Almost 36 hours on from having run the Bristol half marathon I am still getting shimmers of adrenaline and euphoria undulating through my body and mind. I haven’t pushed myself that hard physically for ages. Also, waking up and having to force down food made me realise that too much time had passed since I felt apprehensive about something, in a ‘today’s my driving test’ kind of way. My dad picked me up early and we drove to Bristol under perpetual gloom. I was waiting around for ages and it was cold so I had to keep moving but didn’t want to burn too much nervous energy. Heavy grey clouds and a ghostly whistling wind threatened rain as hundreds of us crammed like sardines at the start line. 

I decided to have a real go at breaking 1hour 20minutes, not realistically expecting to manage it. I’d already calculated that that would entail 6minute 6second miles on average. This is how my race unfolded: inevitably, the start was crowded, and I had to sprint-stop-stagger-sprint to make my way through the field; thank you infuriatingly busy London for all the relevant training in this department. I came through 1 mile in 6minutes 15seconds so was already off the pace, although by this point people were beginning to thin out, and I went through my 2nd mile swiftly, continuing to overtake people. This stopped at about the 2 mile mark. From 2-5 miles was uncomfortable as my body recovered from the stop-start 1st mile and the swift second, a less than preferable beginning. However, by this point I’d gotten myself under 1hour 20minute pace. The Portway got rather steep and I remember coming through 3 miles in 17.54 and 5 miles (after the turnaround; mile 4 was inexplicably unmarked) in 30:08, at which point the remaining 7 miles began to feel like a lot. Even though the Portway was downhill on the way back, the wind was against me, despite my dad saying it should have been blowing upstream. I was with a small group of maybe 6-8, and we all kept changing positions. 2 early-middle-aged men in the group were holding a conversation, which made me realise how out of my depth I was, because I was struggling, trying to use them to deflect the wind whenever I could. I went through 7 miles in 42.30 but by 9 miles those 12 seconds spare had been whittled down and I went through there in 54.52. This was when my quads began to ache - like each heavy step hurt - and the group I was in moved ahead. I let them go, powerless really, feeling dizzy, quite humbling and no time to dwell on it. The distances between square blue mile markers lengthened in my mind. Somewhere around 8 or 9 miles near Max’s house a speak was blaring out Titanium by David Guetta and it reinvigorated me temporarily. I relented and careered across for water, but was too nauseous and breathless to drink, so just threw it over myself. 9-10 was the hardest; that was the point where I could have given up or puked; once there was 3 left I was always going to make it. I came through 10 miles in 1hour 1minute 7 seconds, and was only slowing. The dream of sub 1hour 20 floated away. 

Regardless, I didn’t less my speed dwindle ridiculously (with about 800m to go some guy stopped and staggered over to the railing all baby deer-legged, and puked, and all I thought was that isn’t me), and arrived at the finish line, after endless curves and bends, in 1hour 21minutes dead (1hour 21minutes 2seconds according to the website, fuck them). I wasn’t out of breath, just dizzy, and my quads shredded so bad I couldn’t squat down. Sweat had accreted on my face like granules of sand. I said I’d be happy with under 1hour 22minutes, and I was. My dad found me and said it was funny when I lined up for the start because most people around me had proper running gear on, dorky spandex etc, and I was just stood there in a grotty t-shirt and shorts, and fucked up shoes, whistling, doing none of the stretches they were doing. Fuck that shit.

On reflection, I feel that cycling 5 days a week was the biggest hindrance, because my quads flagged first. Secondly, I reckon I could have pushed my way nearer to the front, and that would have probably taken 20 seconds off at least. Thirdly, I should have trained more. I did one 13.1 mile run in the month leading up to it, and didn’t go mental for it, and I didn’t bother to drop 3 or 4lbs beforehand, which would have been easy. With all these factors removed or tackled, I reckon 1hour 20minutes can be smashed next time. 

My running shoes now sit in my room at home, retired, after one final hurrah, in tatters, riddles with holes, weary. They have been with me and there for me for four years, reliable, and I owed them a send off for such loyalty. For them and I, under all the aforementioned circumstances, I ran as fast as I could.

Thanks to all the fit girls marking out the course that I kept having to smile at and mask my fatigue and anguish for so they thought I was solid.

I reached the end of my tether with England tonight. I am ill, but have been worse.

It was something about the platform at Shortlands, so, so lonely with the weekend stragglers, waiting for the glowworm to lumber in from the woods when numbers matched other numbers, angry when they didn’t quite, a faulty vending machine, a not quite homeless-looking woman with a red and white blotched face eating kebab meat with her hands, lovers parting like sadness with reason is better than sadness with no reason at all, I layered up with swollen glands so I look fat, wet socks, and the rain on the track, outside the shelter - rain like rain on waterlogged fields somehow, watched from a pavilion, shivering in a polo shirt, with 6 Castlemaine cans down and 2 to go, kicked out of some house party hours ago, so distant and disconsolate I’m not even drunk, not understanding why I was feeling this way, or why I kept engineering it again and again, like bad traits perpetuated down a family tree, realising not so long ago that something inside me was tapping at its chrysalis, almost ready, and I, scared, was desperately trying to drown out the sound, delay the inevitable, and then when it did appear, things had gotten so bad, lengths so long, that it was cold turkey or the end of the self, because consciousness so fresh cannot handle anything, it needs space and structure until its stronger.

And I’d had this revealed to myself by myself, all of this, recently, but tonight, again, life had somehow looped, and I was back on the pavilion, watching blusters slinging cold needles of rain, not alone but so lonely, so absolutely nowhere by way of being somewhere undesirable, at 22, like 7 years changes nothing at all even when I know that it definitely does, change, some things, for the better, like all epiphanies are ironic, all of them, and the feeling wouldn’t subside as my cheeks and forehead flushed in the warmth of the train, or with half the Underground closed for no reason, stood alone on Fleet St, waiting for a bus with no shelter for 30 minutes when the sign promised every 10-12, big mean droplets of water down my neck pushed up in vain against some building’s edifice, slowly but surely soaked through, recovery for work tomorrow morning looking less and less likely, eventual bus crowded, like I ask for nothing whatsoever really and get shortchanged, dizziness nigh, and the platform again, with all approaching circles of light futile really in the big scheme of things because the overall darkness approaching was flexing its muscles with 12 hours unrelenting rain, year after year like the only Sundays that ever register in memory, and in 7 years at 29 the exact same feeling might strike me on a lonely platform, or under some sort of shelter, ill or drunk or whatever, watching rain that wounds regardless, and it will happen, I’m fairly sure, unless I get out pronto. 

So yeah, I think I’m gonna go and teach English abroad for a year, preferable Taiwan, or anywhere. Away away oh oh oh away from here x

I haven’t written anything for a while - partly because I was buried in my dissertation until Monday -  and I’m just writing this to blow the cobwebs off. A bunch of disjointed thoughts and occurrences from the last few weeks. 

The place I have now lived for slightly under a fortnight deserves describing. I live in the upstairs room of a house, whose downstairs is occupied by a Pakistani family. The house is within a grimy though not dangerous housing estate in a predominantly Asian ghetto. All of the entrance doors and fencing are painted bright blue to detract from the despair, like a Brazilian slum. The upstairs has a front door along a corridor, accessed by an exterior stairwell, whilst the downstairs front door is outside, like a normal house, but within the complex, as if a once cramped by cosy row of terraces has had prison/school type architecture added around it. The whole house smells of curry, all the time, and I’m not being racist, because it fucking does. I’m desensitised now, as I am to my 40st Pakistani roommate’s skewered-walrus snoring. The bathroom is fairly deplorable - dirty, dribbling shower, tepid or scolding water but no in between, flies trapped above the glazed plastic ceiling tiles buzzing in their death throes - but I’ve seen worse, and don’t officially care, just saying. The bulb blew up the other day and I had to shit by the light of my phone.

The house is dark, like really fucking dark. I can’t see my laces to untie them on the landing. I trip over other shoes like an old man. The cute little children look up at me from the bottom of the stairs when I come in, all shy and inquisitive, and the carpet on the stairs is thick green, and folds on itself, so that descending them takes the strain off my calves, and all of the smells and features and the murk in which they reside feel like some sort of memory I’m half-divorced from.

I’ve been downstairs twice, to do my washing. The kitchen is so grotty that, like The Matrix, no one can be told, they have to see it for themselves. I will not cook or eat anything prepared in there, and I am hardly a stickler for hygiene. Yesterday I was asked to keep watch in the kitchen whilst the family went shopping, because the washing machine was causing the sink to fill, and it needed to be monitored lest it overflow. But I was assured not to worry, because they would definitely buy some ‘medicine’ for the sink to solve the problem, a problem which made no sense anyway, not that I’m a plumber. 

My mattress is on the floor and I have a thin sheet which I’ll have to replace when it gets chillier. I tend to wake up, shivering with cold, at about 5-5.30 a.m., and I don’t understand why, because surely it’s even colder earlier than that. I cocoon myself in the sheet, pin it airtight with the weight of my body, and try to turn my ears off against my roommate’s endless struggle with sleep apnea. He’s sure to lose that struggle one day. His sleep breathing gets more laboured and frenetic until it ceases, like an anticlimax, and then builds up from calm again. I heard him fart in his sleep last night; my farts are way louder.

He’s one of those people full of meaningless, apocryphal, voodoo-like advice, spoken with misguided, unshakeable authority, all of it relating to diet and health and thus utter hypocrisy. ‘You must have seven almonds and lukewarm milk before bed’. What? ‘Not six, not eight, but seven.’ What? ‘You need to eat lots before bed because it’s the body’s healing time’. No evidence for that. Bollocks. A surefire way to put on weight if anything. ‘You don’t drink milk? Come on man, you’re a runner, you need to drink milk.’ Well, I don’t drink milk, and I’m doing fine: healthy, slim, face not breaking into a sweat from standing up. My breathing after a 4.43 mile is more relaxed than you, sat there, watching standup, in your camel-coloured muumuu, having to decide whether to laugh or breathe, because both is out of the question (I didn’t say this; he’s an ok guy. No point alienating another person, spent 20 years doing that).

In fact, I am healthy. So healthy that last week I failed a screening for a medical trial because my PR interval was 90 milliseconds above the normal range, which either means extreme cardiovascular fitness or imminent death (according to a Google search: they wouldn’t tell me on the ward). It didn’t connote anything particularly, they claimed, it just meant that I couldn’t do the trial because any results on me would be massively skewed compared to others participating. I also have a BP of 112/50, allegedly good.

So yeh, £50 a week rent, saving about £200 a week, cuz I’m eating for free, Masters done, can get back to working on my own writing, travelling after Christmas. How much money I save dictates where I go. I live literally 2 minutes from work, so get 45 minutes more sleep in the morning, and I have to shower at night, because some tosser in the next room spends the half hour from 6.30-7 a.m. titting about in the bathroom. Still running, still writing, life still ridiculous.

Snakehips out x

Clearing out my room, I just found this poem written on an empty envelope (don’t remember writing it, might have been drunk) (whereabouts of letter unknown):

Appurtenances only, nothing more

Around a self, are capable of change

Seeing one’s old self in a patio door

- balding, puff-eyed - watching rain brings strange

Re-realising of patterns which fence in

And patterns one gives out solely dawning

Alone with a raw stomach, tasting gin

From a long-distance similar morning

Sprawled out behind glass before gloom

Canted downpour, insolent sloping sky

One is one’s own cement boots, and the womb

Of the sea recedes out of sight with sigh

Where do I start, where do I begin? What better way than with waking? It was 8 a.m. when I first stirred, and I toyed with the idea of going for a run before falling back horizontal, flitting in and out of dream until just gone 10. By then there was not really any time to do anything before going to this wedding waiter job thing, so I shat, showered and shaved and got ready to leave. The sky was bright blue and I contemplated whether to wear the job clothes out or go in a t-shirt and put the job clothes in a bag. I wore the job clothes. Big mistake. It was the hottest day of the year. The cheap polyester of the black shirt I bought from Primark yesterday was wet in minutes (incidentally, first time in Primark: like the Black Hole of Calcutta. Awful); my back was a waterfall. I knew I had to cut through the local park but I ended up outside of it, by these railings with no gate, which I had to scale, almost gelding myself in the process. 

 By the time I got to the rendezvous point (outside a fish market on Deptford High Street) I had my drenched shirt fully open. The place was an ethnic district and the heat was bearing down on it and stirring up flies and stench, like a Delhi bazaar. Gyuri (Hungarian guy from work who offered me the job) met me and introduced me to his friend. Well, acquaintance. He was French, serial smoker, uncanny dead ringer for my housemate’s diminutive, psychopath boyfriend - could have been anything from 30-40 years old, like all serial smokers. His teeth were yellow and his eyes black and sunken into his head, his hair like yellow string, thin and pale. Maté (another guy from work, also Hungarian) showed up in black sunglasses looking like a gangster’s bodyguard, and we set off, all sweating to death. This French guy drove like he was whizzed out of his head, speeding up for bumps, screeching around corners, telling ludicrous anecdotes such as how he drove from Calais to Marseilles in 6 hours, averaging 150mph. We picked up some guys on the way, including this black guy who was still drunk from his stag do the night before. He was funny. 

 We stopped down some dodgy ally in the middle of suburbia (god knows where) to help load a van full of kebabs. They weighed a fucking ton. We just chatted mainly. It turns out Gyuri has a masters in English and is addicted to running like me, and moaned about the cycling ruining his legs. He said he’d gone for a 15km run this morning, which made me ashamed for not having gone, considering he’s about 40. He’s one of those middle-aged guys who’s fitter than most 20 year olds. I wasn’t surprised we had a lot in common. There was no need for the French guy’s reckless driving, because once we got to this wedding we were just stood around for about an hour, trying to look busy. Our boss was this gay Turkish guy in a large-collared floral shirt, both incompetent and a wanker. The wedding was a Turkish/East End gangster one, so all the girls were either fat or munted with big Eastern noses. The bride had 70lbs on me, utter pig. The men all had greasy side partings that scum think look smart and mint green ties with grey vests. Tasteless. We were just carrying plates etc, sweating out horribly, eating lots of free food. 

 The whole affair was a shambles. The gay guy fucked up so there wasn’t enough rice, and he transferred the frustration at his own ineptitude onto us, shouting and nagging and giving contradicting orders, half the time unintelligible, delegating orders lopsidedly and then moaning that tasks were bottlenecking. He reminded me of Ricky from Rydges, because he kept saying ‘come on guys, it’s common sense’ in a faggoty, patronising, fuck-the-pay-I’ma-lamp-you kinda way. I didn’t. Like usual, when someone shouts at me, I just switched off, kept going around the back of the marquee to scoff kebab meat and drink the cider I’d hidden there; but Gyuri - the most mild-mannered, kind-hearted man I’ve met in London - lost his temper, which was hilarious. Don’t fuck with nice guys, like Reardon. The sun gradually dropped, mercifully. After the chaos subsided, we ate all the leftover food and got drunk. It turned out the only hot girl there (some Indian(?) barmaid) was going out with one of the barmen, which didn’t surprise me. 

 Gyuri and Maté were saying how they couldn’t understand a word this French guy said, and this was before we started working. I disagreed. However, the minute we started working, he became unintelligible to me. He kept getting my attention by saying ‘hello’, which was utterly surreal, and his accent so stereotypically French (I em not eh clomsy way-terrrrr). When he drove us back to this suburban alley for our pay though, he became lucid in speech again. We got paid £50 each, when Gyuri had said £30, maybe £35, so I was buzzing, considering how easy it was. Apparently, tips might be on their way soon, from the rich, tactless father of the pig bride. We had to get the train back to central London, but rode it for free, so that was aiiite.

End of day’s regaling.

poetryeater:

Gone

the licorice whips, manila envelopes, shampoo,
shaving kits; I’m all Scratch’n Win, Vanity Fair,
shellacked fruit, and the crinkling bladders of months-old
chips. I squat in my numbness and stare, recording

each night’s parade of freaks on hidden surveillance
film. I’m hyperaware. I’ve…

When deciding to return to his revolutionising of the Batman saga and immortalise it into the widely-opined completeness of a trilogy, the greatest challenge Christopher Nolan faced, most of the world’s viewers posited, was how to surpass the late Heath Ledger’s fascinating, insidious, hilarious portrayal of The Joker four years ago in The Dark Knight. For me, although I echo the masses’ lauding of Ledger, the greatest challenge Nolan faced was that in 2008 I had walked ambivalently into a showing of The Dark Knight, neither hating comic book stories nor liking them, with no expectations whatsoever. Two and a half hours later, my mind had been blown by this sprawling, macabre epic which somehow managed to fuse the superhero genre with a portentous realism relevant to the contemporary climate, whilst throwing out questions regarding morality and the justifiability of vigilantism, but refusing to give an answer. A great chunk of my affection stemmed from my minimal expectations; but, this time around, along with everyone else, my expectations were, as a credit to Nolan’s talent, unavoidably huge.

 So, how did Nolan do? How does The Dark Knight Rises match up next to its intimidating predecessor? Conclusion: extremely well. I tried my level best to enter the experience with The Dark Knight as nothing more than an informer to the ongoing plot, and The Joker as a great but half-irrelevant memory. The relief was that Nolan wisely played pointsman and directed the train of the trilogy down a new track, minimising potential for comparison. Bruce Wayne, eight years a recluse, debilitated and despondent, is coaxed out of superheroic dormancy by the machinations (machinations that have already mustered ominous momentum under Gotham’s surface in Batman’s absence) of masked psychopath, Bane, who plans to protractedly hold the city of Gotham on the edge of obliteration, because ‘true despair cannot exist without hope’. Whilst Batman’s duel with The Joker was a creepy, psychological affair - there was no doubt that Batman could beat The Joker up - with Bane is it the opposite: physical. Bane is a frightening, adamantine, gorilla of a villain, purportedly hardened by a birth into hell on earth (a prison at the bottom of an unscalable well, from which Bane it said to have been the only one to escape), and too much for an ageing, rusty Batman, comparably born into luxury and privilege. And to watch the stalwart, unflappable Batman effortlessly bludgeoned by this massive, aviator jacket-wearing man - who is furthermore ten steps ahead, and boasting a host of minions from all of Gotham’s echelons, all watching on deadeyed - is quite a traumatic experience. 

 Of course, many themes from The Dark Knight endure: the grisly, grey cityscape; the high-level corruption; the ability of evil to permeate an infrastructure, co-opt, amass ‘til-death loyalists, operate under the eyes of high-tech, panoptic surveillance; and the last of these points never compromises credibility in a crazy-supervillians-and-their-mindless-followers kind of way, because it is far too relevant in this post 9/11 world. Of equal relevance is the uneven distribution of wealth, demonstrated through Bane’s dominance of Batman, which resonates back to their opposite upbringings. Bane’s attack on the stock market, and his co-operation with immoral tycoons, the stupefyingly sexy Catwoman’s resentment of Wayne’s fortune, and the prisoner’s post-coup sentencing of the rich, also all reflect the faltering economy and the contention over bankers’ bonuses etc, and it is these features that ground the trilogy, and allow for Batman’s ludicrous and cool array of equipment, because, maybe, sort of, soon, something like this, could - though won’t - happen. 

 I had read the negative reviews of The Dark Knight Rises before seeing it, but even if I hadn’t, I could have predicted the fine points of their denigrations. Bane isn’t The Joker. No, he isn’t, well observed. Batman’s presence is insufficient. I think the whole point is that Batman has to be defeated and cast away, not only for Bane’s mayhem to proliferate unchecked, but because what separates Batman from and elevates him above every other superhero is that he is wholly human, with no superhuman abilities, but plenty of ghosts and shortcomings, and his fallibility has never been so striking as in this outing. You can’t hear what Bane’s saying through his mask. Yes you can. Listen. All of the important stuff is perfectly audible; and, in addition, the articulate, docile voice, grossly distorted, somehow accents his terrifying presence. All of the corporate, shareholder subplots are boring and irrelevant. Well, no. They are not prominent enough to be boring, or to slow the story down, and they are relevant to the story, as Wayne/ Batman is attacked and felled through his vast, neglected empire, and I have already spoken of the importance of money to the film and its themes. The ending is ‘Hollywood’ and cheesy. Well, yeah, kind of I guess, but for a cheesy ending it wasn’t entirely predictable, and as well as being fitting, I feel that Nolan (and Batman) have earned it; also, various nuances, such as Michael Cane’s moving performance, at the end and throughout all three films, channel all attention away from any perceived ‘cheesiness’. In my eyes, Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan, like Leonardo Dicaprio, never put their names to a bad film. 

Go and watch it.

Ah, I haven’t written on here in a while and stuff, can’t really think of any concrete topic to construct this entry around, so just gonna have a talk about general incidents/thoughts of the past few weeks.

This morning, probably at about 4 a.m. (it wasn’t light yet but the night’s darkness was softening from pervasive black to indigo), I awoke with a start from a crystal clear dream, terrified. The final, enduring section of the interrupted dream involved me, sprinting across the bottom of a huge, steep field with an enfilade of woodland at the summit. In the dream, I knew I was going to be fired upon, and was, by a sniper, who sent 3 bullets in my direction, all narrowly missing me. I saw the bullets whizz at me from an over-the-shoulder perspective looking up the hill, as well as being able to see first person through my own eyes simultaneously. I had somehow mastered time, and set about splitting off from my in-time self, and rewinding and replaying the incident at will, so that I could find where the sniper was and who he was, and thus devise a plan to amalgamate with my in-time self again, press play on time, and instead of sprinting across the bottom of the field, outflank the sniper’s position and kill him. I never got this far, however, because I was startled from sleep by some drunken psychopath marching up and down our street, screaming obscenities, so loud that it woke up I, Jack, the deepest sleeper in the Milky Way. The espionage of the dream and the horror of wakefulness confused me as I hung halfway between worlds, and I was temporarily convinced that this psychopath was in the house. Before deciding whether or not to unscrew the weights from a dumbbell and put it under my pillow, I fell back to sleep.

A week changes a lot. Last Wednesday I almost got in a scrap at work with some Polaks and Spics over an argument that was barely an argument. I never get angry like that this days, and think it was more to do with how fed up with the job/life I am rather than what my coworkers actually said; good old transference as my mum would say. It was literally seconds from kicking off, but then my boss came and broke it up, just as I was thinking ‘I’m gonna floor the first one who comes at me - hopefully that big-nosed spic - and then I don’t care.’ Today, I went out to work with one of those Polaks (who’s actually Romanian), because I’m taking over his much more profitable round, and he needed to show me the route. He was really sound. I misjudged someone. Shock. What’s funnier is that some tosser in a white van almost killed him and then started beeping and swearing at him, as if it was his fault. We came to some traffic lights and they were going mental at one another. The van driver got out of his van, and then we both got off our bikes and put the kickstands out; the van driver got back in his van and drove off. Enemies to allies in a week.

I’ve decided I’m gonna learn Danish. My reasons are:

1. The Danish girls who visited me on the weekend said it was one of the hardest languages to learn, and I wanna prove them wrong/ learn it in like 4 months and then be like ‘no big deal wassever’

2. Apparently learning a new language improve how brain work n shit

3. I love words

4. Dissertation procrastination

5. Something random to crack on my CV, you know, just for banter

Snakehips fuge!

Well, it’s tomorrow now, and yesterday was the most stressful travelling day since India (6 hour bus ride with shits and chest infection), yet this was worse somehow because the stresses were more westernised. I woke up after a host of uncomfortable dreams. Most of the unconscious mayhem was occurring in a farm’s grounds. There was a bar and someone asked if I could make a gin and tonic but I lost my brain and couldn’t even find the glasses. I was fleeing. At some point I was somewhere else and Joanna Lumley was looking at me naked through a French window and asked me to come see her later. I had a Spanish omelette down at the restaurant and a last walk beside the restrained fury of the dark blue morning sea. Then the rain came. It followed my entire nostos. A lot of men were hacking at the long grass outside my room and it was decidedly surreal. There were a lot of Australians by the front desk waiting for rides and it annoyed me. My ride was a minivan, crammed with about 16 people, struggling impossibly up rocky hills in 1st. The puddles by the roadside were clayred and the canopy glistened lush and verdant. They dropped me not at the port but I had 4 hours to kill so went back to the volunteer house, impressing myself by finding the way first time. No one was there to talk to so I didn’t stay too long. I convinced the maid to let me into the room I’d been in (because I had the shits) under the pretence of a shower. I don’t know what I’ve eaten, but man alive! I don’t feel ill, but food is just pausing in my guts to groan out a death rattle, before making for the exit. I wandered around looking for that eatery place Bashir took me to but couldn’t find it, and quickly got lost. No signs, no logical path out. I described jagged circles through the maze before osmosis got me to the sea. I stopped by one of those promenade mini cafes for brownie and samosas, in that order because I’m so impatient. I met an English woman who’d been volunteering here and there and studies at King’s (small world). She wasn’t horrible, but I took an instant dislike to her. Who can explain instinct? There was just something spiteful in her voice; she somehow didn’t befit her age. Hmm. Anyway, when she got on an earlier ferry I was relieved. And then for my ferry, Jesus Christ. They let us on too early so I was waiting AGES, rain torrential, streaming down the panes like blowdried tears, headache-inducing British Sunday afternoon weather. Sitting inside, packed like sardines, didn’t fill me with confidence. A programme about cheetahs was on, narrated by (I’m fairly sure) Elliot Gould. We finally left port and the sea was rough, really rough, like the boat was leaving the water surface going over waves. I think the driver was going faster to compensate for the late departure. Idiot. I felt sick and had to really stare at the waves, and chew slowly the soft enamels of my teeth. People were puking loudly all around me, coughing and retching, and the place smelled of sick, which didn’t help. I probs wouldn’t have felt half as bad without that. I held out for the coast where the sea was calmer, which finally arrived. In retrospect I knew I’d make it. The rain continued. I was sweaty-backed with stress. The driver picked me up and I was elated, all friendly and relieved. (On the ferry they were showing Home Alone 2. Here’s a thought: if that kid’s such a pragmatic, trap-setting genius, how come he can’t even get on the right plane ay?) The land rover window was down and the fresh air was good. The rain was heavy but peaceful. The day was tired with raining, the grey lucid light streaked as street lamps came on and darkness neared. The traffic was ludicrous. The potholes and mudgrey puddles of the ‘shortcut’ backstreets were mental. Topless men caked in mud were shovelling by the roadside. The traffic didn’t even make sense: cars were driving slow for no reason. The journey took 2 hours, when the outbound trip to the port 3 days ago took 45 minutes. I thanked the driver immensely. Everyone jumped on me how was Zanzibar bla bla bla shit and fucking stressful leave me alone. I was faint with hunger but too stressed and nauseous to eat. People continued to try and engage me but I couldn’t even focus my eyes. I ate what I could and then took a tuk-tuk to the ATM, through the dark bumpy rain and this day just wouldn’t end. It would have been quicker to run, seriously, no exaggeration. The queue at the ATM eyed me suspiciously but I was too tired to care. I had him drop me off at the bar and got on the Konyagi, settling down for the game. — showed up and the English company was nice. I relaxed despite my exhaustion and knew I was drunk because I was flirting outrageously & she’s not fit. The game was flat, as I suspected it might be. How Utd have let this slip I’ll never know. — got talking to a bunch of people I can’t be bothered with & I drank more than I should, sternum burning with spirits, so I walked off home, swigging water, mumbling ‘the body remembers, the body remembers …’

sharingpoetry:

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there…