t make a fuss about having to make another. The woman next to me who had just ordered also asked the woman if she could have no milk. If you think you are gaining calcium by putting milk in your coffee you are wrong; caffeine absorbs calcium. This coffee tasted like crap anyway. Behind the counter was another member of staff. He was black and vertically challenged. He was wearing a different colour work shirt, which I thought indicated a higher rank. He was talking loudly on his phone and it was clear it was a personal call. As my coffee was being remade the woman kept on looking over at her manager talking on his phone. She looked like she wanted him to die. She handed me my coffee and I went back to the photobooth.
Going through security, I had to put all of my liquid containers into a clear plastic bag. Any that were over 100ml had to be thrown away. I lost some face wash. I also left a bottle of Eau de Toilette and some deodorant in my hand luggage, which came up on the scanner. This meant a woman searching through my bag as other passengers went past. She started flicking through pages of books like Johnny 5. She picked up my jotter pad, but didn’t look in it. Then she said that they needed to do tests on the bottles I had left in the bag. They took them away for a bit and then brought them back. I wondered what tests they had done and decided they probably just sprayed them to see what they smelt of. Are they okay, I asked. They are okay, she said. I then realised I had forgotten to re-tie my shoelaces, which I had also had to take off when going through security.

We went to Boots. My girlfriend had to buy some Ranitidine, and some other stuff she had prescriptions for. I bought some ‘travel-calm’ tablets and some face wipes. We then bought ‘meal-deal’ sandwiches and drinks and ate these in the foodcourt. I ate half of my sandwich and complained that it tasted ‘clinical’.

We went to the boarding gate. I went to the toilets, going into the furthest cubicle from the entrance. I sat down and opened my bowels. It was long and fulfilling. I washed my hands and went back to the boarding gate. The screen said that they were now boarding for the plane. My girlfriend and I got inline. No one else was moving. Then, after about five minutes people stood up, in front of the boarding desk and we realised that we were in the ‘priority’ queue. We took our hand luggage and went to the back of the normal queue. It was already a long queue so we sat down, defeated by our eager attempt. Then other people joined the queue in front of us. The queue was moving but no one seemed to be going in. I started telling my girlfriend that this was ‘false movement’ and that we shouldn’t be sucked in by such bullshit. It seemed like too much trouble to stand in line for so long, so we stayed where we were conscious that the plane would not leave without us. My girlfriend started telling me about a racist man at a bus stop that she saw when she was going to pick up a friend who had stayed with her recently from the train station. I accused her of never picking me up or dropping me off from the station when I went to visit. She defended herself by saying that her friend had no sense of direction. She seemed upset and distressed by my accusation. I felt bad for my hours of jealousy in which I had thought about her going to pick up another man from the train station while she had never done so with me. She said she would pick me up next time if I wanted, but I told her not to worry about it and I was just being silly, even though I would have liked her to.

It took a good half an hour before we got to the boarding desk again, by which time I was starting to need to piss. Perhaps my bladder forgot to empty itself while I was in the toilet before. We boarded the plane, looking at a boxed number on our tickets, which we presumed was our seat number. We then realised that we could sit anywhere, despite the ‘choose where you sit’ system they had online when we were booking our tickets. Fuck Ryanair. We sat down next to an emergency exit. We put our seatbelts on. I still needed the toilet. I figured I may as well wait until we were in the air, it wouldn’t be too long, surely. Everyone finished boarding the plane and putting their stuff in the overhead space. I still needed the toilet. One of the cabin crew started explaining what to do in an emergency situation; I started pacing my feet backwards and forward. I still needed the toilet. After she finished talking, I kept waiting. There was no way I could go to the toilet now, I thought. I started thinking about what would happen if I pissed myself. I started playing the scenario in my head, taking my luggage out from the overhead compartment and putting my coat over my lap as I changed out of my wet jeans and into a new pair. I thought about walking down the aisle with a massive wet patch around my crotch, being extremely embarrassed. I looked over at my girlfriend. She was asleep. A child in front started yelling, We’re going to Sweden! Sweden? I thought. Were we on the wrong flight? I was confused, anxious and I really needed the toilet. My pulsed quickened and beat in my head. I thought to myself, If I pass out now then no one can blame me for pissing myself. I tried to breath slowly and calm myself down. I told myself how good it would feel to finally be able to go to the toilet after needing to go for so long. A voice came on the overhead speakers. It was the pilot, telling us we would have to wait another twenty minutes before our flight left because of the snow. I grabbed my girlfriend’s arm and told her what was going on. She woke up. I asked her what button I had to press to call a stewardess. She said she didn’t know. I pushed a button above my head and a stewardess came. I asked if we could use the toilets seeing as the plane wasn’t taking off. She looked confused then told me there were toilets at the back of the plane. I undid my belt and jogged down to the back of the plane where there were two toilets. Both of them were locked. There were two stewards and I asked them if I could use the toilets. They said I could, but that other people were using them at the minute. It then seemed that I could have gone to the toilet whenever I wanted to. I needed the toilet less now. I was not as agitated. I felt like an idiot, but I was calm. When I finally got in the cubicle I had the best piss of my entire life. When I got back to my seat I was in a state of near euphoria. I was still convinced we were on the wrong plane but I decided that if we ended up in Sweden we could get a train or coach to Oslo and we would get to see a lot of the country. We took off an hour after we were supposed to. Just before we took off I lent to look out the window and told my girlfriend, If I was like this when we took off my face would be pressed against your face through sheer g-force. The plane lifted up off the ground and my ears popped. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up we were in Norway.

OSLONIANS: A Plea to Scandinavia...

Or anyone visitng Scandinavia, Poland or Estonia:

Could someone send me a bag of Wayne's Coffee's House Blend? I have paypal and can pay you.

Thank you.

In related news a short story I wrote called Oslonians has just been published by the fabulous Pangur Ban Party.

Here are a list of links relevant to Oslonians:
Wayne's Coffee

Kjell Askildsen

Knut Hamsun

Vigeland Museum

Blitz Cafe

Tiger Records

Munch Museum

The library user approached the computer opposite me and at first I paid little attention to him. He then started to shake himself vigorously. I thought he might be having a seizure, when he was taking his backpack off in the most ludicrous fashion possible. He then sat down at the computer and started tapping keys on the keyboard. He hunched and increased the intensity with which he hit the keys on the keyboard. I looked at him. He had a shaved head, with a pair of shaded swimming goggles sitting just on top of his forehead. He had been looking at me every now and then since he had started taking off his backpack, I had noticed. I walked away two minutes before my session finished.

I am now at a computer further away. He is still typing. Maybe he is writing a poem.

The library user has left now.

BLOGGING IS AWESOME

I'm fed up with these histrionics

We touch all the time, so why not be the best at it?