Werl/filter

The fire begun shortly after 3am. First, the park went unnoticed, which was hidden for the evening and the house behind a strong and confused wall of the hedge is closed. Leaving main headers the warning enclose a recent pair, their way house behind the iron setting the park in on, after the weak glowing LG1-respects through, the trees for decreasing had LG1-respected and a Umberscheinwerfer on the low clouds to throw above. Fire-brigade were within quarterly hours, two machines, which pull up to the edge of the realising park before them, to need there the keys, in order to receive by the gates. The call was formed, but, while they watched out the glowing within the park long and stated, which breathes deeply, and increasing with each new inhalation, them that they could not wait and the catch of obligation were. It took hours, in order to get the flame under control, by their point the house, which was confessed there, thus long it to the native ones practically invisibly, on worthless staff scattering the karbonisierten posts and the still smoldering Hillock of the black one and the ruined arrears had been reduced was. Those had high and heavy hedge and scattered trees, which had for so for a long time her from the opinion shielded, also suffered; wiped out, stumps hardly even Jutting out of the beds of ashes. Everything, the position in the narrow woodland was left, was the remnants of a hard coal shelter, to that probably for a long time the fire had before collapsed and the knotige and rusty framework of a bicycle, that above against it propped. The Feuerwehrmanner congratulated itself, contents that they the flame before it had reached, to surrounding leaves to jump had contained. The entire park could have been in the danger. The remnants of the house were not looked for, to have been through again and again raked, but there looked, which occupy it at the time of the fire. The old man came briefly before dawn and confessed on fray to the activity around the remnants, his hands on, which were clasped before him, mouth the forehead runzelnd in his nest of a beard. The black Veloursleder of its waistcoat attachment-leaking, and its trousers tulips were jagged with mud. Murmuring too, he walked around the edge, behind the machines, stepped at the branches and shakes its head. Occasionally it would look back on the remnants of the house volatilely and its face as if in the concentration would crumple. It looked over its shoulder and seemed to pursue back a line of, where the house should have been to another point, one point on the other side of the way, by the trees and under a roofing of the fading density. The old man caught on to go, his step light on gravel and over here on to the grass. Setting a hand against the next tree to become in order to strengthen, a hand rotated in such a way that it seemed nearly, a part of the Barke it looked into the Gestrüpp. Dust grains of something - bloom dust? - floated before his face, separation and it placed before itself that for one second he possibly saw the illustrations, a half dozen and behind the strong trunks withdrew, which surround this small cleaning. There was a clay/tone, the worked on respiration, possibly a small animal…

The Weight of a Carrot

Way back when there used to be a small village somewhere in the south of France. It’s name is long lost now, but at the time it was one of the most famed of villages in the world. For it was from here that the most popular scents, worn by both men and women around the world, originated. From the avenues of Paris to the winding streets of Monaco across to Madrid and London, to wear one of the myriad scents of this town was to declare one’s superiority, one’s confidence, one’s worth in the world.

So fine were these scents that the question “From whence do these glorious aromas originate?” was rarely asked. Which is for the best, for the truth would have surely astonished even the most ardent supporter of these fine perfumes.

For above the village, set into the rock face, sat a giant. A vast behemoth who remained there, immobile, looking down upon the small, busy gallic streets. How long he had been there was unknown, but it must have been a vast period of time, for the giant had long since fused into the rock of the mountain itself. Now all he was capable of was eating, evacuating his great bowel, and passing gas.

Thankfully it was these three functions which brought the vilage its great success. And, indeed, all industry within the small town revolved around them. From dusk til dawn the women and children of the village would work tirelessly bringing food and nutrition to the vast mouth of the giant, and there they would feed him the outsized produce from their prodigious farms. Andthe giant would eat, his jaw grinding the food into pulp and swallowing all they brought before him into his gullet. His fondness was for carrots, which the village grew to the size and length of a fully-stretched out man. It would take three to four women to haul just one of these vast vegetables to the summit of the mountain, where the giants head emerged from the stone.

This was the start of the process. It was at the other end of the collossus where the major industry took place. For here worked the men of the village, toiling night and day in the vast, hot foundry and factory hewn out of the hollow in the mountain directly below the giant’s cavernous anus.

Yes, this was where the giant’s remarkable gas was passed, and where his huge stools would fall into the vast refinery. It was there that these excretions were ground, liquidised and bottled. And it was here that the scent of the giant’s evacuations were dispatched across the civilized world to be patted on the necks and wrists of elegant ladies, smoothed onto the freshly shaven faces of their menfolk.

And so it had been for a hundred years. And so it may have been for a hundred more, had not one day the giant passed a most remarkable nugget. It somehow came to pass that this particular dropping bounced from the side of the refinery tank and off through the factory floor, where it wrecked havoc, before falling from the side of the mountain and into the lake on the other side.

Upon contact with the water, the floater began to glow. Fascinated, the workers ran to the edge of their workplace to gaze down on the remarkable sight. Astonished, they watched as something emerged from within the globe of dirt and refuse, such as an insect might emerge from a cocoon. It was a nymph, a most seductive and beautiful creature, which then proceeded to dive into the water and cavort below the gaze of the watching workers. Enraptured, they watched, not managing to do any further work for the rest of the day.

That was how it all began to collapse. For there the nymph remained. And the more the danced and played, the more then men of the village found themselves drawn to the edge of the lake to watch. And the more this happened, the more they neglected their duties. The refinery began to decay, and the thick green smoke which emanated from the rear of the giant started to seep out of the machinery, hanging around the factory floor, its sweet scent permeating the air. The women, realising what was happening, and jealous of the attention given to the nymph, attempted to coax the men back to work. But in vain. And in attempting to work the refinery itself, they found their efforts hindered by the smoke, which now lay around the refinery and the base of the mountain like the thickest of fogs.

The men grew lazy and would not work. They simply stood or sat or lay by the side of the lake watching the nymph dance. The women, unable to bring the refinery online again, realised that in order to stop the smoke and scent obscuring the village completely they would have to stop feeding the giant altogether. After all, if nothing went in, surely nothing would come out.

But by then it was too late. The refinery collaped completely, and the giant grew ill and starved. One day his eyes closed slowly, as if slipping into sleep, but never did open again. The nymph grew tired of the men’s attentions and left the lake for waters new. The men attempted to return to their posts and their homes, but their workplace was in ruin and their women wanted no more to do with them. The town grew poor, no income coming in any more. And a heavy green haze lay across the land. Realising there was no life for them there, the people left for neighbouring towns, scrounging out a life as best they could. Leaving behind them an empty village, obscured by a constant fog, watched over by the dead and deteriorating giant…

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I originally thought about posting the above with the rest of the short stories on here, but it’s not really a story. In actual fact it’s a recounting of one of the more surreal dreams I’ve had recently, put here as a placeholder as I clearly have nothing of great import to ‘blog’ about.

Fool

There was a post here which I’ve managed to delete. Instead, all you’re going to get is a random tit-bit of information.

I once, in a school play and over the course of a single night, played both a tube of toothpaste dressed as one of the wise men and an Ethiopian. Now how’s that for range?

The London Burlesque Festival, the Axis of Idiocy, and other weekend reflections

A very exciting, tiring and hectic few days - partially due to work, partially due to more fun ways of spending my time. From Thursday through to Saturday I spent healthy segments of my evenings watching a great many ladies shedding themselves of vintage clothing and shaking their tassles. Yes, it’s time for the London Burlesque Festival, in which my girlfriend and other friends of mine were performing. It all kicked off on Thursday directly after work with a trip to the outer sphincter of London to watch a friend of my perform. Before charging in to the negatives I’ll first mention the positives - mainly that the performances were of an excellent standard and the venue was a rather nice, low-ceilinged little venue; it’s name, however, currently escapes me.

But there were negatives. Indeed, the evening appeared to be beset on a regular basis by members of the Axis of Idiocy. First and foremost of these is whoever is responsible for the hell that is travelling anywhere beyond the centre of London. It took three hours and considerable tube and train hopping just to find our way to Dalston Kingsway. The last of these trains (which we were mercifully only on for a couple of stops) was a crush of the kind which makes you fear for your life and which wasn’t helped by two black youths threatening to stab anyone who touched them and attempting to push those around them away - an impossible task given how tightly packed we all were.

But off we got, unmolested, and along the road we set trying to find the venue - which we walked past twice due to it being little more than a single orange door set in the wall next to a chip shop. But, as mentioned before, the venue itself was pleasant enough and the crowd were good-natured and relaxed. All was set for a decent night until the compere of the evening took to the stage. An utterly charmless oaf whose ‘patter’ seemingly consisted of slurring his introductions to the point of incomprehensibility (apart from the occasional ‘fahk’ or, indeed, ‘faaahhhhkin’), he proceeded to get pissed throughout the course of the night and lurched about with his stupid little hat cocked jauntily to one side of his bald head. I swear it was like Nathan Barley never happened. I proceeded to get drunk and berated him all evening. I don’t think he noticed. Or cared.

We left later than planned as there was apparently some lassie there who knew a bus which would get us straight back to Victoria shortly after the show was finished. Unfortunately, upon asking her where we went when we left the venue she merely shrugged her shoulders and murmured “I dunno…” Cue some angry tramping around the fringes of London until we found the bus stop - only to find that the bus was long gone. Tramp tramp. Then my girlfriend, taking matters into her own hands - and wallet - thought ‘fuck it’ and hailed a cab. Some heroic cabbie driving later and we finally made it to the Brighton train.

My mood by this stage was foul and it was my intention to sleep the journey away. My slumber, alas, was spoiled by a businessman (who in fact turned out to be the boss of someone we knew) ambled up the carriage, pitched his head over and vomited very splashily in the area joining our carriage to the next. Needless to say, as it started running up the aisle towards us, we made a decision to hop off at the next stop and get in again further up the train. Our carriage of choice was home to an inelegant auld, and very camp, man who wandered up and down the train bitchily declaring his superiority to all and sundry before departing at Redhill never, one hopes, to be seen or heard again.

Friday’s trip was somewhat less eventful. I took a half day off work and we travelled up to the Hilton in Kensington, where we’d reserved rooms for the two nights my girlfriend was performing. It goes without saying that the hotel was a step up from what we were used to, and it was only a short journey to Bush Hall where the newcomers contest and the international gala were taking place. Left to my own devices after my girlfriend left to go prepare for the show, I met up with Rob - one of what we would eventually term the ‘Habs’ (Husbands and Boyfriends) - to grab some pub grub then head along for a deeply nerve-wracking night of waiting for our respective ladies to show the world what they could do. But we needn’t have been so stressed - both performances went fantastically and I was immensely proud of my girlfriend. She did fantastically.

Stress left behind, we spent the rest of the evening getting thoroughly drunk and I have vague recollections of cornering the organiser of the LBF towards the end of the night and telling him how shit the compere had been the night before. I’m told he agreed with me, but it’s all a bit hazy. Afterwards we retreated to one of our rooms at the hotel, took multiple drunken photos, drank some champagne and ordered some room-service pizza. As you can guess, it wasn’t a cheap weekend.

The following night was the international gala, during which my girlfriend was performing with her burlesque school buddies from the Vavavavoom School of Burlesque. I’d had to travel back to Brighton during the day to feed the cats, and didn’t get back until late. Neither of my fellow Habs had tickets for the show so I was very much left to my own devices and, suffering a diabolical hangover from the previous night, didn’t feel like a drink. So I spent a lot of the night milling around, waiting for them to come on. But there were plenty of impressive acts (including a trapeze act where the poor woman looked like she was going to cut herself into a thousand bits on her wires) and a good time was had. The Vavavavoom show, when it came, was lots of fun although I was barely awake by then. Falling into bed at the end of the night has never felt so good though.

And that was that. The journey home on Sunday was easy enough despite the world having tunred into some kind of winter wonderland overnight) and most of the day was spent in from of the TV and 360 keeping ourselves entertained (Condemned 2 is the current game of choice for me - possibly even grimmer than the first one, a game which I could only play for 45 minutes at a time without feeling horribly soiled). The cats spent some time outside in the snow, but the confusion of it all was too much for them and they quickly snuck back indoors. Then it was back to work on Monday to a major web release which has left me feeling alternately exhausted and exhilarated and which should ultimately be very rewarding.

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I’ve been reconsidering my next writing project recently and I think it’s about time my attentions turned back homewards. Indeed, some recent disasters have proven to me that I don’t have what it takes at the moment to write about situations which are clearly out of my depth. My last attempt to write a flood story set in Mozambique was technically okay, but lay flat and lifeless on the page without those key details of experience which can shock the life into a piece of work. Therefore my current projects are each travelling North, to explore those little Scottish satellite towns which I know and loathe so well, and which I have spent so much of my life in. The first of these is likely to be an update of the Sawney Bean story set on a council estate - the Boghall Chain Saw Massacre anybody?

This all may have been sparked by starting to read Lanark a novel which, if it continues in the same vein, is likely to make the leap into my top 10. I’ll save my thoughts on it until I’ve finished, but thusfar it’s been a joy - a novel which has literally made me laugh, reflect and recoil in fear, responses I don’t recall having had to any work of fiction for quite some time. A jolly 500-odd pages ahead, I think.

That’s all for now, except to say that my next post will likely be on the subject of comic books. This line’s more here to remind me than it is to inform you (the mythic, currently absent reader…)

Hail!

Post.I

Okay, let’s do it properly this time…

New blog, new danger. I’m no stranger to dropping my thoughts into a wee text box then flushing them down on to the web for all to read, having once been the proud updater of a DeadJournal account (long since deleted, and for the best too as every time I think of some of the things that past version of me wrote there I cringe just a little bit - I daresay I’ll feel the same way about this one in five years time…), and another slightly more recent effort on a Site Which Shall Remain Nameless because I wouldn’t give the cunts who run it the benefit of the free advertising.

All of which assumes that someone, somewhere will read this. I rather hope so. It’s not that I wake up in the morning thinking “Right, I’ve got a message for the world!” But I have been known to turn my mind and my fingers to the occasional work of fiction and have this odd compulsion to fire it on to the wonderful world wide web for strangers to pass comment on. Mainly because I wouldn’t dream of forcing it on to my friends and loved ones, at least not yet.

So, as well as my occasional blog-based ramblings, you should also be able to spot the occasional short story, or chapter, appearing in the page list in front of you. So come by, say ‘hi’, and if the urge comes upon you and you’ve nothing better to do for the next twenty minutes or so, go and give them a read and let me know your thoughts. I’ll confess that some of them need the rough edges smoothed off (with sledgehammer and blowtorch on some occasions), but I’ve a degree of pride in most of them - but I tend only to let my ugliest of children out to play.

One quick word of warning - whenever I start one of these things, it tends to take me a while to find the right tone. So if the next couple of posts veer from one mood to the next, don’t be alarmed. I’m just finding my feet.

~John~