TIME'S UP

"To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven."

TNUC

Armed gang rob cash delivery van
A cash delivery van has been held up by armed robbers in Bristol City Centre.
The gang ambushed the delivery vehicle outside a branch of the Nationwide Building Society in Baldwin Street on Monday evening.
The robbers made off in a blue Rover car. An Avon and Somerset Police spokesman said a vehicle was recovered in Tower Street at about 1950 GMT.
He added it was yet to be ascertained how much had been taken in the raid. Baldwin Street remains closed.
No one was thought to have been hurt in the robbery and crimes scenes investigators remain at the scene.
The spokesman said: "Police are in the process of speaking to a number of people who witnessed the incident.
"Baldwin Street is expected to be closed for a number of hours while crime scene investigators examine the area."

Baldwin Street was closed, two police cars blocking the road, when I passed on my way to the Watershed to meet a couple of friends and to see 'No Country For Old Men.'
I got to the bar where we'd agreed to meet, two men I hadn't known would be there were also sat at the table. They looked at me said nothing, as I did, but they were the intruding into my expectations.
'I'm going in now,' I said to my friend.
'Won't you look a bit silly going in this early?' he said.
'I can manage looking silly,' I said, went to Cinema 1 and read the programme for February.
When my friend sat down next to me he said, 'You don't mind them being here do you?'
'The way they looked at me I thought I had "CUNT" written on my forehead.'
He leaned forward and said, 'You have.'
'Oh,' I said. 'I thought it said, "TNUC" but then that was in the mirror.'

COUNCIL VANDALISM

VISITING GRANDAD

We went to see Grandad. He was pleased to see us, when we woke him up.
‘You still smoking?’ I said.
‘Yes, yes. I’ve got some here. You want one?’
‘No, but these two want to go for a smoke in the smoking room so you got to come with us.’
‘Okay,’ he said and pulled himself up on to the zimmer was in front of where he’d sat.
He looks well.
‘You look well,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes. You think so?’
‘What’s the food like here, is it alright?’ I said.
‘Yes, it’s very good.’
He told me the story he tells me every time I visit about Harry Dolman handing out pound notes through the window of his Rolls to City fans on match day. ‘I’ve never seen it,’ he says. ‘But I heard them say, “Harry was handing them out again today.”’
‘I’m just going to pop out to the shop,’ I said.
I needed some fresh air, a break from the smoking room is small and with the three of them puffing away as much as they can in the time available.
I sat on the bench in the car park, ate the bombay mix and read the paper I’d bought from the newsagent opposite.
By the time we left we’d been there an hour.

OFFLOAD

AS I SIT IN MY ROOM

As I sit in my room, window open, I can hear the sound of building work, drilling, hammering, buses going up and down Stokes Croft, cars racing round Dove Street or slowly searching for a free parking space, a woman shouting, ‘Fuck off, you fucking prick.’

CONVERSIONS

‘The transvestite I went out with,’ she said, ‘he was on the Atkins diet, protein heavy.’
‘No carbohydrate?’
‘Not much but when he got aroused he smelled like cat shit.’
‘Hmm, lovely.’
‘It was something to do with his liver,’ she said.
‘You know what?’
‘Not really, but I know the liver converts fats to energy and if you’re not eating much carbohydrate and lots of protein it can affect how it works.’
‘Smelling like cat shit though...’
‘Yeh, it was the final straw,’ she said. ‘That, and because he fetishised the make-up, you know, the lipstick and everything, had them all laid out, and changed his clothes all the time, which was really tedious, meant we took hours getting out when ever we managed it at all, anyway, it was that and the smell, I had to end it.’

WHY BOTHER?

This blog is available only in the January 2008 edition of the Stokes Croftian which I advise anyone I know not to buy.

STAR FM 107.2

We were in Broadmead, the eastern spur, a man came over in his hand a microphone, on which was a label said Star FM 107.2.
‘You mind answering a few questions for the radio?’ he asked me.
‘If it’s okay with the Queen?’ I said looking her way and she nodded approval.
‘What you think of the proposed congestion charge the council is thinking of imposing on traffic coming into town?’ he said.
‘I’m not a car owner,’ I said. ‘But I live in town and I’m in favour of anything keeps the level of traffic down.’
‘What about public transport alternatives?’
‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘But it’ll need more than First exploiting the people. I just got a bus from the other side of Old Market into town and it cost me one-seventy.’
‘What about trams or an underground or something?’
‘Yeh, both. But not on the cyclepath. I heard they wanted to put a rapid transport system down there but it gets used all the time by cyclists and pedestrians and it’s a wildlife route through the city, so not there. A tram down Gloucester Road would work they blew that a few years arguing with South Glos about where the terminus should be. I mean South Glos, what are they doing making decisions affecting Bristol, I’d like to know?’

FACT

I have it on good authority.
We’re all going to die.
And there’s nothing any of us can do about it.
There’ll always be those prefer to remain in denial.
But it doesn’t change the facts.
It’s going to happen.
Best thing?
Deal with it.

EXHAUSTING

Sitting in Zazu’s, a new cafe open on Stokes Croft although it’s address, Jamaica Street, was written on the label of a parcel on the counter in front of which I waited to be served behind two women with five children each wanting a complex variation of a hot chocolate drink.
I managed not to let my irritation flourish, which for me was an achievement. Earlier in the day I’d told someone I reckoned angry was my default position, I live with it, the emotion part of my everyday experience, it lives with me, always ready to spring into action at the slightest provocation. I rant myself to sleep and wake with a scowl. It’s exhausting.

SHIRTS

HOME

HIT

Daughter and I were in the lift going down, when, after a few floors, a woman got in. The woman who a few months ago got in when the lift was crowded and coughed all over us there until we got to her floor and she got out.
Today her face looked as if she’d been thumped, several times a few days ago: bruising and scabs around both eyes mostly the right.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘You got a cold?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘I won’t get too close,’ pressing the button to the ground and as she did so turned her head towards where we stood at the back and said, ‘I know it looks bad. I fell over, it doesn’t mean I got hit in the face.’
‘Ok,’ I said.
‘Yes. I fell over...on the floor...I know it looks bad but no one hit me, no, I fell over, it’s not being hit’s done this, fell over onto my face...’
‘Ok.’
‘Yes, no one hit me.’
‘Ok.’
The lift stopped at ground floor and the doors opened. The woman was first to reach outside and we said goodbye.
‘Her face looked pretty beaten up,’ said Daughter. ‘Both sides, you notice?’
‘I did. And the amount she said it wasn’t someone hit her was obvious it was. Not that it’s acceptable mind, but I can imagine she’d irritate me enough to want to hit her.’

DOWN IN THE SUBWAY

There’s a busker been playing bongos and singing songs in the Debenhams end subway of the Pit a few days I’ve walked through recently.
Today on my way back home from town he was there singing:

‘...every day it’s the same old story
because Gordon Brown’s just another Tory...’

PUT INTO WORDS

I’m in the second day of a heavy cold, running a temperature after two nights of aching and difficulty breathing keeping me awake.
This time last year I was bedridden, so weak I could hardly lift an arm. At night I sweated the bed wet and in the morning she came over with a few days supply of ginger and carrot soup, took my bedding to the laundry and brought it back a couple of hours later clean and dry.
I was off work for more than five days so walked from mine up Newfoundland Road alongside the motorway to the doctor’s for a sicknote. I was seen immediately, my name called as soon as I arrived at the surgery, but the walk exhausted me.
The end of the festive season brings a return to the routine where I feel more secure. And I’m wondering if being ill at this time of year has any significance, beyond the annual physical symptoms, if it expresses something I haven’t yet managed to put into words.

NARROW BOAT

We’d seen each other on Glastonbury High Street. I saw her with another woman and a crowd of children about to go into the cafe next door to the bookshop I’d just come out of.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello.’
‘I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘I know. Must be eight years.’
She was one of the Essex Crew I did a few jobs with back then. Once she and I went out for a meal and ended up in what was the Brewhouse on Stokes Croft and discussed the relative virtues of having a hairy chest.
‘They yours,’ I said of the children, ‘or you working?’
‘Two of them are mine,’ she said as she stood there holding the hand of a young girl was staring up at me. ‘This one and one gone in there with the others.’
‘Well done,’ I said remembering she’d said she wanted children.
‘I’ve been busy since we met last.’
‘Oh yeh?’
‘Married divorced and two kids.’
‘That is busy,’ I said. ‘You still on the boat?’
‘I had to leave,’ she said. ‘I was eight months pregnant with that one in there and I couldn’t carry this one and turn around at the same time I was so big, out here I was...’ she showed me with her spare hand.
‘...it was a narrow boat,’ I said.

ST. PAULS ROUNDABOUT

JURY SUMMONS

I’ve been summonsed for jury service. My name was randomly selected from the electoral register.

Jury service is an important public duty. You will be asked to consider the outcome of a criminal trial in the Crown Court. You will be among many people selected each year for jury service and you will have the opportunity to be involved in the legal system.

Jurors may also be needed to serve in a civil case though this does not happen often. When it does, the trial will usually take place in the High Court or a county court. Jurors might also be needed to serve in a coroner’s court.

WARNING

You may have to pay a fine of up to £1,000 if:

. you do not reply to this summons; or
. you do not attend court for jury service without a good
reason; or
. you are not available to be a juror when your name is called
at court by the Jury Officer; or
. you are not fit to be a juror because of drink or drugs.

ADDICTION

I don’t want to get out of bed today. I have things to do but not for a while so I can lie here my head on the pillow staring out the window at the block opposite, roll over look the other way all the while listening to the radio...
...Woman’s Hour, interview with an author of a book stars a shopping centre, is a mystery not a ghost story...
...those things to do are just things to fill time so later I don’t feel bad about myself...is suffering an end in itself, a lifestyle choice?
I’ve given up an addiction, not the first, in the past there’s been a period of not knowing how to use the time made newly available by the now absent activity...
...video game addiction in Korea has led to deaths through dehydration and over stimulation of the cerebral cortex, gamers spending days in PC bangs (internet cafes), playing, watching others play, and talking about what they’ve done lately...the best are professionals making a living and being treated like rock stars...recently a centre for the treatment of video game addiction has opened in Holland it being only a matter of time before one opens here...

SLEEPER

‘Do you have any idea how painful it is having your shins broken with a baseball bat?’ I said.
The two women in front of me wondering what my problem was did not speak but kept looking at me sitting my legs outstretched trousers pulled up to show my shins.
A man approached. I went to my room unsure what was going on. A knock at the door and the man women came in followed by the two women. They asked me questions about what I’d been doing the year just gone. I was suspicious of their motive.
‘You’re a sleeper, is what we think,’ said the man. ‘And that you’re on the brink of activation.’
I didn’t know what he was talking about, fell asleep, had a dream...I was a child I’d not been a way I remembered, began to know how what happened to me then had affected my current situation and justified the accusation...when I woke I left them whispering in my room.
Out on the street at the end of a row of shop fronts in sepia a policewoman sat on a motorcycle parked behind a car driven into the one in front. I slapped her face. The way she turned her head to look at me it didn’t seem to be such a good idea.