Diary
Stuffing it ceremonially into the milk jug
“Minimalism”, I once wrote in these very pages, “is anorexia projected outwards”. This suspicion that my ongoing dedication to asceticism might be a mental illness was further demonstrated this week.
“It’s pathological!” my girlfriend teases me after I decline a carrier bag at the pharmacy. As a result of doing so, I had been forced [...]
The damning evidence of a further level of preparation
On our way to sunbathe in the park, my girlfriend and I chanced across three uniformed policemen enthusiastically singing ‘Jingle Bells’ by the roadside.
One of the officers was even keeping their rhythm with a set of sleigh bells, adding quite the festive vibe to an already merry scene. I’m not sure which was the [...]
Typographic bounty hunters
Reading a library copy of Haruki Murakami’s South of the border, West of the sun today, I noticed that someone had fixed a typographic error in the book by penciling an ‘r’ into the misprinted word, ‘unb oken’.
The manual correction of typos in library books strikes me as a slightly odd thing to do but [...]
Where Delhi Belly comes from
“Suppose you chomp down on an abscess and shatter your jaw,” says my dad in the cautionary tone of someone who knows about life or has at least been told a lot about it.
“Or suppose you get completely paralysed from the neck down. A proper superman job. How are you going to get home then?”
We [...]
Arsevoiced and scatterfashion
People sometimes ask me why I have such a stupid voice. “Why do you have such a stupid voice?” they ask. “Why, why, why, why, why?”
It is not an unreasonable question. My voice sounds like two Mancunian butchers trying to hold a conversation while crossing a corrugated bridge on a tandem. “Yah, yah, yah,” I [...]
Electric doors all over the universe
The guy with whom I share some office space often leaves his “silver bullet” pen behind. Apparently capable of writing both underwater and in outerspace, the bullet is a very silly and ostentatious piece of stationery, resembling a Cyberman suppository.
Never having a pen myself, I inevitably make use of the silver bullet in Steve’s absence. [...]
The froth of his Ruddles
From the very periphery of my vision, I saw someone sit down at the table next to mine.
Reading a book, I was only dimly aware of his presence at first, but it soon occurred to me that the man was staring into the side of my head, like an off-duty phrenologist who doesn’t believe in [...]
Not simply reusable but resealable
I had deduced from their behaviour that adults desired two things: money and small reusable bags.
One type of small reusable bag was the sort of airtight plastic bag in which you might store an uneaten sandwich in the refrigerator. This type of bag was not simply reusable but resealable, potentially making it the ultimate in [...]
Drinking fortified wine from an egg cup. Laughing.
Depending on when you asked, his family had either died in a cult suicide or had been poisoned by exposure to radioactive material. On another occasion, they had been murdered by an angry milkman.
Whatever happened to Bladders’ family, he now lived with his uncle in a damp-smelling semi-detached house. They lived in squalor. I once [...]
Poop hatch with a jeweller’s eyeglass
Applying for immigration into another country is the bureaucratic equivalent of surrendering your bum for scrutiny by stormtroopers. Officiously they would examine the wrinkles of your poop hatch with a jeweller’s eyeglass, checking for traces of mortal turpitude with the careful precision of Dr. David Banner putting the finishing touches on a ship in a [...]
