HOW THE FUCK DID I GET HERE?

Was talking to S O’Bastard last night as we stood outside the bar we’d been playing. He was smoking, telling me about the new life was his in a few days.
‘I’ve got skills,’ he said. ‘Talents people want. That’s why they like me.’
;Is that right?’ I said.
‘Yeh, I get around,’ he said, ‘I travelled across Europe by singing songs and playing guitar.’
A young man walked over to us. He had a row of quarter inch red sores across his forehead, on his chin, and some more in a line down his neck. His hair was greased back at the sides like Elvis if he’d been a young street junky in Bristol.
The young man shook SO'B’s outstretched hand. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘You’ll do what you think is best for you,’ said SO’B. ‘It’ll be your decision, whatever it is.’
‘I liked the way you spoke to him,’ I said after the young man had gone. ‘You were very gentle.’
He said, ‘I know what it’s like to find yourself somewhere and wonder, “how the fuck did I get here?”’

MAN BUS TAXI

CLOSING A BOOK

I didn’t sleep last night.
I was stoned on morphine and codeine.
Opiates are my favourite drug.
I didn’t sleep last night. Lay in bed drifting in and out. The radio off. I wanted quiet to think.
We’d left together, went our separate ways then turned towards each other, briefly, like a final thought before closing a book.

LAMINATE FLOORING

Laminate flooring is produced on High Density Fibreboard (HDF) manufactured from natural materials. As such all laminate floors will absorb and expel moisture according to the ambient conditions of the room they are installed in. This causes the boards to expand and contract very slightly. In order to do this there must be room for the boards to expand into - this is why you need to leave an expansion gap of 12mm around all edges, across room thresholds, around door frames and architrave, around radiator pipes, and in Bathrooms (if your floor is suitable) around toilets and sink pedestals.

If possible, it is usually easier to join two or three and then push them into the corner particularly if the wall is uneven helps to facilitate this. You 50cm between

I(f you are starting a row at the pipes, rather than cut a board you can lay the floor so that the pipe falls on the joint of two boards. Connect the two boards together and drill on the joint using a drill bit 25mm larger in diameter than the pipe, to allow for expansion. Disconnect and install the boards

WHITE VAN

RIKAXXE

He texted me: You coming to rikaxxe?
On my way
‘Was he the one?’ he said as we left the shop.
‘No, he wasn’t there,’ I said. ‘Probably hiding behind one of those big speaker cabs.’
When he’d phoned earlier and said he was after buying a bottleneck so he could play some slide I suggested Rikaxxe saying, ‘I might get a blog out of it.’
‘Not much for the blog,’ he said.
A few months ago I was in there and asked the boss how much for the LoopStation and he said, ‘One seventy-five, but I don’t know how long it’ll be that much what with the exchange rate the it is it could go up in the next half hour.’
‘Really, as soon as that? I said. ‘I can’t buy it today but I’ll come in Monday.’
‘I can’t guarantee the price,’ he said.
‘I’ll have to take that chance.’
When I went in Monday the boss wasn’t there so I asked one of his assistants, ‘Is it still one seventy-five?’
‘I don’t know I’ll have to phone him,’ which he did. ‘No,’ he said, ‘now it’s two twenty-five.’
I raised my eyebrows and he shrugged his shoulders.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave it. Thanks anyway.’
I left the shop wondering why it was so difficult to be sold stuff in there, why there was always something, this not being the first time I’ve been involved in one of his episodes...
...and I bet his name’s not even Rik.

QUAKERS GULL

FROM UP THERE

‘You live up high,’ he said from the corner as I walked into the lift. ‘That’s a long way up.’
‘It is when the lift isn’t working,’ I said. ‘Either of them.’
‘Oh yes, you got there too, haven’t you?’
‘Even worse if I’ve got the bike.’
‘Hmm,’ he said.
The lift stopped at the fourth.
‘A good view though,’ I said as he squeezed past me on his way out. ‘From up there.’

I DON’T REMEMBER HER NAME

Walking out of the flats she came towards me in the rain. She carried in each hand a bag full of shopping seemed to pull her down. No umbrella, no hat.
‘Not much of a day,’ I was going to say as we passed but she kept her head down and made no attempt to catch my eye.
Near me as I drank a double expresso a man, feeding a baby from a bottle, sat opposite a woman who said, ‘Going back to work’s going to be the real test,’ to a man’d stopped and said, ‘Hello.’
He stood at the bottom of the stairs he’d just come down and I wished he’d go away, say, ‘Goodbye.’ Go. I was feeling uncomfortable too close to beyond my tolerance.
‘When are you going back?’ he said to her.
‘December.’
‘Reception?’
I couldn’t listen anymore and distracted myself but when he did make to leave the woman said, ‘Say “hello” to your wife...I’m sorry, I don’t remember her name.’

HARRY WAS HANDING THEM OUT AGAIN

I visited Grandad in hospital and he told me a story he’s told on several occasions and each time he tells it like he’s never told it before.
‘I’ve never seen it myself,’ he said. ‘But sometimes I’d get into the ground and I’d hear someone near me say, “Harry was handing them out again.”’
‘Oh yeh?’ I said, it being my line.
‘Giving out pound notes from his Rolls.’
‘That must’ve been a while ago.’
‘He was a generous man, Harry was.’
‘He sounds it.’
‘A millionnaire.’

EAT CAKE

We met in Kuvuka.
‘You get the comfy seats,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the coffee.’
‘I think someone’s already sitting there,’ said the woman behind the counter pointing at the couple smoking outside.
‘Doesn’t look like they’re sitting there now,’ I said.
I turned, watched her sit down in the far corner of the sofa, put her bags next to her.
‘You want to share one of those roast veg paninis?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ turning back.
‘We’ve sold out, except for the bacon one there.’
‘I don’t want that,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to eat cake.’

TOP MAN

BROADMEAD PIGEON
an early Sunday morning trip to Broadmead. The sun was out, the sky was blue, there was a pigeon but where were you?

GRANDAD’S BITE

Grandad’s in hospital again.
He fell off his chair twice since he started using a cushion to sit higher so when he leaned forward falling asleep he tipped out onto the hard wood floor.
I wrapped a small piece of chocolate cake I’d baked earlier and took it, with today’s Evening Post, to Grandad who was already in bed.
I walked over and said, ‘I brought these for you.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘I won’t stay,’ and got up to go.
‘Ok.’
He began unwrapping the cake and by the time I turned round to see him once more before walking out the door he’d taken a bite.

KIDS, AY?

‘Ride faster, you wanker,’ the young man shouted through the open window of the front passenger seat as the small metallic blue car passed me at the top of Park Row going down.
At the red light at the bottom of St. Michaels Hill the car stopped and I could see there were at least four people inside.
‘Stuck in traffic, are we?’ I said as I rode past on the inside.
The young man shouted a tirade and when I looked back he was leaning out the window hanging on to the roof of the car and gesticulating too.
I freewheeled through the lights and arriving at the BRI locked my bike outside the main entrance.
The young man shouted some more as the car passed near to where I stood. I saw him doing his thing through the crossing at the bottom of the hill.
I yawned.
Kids, ay?

MY CREW

He passed in front of me as I sat at a table outside Costa’s where I’d just bought a strong black coffee. He carried what looked like a large Costa’s cup.
I thought, ‘I wonder why he’s walking off with that?’
Ten metres or so into the spur he broke into a run and disappeared from view round the corner to the small car park where the Broadmead street cleaners keep their street cleaning equipment.
Why is he running? Then I remembered seeing a Costa’s bowl for tips on the counter and realised it was the tip bowl he’d run off with.
‘See the tips have gone?’ I said when I took my cup back.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Not that we get many.’
Later I read the news had appeared on the pavement on the bottom right hand corner of King Square, it said: Jew Boy in my crew.

THE END OF THE WORLD

I walked into my front room overlooks the east side of town. It was very tidy. Especially the table in the corner by the window.
But something was missing.
The computer.
‘They’ve taken everything. The printer and the external hard drives, both of them,’ I said. ‘And they didn’t leave a mess.’
He wrote in his notebook. A spiral reporter’s notebook. Biro. Black ink.
He wore a light coloured linen suit. And a fedora with para boots he’d bought from an army navy stores was on the quayside.
I looked at the table expecting to feel a great sense of loss but instead knew, that even if all those things had gone it wasn’t the end of the world.

WALL PAINTING
Two council workers painting a wall. I took this at 12:10 today, Monday 6th August, 2007 and uploaded it within the hour.

DENIAL

A noise coming from somewhere in the building. I can’t tell if it’s above, below, how far.
‘Get in the fucking bath,’ a woman shouts.
‘No, get off,’ a girl crying.
Quiet. No voices or pipes.
Someone walking around, where? A drill sounds as if it’s in the next room can be floors away. No good for accusation
- ‘Shut the light,’ that woman again. -
but useful for denial.

CHAOS DIDN’T DIE

‘Can I have the paper?’ I said to the woman working the checkout.
‘Oh, sorry,’ she said and fumbled it.
I packed the paper then the rest of the shopping.
‘Thank you,’ she said handing me the receipt. ‘Take care now.’
I’d heard her say, “take care now,” to the man in front of me and thought I wouldn’t feel comfortable if she said it to me so when she did, except for turning my back to her, I said nothing.
On one of the raised grassy areas in James Barton three paramedics knelt down beside the body of a man wore a fluorescent tabbard over his jacket and had a shaved head. I couldn’t tell he was dead or alive.
I read the news written on the wall at the top of King Square Avenue: “Chaos didn’t die.”

SEA SAND STONE
we went to the Gower a couple of days, you probably recognised it

BELIEF

‘Oh hello,’ the young girl said to the man got in the lift just as the door was closing thus occasioning another “open/close” sequence.
‘Hello,’ he said.
He might have looked at her. His head moved in that direction but sunglasses hid his eyes.
‘You were in that play weren’t you?’ she said, ‘at Easton Baptist church.’
A moment’s pause and he said, ‘yes.’
‘Do you know J? She’s my sister.’
‘Was she in the play?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s why I thought you might know her.’
‘Yes,’ he said after what seemed like a very short amount of time. ‘I believe I do.’