SOMETHING

There was a homemade bench had several piles of books on it outside the wall of a house down the road.
‘Have a look,’ I said and pulled the car over to the kerb. She got out had a rummage.
‘What’s the big one?’ I said. ‘Get it.’
‘That’ll come in handy,' she said, 'when you run out of ideas,’ passing the book read on the cover - JACK’S REFERENCE BOOK ~ AN ENCYCLOPEDIA, A MEDICAL, LEGAL, SOCIAL, EDUCATIONAL & COMMERCIAL GUIDE, A DICTIONARY. It was printed 1911 in London by T. C. & E. C. Jack, at an address I once lived.
At the flat later, I opened the book

BRISTOL, a city and port, on the Avon, on the borders of Somerset and Gloucestershire. Its trade with Ireland, Canada, West Indies, and South America is considerable and increasing. The new dock at Avonmouth, now (1906) building, at a cost of nearly 11/2 millions, will offer great facilities to shipping. The city has an ancient cathedral, which is, however, surpassed in beauty by the church of St. Mary Redcliffe; (For population, etc., see p.902.)

On page 902 the population official estimate, June, 1908, was 372,785, with the mean annual rate per 1000 of a) Births: 23.1, and b) Deaths: 13.6.

THE BABY WAS MINE

‘The baby was mine,’ I said, ‘the one you hurt me with.’
‘I’ve been fighting,’ she said, ‘and I can’t do it anymore...I’ve been trying to.’
‘And I’m not a disease,’ I said, reminding him of what we’d agreed.
‘Not seeing you, then you came down fast and...I realised I distance stated -’
‘You were offensive.’
‘I’m sorry. I was angry. I was furious. I took refuge in a fence mechanism.’
‘It was the last straw -’
‘It won’t happen again,’ she said. ‘I’m new at all this and it’s not easy. You could give me another chance.’
Her eyes misted over and she perked up enough to manage a verbal negative reached for her clenched hands.
‘Please...’
‘Once again you’ve shared news that we’d been together and ever hiding the fact that child, hit me hard, made you might be hiding,’ I confided.
‘I was afraid of how you’d defend yourself,’ she said, her half-heart keeping in the dark damage the view of her had done.
My stunning dark golden gaze levelled. ‘I needed you and I lost faith in my own point and everything went haywire.’
‘You...went haywire,’ she said. ‘But I’m holding that offence if you don’t want a baby.’
‘But I just said,’ I said, ‘“the baby was mine.”’

FELL FROM ABOVE

Last night I dreamed I got back to my flat and found my front door open.
I went inside, my heart resigned to finding things missing, which I did -
guitars,
computer,
food,
furniture,
carpets,
floor tiles,
and the floor itself
- is why I fell through to the flat below where my neighbours sat looking up at me from a sofa,
I asked, ‘Did any of you see anything suspipcious?’
The one smells worst looked in the mirror and said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘years ago it was, before I knew you, ever seen you, even, so it’s probably not relevant to your current concern.’
‘Which is?’ I said.
‘You tell me,’ he said. ‘You’re the one fell from above.’

DROP THE BAG

‘Drop the bag,’ a man’s voice. ‘Drop the bag.’
The outside of Broadmead, just checked the window of Mastershoe.
‘Drop the bag...’
I stopped to watch what was happening - a woman running across the triple carriageway, a Sainsbury’s bag-for-life in her hand...
‘Drop the bag...’
Two men running after her, the one not shouting, ‘Drop the bag,’ spoke into a handset, I couldn’t hear what he said...
‘Drop the bag...’
They were big men, ordinary clothes, wandering stores detectives...
‘Drop the bag...’
The woman dropped the bag to the road, looked back over her shoulder - she was young - then climbed through the gap in the railings between the directions, then ran off towards St. Pauls.
The two men slowed - I wondered how long they’d’ve run for, the size of them - reached the bag, picked it up, walked back the way they’d come, looking through the clothes were in the bag.
On to the Horsefair I saw and heard a girl beggar ask a man for money, then for a bit more after he’d given her something.
‘Fuck off,’ he said, walking away. ‘Go on, fuck off.’

AS IF I NEEDED TELLING

Onto the end of Stapleton Road, Tavernside, thinking, ‘I might go the back way,’ to hers, as it was I didn’t but along St. Mark’s, High Street, and so on.
Anyway, as I was passing the Tavern and Au Temps Perdu, a man, wearing blue denim jacket and trousers, came running across the road towards me, said, ‘Excuse me mate. Excuse me.’
‘I haven’t got any money on me,’ I said, not slowing down.
The man, neck and throat tattoos, said, ‘Fucking hell,’ he said, ‘How’d you know I was going to say that?’
‘That’s what happens,’ I said. ‘That’s what people ask.’
‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘Fuck off then,’ as if I needed telling.

DON’T YOU?

A top floor city centre flat. Curtains closed, blinds down.
I know exactly where I am and I feel lost. Mislaid focus, wondering why I’m bothering treading the wheel, round and round and round, really, where is there to go? Do this, make that, go there, say hello, and...then what?
Poverty is an economic relationship and a state of mind.
- fastest over the distance means something to someone...commentators identify with the feats of those they tell us about, encouraging us to do the same, ‘You’re with us or against us.’ - and that’s a fact, folks.
‘How proud are you, Mr. Winner?’ - proud, erect, upright - ‘Not proud at all, you fucking twat, just knackered and slightly disappointed and disturbed at what I put myself through, the pain and deprivation, to feel good about myself, to not feel that all pervasive sense of despair.’ ‘You sound needy.’ ‘I could eat a horse...’
...while Michael Phelps, apparently the greatest Olympian of all time, consumes twelve thousand calories a day cheered on towards a record haul of gold medals by children dying of hunger...
..the emptiness, the bottom line, the place of rest returned to after all distraction is spent...
...you have to do something, don’t you?

DISPERSAL ORDER FOR INNER CITY
from BBC website

Police have been granted a dispersal order for part of a city centre in a bid to beat anti-social behaviour.

Officers can now move groups on in the Stokes Croft, King Square and Brunswick Square areas of Bristol.

A police spokesman said: "The powers have proved a very effective way of dealing with anti-social behaviour in other areas of Bristol."

The order is part of a strategy between the police, Safer Bristol and Bristol City Council.

Inspector Dave Huggins added: "We hope this will reduce the numbers of people street drinking and improve the quality of life for the community.
"Together with our partner agencies and the vast majority of the community the police have been working hard in this area to address this problem."


SPOIL ME...
found business card

Spoil me...
IN STOKES CROFT
....by letting me spoil you
with
private sensuous massage
in my private flat
for only sixty pounds
0117 924 8754
9 KING SQUARE AVENUE, STOKES CROFT BS2 8HU

A DYING SUN

Some days memories of opportunities missed, of things not done, come to haunt me. It’s like they say, ‘Hey, look, he’s having a crap time. Let’s get him.’
And they don’t tap, they’re not subtle, they stamp around, swing a baseball bat, poke, prod, disturbing me...
But what comes first? The down or the beating? Actually I don’t give a fuck, what with all the whispers, the condemnations, the home truths -
‘Why did/didn’t you...(whatever)?’ ‘You useless £$&*%@&.’
- on and on, all the way home...
...oh, how I loathe myself...
...but then, when the ghosts have blown through, when I’ve stopped fighting the doing over, a calm settles and once again I orbit my own sun, that cold and distant dying sun

SNOT

Well, I’ve got to tell you, though I wish I didn’t but seeing as I’ve stopped retching, only just...
I’m back in the flat after walking in the rain through town, came in to the block, a man stood leaning on crutches behind the inner double doors. He was rolling a cigarette and said when I passed, ‘Excuse me, Sir,’ he said. ‘Excuse me.’
‘Yes,’ I said, thinking, ‘He’s going to tap me for change.’
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ again.
‘Can I ask you...’
‘Get on with it,’ pressing the call button.
‘Do you want to buy a Big Issue?’ standing on one leg.
‘No thanks,’ getting into the lift, thinking, ‘Oh.’
‘Okay, thank you.’
As the door was closing behind me I pressed the floor button with my first finger knuckle and...my knuckle slipped off the button, eurghh, ‘What is that?’ fuck, snot on my knuckle, eurghh, disgusting, fuck...a blob of snot on my knuckle, jesus...
...a grey blob of snot on my knuckle, I wiped it on the side of the lift to my right, smeared it across the metal...
I washed my hands for ten minutes when I got home, then ten minutes more all the while feeling sick, trying not to imagine the snot accidentally having got in my mouth, eurghh fuck, I hate it, users spitting, leaving rubbish, dropping greenies, snotting, I mean, do it in your own home is up to you but in the lift?

BETRAYAL

So I go out for a walk, nothing unusual, needed a break from the flat, do the loop after dropping down Ninetree Hill and onto Stokes Croft where I paid for two packs of tictacs in the post office.
Avoided the Island had a couple of drinkers wobbling about on the pavement in front of three or four sitting on the wall over the road from Mr. Tomato,.
Along Jamaica and up onto Dove Street between the Elim church and the hostel deciding not to use the bottom lift because of earlier.
Past the HRS truck was parked the top of King Square and a couple, each with a tin, kissing at the bottom of Spring Hill. Why are there so many drinkers out on the street tonight?
Outside Carolina a man, bald, black short-sleeved tee-shirt, let a dog off a lead, said, ‘Off you go,’ the dog ran towards the dog-toilet area.
The man turned to me, who’d just trod on a cigarette butt looked like it might’ve had a metal object in its end, twisted it into the ground and it hadn’t, he turned to me he did and said, ‘Wish the missus was like that,’ like the dog he meant.
‘Does she come when you call?’ I said.
‘Not my wife,’ he said, ‘which is why I have to give her a bit of this...’ swiping the air with his left arm, demonstrating, I knew.
I didn’t say anything, kept my head down, as I’d done the whole walk, thought about saying, ‘Goodnight,’ but felt it'd be a betrayal.