LAST NIGHT

Last night I said, ‘it’s the wrong format. They can't show it. I want to go.’
‘Don’t go,’ said the man on our way out. ‘You haven’t seen my film.’
I said goodbye. He said we should stick together.
This morning I told her I wanted to finish it expecting her to say she didn’t think it a good idea. What she said was, ‘you’re doing something you feel uncomfortable about.’
This evening, walking in the opposite direction, I saw the man who’d said, “don’t go.” He was carrying a camera. He was with two other men one of whom held a tripod in his right hand.
‘Shall I say hello?’ I thought and didn’t know if he’d’ve recognised me. When we’d first met it’d been dark. ‘I’ll wait until we meet there again,’ remembering how I’d felt last night.

TEN O’CLOCK

I was trying to get the fob out of my pocket when he pushed his outstretched arm, fob in hand, past me to where you place your fob against to open the front door of the flats.
I pulled the door open but didn’t hold it for him as he followed me in.
‘What did you say?’ he said as I pressed the call lift button.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ I said.
A moment feeling pissed off with this man with a bike before I turned to him and said, ‘you got a problem?’
His phone rang and he turned his back to me and walked away saying something to the person’d called.
In the lift I thought there’d be trouoble and was glad to see he was getting out below me.
‘You look knackered mate,’ he said.
‘I am,’ I said. ‘I’ve been at work all day.’
‘This rains crap,’ he said.
‘It is rain,’ I said. ‘And I’m wet, and I just want to be at home.’
‘Yeh, me too mate,’ as the door opened to his floor.

WILF WORDS

I read this in METRO, the paper picked up for free on public transport.

Web users’eyes
are wandering...
BRITONS spend an average two
working days a month aimlessly
surfing the Internet, a study has
found. More than two-thirds of web
users admitted regularly being
distracted, or ‘wilfing’ - short for
‘What was I looking for?’ Nearly a
quarter of those questioned said they
spent 30 per cent or more of their
online time wilfing - equal to one
working day a fortnight.
Jason Lloyd, a spokesman for
researchers at price comparison
website moneysupermarket.com
said: ‘Although people log on with a
purpose, they are now being offered
so much choice and online
distraction that many forget what
they are there for.’

Some of my friends and I have used the term ‘wilfnapped’ to describe a conversation with a man we know.

UNDERCOVER

He was leaned over supported by his arms his hands either side of the copy of the Sun I’d put face up on the table.
He was looking at the front cover.
‘What do you make of that?’ I said, meaning the story was headlined.
He stopped reading - signalled by a slight movement of his head to the right where I stood watching - thought for a moment then said, ‘it’s not exactly well written, is it?’

THE WALL

BITING THROUGH

‘You with that lot?’ said a man’s voice to the right of me as I sat near the top of Ninetree Hill.
‘No,’ I said, ‘watching...and filming,’ the camera on a tripod in front of me.
‘They were here yesterday during the night as well.’
‘I saw two of them do the skull and there were four this afternoon.’
‘Who’s paying for all the paint I’d like to know?’
‘I was wondering about that,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot of it.’
‘And they carried it up there and everything else.’
‘Intrepid don’t you think?’
‘If they worked that hard for someone else they’d make a lot of money,’ he said and walked off.
A short time later a man, pushing a bike up the hill, said, when he got to me, ‘amazing isn’t it? A crocodile and a skull.’
‘A crocodile?’ I said. ‘Oh yes, I can see it now. I didn’t know what it was.’
‘Yeh, it’s on its side...you can see the teeth...and the eye,’ all the while pointing. ‘The connection between them,’ he said, ‘is the teeth, sharp teeth, sharp bite.’
‘Getting your teeth into it,’ I said.
‘Biting through.’

SUNSHINE BOY

FRIDAY 13TH

GIVING THE WORD OF GOD

ISN’T IT ABOUT TIME?

There were people sitting on each of the benches in King Square when I walked round the outside of the park on my way back home from saying goodbye at the station:
- two women and a pram;
- three men drinking;
- a man on his own facing Jamaica Street;
- woman with a dog.

‘You should do something about those,’ shouted one of the drinking men. ‘My friend’s getting an erection.’
‘That’s his problem not mine,’ said the woman pulling her cardigan across her chest. She crouched down by the pushchair and reached underneath at something on the tray.
‘It didn’t used to be,’ said the man.
He laughed loudly and waved the can of Special Brew he had in his hand towards her. His friend, the one sat on his left, took a swig of white cider from a green plastic bottle.
‘Yeh, well things change,’ she said. ‘I wanted to do something different.’
She stopped what she was doing, stood up and looked over at the three drinkers the third of whom sat on the grass scratching his leg.
‘Isn’t it about time you lot did something different?’ she said.

TWO GULLS TAKE OFF
(I saw these two on Little George Street.)

ON THE LEFT

On the way back home from spending a night in Greenbank we crossed the Easton Way turned off Stapleton Road, walked along Goodhind Street, some of Pennywell Road, Little George Street before stopping at the bridge on Wade Street to watch a pair of Mallards in the water.
‘This is where we saw the mink,’ I said pointing just behind the ducks.
‘That was a while ago,’ she said.
We stood looking down leaning on the wall.
‘Excuse me lads,’ a man’s voice said and we turned to face him. ‘Oh there’s a lady, sorry.’
He had grey shoulder length hair, a grey beard, sunglasses, wore jeans, a light coloured jacket, and carried a rucksack over one shoulder.
‘Is there a shop open down there round the corner...where I can buy alcohol?’
‘Er, no,’ I said. ‘Top of this road and to the left.’
‘Oh right, okay.’
‘Yeh.’
‘Just up at the end and turn to the right?’
‘No left, I think so, yeh.’
‘You think so?’
‘Yeh. It’s not that way because that’s the erm...stationery...thing, Office World.’
‘Staples,’ he said.
Yeh, Staples, that’s it.’
‘So up here and turn left?’
Yes, end of the road turn left, yeh. If he’s open you can buy it there.’
‘Okay.’
He walked off the way of the directions and a group of men and women standing outside the entrance of the hostel on the left.

END OF THE DAY

TIME DIFFERENCE

‘Thought you’d moved,’ he said when I walked in to the laundry ready to take my washing form the washer and put it in the dryer.
‘Why’d you think that?’
‘She said she hadn’t seen you about for a while so I checked with the Coucil if you’d moved.’
‘And they told you?’
‘Yes.’
I thought a moment. ‘One thing I noticed is that since the new lift’s been done I’ve met less people in it than the old one and I reckon it’s because it’s faster.’
‘Faster?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I timed it.’
‘You timed it?’
‘Yes. It takes twelve seconds less to get from the bottom to my floor in the new lift than it did in the old one.’
He looked at me.
‘Forty-five maybe forty-seven in the old and thirty-five in the new. That’s about a quarter difference in time. And I don’t meet so many people because of that difference. I used to come in there’d be a crowd waiting but that doesn’t happen now...or not very often...or as often as it did.’


THIRTY-SEVEN WINDOWS

‘Did you hear about the man smashed the windows?’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s in court next week.’
‘I’d just got back from seeing Rita up the road and he’d just finished and they had him in the back of the car.’
‘Yeh, they got him just outside my flat.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘You know what triggered it off?’
‘You see the car parked where it shouldn’t be on the yellow lines?’
‘Yeh, there were four or five men stood around it when we got back. All the windows’d been broken.’
‘Well he didn’t like the way it was parked.’
‘Didn’t like the way it was parked?’
‘It shouldn’t’ve been parked there.’
‘Even so...’
‘So anyway he smashed thirty-seven windows and it cost the Council eight thousand pounds to replace all of them.’
‘Took their time over the caretaker’s office.’
‘That’s bullet proof glass, that is.’
‘I thought they were bullet holes when I first saw them.’


PINK TOWELS

‘You want to watch that pink towel or Jay’ll steal it.’
‘You mean the small guy comes in here after us?’ I said.
‘Yes. He nicked one of my towels was pink. That’s how I know.’
‘You sure?’
‘I put it the wash, went away, came back and it was in the dryer with his stuff.’
‘You say anything?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like it anyway. It was one of a set of five was bought for me. Well, the girlfriend bought them for me except they were really for her. It was her way of trying to move in.’
‘Pink towels?’

FROM WITHIN KUVUKA CAFE
(Stokes Croft)

THE PAST AND FUTURE

She said something through the access points of the gate was locked between us in Ashley Road and the land behind Westmoreland House and the Carriage Works.
‘You belong to the cabin?’ said the man wearing a green fluorescent jacket and white hardhat she’d spoken to.
‘No,’ I said. ‘What are you doing in there?’
‘We’re doing an archaeological investigation of the site before any work begins.’
‘Oh yeh?’
A thin string of saliva, stretched between the upper lower lips in the centre of his mouth, opening and closing. I couldn’t stop looking at it, repelled by it, wondering if it would break, or what he might say if I mentioned it.
‘During the civil war the Royalists tried getting in to Bristol through here and we’ve found some trenches dug back there.’
‘Trenches?’
‘Defensive trenches. They’d dig a trench and make a ridge with the earth they’d dug out. They were backfilled after the war. Finding them’s going to hold up work for a while.’
‘Any chance of having a look?’
‘Not at the moment,’ he said. ‘It’d be a health and safety issue, the regs, you know?’
‘Oh, right.’
‘I broke them myself. I’ve just been up the Escher stairs they call them, in the tower...’
‘...I know the ones you mean I can see them from where I live...’
‘...didn’t go all the way up though, they get a bit narrow the higher ones.’
‘You know what’s going to happen here?’
‘They’re inside of the building’s going but the front’s going to stay. I think Kuumba’s going to have a theatre here or something and there’s going to be a Council housing project.’
I pointed to a book lying front cover face up on the ground near where he stood and asked him what it was.

TWO WOMEN ON A BENCH
(King Square)

LIFT FART

People have pissed, dropped rubbish and spilt drinks of various kinds, I’ve found dogshit in there too but the worst that can happen using the lift happened to me yesterday.
Waiting: laughter and talking from the floor below as male and female riders got out.
The lift came up and I got in. Then I smelled it and knew the laughter I’d heard was because at least one of the departed had farted.
I tell you it was an unpleasant trip down but one I had to make there and then seeing as I had the bike and was running late and couldn’t wait for the smell to dissipate.
Rubbish, piss, shit, though none of them my choice of lift companion, can be stood around or over or covered. But a fart? A fart fills the volume of lift space, surrounds whoever's in there and it is by them that the fart is breathed in. And I think you all know where farts come from.
Bastards...disgusting...an outrage, farting in the lift...couldn't they have waited like I do... and what if someone’s waiting to get in when I get out? They’ll think it was me.
I practiced saying: ‘it wasn’t me,’ but I needn’t have bothered.

SYNCHRONISED HEAD TURNING

SHE LIVES AROUND HERE

She was walking near the water when I saw her as I gave a man directions to Trowbridge.
‘You know the best way to Trowbridge?’ I asked two women came jogging towards us.
They looked at each other then one of them pointed up the road, ‘just keep on going.’
‘Keep straight on,’ I said to the man. ‘Over the roundabouts under the railway bridge and through all the traffic lights until you come to a set where you can only turn left or right. Turn right. That’s the road you want.’
And that’s when I saw her.
Walking along by the water.
‘So straight on til the lights I can only go left or right at and I got to go right.’
‘Yeh.’
‘Thanks,’ he said got back into the car and drove off.
What was she doing there?
Oh yes, she lives around here.

WHOA, BEE GONE

APRIL FOOL

My daughter’s coming down tomorrow for the week so I was clearing and cleaning her room when the phone rang half ten or so.
‘Hello,’ I said when I picked up.
‘Hello,’ said a man’s distorted voice.
‘Oh, hello,’ realising it was my dad on the line. ‘When you get back?’
‘Last week,’ he said. ‘I’m just recovering from the jet lag.’
‘Took you that long?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Anyway we had a good time.’
‘Oh yeh?’
He told me their’s was the first cruise liner docked at Maracaibo for sixteen years. The locals treated them like royalty providing an escort wherever they went and held up traffic so they could cross roads unimpeded.
‘I’ve not seen poverty like there was in Caracas except in India,’ he said.
He mentioned the cricket and I could hear his wife in the background talking on the other phone with her son who follows the game. I mentioned the football and he said, ‘I’ve got to go.’