O! Hail the murky corners of the ethernet! Have a go, do, you have-a-go hero! Cocardes of blue and rouge on ceilings and walls. Bunting rises and falls. Tongue-tied and mouse-like, entertaining nobility from when... but from when...? Unto civility. Un-rude, moving in the right direction. Taken to task and found, wanting.
Another slurp and what does the label say? Return yet not to reality. Try to rise, let the pen club perish on the vine. Rank, metre, sensibility. Thirty more. Stagger, stutter, play out the back office, heated memories, vaguely vast – shudder. Looping the close. Turning helplessness into bait. Untrammelled exotica, as yet catalogued by only the few. The few, who, to do morose facial expressions, ignore the rulebook. They cast aside the entertaining puzzles and took the straight road. Again and again and again. Grovelling to authority, farcical fiascos. Set it all upon a flag, hoist it up above the hotel, and ask at the bar for a guide.
Let it flow. Another sip, feel it. Type those words, familiar and unfamiliar, as they swim in the dark canal, bobbing along. Bubbles of experience. Won't say no. The road has changed, alongside it new bauble-shops. Threshing separates the genuine offers, observe. Count 'em! One by one, some fall, some stand. Purity of conscious flow? Nuggets, bobbing along? Facsimiles of facsimiles – our common history pledges to one and all the harness of our fate, collective and individual, through to times' end.
Hendon in the 1930s. Billboards, burps, pavements, garden gates and lilac. Now, then, what's this – a henhouse? Pastimes from older times. The men who wrote down train numbers in little books. Crystallise, coalesce – do! From the inchoate to the precise, we are waiting, a sign, a name, a clue... Hazel? Aerodrome...? Pixelated senses. Waste no time here. Jump.
Go. To the wireless set. Tuned at random. Hilversum. Droitwich. Midnight in Moscow. Sensible chords, the human condition, tapping in. What are you thinking? What will you be thinking, thirty years hence? I write this before you read it. A Walk in the Black Forest? Again, the familiar resurfaces. References caught by the few, inevitably lost to the future. To be found by someone who tries to make some sense of them but is roundly mocked by the experts in the field. Milk floats, that sort of thing. Hold onto the wire. James Clerk Maxwell and his equations. Enjoying the fruits of his genius, aren't we? Solid halls of plenty. The curtain must fall, though. Rage. Our happy consumption approaches its dénouement, its apotheosis. Rage is natural, pure, unfocused. From its abatement harmony rises. A flash, a moth, a flying thing. Hendon in the thirties again! Steam powered though; hammering through suburban halts with the crack express.
Thirty pieces of silver. Certainly a lot at the time. Buy some land, plant some trees. And see what grows, see how it grows, see what fate has in store for those living things. The evening is both exciting and weary at the same time, the stew is on the fire, rich, chewy chunks of beef, potato and carrot – poor Tom, another bit of cheese? Ideas bounce, ricochet, coalesce, ideas old and new, a whole night's sleep before the next cup of coffee. I love the sound of breaking glass. I do! Pop fineness, pop finesse. We keep circling the same point. Air races. Flavours, crunchy snacks. Exit poll? An hour away. Junction 25.
Keep going, refuse the instinct to quit. It is shallow, ordinary, common. It is what draws the football supporter to the game; the spectacle of determination. O, the pain of memory. Things you think but must never say. At the Last Judgment, it will be memory that brings you down. Embarrassment. Atone now, but feel that freedom from guilt will never quite unburden your soul. Again, that's next time. Better, finer-tuned instinct. Impulse under mandate. Begotten, not made. Buzz-buzz notification enters my stream of consciousness. Experimental. XP, XB, XA. Over the field. Excitement and hopes. I am hungry – I want to eat. A large bag of chippy chips, salt and vinegar and a pickled onion. A night out, mate! What could be better? Pale ale followed by chips. Whatever flows, whatever is recorded, imagined, experienced. My fingers are flying over the keyboard. The sense of north-west London, the North Circular, upstairs on the bus, the smell of stale tobacco smoke, the conductor's ticket machine issuing a 6d ticket, early autumn settling in, tall clouds against a blue sky...
I am hungry. I do want to eat.
Stop.
This time three years ago:
The sights of summer
This time four years ago
Warka Miasto
Farewell to Papuś
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics reviewed
This time nine years ago:
Now it belongs to the ages – on Great Works of Art
This time ten years ago:
More Brictorian Liverpool
This time 11 years ago:
Łódź – city of tenements
This time 12 years ago:
Liverpool reborn
This time 13 years ago:
What goes round comes around: retro is cool - again.
This time 14 years ago:
Warsaw's southern bypass by this time next year?
This time 15 years ago:
Stand Easy! - a short story
This time 18 years ago:
God Save The Queen – I mean it, Ma'am
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