Pottery Corner 3

Countryside


The last ember’s slow glide
Long fingered patchwork cast deep
In the yolk of those western lines
In birch we lay, and dandelions
Dapples on our breath, eyes wide
“I’m game.” She said
So I shot her.


Lupe the Loop


My girlfriend has lycanthropic tendencies.
Which doesn't mean she's charitable.
It means she bites my head off.
Once a month.
When she's feeling iritable.

Pottery Corner 2

Darwin Was Right


I think my teddy bear
Might be a real bear
Because he ate my sister
I saw him twist her
And stuff her in his belly
Just like they do on telly
And now she’s dead
My little bed
Is more cramped than it used to be
When it was just me.

Got myself a walking, talking,
Eating, growling, living bear
Gotta do my best to please him
Just coz he’s
Carnivorous

Mum, can Sam stay over tonight?

Shit Happens

The Metropolitan Police are about to get a very public kicking for shooting a man who had nothing to do with the attempted bombing of commuters on the London underground. Heads will roll. Accusations of racist targeting will fly.

We arm our police because we want protection. When we hand them weapons, we also hand them the burden of choice about of whether or not to shoot. Anyone who thinks they might do a better job under such circumstances should feel free to contact the Metropolitan Police Service and apply to become a police officer.

At times such as these, when lunatic bombers are attempting to blow up every bystander they can find, it’s not hard to see why someone who rushes into a crowded underground station, vaults over barriers and fails to stop when challenged by up to twenty agents could be mistaken for a bomber. Innocent or not, if twenty people with guns challenged me to stand still and put my hands up I might have the sense to comply.

But now he’s dead, and heads will roll. If he had been yet another would be bomber (which would have made him the fifth that week), we might have been looking at an awful lot more than one death. The trouble with giving people guns to protect us is that sometimes people get killed.

Here is a list of some other people who have been killed on public transport despite having no intention to bomb innocent civilians:

JAMES ADAMS, 32
SAMANTHA BADHAM, 36
LEE BAISDEN, 34
PHIL BEER, 22
ANIA BRANDT, 43
MICHAEL STANLEY BREWSTER, 52
CIARAN CASSIDY, 22
RACHELLE LIENG SIONG CHUNG FOR YUEN, 27
BENEDETTA CIACCIA, 30
ELIZABETH DAPLYN, 26
JONATHAN DOWNEY, 34
RICHARD ELLERY, 21
ANTHONY FATAYI-WILLIAMS, (Age not given)
DAVID FOULKES, 22
ARTHUR EDLIN FREDERICK, 60
KAROLINA GLUCK, 29
JAMIE GORDON, 30
RICHARD GRAY, 41
GANZE GUNORAL, 24
LEE HARRIS, 30
GILES HART, 55
MARIE HARTLEY, 34
MIRIAM HYMAN, 31
OJARA IKEAGWU, 55
SHAHARA A ISLAM, 20
NEETU JAIN, 37
EMILY ROSE JENKINS, 24
ADRIAN JOHNSON, 37
HELEN JONES, 27
SUSAN LEVY, 53
SAM LY, 28
SHELLEY MATHER, 26
MIKE MATSUSHITA, 37
JAMES MAYES, 28
ANNE MOFFAT, 48
COLIN MORLEY, 52
BEHNAZ MOZAKKA, 48
JENNIFER NICHOLSON, 24
MIHAELA OTTO, 46
SHYANUJA PARATHASANGARY, 30
ANAT ROSENBERG, 29
PHILIP RUSSELL, 28
ATEEQUE SHARIFI, 24
IHAB SLIMANE, 24
CHRISTIAN SMALL, 28
FIONA STEVENSON, 29
MONIKA SUCHOCKA, 23
CARRIE TAYLOR, 24
MALA TRIVEDI, (Age not given)
LAURA WEBB, 29
WILLIAM WISE, (Age not given)
GLADYS WUNDOWA, 50

This isn’t a game. Islamic terrorists want you to die because our Prime Minister backed America’s invasion of Iraq. Interesting that nobody thought to blow themselves up in Baghdad when Saddam was waging full scale war on Iranian muslims, or when his son was torturing Iraq’s soccer team to death for losing the World Cup.

An innocent death is a tragedy, but to allow the incident to be manipulated to weaken our walls would be suicide. It’s time to close ranks and protect the people who have stood up to protect us.

Pottery Corner 1

Pullman

I told her I was a writer,
None of your lighter weight minds.
Mine's a white wine she said,
Adding that she didn't usually.
She said she loved to read,
It filled the need for finer times.
I asked her for a favourite line,
But she changed the subject.

David's going on about writing again. Like he thinks he invented it, or something. Tsk!

I had some more honest and frank feedback over the last couple of days. Namely that one reader doesn’t like the method of italics for speech and the lack of quote marks, and that another reader thought the last chapter was a bit disjointed and contrived in that it seemed to have been put together just to get the characters where they needed to be. Can I just state for the record that negative comments are a GOOD thing and I welcome them as much, if not more than praise.

That said, the dodgy speech notation is staying, until someone convinces me there’s money in doing otherwise! But I have to admit that I’m very disappointed with Chapter 12. Originally I was going to make the whole thing a long Glyco show, but decided against it. What’s more annoying is that I can’t talk about the ideas I have and sound them off people because it would give away too much of the plot. That said, I’ve been having a really good think about the way the story is going and I’ve decided that a lot of my more recent ideas are an awful lot more exciting and believable than those which I’d originally planned.

Writing a long story is a funny old process, and it’s rather like being in love, (if you can remember that far back.) You’re free to go about your normal daily business, but everything you do is tempered by that background thought that there’s always a little part of your mind on something more interesting. I like to daydream, so I’m no stranger to using my imagination. But when I try to force ideas out, none come. I can sit down with a paper and draw flow charts and wiring diagrams, and nothing happens. The only truly creative process occurs when I don’t try.

There’s a point, when I’m really not making any effort at all, like when I’m drifting off to sleep or if I haven’t been disturbed by a phone call or a tenant for a while, that I stop thinking in words, and start thinking in pictures. Now, I’m not for one moment suggesting that I’m unusual in this. Cognitive Behavioural Therapists mention this transition as a method of helping insomniacs spot when they’re ready to sleep. It’s just that I’ve realised recently that it’s only the ideas that have been conceived in this state that have actually been worth a damn.

What’s really odd is that I actually get into that state when I’m writing. Things such as Dog flu and such like. They just happen. No effort required, because I’m having the dream and writing it down. My head’s full of the images of the action. I think for a while, let it all go on, and then just put it down on paper. It means that half the time I spend on i-con is as close to asleep as makes no odds.

I got an absolutely whizzo idea today, and I was driving, listening to Hard-Fi. And then – Pop! I’m watching a little girl in a field of bluebells talking to an angel. Just like that. Where did it come from? What made the idea pop up like that? But (and this is what’s so much fun about the whole experience) now that the thought’s there, I simply can’t imagine i-con working without it.

Anyway, I’m putting a quality control warning on Chapter 12 and I’ll get round to re-doing it quite soon. The difficult part for me is finding that peaceful time to write well. Fortunately I’m in the type of job that allows me to occupy myself as I see fit, but on average I’m distracted at least once in a paragraph while I try to write at work, and writing at home is tricky with the Boy’s new found love of Command and Conquer.

But I’ve learned my lesson. From now on I’ll be watching for chapters written without enough care, and I’ll be making more of an effort (if that’s the right word) not to force out words and situations for the sake of it. See if you can spot the change over the next few weeks.

I am right. You are dead.

At 08:51 this morning I was sorting out keys and logging the ones that had been taken out for the days work.

By 08:56 I was hand-writing my report for the weekly Council meeting that day, and at 09:17 I was just finishing typing it up.

At 09:47, thirteen minutes before the meeting with the Council Housing team, I was buying biscuits so we would have something to munch on. I sat in the car and ate a Topic.

You can see what other people were doing at the same time here.

Last week, the world watched London as thousands poured into Hyde Park to be part of the Live8 concert and to add their support for the political movement to bring pressure on the G8 leaders to redress the inequalities of rich and poor and bring about an end to the unfair trading system that has held the development of the third world back for so long.

Yesterday, the world watched the Olympic Selection Committee choose London to host the Olympic games in 2012. Nelson Mandela publicly backed the city's bid:

"I can't think of a better place than London to hold an event that unites the world. The Games in London will inspire athletes as well as young people around the world and ensure that the Olympic Games remain the dream for future generations."

Today, the world watched London again. It was the day that "if" became "when".

The good, the bad. The selfish, the generous. Academic, Illiterate. All converged on that single point in time when somebody decided their lives were forfeit in the name of a righteous cause that was great enough to justify the pain of a family who would not see them again. A cause that was so noble that the act placing a premature full stop on somebody's life and dreams became an irrelevant concern. The service of a God so vengeful, so unforgiving, that He would welcome into Paradise the soul of any man strong enough to spill the blood of children in his name.

The dead-end dogmatism of I am right, you are wrong, has circled back since the contest of ideologies and once again attained its apotheosis of I am right; you are dead. The monologue of unilateralism constantly aspires to the mantle of The Chosen and of course, further dichotomises the world, inviting us, on pain of consequences, to choose between 'them' and 'us'. We must, in other words, reject the pronouncements of a George Bush in the ultimatum: 'you are either with us and against the terrorists, or you are on the side of the terrorists', just as strongly as we repudiate Osama bin Laden's 'The world is now clearly divided into two - the world of the followers of Islam against that of infidels and unbelievers'.(Wole Soyinka, "Climate of Fear" Reith Lectures 2004. Click here for full transcript.)

As much as everyone wanted to get out of that City today, when I first found out what was happening I just wanted to get back there. I know it was a stupid thought, but it's how it was. I've heard of horses running into burning barns and now I think I get it. I found out about the news less than ten seconds before I called Pepps to make sure everyone was still alive.

A very long ten seconds.