My · Husband · Left · Me · For · Tori · Spelling

was i 10 or 11 when we came here to
live? i hadn't any pubes, was yet to cum -
cos i recall when i did; in that room
at the front. a pile of magazines staring out
with toothy bland popstars: friction marries
the eye and i climb higher and higher til
a dribdrab of clear seedless gunk:
saliva with a tingle.

and then a baby was born - not mine from
the gunk but foretold. a brother so the rooms change
around. learn to share, make the friction a secret.
secrets. more secrets inside and bruising - the sorry
pain of a body transforming and a psyche
evolving - sleep, more sleep and the eyes shimmer
silver.

i left before she did - there was snow on the ground
and a knife to reflect it. it didn't  touch any flesh but
it sure pierced something; that night i walked out the
door a man, in eyeliner, a man, a man on his own
route, a 16 year old man.

and so back but briefly - i can see the outline
of the man who sired me sat at his table reading his papers,
flapping thru maps - and i'm conscious that tho i saw
this so often, as normal, for granted - in memory
i might feel this moment precious, and forget the haunting
and this belly that bubbles with bile - and the clouds
thick and white, smothering the sun
like they're withholding heaven.

********************************************************

a bit of a mess this, but the framework of something i want to say

i wrote this just now. i don't think it's much good, but i haven't written for months. i'm grateful for anything that befalls me:

*******************

you think i'll drown if you
hold my face down
in a river? see me now,
breathing thru gills i sliced
in my cheek
with the fish-hook you meant
me to swallow, digest
and tangle about my liver.
pull it and see - what's there? -  is
it me?
is it heart? is it lungs or
fireworks?

and if i look round the room - stuff. more and more stuff, crammed into a tiny space, everything made symmetrical by the hand of an ocd. a teddy's stance is mirrored there. that dolly has a twin. if there's a plate hanged east, see it reflected west. nothing is ever left lonely - my mother, an incredible matchmaker of stuff. and then a line of cards blutacked to the wall - all of them saying either mother or mum, one mummy. i vaguely recall picking and sending some, my brothers will have sent her the rest, but i dare not look inside them; not with my heart so heavy. i might see a glimpse of my handwriting - lighter and bouncier than it looks today; a message that would beam with naivete, remind me of a long lost self. if i saw that i'd crumble.

and i think now why i'm here. because i was sick of mind and body when she called me, sanity hanging by a thread - and she said: son, come home to your mother. let me cook for you and listen. if you want to be alone,  i'll clean out my office. i was moved - we don't usually play mother and son like this: she resists her role, i scowl at mine. but when i turn up, i see the effort she's making - the room laid out for me, the foods she knows i like - an offer of valium. the listening to me and holding her tongue: she knows better than to tell me what to do.

last night neither of us could sleep. so we sit in the kitchen smoking cigarettes, me sipping a glass of wine - and she says: let's go to tesco. and i go - it's 3am. there'll be no-one around she says. so we drive to this huge superstore, her still dressed in pink pajamas, me with bedhead and sullen lips. we look at cds and books - then clothes, cheap, nasty clothes she insists on buying me - a jacket, some jumpers, jeans. i say: no, i'm not bothered, she says: PUT THEM BACK IN THE TROLLEY LAD. and then we get treats: cakes and sandwiches, ice cream, a pineapple. at the checkout the woman says 130 quid. mam pays in cash. when we get home we're jollier, talking smack about some bitches she knows from the top estate, and chewing on unnutritious foodstuffs.

she's being so gentle and lovely, trying so hard but driving me mad. talking too much and attempting to mother a grown man she neglected to mother when he needed it most. she wants to talk to me about fyzal - i won't go there with her. too painful, her mind too messy to be insightful or keen - if she says something wrong, i'll bite. another day, i say - knowing i mean never.

it's quiet now. i can hear the hum of the telly downstairs, and now and then a battery operated air freshener chugs out fumes in the corner. i should eat something. my stomach is empty. the thought of food makes me sick. i'll roll myself a cig.

 by the time i was 20 i was in london which would serve as a substitute paris. i'd dropped out of my philosophy degree as any good existentialist would, to read simone de beauvoir in a darkened room by day - and tour the alternative clubs by night. i had no money - not even the dole - i would shoplift my food, justifying an increasingly addictive behaviour with socialist principles: everything is everybody's, including that cheese, those books and that spice girls dolly. i made friends in clubs who would buy me drinks and supply me with drugs. i would wind up back at their houses for days talking shit and writing down political manifestos when they went to sleep. this was what it meant to be creative - surely. drink and drugs and shallow friends - pretty women with hair cut short, sharp tongues and romantic ideals. gay boys with floppy fringes and an ironic penchant for motley crue. was i gay? why darling, isn't everyone? you're bi - oh me too! shall we all sleep together in this bed? fuck away -don't mind me, i'm singing smiths songs whilst plucking the acoustic guitar.

so it was squat parties and dressing up. lots of hat wearing and nights without sleep - and the creative element reduced to rambling journal entries and bad poems jotted inside the blank hallways of novels. i was having fun and it was all very decadent (people attempting suicide all around me) as imagined - but i hadn't written 'l'etranger' yet.

i grew disillusioned with the set of people i was around. i was soon able to deduce that their artistic sensibilities were if anything post-modern. some of them went on to fashion school, others ran club nights - a few became politically radical and served time in a gothenberg jail. i would stay in my room looking at the crack in the ceiling, thinking about death and writing letters to people in arizona.

when my best friend died i took back to partying. gay clubs and the ghetto til i found my chap. if he could cast out and make films at such a young age then i could write. i would enrol in classes and give it a go.

now - i've known all along that i wanted to do it - and though i've flirted with music my heart wasn't in it. the love was for words and the assembling thereof - the beautiful, terrifying english language. and so - having brushed away the romantic cobwebs with a cotton duster i could see what i had to do...and if my life as  flaneur was my apprenticeship now began the work.

and it is work. drudgery at times. as romantic as the life of a coalminer and as painful. the agonising over details - the toiling over plot. the million things i have to do before i feel myself able to actually sit down and do it. the solitude of it all - which i have to explain with a blush to those who want to see me: sorry i can't enjoy myself tonight, i'm busy putting myself through the grinder, on my own in the corner again. some other time. it's like depression or a sickness. when i'm not doing it, i obsess. the skimpy life i allow myself to live is all being set down in the little jotter of my brain. ordering coffee, i have dreamed up a whole dramatic life for the barrista by the time he's dusting the cinnamon on top. if i have backache, i try desperately to commit the pain to memory - so that when i'm writing about an old woman, some time in the future i will know her lumbago. if i miss someone i procure to heighten it - an evanescent twinge is drawn out like a nightingale's song. i will feel it, to write it...the heart will take the pain and spindle poetry from it..or else. it's like a life lived through a perspex glass, and it's sick.

sick. sick. sick. inflicted solitude. turn yourself inside out. lash yourself for failing. such masochism! and yet i love it still. how's that? somehow i've given purpose to my life - and in the event of that,  it's shrunk. besides writing, and the numerous diversions (like housework) which ritualise the process - i do next to nothing. tv. the odd day hanging out with fyzal or claire. a seat on the deckchair as i read in the sun. a trip to the shop for baked beans or cigarettes. and my class - where kindred sickos want to talk about writing, obsess about it just like me.

will i ever write something worthwhile? i believe it so - but til then i'll keep grinding away; i'll only stop now for armegeddon.

i do sometimes wonder if my attitude towards these seemingly everyday things tells tales on me. who else would boil up like a pan of milk over something so fixed as the weather? a little white brat maybe chugging down the street in a pissy nappy - but no adult man, just this side of his thirtieth birthday. maybe there's a rugrat in me then - stamping on the balls of his tidgy yellow feet in a fandango of fury - or a snot-nosed rumplestiltskin, battering his trotters on the hard wooden floorboards so that mummy might hear. if there is, i must forgive him, for his anger is an energy of sorts... well, at least when the blood is fizzing in my veins like that i can feel it there.

i guess my problem isn't control so much as aversion to blah. i don't demand that the sun have his hat on everyday - just that when he does it's a visor. and if instead it rains, let it be enough to float noah's ark. it's the wishy-washy business in between that offends me. if something must be bad, let it be very bad - thunder, not drizzle; showgirls, not donnie darko; murder, not missing child....that way i'll know where i am.

my classes this term are pretty shit - though there are few new interesting people...well two actually. both of them elderly women, but in different ways. the first is a stuffy old monster with the face and manners of pd james. she speaks in a clipped baritone that commands respect and wears beige polyester trousers, like some old bull dyke. more interesting tho are her stories which are outrageously bad. as i say - if bad must be at all let it be in excelcis. and how. it would seem that ms james scours the broadsheet press for a story that takes her fancy then pretty much types it up word for word as it might have appeared there. these stories are not an inroad into the human angle for her, but an opportunity for precis, which she then reads aloud to us all without shame. the first story (about a woman suffering injustice on the gaza strip) was a fucking riot. just cold facts arranged as tho by an automaton. i fancy there are xbox 360s with more soul and poetry than that old statue.

the other woman is a type encountered surprisingly often in classes like mine - the sort i call for short hand 'the baby jane'. they tend to have faces like sultanas that they attempt to paint over with startling colours and frame with peroxide curls. a woman at my class a few terms ago shockingly resembled a burnt barbie...all sinew and brown excess skin. this one is more presentable, but in other ways more of a riddle. i'd say she was somewhere between fifty and sixty - so a good deal has sagged. if she had courtney love's money it would all be tucked up behind her ears, i'm sure - but she hasn't so she just sports her hair, and her kinder-whore look circa '92. her eyes are most engaging - dreamy and childlike that look upon things lingeringly as if for the first time. and this is all matched by a marilyn monroe voice which stutters around sentences and draws out words for all the blood in them. when she has something to say about a piece of writing, it is usually some incidental quirk which made her 'feel something down her spine.' and by the time she's managed to get it out, 2 hours are over and people are packing up their notepads. if i had to guess i'd say valium.

so yes, i enjoy people like this in my classes - they fire my imagination. the other types get on my tits. like the pregnant bitch who sits caressing her ugly camel's hump as tho it were a prize marrow. she read in her first week, which i was kind enough to critique for her. i made notes in the margin of her shit chick-lit story, pointing out where the dialogue was flagging. three weeks later she read again - a story this time about 'attending a new writing class.' one of her characters says 'oh but they write on your work. it's scary.'
to which another asks her 'oh what do they write?.'
'well someone wrote in stubby blue ink  that my dialogue was dull.'
cue: a drawn out compost heap of self-pity meant to wreak revenge on her cruel critic. (moi)

when she was finished i began to scribble fervently on this new piece, explaining to her the nature of criticism, opinion and it's uses. perhaps she had been used to a different style of criticism - or maybe she had mistaken herself for a writer of genius, who just so happened to have stopped by a weekday college class to cheer it up with magic and music, en route to picking up her nobel prize...whatever the case she got what i try always to give: honest reaction - and i expect the same from whomever evalautes my own work. why else bother to go there at all, if not for that?

anyway - i envy her unborn baby. think of the fairy tales it's sour-faced mummy will tell it. stories bustling with details about skinny lattes and laddered tights, and the hilarious embarrassment between the sexes. should red riding hood have that chocolate brownie and then have to do the cabbage soup diet for the rest of week - which will just be murder if it raises its ugly head when she does finally get the big bad wolf into the sheets. what's a girl to do?

 if she asked me i'd tell her straight: just fucking drop dead. i'd write it in stubby blue ink. or shit.

*********************************************************************************************************

Spring, that siren, sang to me;

- or did she hum?  With her cool

baby’s breath chugging puffs on my feet

through the crease in that window

that never quite shuts. And her fierce,

hot eyes casting prim prison bars on the carpet

through the slats in the blind.

Sour from my bed, I drag my white body

down the stairs and then hang it

like laundry on the chair that waits

like a cat beside my front door – too

close to the wall for Google Earth to see.

And yes she did hum, for down here

she sings opera. ‘A proper Madam Callas,

I’m sure,’ say the beat-boxing bubbles in my

echoing belly, groaning their protest like

farts in the bath.

And if eyes could groan, wouldn’t mine?

First: they’re starch-ironed shut by the night

then held up to quiver like unsure clams before this

splendid hallelujah of light.

So scratch the Rice Krispies from each of four

corners and squint then at the dancing dandelion fuzz:

air-born and circling as though on flies’ wings.

See the radiant pink blossom clumped in corners

by the dustbins, like snow drift.

Looking harder they might notice the luminous

green jewel in the cobweb – neither spider’s lunch nor

next year’s sprout;  perhaps a project for an Art GCSE

by some sullen girl with a camera and a weight in her

chest;  a b minus in her future.

Note the same bud of green on your arm hair – fresh plant

blooming in the old blond forest. Let it set

root there, combine your DNA with its chlorophyll

so that next year, for want of a garden, you can mow

your own lawn across your chest with a petroleum

monster. But wait: you are not a salad bar, nor a nursery

that tired older couples frequent on a Sunday – so with

a flick of the finger,  knock it to the ground, erasing it

with your big grey toe.

See all of this with your sticky pink eyes or not. Feel it wash through your

body or let it pass somewhere over your shiny reptile suit, knitted together

from skins snakes have shed – for when you’re dead in the ground

all this will still circle, spew and carousel. Spidery trees will turn pink,

the next week glow green and bear thick spiny fruit.

And for every purple heap of jelly broken-necked

on the hop-scotch, skewered on a stick and poked teasingly

into the dirty girl’s hair, there’ll be four or five fledglings

bringing back the dried stalks of Autumn to the rafters of

this old house where you sit, just a seed now

in your arm hair.

at the garage - refreshment stop - i stole you two
lemon tarts - one of which you nibbled and put back in the white
paper bag

minutes later we were back on the road and then
off - careening down the banking into mud.
you would have laughed to have seen me so
splattered, jackson pollock redesigning my face,
you would have laughed.

*   *  *  *   *  *

you would have laughed, jackson pollock redesigning
my face, careening down the banking into mud and then off -
back on the road minutes later.

lemon tarts - one of which you nibbled and put back in
the white paper bag. at the garage. refreshment stop.

on the sofa - strumming the guitar you bought me at
the house-clearance, singing carols, hoping you'll join
in. you on the bed with your pin striped trousers and your
powder pink top, wrist dangling off the edge with its
spice girls watch. waiting for the car to come take us -
separate places in the end, we hadn't known.
by tea-time once again we were friends.
we had argued that morning about cleaning.

up til a couple of months ago the place was run by a little indian woman and her giant husband. one would attend at the counter whilst the other would potter around behind, moving parcels from one table to the next or sit counting out pound coins into plastic bags. there was no standard as to which of them would be standing behind the perspex, ready and waiting to scribble over my cheques and hand out the cash, but whomever it wasn't would be just a footstep behind, dithering like an extra on a film set. if it was she, the service came with smiles - sometimes small talk - and i always felt a little warm in my belly when i walked out the door. otherwise her incredibly tall husband with the  bony hands would have to crane himself down from the ceiling so as to see me through the counter. occasionally i would forget where i was and imagine myself at a museum, peering through the glass cabinet at a waxwork of frankenstein's monster. nothing about his manner discouraged my reveries, for he moved as steadily as a tomb would open in an expressionist horror film. the skin on his face was primarily yellow, with a grey undertone - near on silver round the eyes. and because he was closer to seven foot than six i would be looking right up into the grey foliage of his nose as his downcast eyes appeared closed in prayer, counting out the twenties on the table. his eyes would only look straight into mine when he was finished and only then would i read humanity in him. thankyou, i would say and he would nod graciously. often as i passed by the window i would look back in at him, standing stock still where i left him, all skin and bones...'less a presence  from a distance'  i would think.

last month there had been a queue. one woman besides myself equals two and two in a shoebox is a queue. the wife was at the counter but something in the scenery was off. the tall man to her right was a mere boy - 6'8 surely, but honey-cheeked where  i'd expect him ashen. the black caterpillar over his lips and the downy fur striping across his cheeks were no testament to his manhood; indians begin to shave, if at all, aged 11. and besides - though he resembled him in stature, this was not my waxwork man.
'where's the other man?' the brazen woman in front of me asked.
'my husband passed away last week.'
'oh i am sorry to hear that.' the woman said.
'his heart.' the little indian woman said, staring back at the customer with wide, entreating watery eyes.
the brazen woman just shook her head, whilst the indian woman stared back at her hoping for more.
when it came to my turn at the counter i had wanted to speak. not about her husband, for i know well enough that it is nearly impossible to talk to others about their own suffering - but about the weather, the post being late, the usual tidbits. in the end i handed over my cheques in silence, saying only 'thanks' when they were rewarded.

i remember reading a quotation someplace which i can only paraphrase, given my dim memory. it must have been uttered by someone clever, for its truths are subtle. anyway - it was something like 'we are more shocked by the deaths of people we barely know, than those of our immediate kin.' it struck me at the time as fanciful, but as i've aged a bit - experienced my own losses - i get the gist. there's no denying the devastation the death of a loved one can wreak. but in some corner of our hearts we have planned for it already. the unconscious has prepared us to lose the ones we love - it all happens off-stage the moment we begin to love them. when it does, our fears have only been confirmed - and the death may be someone else's but the loss is ours. when we hear about the death of someone we do not especially care for, death itself as an existential truth must be faced. there are no furious emotional connections to pass through, no grief. just the raw actuality that someone we saw around now and then, breathing in and breathing out has stopped. a moment's thought and it's hard not to think of the dead man without seeing a mirror shining back.

this month i cashed my cheques same as always. the tall furry boy was gone, leaving the woman at the counter by herself. as i entered the post office, a woman and a postman snuck in just before me. the postman pushed a card through the counter and said: can you see if i've left this parcel back here. must've luv.

the little indian woman looked flustered, getting up from her chair and muttering something about there being three parcels on the table. as she stood up i could see that her sari had come unpinned at the top. her dishcloth coloured bra was half on display and appeared to be cutting into her flesh quite painfully. underneath it were three or four folds of youthful looking fat, punctuated by a very wide belly button. i watched as she slowly checked the information on the card against the parcels behind her, turning back to say that none of them matched.
'well i'm sure i left it here luv.' the postman said.
'it's not here. there's only 3'
'well can you check again please? i left it here day before yestdi. remember it plain as day.'

reaching round toward the parcels she lifts them one after the other on the counter.
'is it seeds?' she asks the woman, lifting a box with a portrait of some pansies on the front.
'not seeds? well are you jennifer?' she says, lifting the next box.
i notice how pale the flesh on her belly is compared to her face, almost as light as mine. except for the belly button which puts me in mind of a badly stained teacup.
'not jenniffer? well are you john? no? well then it's not here.'
the postman is getting angry by this point, rapping his knuckles on the counter in agitation ' i bloody left it here.'
he turns then to the woman who is neither jennifer or jack and tells her to hang onto the card and he'll chase it up for her.

as they leave they shake their heads at one another, and i step up to the counter with my cheques.
'if it is not here, it is not here.' the woman says, still unaware that her bra is on display and that her belly button, like a black baby's mouth is gawping at me.
'he's probably just made a mistake.' i say as she counts out the cash.
she nods to say yes and looks at me dead in the eye sorrowfully.
i think about telling her to do up her sari but am terrified to add to her humiliation. her brown soulful eyes tell me they've already had enough, so i turn and say goodbye, quietly hoping she notices soon and whilst alone.

of course the mirror is already in place - made not of glass, but self awareness. should it not be enough to know the ways in which i sabotage myself, in order that i don't? it would seem to be but half the journey. so months slink away like minutes - and take with them my self-esteem and ambition. 'to-do' lists jotted down jauntily in january remain unmet in march. yes, i'll just create a thousand things from nothing that demand my attention, then i'll get around to that. and as though nothing were not enough to be getting on with, i dally with daydreams: a parallel universe and the job pages of newspapers are heavy with posts for procrastinators, the wages for which make the city bankers look like bob cratchit. i don't apply - because in this universe i am already bill gates; a self-made man who knows the business of pissing about better than hawking knows black holes.

i need what the japanese call a 'kettobase', which translates as something like: swift kick. i should hope to administer the kick myself.

though not writing much at home, i still attend the class - which tends to be more fun than work.

arriving yesterday at charing cross, i noticed someone familiar staring up at the destination boards. someone i went to university with, someone in fact i'd lived with once yet  whose face i hadn't considered for six years. late as always, i hadn't the time to talk, even if i'd wanted to, but i was intrigued to see him there standing like a soldier, as though commanded by my memory. instead i snuck into a little corner by burger king and watched him from the shadows.

there is always something touching about watching someone you know going about their lives alone and unaffectedly. sometimes you'll drive past your brother as he bends over to brush a leaf from his trainer into the gutter, or you'll see your lover dining alone in a cafe, chewing hard on his burger. unaware they are being observed, a clarity about them suddenly emerges - and an emotion somewhere between pity and love passes through.

i noticed that my friend had not changed much - that his idle way of clutching the straps on his bag was the same now as i'd remembered it. different bag, serving an age old habit that probably began in the cradle with a ribbon or a blanket. and as sure as our faces are prescribed, our manners and ways of moving become so too.

looking up at the boards i was reminded of his eyes - big and bold. green and yellow like a lion's, which say he was born in august. and his skin - still creamy and tight over his cheekbones - always then, and now making his face look like it was wrapped and ready for consumption. there is no sign on his face of six years having gone by - not an inkling of a wrinkle, nor a dash in the brow. perhaps time makes no dent on the innocence of those immune to it.

a flutter of the boards tells him the train is ready, and he's gone. i pick myself up from my corner, and jog out of the station, remembering i am already late.

turning out of kingsway onto the final stretch towards college i noticed a man walking towards me. at the very moment our paths crossed the man, dressed in grey and with shiny brown eyes leant down to the pavement to pick up a gold band ring that lay between us. with a glance in my direction, he extends his arm to show me as though he were wielding a pistol.
'gold?' he asks me in a thick russian accent.
'yes, gold, ' i say noting the stamp on the interior.
'you want?' he asks pushing it towards my face.
'no, no. you found it - it's yours.'
he appears to not understand me at this point, and pushes the ring closer towards me to inspect. i stare at it for a second then say 'gold, yes. yours. you found it. good luck.'
unsatisfied he continues to hold the ring aloft. i move away from it slightly and whilst doing i notice his eyes now have the sturdy gaze of satanic vigour.
alarmed, i move in the opposite direction, protesting my lateness and wishing him good luck.
as i turn to look back i notice him fiddling with the ring and scratching his head as though he were a cartoon bear.

at my class there were 6 of us out of twenty - a small enough number for it to feel festive, but i will write about that tomorrow.

a few musings:

* whole districts of it look like sheffield in the 1980s.
* you can still get white dog poo there. in plenitude - as tho to compliment my first point.
* outside of the tourist districts all times of day look and feel like 6am. it's easy to walk three blocks in schoneberg at 2 in the afternoon, without seeing so much as a dog crouching on the pavement to take a white shit.
* night times are the opposite. 3am on the underground - and the trains are as crammed as monday morning at 8.
* the film museum's main dietrich room looks like a  shrine to a goddess. hellenistic greece would have honoured athena as fittingly. her personal artifacts displayed like articles of faith made me think of the catholic fetishization of the saints. so this is where religion was transferred in the 20th century - past god on to the great icons. lili marlene as faith; and i'm a believer.
* ubiquitous posters of penelope cruz advertising hairspray prove certainly that she suits rather less make-up.
* it's difficult not to come to a city for the first time without indulging its entire romance - and there are few cities as battle scarred as berlin. think of the city as a body and you can see where it has slit its own wrists - freshly if you consider the wall: reduced now to short strip; part sepulcher, part tourist attraction. it's difficult to look at the brandenberg gate without thinking of it, or the kaiser wilhelm church without thinking of hitler.
* german food is massively underrated - unpretentious and tasty, i'd say it was ripe for re-evaluation by world cuisine.
* the news-reader on rtl could by heidi klum's mutter.
* the city is abounding with second hand shops - all of them shit. almost as tho traders are given licence to open a shop round a dumpit site. no i will not pay 8 euros for a hessian shirt that would better work as a dishrag. made me think i should scrape out the wax from my ears and try selling that. if dishcloths are clothes here, i'll call it a candle. the 'biggest second hand shop in europe' fared little better: the odd item i found inspiring would have probably only fitted the residents of munchkinland...should change its name from 'garage' to 'mothercare'.
*my favourite wing in the pergamon museum was 'islamic art thry the ages', of which i'd hitherto seen little. greek and roman ruins i know inside out - and whilst these renderings of the human form never fail to move, it's great to see something fresh. the beautifully painted pages of the koran, passed down from the ottoman empire were my favourite. reminded me to take up calligraphy.
* i was bemused by the reichstag building. should this novelty glass bulb really be sitting over parliament like that? i understood its symbolic principles and very much enjoyed the view from the top, but it still left me scratching my head. the bundestag itself made me think of a lecture theatre, plastic blue seats seeming somewhat cheap, given the cherry on top.
* the cold boulettes carried around bars at 2 in the morning by amusing meat men are tastier than anything you might get in a restaurant. currywurst varies in quality, but always hits the spot.
* there is no need to pay for the u-bahn. no barriers, no checks, as efficient as clockwork, running all night at weekends - it's the service for me.
* modern cabaret is somewhere between french and saunders and hell. all things have their time, then if untethered, descend to pastiche. nostalgia can save an industry, but not an art.
* berliners are markedly more friendly than londoners. nothing was served to me without a smile and no-one seemed flustered by my broken german; it did leave me in search of the stereotypical frosty manner - perhaps hijacked by the french, who always think they need that bit more.
* the place seems like somewhere * becoming* or re-imagining itself. this is as good a thing for a city as for a person - things are not stale, innocence is back in fashion. where else could you go into a gaybar with red foil wrapping paper stapled all over its walls and white balloons tumbling from the ceiling and not feel underwhelmed?  it's the sincerity and naivete that lifts it, and which touches me.
* of all the cities i've visited in my short life, this is the one besides london i can imagine myself living in.

best books of 2006

1. ali smith - the accidental
2. camille paglia - break blow burn
3. alice munro - the view from castle rock
4. sarah waters -  the night watch
5. lewis hyde - the gift
6. margaret atwood - the penelopiad

yes, ali smith wrote my favourite work of fiction. the story was simple, but intriguing enough; the characters perfectly handled - but it was the style i found most rewarding. prose that sings and never clunks. for my money - the best british writer currenty working. camille's take on poetry was exciting and refreshing - and her appraisal of the form to include the lyrics of joni mitchell made very perfect sense. alice munro wrote the best collection of stories (tho i have yet to read atwood's latest collection, still in hardback) - and sarah waters took me by surprise by writing something beyond her usual middlebrow trash. 'the gift' was a hearty gift indeed - a beautiful evaluation of how the creative process transforms the world. in 'peneopiad' atwood re-writes 'the iliad' from the perspective of penelope. the result is a very light and frothy read, a perfect bathtime accompaniment.

disappointments

lionel shriver - there's something about kevin
ian mcewan - saturday
richard dawkins - the god delusion

shriver's novel was clever but empty. i didn't believe in her kevin, and found her protagonist infuriating. it had its moments, but after the final page i felt bereft - and not in a good way. 'saturday' was a chore to read. he should have called it: monday. and nothing infuriated me more than richard dawkins this year - his stony rationalism might have hit a cultural nerve, but i find it somewhat disingenuous, and secondly: aggravating.

other books i've enjoyed this year - published anytime.

jean rhys - tigers are better looking (my bible on literary style)
elizabeth smart - by grand central station i sat down and wept
al alvarez - the savage god, a study of suicide.
lorca - house of bernardo alba
aescylus - the oresteia
harold bloom - the western canon
christina hoff sommers - who stole feminism?
mark cousins - the story of film
lorna sage - good as her word
e.m. cioran - the trouble with being born
elizabeth bishop - one art: selected letters
john gray - heresies
laura hird - born free
diana athill - after a funeral
flanney o'conner - complete stories

the flannery o'connor stories floor me - they depress me as much as they inspire me - if one day i could write like that i can pass into nirvana; ditto the stories of jean rhys. wonderful to read the tragedians this year - and i was especially taken by aescylus, renowned for being the dullest of the three. al alvarez's study of suicide is the best meditation on the subject i've ever read - really something special; the christina hoff sommers book is all perfectly true.

that concludes my review of the year. happy xmas one and all!

Best Films Of 2006

1. three times (hsiao-hsien hou)
2. cache (michael haneke)
3. volver (almodovar)
4. the child (dardenne bros)
5. canary (akhiko shiota)
6. the devil wears prada (david frankel)
7. linda linda linda (nobuhiro yamashita)
8. final destination 3
9. junebug (phil morrison)
10.. grizzly man (werner herzog)
11. united 93 (paul greengrass)
12. time (kim ki-duk)
13. the squid and the whale (noam braumbach)
14. container (lukas moodysson)
15. brokeback mountain (ang lee)
16. the road to guantanamo (michael winterbottom)
17.the death of mr lazarescu (christi puiu)
18. capote (bennett miller)

i intended to list 20 but got stuck after 18 - overambition is not too often my forte, but there you have it. i'm startled actually that there were 18 movies of any note, as i had figured it to be a disappointing year... and i'm certain i'll have missed a couple - we'll call these the ghost marks of films 19 and 20.

nothing looked as good, or moved me as much as 'three times'. i guess you could say it's a portmanteau film - 3 shorts interwoven and shedding light on one another. the word 'transcendental' is bandied about far too often in cinema, but it applies to this film as much as it applies to ozu or bresson. 'cache', despite not being 'code unknown (to my mind: the best film this decade) seemed to be haneke's breakthrough film - somehow people got it this time and went to the cinema in droves and i doubt they came out dissatisfied. 'volver' was almodovar back on form. after the truly abhorrent 'bad education' i hadn't hoped for much, but i got plenty.

there were the odd diamonds in the pile of horseshit piping out from hollywood too. final destination 3 was as fun, witty and cruel as horror films deserve to be - the crowning cherry in a trilogy with no cracks in it. the devil wears prada  was that rarest of films - high class breezy comfort viewing, harking back to the women's pictures of the 50s...and with a stellar performance by meryl streep. 'united 93' pwned anything else addressing that particular subject; and junebug and the squid & the whale were indie film making at its finest.

stinkies of 2006

these were numerous but i'll limit them to 5. avoid them like the plague, no matter what the critics say.

1. hostel
2.art school confidential
3. the hills have eyes
4. the queen
5. red road.

the critics say 'hostel' is a horror film that understands the conventions perfectly - and whatsmore is a poltical allegory to boot. (post 9/11, post 9/11, post 9/11 - fucking gottit?). actually it's a schlocky piece of trash, which undermines its conventions, barely understands them infact, has no grasp of tension or feeling for characterisation - and the allegory is sledge-hammer shite. 'art school confidentail' had a lot to live up to after ghost world; it failed at every turn - disastrous!  'red road' had its moments (the sex scene in particular was well done) but the tacked on endings were cop outs of the highest order and felt like bows of shit garlanding a mud pie.

television

i watch teevee nowadays in three ways. there is that which i download and watch with the same attention as i might a movie, that which i make a beeline to watch as it's broadcasting, and that which i catch haphazardly. my list reflects this combination.

best teevee of 2006

1. celebrity big brother (ch 4)
2. longford (itv1)
3. project runway - season 3
4. the amazing race - season 10
5. one life - tanorexics (bbc1)
6. flavor of love - season 2 (vh1)
7. little miss jocelyn (bbc3)
8. legends (bbc4)
9. x factor (itv1)
10. survey of religion with sister wendy beckett (ch4)
11. asbo teen to beauty queen (ch5)
12. myra: the prison years (ch5)
13. america's top model - season 7
14. unan1mous (ch 4)
15. janice dickinson modelling agency

ok - i took this list less seriously than others so i probably missed shitloads. i will say that big brother 7 started well, but then slid into a right old mess - let's hope next year will be better. america's big brother all stars was also a bit of a wash out. thank god for the celeb version.

music videos

as usual, most were horrible but 3 stood out. these were -

1. shakira - hips don't lie
2. will young - all time love
3. sugababes - easy.

i still get butterflies when 'hips don't lie' comes on - an amazing, sultry performance by shakira - with choreography that reminds me of all time favourite video ' love is a battlefield'.

ok - i'll do books and other things another day, as i have to get ready now to go out.

 best albums of 2006

1. el perro del mar - el perro del mar
2. liz durrett - the mezzanine
3. thanksgiving - cave days and moments
4. neko case - fox confessor brings the flood
5. kazumi nikaidoh - no album
6. juana molina - son
7. smoosh - free to stay
8. the tiny - starring someone like you
9. beirut - gulag orchestra
10. band of horses - band of horses
11. dat politics - wow twist
12. the blow - paper television
13. the shins - wincing the night away
14. kimya dawson - remember that i love you
15. emile simon - vegetal
16. nina nastasia - on leaving
17. paavoharju - paavoharju
18.cansei de ser sexy - css
19.lo-fi fnk - boylife
20. ms. john soda - notes and the like

el perro del mar created her own sound by filtering the spector wall-of-sound thru desolation; liz durrett made the record cat power ought to have made, thanksgiving put me in mind of early palace bros - and neko case made the best album of her career.

songs (in no order and besides the ones on the albums above)

midlake - roscoe, helios - halving the compass, kahimi karie - you are here for a light , ronnie spector - all i want , imogen heap - hide and seek , imogen heap - headlock , bertine zetlitz - girl like you , yeah yeah yeahs - warrior, burka band - blue burka , lil chris - getting enough, sugababes - easy , paris hilton - stars are blind , shakira - hips don't lie , nelly furtado - maneater , love is all - used goods, lavender diamond - you broke my heart , jamelia - something about you , utada - sanctuary , fergie - glamourous , fergie - fergilicious , dragonette - shockbox , robyn - with every heartbeart , amy winehouse - rehab , rihanna - sos , patrick wolf - accident and emergency , betty curse - god this hurts, christian falk feat robyn - dream on , matson jones - wrecking ball , pony up! - the truth about cats and dogs , shiny toy guns - don't cry out , sally shapiro - i know , anna oxygen - fake pyjamas , joan as policewoman - eternal flame , final fantasy - arctic circle , xiu xiu - hello from eau claire, the whitest boy alive - alive , piana - early in summer , belong - i never lose, never really , magneta lane - bridge to terabtia pretty girls make graves - pyrite pedestal , immune - you landscape , monotekktoni - chemicals , lau nau -kuula ,casiotone for the painfully alone - scattered pearls , charlotte gainsbourg - af607105 , cortney tidwell - mama from the mountain ,bodies of water - i guess, hanne hukkelberg - berlin , jenny lewis with the watson twins - big guns , jenny lewis with the watson twins - melt your heart , margaret berger - seek i'll hide , robinella - break it down , psapp - new rubbers , the konki duet - daylight song , tilly and the wall - bad education , tuung - the pioneers , tokyo police club - cheer it on , young people r and r , oppenheimer - this is not a test , feist - mushaboom , beyonce - ring the alarm

musical disappointments

1. joanna newsom - ys (keep it simple, love - all those words and strings have smothered your spirit)
2. cat power - the greatest (keep telling youself that, shitbag)
3. dresden dolls - yes, virginia (no, virginia)

tomorrow i'll make my way thru film, books and televison with lists galore.

maybe it's just the case that life-lived cannot bear appraisal til it's behind us. we cannot grasp that we're happy until we're not. wasn't it kierkegaard who said 'life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward.'? yes, yes. heartbreaking.

at 10am this morning the door buzzer was honking like a goose from the landing - so i sprang out of bed thinking it might be the last of my xmas parcel deliveries. on the occasions i have missed  first delivery it has taken me about 8 months - after an assault course of jumping through all kinds of hoops -  to get what is owed me back. so i have developed some kind of reflex consciousness, in the vein of pavlov's dogs,which responds thru sleep to the buzzer with the panic of an armageddon. were a tornado to tear thru the street, taking the roof off the house with it , you could almost guarantee i would sleep on; i sleep as though preparing for my coffin. but that vile, trumpeting buzzer alarm cuts through my sleep with a razor. in seconds the blood is pumping through me as though i'm being gang raped - like a car that goes from 0-90 in 2 seconds i am on my feet and bounding down the stairs, checking all the while that my genitals are tucked in.

how annoyed must i be when at the door there is no brisk postman handing over a box, under a grey december sky but a red cheeked creature dressed in what my mam would call a smock, and a sun blaring at me like a floodlight?  in my undies, and with my hair flattened like a dead crow - i stand blinking at this man - and wonder somewhere in my foggy consciousness if he's not a priest.
'hello - i just wondered if you'd ever had a visit from us before.'
i just stare and blink. though i respond to the doorbell physically as tho someone just switched on the christmas lights, it takes my smarts a good while to catch up.  i'm barely thinking 'what the hell's going on here' much less responding to what he's saying. blink.
blink.
'erm, i'm a jehovah's witness. do you have the time to talk to me?' he goes on.
ah, now i get it. a jovo! i remember them - i didn't know they had them in london, though there's plenty swanning round yorkshire.
'well i just woke up actually. i would need time to come round.' i say
'ok,' he says ' perhaps another time.'
and with that i close the door, stomp back upstairs moodily and switch the coffee machine on.

10am on a saturday morning is no time to be talking god. the very most i would expect of myself  was that my eyes weren't glued shut, and if they weren't they'd be vacantly squinting at kids teevee, or studying the notice on a cigarette packet over and over: smoking when pregnant harms your baby, smoking when pregnant harms your baby, smoking.....  all the while my soul is whirring somewhere i can't reach.

wonder why they insist on doing god's work so early in the day. surely it can't be beneficial to their cause. on top of the fact that almost noone wants to be bothered with the subject of god at all nowadays, the reputation of the jovo is that of nuisance. why confound your rep by waking folk up? perhaps it's their plan to snare people when they're still cloudy with sleep. people are so dizzy from their beds that they acquiesce to whatever's thrown at them - and by the time they wake up fully they're rejoicing down the kingdom hall.

anyway i was rattled for a few minutes then grateful. i hadn't seen 10am in many a week, and with the daylight hours dwindling  to their fewest, my retinas needed as much light as they could possibly sup. after a coffee and a few fags i put my coat on and went walking into woolwich. i needed to buy a few xmas presents, and the weird mood of the morning was making me nostalgic. by way into the town centre i pass thru somerfield not to buy things but for the wizard-of-oz effect. however drab the day outside - the harsh lighting of the supermarket renders everything technicolor. it's a jolt on the nerves, then back to black and white.

with my shopping done, i return to my flat. en route i pass the house of a gay. i am always intrigued by his window, which he decks out like a myspace page, with pictures and paraphernalia. there is the obligatory rainbow flag, staring out from the bottom, then above it a portrait of princess di. these are the window's staples and never change. the other things in the window come and go with the seasons. for instance - after the london bombings there was a page from the sun newspaper with the headline: never forget, or something like that. the world cup brought an england flag, the elections a 'vote lib dem' placard; on world aids day he'd fashioned a large scale red ribbon out of some red material he must have had round the place - an old, spent arse-tampon or something.

today the window-used-like-a-myspace-page had christmas lights, a notice that said: gay is not a stick to beat me with, a cd cover given away with a newspaper to commemorate live aid 25, with the godawful, gaudy depiction of a big white hand holding a small black one on it, and a picture of leona from the x factor.

beyond the display i can see him, sitting on the sofa and smoking on a cigarette, next to a christmas tree. i always see him doing the same thing. just sitting and smoking - and staring into the distance. if i ever get to meet him i expect to tell him that he's in the wrong line of business; that he might denounce his career as gay, cigarette smoker  - and consider arranging mannequins in the shop windows of harrods instead. and if he's lucky i might tell him all about myspace. i'd have to check he wasn't on heart medication first tho.

i was upset after that - and pleaded my case, to no real use.  i'm not so in-denial that i'll shrug off the truth when it's offered to me. she did me a favour there though - laid down the gauntlet, and now i want to prove to myself that i'm able to see my ambitions through.

i'm writing here now just to clear my head before i return to my story.

i need to think of my writing as work -  not an extra-curricular activity. if i'm serious then i ought to be able to do this. i should be able to sit down at  my computer, as a secretary might - leaving only  when the clock says: enough. that i write at the computer is half the problem actually. how can i work  with so many temptations in the work room? the internet is a whore. a temptress with her tits out. yes, i've finished that paragraph perhaps i should take a break now: find new music to download, check my torrents, look at lj. trying to work at the computer is like a monk vowing chastity at a stripshow.

i could unplug my modem from 9 until five everyday - but then how would i ever get all the films i have queued on my emule? i must learn instead to exercise restraint.

i bought a few things for xmas yesterday. just bits and bobs, at half price, and a couple of things from the pound shop. after halloween, the poundshop loads its shelves with tinsel and wrapping paper - and slams on the 'frosty the snowman' tape. you have to feel a little sorry for the minimum-wage staff - most of them hindus - having to listen to aled jones and slade on a loop.

among my purchases was some shaving gel called 'ambition'. i needed some - and i've never been one to quibble about brands. 300ml of shaving gel for a pound (that's all it cost yer) seemed like no small bargain - and how could i not purchase  it, given its name?

a big can of ambition, for me thanks. just what i need.

turns out the shaving gel's ambition is to be snow. when i rubbed it onto my face this afternoon it melted into my pores like such. i would have had better luck shaving with the contents of my ashtray. still, ambition's ambition however misplaced.  if the shaving gel aspires to being icy precipitation, who am i to demur?  just wished the labeling would have been clearer.

am tempted infact to go down the poundshop with a marker pen, writing under the original markings on all the cans which say: shaving gel: Ambition ...

(to be snow!!!!!!!!)

i sit in the class counting the seconds on the clock, wondering to myself if these blathering fogeys have been sat in the same place all week long having had no one to move them. i used to think that the smell in the classroom had been generated by all the bullshit spouting out of their toothless mouths but now i wonder if it's not the smell of unemptied colostomy bags.

every week i forget just how tedious it is  - as though the experience were like childbirth and my psyche had a built-in capacity to block out the pain of it.  i am setting it down here in my journal as reminder to myself - YOUR WRITING CLASS STINKS.

the teacher, caroline is starting to rub me up the wrong way as well. it's her manner i find objectionable above all. her voice, so unnaturally thin, sounds like the wind blowing through the crack of a window.  on the occasion that my ears are tuned to dog-radar frequency i am able to catch what she says, and it often belies the meek voice carrying it.. pitter patter, pitter patter goes the voice - like gentle rain falling on a field - no matter what it's conveying. she could be saying ' your writing makes me fucking sick. it's utterly shit and you'll make prime minister of the world before you ever get anything published.' and it would sound like THAT,  like brahms.

'so, let's move on' she'll say, looking up through her fringe, whilst coyly smiling on one side - and i think to myself: she's channeling the ghost of princess diana, fucking bitch.

as a short exercise - and from memory -  i'll paint a portrait of my classroom and its inhabitants....

at the head of the room, on a desk by herself is thin-voiced caroline. (good god, there's a right draft coming through _ oh no, sorry it's just caroline TALKING!) her hair - a large. dyed bush on her head - is combed in the style of jane jetson, and is given to wobble as she speaks , as though it were an entity by itself.: a crow perhaps, mistakenly settled on an old woman's head because it thinks it can hear the pitter patter of rain on grass. where better  to find worms?

next to her - on the left, and a desk apart, is a man in middling age, bald as an egg - and as dumb.  his cranium  seems to me especially rotund, because any traces of remaining hair have been shaved away.  his white skin is pulled so tight over the bone, it shines like latex. the effect  is that he looks to have no skin (or sinew) at all. when i think of him now i see just the bust of a skull - hamlet's prop. he's writing a very tedious novel, set in a manor, about some man who looks out of windows a lot and notices just how polished the piano looks today. it's so slow moving it might have been paced by a snail.

next to the skull sits the irishman, who knows his bourbons. what the man to his left lacks in colour, he makes up for.....let's just say his scarlet face wears his sins all over it. he has white hair, combed over to one side which offsets his belisha beacon complexion, and a line  where his mouth should be, like someone leaned on the spacebar.  _______ oops.  he's writing a story set in australia, which he reads out in a plethora of distracting accents. i can't remember much else about  his work, because i always find myself drawn to look between his legs as he's reading. the khaki corduroys that he wears on a loop gather very tightly round his groin - suggesting the little red knob no doubt nesting underneath. one minute he's reading , the next i'm hearing caroline whisper 'moving on then please.' my thoughts still cloudy with images of  a bell-end without a shaft nestled on a pair of  rashy bollocks.

next to him is the man i find most excruciating and depressing of all of all. let's call him the crimewatch paedophile.  when i previously called  the class 'grey' i was thinking primarily of this guy: his colouring makes me think of the  once-white flannel  i have draped over the washbasin in the bathroom.  his expression is of constant exasperation: all puffed out pink lips and  descending forehead creases. he dresses like an unkempt tory politician - always late with his tie flung over one shoulder. when he speaks it's in stammers; m-m-m-m-m-akes everything sound strained as though he's constantly mid-shit - honestly, he'll take 5 whole minutes to say that he liked what he just heard. if he has a neck i don't remember it;  his square head seems to balance on his boxy body - like a telly on a wardrobe. he's attempting to write his memoirs - stories based on his life as a nervous wreck trying to make it in the journalism business during london's swinging sixties. it's as likely to be published as  the wad of bus tickets at the bottom of my bag.

next to the jibbering jelly sits another - this one a little older, 65 i'd say. he's been attending the class for years and is humoured for this. again he has difficulties speaking - stuttering seems to be some kind of pre-requisite to enrol.  i shouldn't be too mean about him because he genuinely seems to have some kind of learning difficulty. that he dresses in faun trousers and christmas jumpers makes me somehow sad. when i look at him i see an elongated child, gone grey. a stupid, soft-as -shit child with a heart of gold. slightly nauseating, but ultimately harmless.

to his right are a pair of women that enrolled together. the first is a woman in her late thirties, with a schoolboy's haircut. in effect she looks like a progerian child - all the features of a chavvy young lad, but faded, grown old. sometimes when i look at her i think of the rainbow puppet, zippy. she's zippy grown all shy and nervous. when she listens to someone else read she does so with her mouth open and cartoon lines on  her forehead.  oh zippy! isn't everything a puzzle! her writing is just swathes of shit dialogue, unpunctuated by time and space. people speak what the narrator should signpost. she has written a 500 word novel about the foot and mouth crisis that her friends tell her 'might work better on the radio.'  might work even better  on a bonfire.

i like to think of her friend as her mother, but they're the same age. still there's no denying there's some level of maternity being played out between them.  she's like a clucking hen around the scrubby lad-woman, speaking on her behalf and bigging her up. i shan't be surprised if i see her wiping her face with a spitted hankie tomorrow.

next to them is the gay, whose writing is reasonably interesting,  but whose voice  could curdle cream. everything he says so high-pitched and whiny, as tho he were constantly being buggered from behind. next to him is the indian man, who i like. an ex-doctor, who writes good poetry and says half-way sensible things.

next to them is a woman who resembles a burnt barbie. say, the doll is allowed to age - reach sixty infact, then a young girl comes along and tosses it on a bonfire; the remains would look like this woman.. worse than her face is her purple prose. 15 adjectives where none would do. in her stories things 'undulate' and 'amble' . girls are in their sixth year, instead of being plain old five. everyone says how beautiful her style is. i just write SENTIMENTAL PRECIOUS SLOP on my folder and keep schtum.

next to her is a woodlouse. a little grey woman with no eyes. she writes nostalgic old claptrap about what it was like living under a plank of wood with a hundred other lice or some such. i try hard not to listen to be frank and often wonder why ears don't have lids like eyes do.

they would come in handy for when the woman next to her: THE TRASH-HEAP speaks. this big mess of a woman, who i can only say reminds me of my dad's compost slag. it's like all her body parts were flung together on a pile, and somebody  threw their charity shop donations all over them. she's writing a novel about hadyn, yes that one - which makes my head fucking hurt.  ' and then he thought - yes, that would make a great concerto.'

there are a few other people in the class - including someone else who i like - a brazilian  woman, who tells it like it is. but i'm bored now. i'm in there tomorrow and i don't think i'm doing my spirits too  much good by wallowing in the shit.

so i'll say - volver is a very enjoyable film, as is the devil wears prada.

the heat situation in my flat is a problem - and it puts me in mind of persephone, daughter of greek goddess demeter. you'll remember that she spent half her year in the underworld with hades, the rest with her mother on olympus. this is my lot too in my big room with its ornate and rickety window. summers are blissful - the window jammed open like a mouth perennially in shock - so the breeze can conjure itself up somewhere between the sky and the back door. i stay cool whilst aimie bakes in the back room, as unable to be ventilated as a sauna box.

come winter - and i can store ice-cream on the arm of my chair....for weeks if necessary. if it's 2 degrees outside, it'll be minus that in here, central heating or no. i'll wake up some days thinking i'm under a cloud - which i am - of my own breath. and i must be careful when i go to the bathroom not to trip over the iceberg by the telly. all thw while aimie is snug as a bug in the backroom, where the windows are doubleglazed and the heating's worthwhile.

in a sense, both aimie and i play at being persephone - our turns in the underworld occurring whilst the other enjoys olympus. there is probably some kind of justice in this, but i fail to find consolation in it with siberia breathing down my neck.

so imagine my upset this term when the would-be colourful characters come in one hue: grey. so many grey men! sometimes i observe them pitched together in a row from the other side of the classroom and wonder if i've gone colourblind. is the sun casting a monochrome rainbow over the desks?

too many men in any recipe is always a problem, male obsessions generally being rather one dimensional, logical and flat. so where are the women this term - or at the very least the younger men? oh peppered here and there but obscured by GREY clouds. i use the colour literally as well as figuratively because these men are fogeys in every sense. grey of hair and teeth, faces drab as bleached out laundry. and when they speak i'm shocked it's not to complain about arthritis. instead it's usually to nitpick pedantically on the piece they've just heard.

i'm used to one or two  men like this: a stern bald man called max, who looks like he's swallowed a beach ball would always be at hand to mumble something useless and inconsequential after every reading - which would be met by silence.

but the max-like pedants haven't faded, as silence hopes they will, but proliferated all over the classroom. someone reads something out, enthusiastic for a honest appraisal of their efforts - and the grey clouds circle around it like wolves: concerning themselves with tiny, trivial fragments of the story, instead of its full thrust.

this week a woman read a folksy story, set on a fishing boat. there were problems with it surely, but it had some vivid and original imagery marking it along the way - and it was on the whole: pretty satisfying. were the grey clouds listening out for any of this? i believe their collective ears perked up only once, at a detail that completely passed me by. at some point in the plot - the protagonist fishes a man from the ocean who is decked out in a full diving suit. an unimportant detail in the story really and nothing too curious about it you might think. but then one grey mouth opens to say 'but is it feasible that he could lift the diver? those suits are heavy.' oh god. my eyes roll back in my head, i close my eyes and fiddle with my bag. but then i console myself that the tumbleweed is sure to roll on by afterwards. it'll be alright - just a fuddyduddy talking shit again. but as one grey mouth closes another opens - starting a chain of this opening and shutting of wrinkled mouths and before too long this exposition about NOTHING AT ALL has eaten into 15 minutes of classtime. 'suspend your disbelief!' i shout eventually. 'it's fiction - and this doesn't matter much. i think she read it out to us to see if the story works on the whole - and it does.' then it is i who watches the tumbleweed roll by - but at least the grey mouths are zipped tight. i swear these people are autistic the way they focus so minutely on the insignificant.

when i read out myself i prologued my reading by saying i was interested in finding out whether the story worked on the whole - not in the tiny implausibilities along the way. i could tell everyone just thought i was an arsey cunt. they had probably already presumed it - when in the first week i refused to play an introductory name game, which i had been told would help me better to remember everyone.

it was some godawful game whereby the person who was introducing himself would preface his own name with an alliterative verb. so frank becomes: fun loving frank. the next person to introduce herself would have to remember the name before hers, before adding her own to the chain - and so on. by the time the game came around to me, 16 or so people: funloving frank and tenacious theresa and jolly julia etc had already played - but instead of just saying 'Kuntish Kraige' or whatever it may have been i said ' i don't want to play this, thank you. I'm Kraige.'

caroline said: oh but it's just fun. it'll help you remember everyones' names. have a try.
'i don't want to caroline,' i said. 'ill remember them as the weeks go on.'

so i reckon they all think i'm a miserable fucker there. oh well - at least it's half true.

to redress this perhaps - and because i was meeting a friend an hour afterwards - i decided to join the class this week for the ritual coffee in the canteen. as i sat down with my coffee i was dismayed to see that the other women on the course had the good sense to leave well alone. i looked around me: five grey clouds! rather than panic, i sat blinking - and wondering what the hell to say. some irish man began to talk to me about bourbon. did i like it? when i was younger, yes. jack daniels and coke was my tipple for a while once. oh jack daniels isn't really a bourbon? how interesting, i never knew.

i began to think how his red face looked like a cooked goose - hanging forlornly from a chinatown window - and how he was actually cooking himself from the inside with all that REAL BOURBON in his gut. i realised then he had asked me a question, but i hadn't been listening. i couldn't say: sorry i was too distracted by your scarlet face, i wasn't listening. so i said 'yes'. clearly the wrong answer - as he swiftly moved on to talk to someone else.

i began then to direct my conversation towards frank who has been attending the class for years. he's about 65, with white hair and a very pink face that somehow suggests how his cock might look. this melts down his chin like a candle - and if the colouring makes me think of cock then the jowls scream: bollocks. as he'd been there so long he must know something about writing. if not about good writing then at least the process. i tell him how my writing's been going - and how impossible i've been finding it lately. he tries to be kind - but i could tell he was struggling to speak to me without condescension. he babbles some cliches at me and i wondered why i bothered.

he also kept referring to totems of gay culture, as though fishing for me to identify. brokeback mountain? not biting the bait, sorry. joe orton? nein. oscar wilde - erm, no - none of your business - frank!

anyway - as i'd finally finished the longest coffee of my life - i said i had to go - but before i did he told me i might benefit from reading 'catcher in the rye', as if i hadn't long ago. 'it'll help with your writing.' he said.

'oh will it? ta.'

i had a very nice time in poland. when i tell people this they tend to crinkle their nose a little as though i'd just told them i had a very nice time swilling around in a bath of pig shit. so it wasn't the bahamas - but we don't all have tropical souls.

we got to the airport at 4, in plenty of time for a 7pm take off - but the lines through customs snaked for what seemed like a kilometer.  it took an  hour and half to get to the metal detectors, and when we did we had to take off our shoes and throw our cokes and cosmetics away into a vat - in case we intended to use them in a potion that would blow the plane up.

finally air side, we found we could buy drinks and cosmetics to replace the ones sitting in a bucket - this we did, whilst we waited for the screens to flash up with an achtung that read: DUE TO AN INCIDENT ALL AIRCRAFT FROM THIS AIRPORT WILL BE GROUNDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. a little weary - but also excited we called our mams to check see if we were missing 9/11 mark trois. if we were then nothing had been featured on the news.

entirely disheartened we went around each of the duty free shops dousing ourselves in face creams and spraying on all the perfumes. the boards still screamed their stony faced message, but at least now we stunk like whore's handbags.

easyjet were sending people home - bags were returned to them - but  when we asked about the flight to warsaw we were told to stay put. tina decided to go shoplifting, and despite the oath i had made with myself when i was last convicted of theft, i joined in a little. we calculated a haul of 140 pounds worth of booty by the time the message boards began to show promise, which included a guidebook to poland, various items of make up, 8 sandwiches, 2 disposable cameras and designer perfumes.

finally the boards promised us a 12.55 take off - 6 hours after we'd been due. the circumstances had been unforeseen - a small aircraft had crashed on the runway and needed clearing up. such a long wait - and nto even for a grand scale act of terrorism. we were pissed off.

finally on board  when the pilot tells us in polish that the airport in warsaw is currently closed and take off is in fact a further hour away. that hour seemed to take longer than the preceding seven combined. no i don't want a tiny tube of pringles for one pound fifty - nor do i want a tacky model of the plane i'm flying on - just get the pilot to fucking take off you pasty bitch.

we arrived in warsaw at about 5am - and at tina's flat an hour later. we had a luscious breakfast of bratwurst and bread, then went to bed til about noon. in the afternoon i looked around the city a little (fairly grim, traces of  the communist past everywhere one looks) and in the evening we went for dinner at tina's next door neighbours'.

the meal was a platter of stodgy dumplings and a pork cutlet - substantial if bland - and served with 4 pauses for toasts of neat vodka - a drink i'm not used to drinking without mixer - or indeed with a meal. afterwards we had lody (polish icecream - as delicious as italian and in as many flavours) and conversation of sorts. now tina speaks a very rudimentary polish and i speak 2 words: thanks and goodbye.  this means i am more than able to thanksbye anyone tempted to diss me, but beyond that i'm lost. for a couple of hours i sat nodding at zophia and stanislav (an old couple who treat tina as tho she were her grand daughter) and flicking through the polish-english dictionary if i wanted to emphasize anything i might dare to say. by the time we were done stanislav and i had helped one another to understand that santa claus brought children presents at christmas, with the dictionary at hand. a dialogue that took a whole hour - to accomplish something i'm sure we'd both known since we were two.

still they were wonderfully generous of spirit - and what was lost in translation i understood with my heart. now polish people, it goes without saying are very poor. zophia sleeps on a bed in the kitchen - and the flat she inhabits has just two rooms. nevertheless i doubt i would have felt more welcome in an english manor with a hundred rooms - and left that evening feeling i'd experienced something quite special, outside of everyday tourist familiarity.

another afternoon in warsaw - looking askance at the boxlike architecture, then shopping at the mall for booze and frippery. in the evening we took a train to krakow - a three hour ride, and when i got there i couldn't have been more surprised about how different it looked. krakow is the only city in poland that was barely touched by the havoc of world war two. it's buildings are ornate and splendid - colourful where warsaw's buildings are tarmac grey. even by dark it looked wonderful - sorta gothic and spooky, similar in feel to prague.

after struggling to get a hotel (the hostel we had booked would not permit us entrance after a certain hour - fuckers!) we finally found somewhere in the student district (halls of residence essentially - turned into a hotel outside term time), dropped off our rucksacks, then hit the town. after a delicious meal we went out to the bars, drinking cocktails and laughing at a covers band doing souped up funky versions of phil collins songs. at about 3 we wearily went to bed, to awaken next day for an early train to auschwitz.

we missed that early train. drink doped us hard and we slept through two alarms and the sun blazing down at us through the window.  finally, like zombies we arose at about noon - and took the bus to aushwitz, which arrived hours after we'd intended to be there.

this was certainly the highlight of my holiday - and not anything like i'd expected.  i had begun to think of the holocaust as i do 'i heard it through the grapevine' - something so deeply woven into popular imagination that it's impossible to feel anything about.  face to face with its artifacts and physical reality i was moved hard - and thought more deeply about this period of history than i'd ever allowed myself to do before now.

the site is all in tact and each of the buildings has been transformed into its own museum, thematically endowed with the artefacts that would relate to how that building was originally used.  block 11 for instance (labelled 'the torture block'') harbours the standing blocks where errant prisoners were made to stand up for weeks at a time. all the pieces in this building relate to the theme of torture. other museums have displays relating to living conditions, extermination, food, the hospital, starvation, etc.

i didn't go around the site like ian curtis, spewing inside or glorying in the human misery. i hadn't expected myself to react  really - if at all then superficially. i did find it amusing that an old american man asked his wife to take a picture of him with his hand through the barbed wire, as though the day was liberation day; i found myself sometimes marvelling at the cruelty and wit undoubtedly behind some of the nazi thinking. but  i was ultimately moved by the corridors upon corridors of haunted faces staring out from the walls in the museums. men and women looking so much the same - bald and skinny and terrified, one or two defiant - but all of them meeting the same fate.

the gas chambers and crematoria felt like horror film mis en scene. whitewash with stains, i didn't want to spend too long inside them. and after a coffee and cigarette in the hot sunshine - we were ready to leave.  me, carrying around a bundle of emotions i hadn't expected and didn't know what to do with - a drink in krakow was in order to sort me out.

we went to some jazz club til the early hours, talking about the curious day - and the the histories behind each others love lives, only easing out when they turned off the lights to put on a diana krall dvd.

next day was sunday - and a full day's sightseeing in krakow - the castle, the parks - then wearily back to warsaw fro supper and then bed.

one more day in warsaw and i bought 80 packs of cigarettes to see me through to christmas. 90p a pack - i was taking advantage. back in london by midnight - i was knackered and cold and fretful again about the rest of my life.

i say it's bad but it depends which side of the telescope you're looking from.  people need crutches only when they can't walk unguided - and i aint lame.  it will help my confidence to do without. plus the classroom is less likely to be my playground now. i find it difficult to take very much seriously with tina at my side - and perhaps the time is now to face the lessons earnestly.

after the class i'm going to poland. i'd almost forgotten til recently that i'd booked the flight - but i'll be there for the next six days, with tina who has to attend court .  a tenant who had lived with her recently deceased grandmother is contesting the will, which left her flat in warsaw to tina - and there's a lot of red tape to cut through.

anyway - i haven't seen poland before  - i'm somewhat excited. i'll spend tonight and thursday night in warsaw - going to court on the friday morning. then straight after, we'll take the train to krakow and spend friday and saturday night there. from krakow there's a bus to auschwitz that takes  about an hour, so on saturday we'll be having our photos taken next to mountains of hair.

i like the idea of saying to someone 'i'm going on holiday today'.' 'oh yeah - where you off?' 'auschwitz. - like disneyland but graver.'

i may try to keep the journal updated from a net cafe whilst i'm out there - but if not i'll have plenty to report when i'm back no doubt.