sea2

Some things can crush a man. They'd better not try to hurt you by hitting you or calling you names because that's been tried and it doesn't work. So many small defeats, so many humiliations and you are a washed-up, ten-time loser and you have no qualities that a normal human being should have. Drip feed the badness in the eighties, the Falklands, ten-men-dead, the...
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Sing, Michael, sing. A dirt path; mainly mud, littered with stones. Dodge the puddles. The trees rush towards you. Leaves are five different colours. The woods a kaleidoscope spinning as you run; your heart a machine gun. You are twelve-years-old. They never, ever hear you when you cry at night. If you run then no one can hurt you and nothing can touch you. When...
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Waiting for Mrs O'Brien to Die.
The kitchen window in the old house looks down over the vale of Tralee to the steeple of St John's Church and beyond to the Slieve Mish mountains. It's only a small window and allows poor light; if the house were to be built today it would be twice the size so that the new money could appreciate the...
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I loved you in an inky black womb. Outside, Barcelona sighed pollution from heaving lungs, laughed, wept and bickered. In our sanctum all was still, save for the movement of our limbs stretching to find a cool oasis on sheets warmed by our bodies and late summer heat. My fingertips and lips charted the deserts and terrains of your skin, crossing a rivulet of sweat...
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A fog of phlegm has descended upon me. It sent advance warning of its arrival last Wednesday when I was lying on my back, fashionably drunk, and attempting to watch some football on television. Every now and again I shot bolt upright and coughed, resembling nothing more than a waking zombie in a morgue. I briefly considered going upstairs to get a white sheet to...
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A few years back, five of us went to Cornwall. We were five people with disparate interests but just so you know what kind of people I surround myself with, I will tell you that the included the world's most heavily tattooed bird-watcher and, and this is key for the purpose of this story, an industrial archaeologist. The reason that this is key is because...
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It is 1983 and you are in The Hoop and Toy. Outside the streets of London are starting to stink of Thatcher's yuppie excess and "fuck you, I'm alright, Jack" philosophy but inside The Hoop and Toy you are discovering that you like drinking and you love French girls. There are two of them sat opposite you, oblivious to your staring. One of them has...
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Bird watching. Wash the breakfast things and see the birds compete for the seeds and scraps you put out for them. Notice whom for wheels are turning. The wren is back. Winter survival battles played out on my little patch of earth. Avenues all lined with trees, picture me and then you stop watching. These routines make things possible. Wash, rinse, dry, put away. Pessoas...
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I am not a scientist. True, some of my work on a formula involving vodka, blue curacao and orange juice was worthy of peer review and publication, and I have been known to partake in a variety of other experiments trying to push the envelope of human knowledge and experience but on the whole I am not a scientist. To this day I reckon the...
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The Aire, the Swale, the Nidd, the Wharfe, and the Ash, the Beech and the Oak. The Jay, the Magpie, the Blackbird and the Wren. The Prince, Tommys, Anywhere. The Dales, the Slieve Mish. Carling, Bushmills. The Bhoys. Accepting that soon I'll be drenched to the bone. My little world.

In which I am listening to a reggae version of The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol performed by Michael Rose of Black Uhuru. Interesting. And kind of chuckling about a friend who left her mother babysitting the kids while she went out. She put a DVD on for the kids and grandma before going out and all was well with the world. Except she hadn't...
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