February 2012
24 posts
Good Heavens
The house-mates are preparing for the Brits by playing some Ed Sheeran and eating pancakes. I’m now listening to some Dowland thru the headphones and reading Walter Raleigh’s History of the World, just to bloody proliferate the gulf. Three floors, several centuries, and two very, very different worlds.
“Within the dream, you said:
Let us kiss then,
In this room, in this bed,
But...”
– Philip Larkin, X, (from The North Ship)
“Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I...”
– A.E. Housman, ‘Because I Liked You Better’
“Love is all there is, it makes the world go ’round
Love and only love, it can’t...”
– Bob Dylan, ‘I Threw It All Away’
Deceptions.
Do I fall asleep this evening to Dylan’s Nashville Skyline or Arab Strap’s Philophobia? And what is all the fuss about The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock? I have just re-read it and I find it extremely depressing. Women don’t find me attractive now, and I am 21! How old is Prufrock? I’ve always thought him in his forties, at least, I think, and he’s concerned. Gosh....
“Yes, Clarissa will have loved a woman. Clarissa will have kissed a woman, only...”
– Michael Cunningham, ‘The Hours’
“Beside him, on the grass, lay a small leather suitcase with gold catches....”
– Rupert Thomson, Death of a Murderer, 2007.
“I saw some piglets suckling their dead mother. After a short while they...”
– Confucius
“Then music drooped. And what came back to mind
Was not its previous habit, but...”
– Philip Larkin, ‘The March Past’
“A pity she does not exist, a shame he’s not a fag,
The only girl I ever...”
– The Magnetic Fields, ‘Andrew in Drag’
“‘Yes, I’m quite looking forward to Wednesday,’
Said the boy with the flaxen...”
– The Boy With The Flaxen Hair
January 2012
41 posts
1 tag
“Sutherland loathed money - partly because he belonged to an old Virginia family...”
– Andrew Holleran, ‘Dancer From The Dance’
Reasons For Attendance
Last night, or, rather, this morning, I turned twenty-one on a sticky dance-floor of a hotel function room on Lord Street, Southport. It was my brother’s friend’s eighteenth, and my sister & I stumbled along. I certainly saw a different side of life; here where the youth dress up, cavort, caress, drink shots of tequila, never pints, dance to whatever is in the charts. Strange to be...
Can people add songs to this motorway (English...
Half Man Half Biscuit, M6-ster
The Long Blondes, Separated by Motorways
Darren Hayman, Who Hung The Monkey
Tom Robinson, 2-4-6-8 Motorway
Suede, Picnic by the Motorway
Jah Wobble, A13 (thanks to cadiumgreen)
The Kinks, Motorway
Wilko Johnson, Ice on the Motorway
Doves, M62 Song
All motorway related songs are acceptable; so if a track mentions say a service station then it will be eligible...
“‘Sixpence a week’, says the girl to her lover,
‘Aunt used to...”
– Thomas Hardy, ‘By Her Aunt’s Grave’
If my sister read this she would say something along the lines of, ‘Ooh, burn.’
“In the monotonous village where he works
an employee in a general store;
so...”
– Constantine Cavafy, ‘In the Monotonous Village’
“With only two terms of his undergraduate course left, Larkin still had no idea...”
– Andrew Motion, ‘Philip Larkin; A Writer’s Life’
“Of College labours, of the Lecturer’s room
All studded round, as thick as...”
– William Wordsworth, ‘The Prelude’
“The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what...”
– Shakespeare, ‘Henry IV, Part II’
There's nothing worse than hearing about somebody...
Last night I dreamt that I was bought on as a substitute for Notts. County and the fans started shouting something about Joanna Newsom. It’s okay for you to like Joanna Newsom, but do not expect us to. Hooray, hip, hip, clap, clap, shout, shout, hooray.
For the record, I don’t like JN.
Nothing to be Said
This week has been very strange. It seems to have passed by without ever beginning. What have I done? Condescended to work for an hour or so in the library each day, watch Nottingham Forest lose to Leicester City in the F.A. Cup, develop a fondness for tomato sandwiches, attempt to get into Thomas Tallis, attempt to get into Radio 3, attempt to get into The Archers, stop reading after ten pages. I...
“There’s people who can’t spell ‘weird’ right
Driving ‘round with...”
– Half Man Half Biscuit, ‘Turned Up, Clocked On, Laid Off’
“I’m filling up at Rothersthorpe North
Good Girl has broken my heart
She took...”
– Half Man Half Biscuit, ‘Keeping Two Chevrons Apart’
Home is so Sad
This afternoon I decided to follow the west-wind along the river until I came to a pub. It was a nice walk. The sun was low and bright, and it hurt your eyes to look up but the silvery reflection on the water was quite beautiful, and with children feeding the ducks, and rowers passing me by at a frequent pace, you could say that I was quite content with the world.
The Ferry Inn was the pub that...
“Hoovering the stairs for the gas man
Was I thought a step too far,
But a clean...”
– A light, comic verse I have written just now as exercise in writing with different forms.
The character is a good friend, and I probably shouldn’t have written it, but it is all true.
I shall probably soon delete for fear of discovery!
Late night observation:
Bus lanes are constantly abused by motorists.
