and hybrid work means shivering alone by a lockfast window on a sunny day

my favourite track, the album’s last
round the oval, and pound the quad

persons unknown want persons all to commute to work again for reasons unknown. and you get there and none of your colleagues are there. and its sunny outside but cold in the office. this was the human experience of service workers in 2024. i wonder what they will make of it in a thousand years. if anything…

the next day, i was cycling down by the sewage works when i felt a strong need to pull over, in the peak of the smell for some reason, to note down that my favourite track is always the last one on the album. its not necessarily true of all albums but i think it truly describes the kind of song that i typically would select as a ‘favourite song’ at any given moment. something a bit epic, maybe a big melancholy balled, or something just a bit strange. but in researching this post, i have discovered that a lot of the songs i thought were the last one on the album… were not. i guess i listen on shuffle a lot.

i still think its a fair description of the kind of songs i tend to sometimes like anyway.

you meet someone you know from gossip

our hour our sense our self
in each case you can choose to cooperate or cheat

i wasn’t thinking of any particular meeting or person, just the idea of how sometimes characters can go from sort of fictional, like a friend of a friend, and then you are introduced and you feel like you already know them a bit. and maybe they even know something about you…

at the time of writing, i’m just back from a weekend of cycling with my club. we had glorious weather for a weekend in argyll, scotland. we cycled 220km with 3000m of elevation. i ate so many squashies and cereal bars. i’m looking forward to returning to my regular diet.

the roads were great, although a bit busy with cars at some points. devoted readers of the blog will know that i dislike cars. there was one particularly bonkers point when we were almost mowed down by a fire engine that i can only assume had been stolen. then a sports utility van thing that almost crashed head on with another car while overtaking. breathtaking stupidity really.

[post script] i have now been back from the holiday for two weeks, and the experience was dampened quite significantly when i learned that one of my club mates sadly died suddenly shortly after the trip. he was older, and had a heart transplant, so i suppose he had probably done his memento mori and made peace with mortality. but death never fails to shock. i didn’t know him well but he seemed like a good guy. rest in peace, s. d. (a different s. d.)

pun-ridden doggerelly sub-nonsense

in funereal nomenclature and dress
but i did have six toasts today, all of them doublers
(lentil, tuna rocket; salmon shallot; ched spicy)

i met my old friend s.d. for a few beers, and was reminded of his old homestead webpage. it was very funny and claimed to pertain to ‘subnonsense,’ a posited form of nonsense which i still find funny. and i guess i’m giving an honest appraisal of my work in these lines… as a poet, fundamentally, my building blocks are puns and emotional turmoil.

the next day i had many and varied sourdough toasts.

the bread, my sour domain, hers an egg on top

perfection is a conspicuous imperfection..

i haven’t made a sourdough loaf in a couple of weeks. i’ve been out of routine. travelling a lot. started a new job. i won’t have a chance to make another loaf until… not that long before this blog is published. by when it will have been maybe 3 or 4 weeks. my poor starter. i shall have to feed it a couple of times before i leave. or give up on the whole routine.

i have been thinking about it. quitting. it’s a pain in the arse. but it slows me down. it means planning for a whole day at home. and its always a thrill seeing what comes out the oven. every loaf a unique little masterpiece. the sight of my labour, mixed with the grain from the land, a little salt from the sea, a process that connects me personally to my ancestors, a process that dates back to maybe 5000 or 6000 BCE.

hmm. i feel the weight of history upon my shoulders now. i guess i’ll feed my starter.

stars are parts of empires, feart to boo a ghost

i schedule noxious imbibition and obnoxious noise projection
with colleagues, on a rager, dipsomaniacal

i was thinking about stars. what do they symbolise? parts of empires. 50 stars for the 50 states of america. or the stars of the european flag, representing the 12 founding members of the european union. or the 27 states/districts/stars of brazil. i don’t know what the australian stars mean but whatever it is, i mean, we are in empire territory, aren’t we?

and boo a ghost. haha. it’s meant to be boo a goose. but an old friend’s colleague used to say ‘x would be scared to boo a ghost,’ which i found hilarious as its an altogether different prospect. it would be a flimsy character who wouldn’t have the matter about them to boo a goose. an encounter with a spectral being would likely put one so firmly on the backfoot that any booing would be bizarrely foolhardy.

chaos vikings marchin’ under summer’s radiation

space tunnel violinist, what did we do to you?
reflect on convalescence’s end, my reaction improved

i’d just finished a period of convalescence. a period of autistic burnout. had processed some things, felt a bit better about them, had some regrets, but by and large i was starting to feel a bit better after a rough stretch.

meanwhile, my girlfriend was off running one of her scandinavian marathons. fortunately this activity doesn’t involve me. i love to run but 42 km seems like too much of a good thing. i ran 10km yesterday and spent a few hours working on a song and i’m absolutely beat this morning. we all have different energy i suppose.

i am perhaps the space tunnel’s biggest fan. it is a tunnel (through space) that connects the scottish events campus to the exhibition centre railway station. not sure why they didn’t rename the railway station when they renamed the exhibition centre 🤷‍♂️ anyway, not sure what the violist wanted revenge for, but he set about it mercilessly.