anyway, the plane waitress keeps saying, ‘i’m sorry sir but we can’t physically take cash,’ as if the problem with the transaction related to the laws of physics rather than as a cost-saving measure that only benefits the airline’s profits. eventually a women across the aisle got sick of the show and bought the guy a heineken and then he ostentatiously repaid her several times over. that was probably the highlight of the flight.
do you ever struggle with metaphysics in your quotidian?
so this old dude keeps banging on, loud as you can, about how his wallet got stolen on holiday. and that he has 1000 euro in cash. in fact, he is waving the cash about like a mad man. it’s got a money clip on it like tony soprano would use, but this guy looks more like a cross between paul weller and max clifford, except substantially unchinned.
do you still use analogue money, perhaps for reasons of criminality?
to be continued.
even the rich and powerful will die. trump will die. starmer will die. kardashion will die. i will die and you will die. except i am a fictional character so maybe i won’t die. or maybe i will in some stories, but not in others. what if we all are characters in novels, who only live when our book is off the shelf?
my girlfriend managed to time her visit to her sister’s such that she was not in town when i got home from the bike holiday. i think she was holding me to a long tease. absence makes the something something. i was missing her.
throwing darts with some colleagues, i realised that if i really pay attention, i can reliably hit the board, and occasionally hit the thing i am aiming at. i came fifth out of eight. not very impressive. but why would a good soul care? they may be compassionate if, for some reason, darting competence was important to me. but the good souls don’t care about competence or endeavour. they just love other good souls.
the best bike rides have boats in them. that’s just a fact. we were nearing the end of the holiday, and fortunately the wind calmed a bit and we got an epic ride over the big mountain in.
i was comfortable and cool in the breeze, and considering one of my favourite writers – milan kundera. he writes perfect prose, light yet weighty. deep with philosophy, shallow with the needs of flesh. the story is unimportant – the storyteller is the whole show. characters, plots and places are tools which the author uses to carve the meaning of life into his reader.
it’s funny how the tease works, that the hint of a thing can be better than a lot of it. the feeling of being left wanting more. i think that’s why cigarettes are so popular. so fundamentally unsatisfactory that you need an infinite amount of them. typing this makes me want one now. and i quit a long time ago.
i do try and be a good stoic, and i touch on themes of stoicism often in the poem. every day i make a point of thinking about the fact that i will die and i don’t know when. and i try and remember to think of one specific person, and remember that they will die too. a different person each day. people i love, people i wish were already dead, people i barely know.
i think i’d heard on a podcast that the carthaginians were excellent navigators and seafarers. in fact, they even visited the canary islands, where i was when i wrote this line. both my grandfathers spent time at sea. ‘worse things happen at sea,’ they say. well, i was struggling with the stormy weather enough on dry land.
it’s a new month, so i have a new verse out on the youtube / spotify / apple music. it’s called the slugabed. hope you like it.
i just spent two days solid sorting through emails. all my emails since gmail was invented. almost 20 years of emails. so many rejections from jobs. from the lowest paid, lowest skilled, right up to the top – board level. no matter what step of the ladder i aim for, my skill profile doesn’t quite work. so that’s why i’m a poet and a cyclist. and this line was my lonely, dyspraxic protest against winds that i was too scared to ride in on my bike holiday.
when i was younger, all my friends were my age. we shared a frame of reference. same teachers, food, tv shows. as you get older, you start to recognise differences that passed you by. different types of parent. differing wealth. different trajectories.
now i have friends of all ages and it has really struck me – everyone’s experience is unique. there are generational flavours of course. but in a way, we are trapped solitarily in our experience, knowing the things we know, being the people we are.
