A story in one page.

“You’re fuckin’, like, bitter, man”
I didn’t have to take that kind of shit from him. The man treated drugs with a devotion usually reserved for religious fanatics. His internet browser was almost inevitably open on porn. Which he would watch, with the volume on, and loud, whenever he felt like it. He lived in a stain covered New England Patriots Jersey, stolen from a box we’d found abandoned at a roadside, one piss-poor summer about two years back. We could’ve taken the whole box. Made a killing on eBay. Spent it all on reconfiguring our biological chemistry. It was cold, wet, and three o’clock in the morning. We could barely be bothered to drive, let alone contemplate fleecing the stuff. In the end, he took one, and we left the rest. Some other poor bastard could take it. Hell, they’d probably be traced anyway. He had no interest in American football whatsoever, aside from the fact he knew it’s real name, Grid Iron, and would bring this up at every given opportunity.

I put my fag out on the wall of his dorm room. At this point, it was so stained with smoke, and god knows what else you could barely see any mark I might’ve made. I dreaded opening the door. The smell of the room was making me sick, but the only light I’d seen for the past three hours was straining desperately through the smoke yellowed curtains, and my sunglasses were lying, trodden on in some field somewhere. The smoke was thick, and acrid. My eyes already weren’t happy. I would take a deep breath, burst out of the room, and get the shades on my crash helmet down as fast as possible. Hopefully, that excuse for a machine outside would start. It was practically held together with wire and tape at this point. The left wing mirror had been reattached several times at this point. The petrol tank was scratched beyond recognition. The exhaust had a huge dent in the side. Damnit, I loved that machine.
“I’ll see you later, I’ll come back, but I need to go”
“You’re leaving?”
“No”
I grabbed my helmet, my jacket, and the chewed up packet of cigarettes I’d been trying not to smoke.

I burst out of his room, shoved the cigarettes into one pocket, with one hand, whilst fumbling for my keys with the other, in the other pocket. My helmet hung from my arm. I smacked it into the doorframe as a left the building. And just as I was fumbling to pull it over my head, I saw her. She lived two doors down from him. She couldn’t stand him, but she took to me. I didn’t take to her. Too much money. Too bubbly. Too.. Too much, I guess. She was pretty good looking, in that kinda standard men’s magazine kinda way. I’d been told to go for it with her God knows how many times, but I just couldn’t. She just got to me. She got five hundred a month from her parents. I got squat. She spent most of it on clubbing, cheap alcoholic drinks I can only really describe as date-rape-ade, and getting her hair done.
“Hey! I haven’..”
“Sorry, I can’t, I gotta”
“Oh, fine, ok”
I barely even heard the last part, I didn’t stop, just barged past, pulling the helmet down firmly over my head, and flicking down the sunshade. She cared too much about what people thought of her. He didn’t give a damn. And he really didn’t. So many people say that, but you know what? He really didn’t.

That was a week and a day ago. He was found, swinging from a rope, from his lightshade. And all I could think of was “Damn, I guess he did care what people thought of him”. That, and how strong the light fitting in his room was.

On the strange situation of my birth

It’s easy to over romanticise the circumstance of my birth. Pristine white hospital walls, the cold, silvery chrome metallic sheen of complicated medical instruments. The handsome, young, clean cut doctor. A strong jaw line, a touch of stubble. The perfect, crystalline, bead of sweat that forms on his forehead, which creases slightly, enough to show a certain premature wisdom, but no sign of aging. The young nurse, flaxen haired, perfectly bronzed skin, dutifully wiping it away. Full pouting lips. A look of awe, tinged with adoration, and the possibility of pure animal lust, hidden beneath overly made up eyes.


That, as these things always are, was not the case. Enclosed by the worn dirty beige of an NHS operating room, I was torn away, clumsily pulled from my mothers womb, scarlet red, bloodied, and sickly. My father, (at this point still sporting a thick, dark head of hair, which would, eventually, be destroyed by twenty years, and three sons.) after being shooed away by various staff, peers in through the window, not out of concern so much, but out of a morbid fascination with seeing his young wife, eleven years his junior, and still in her mid twenties, cut open, and his first child, his first son, torn from the fleshy tomb which had incarcerated him, had incarcerated me, for what was fast becoming the best part of a year. No sooner as I had been moved from one small dark space was I plunged into a rather large, and exceptionally bright one. Hooked up to tubes, and machines, it was if my body was regulated by an outside force. I may as well have never been born at all.

Of course, this is my father speaking. Me, I don’t remember a thing about it. As far as consciousness is concerned, I have always been. And will probably continue to, till as long as I can remember.

Are you pissed off? You should be.

Apathetic fuckers of the world. Self proclaimed seers. New age musical gurus.

Fuck you all.

Every day we move a step closer to being not much more than bacteria in the petri dish of the politicians. The newspapers preach hate, the BBC fear, and the public feined nonchalance, to cover ignorance. Even music has lost its power. People who claim to love music are usually too busy working out how to get their skin tight jeans over the stick wedged up their arse by so called "indie" record lables and the NME.

You want to hear indie? Go find a band sleeping on kitchen floors after ever gig they play, recording in some shitty rented garage with instruments held together with wire, ducttape and sweat.

Complaining about topup fees? How about you do something about it, instead of moaning, then spending all your loan cash on Vodka and Redbull mixers till you can find something to stick your penis, or to stick it's penis in you. Fucking do something.

Kevin Smith, and a second year in Canterbury

Here you go, what people read blogs for. Pointless emo prognostication.

I can practically see my life turn into a Kevin Smith movie. Fuck, we even dress like it. I've got my main characters, I've got my supporting cast, I've got my vaguely alternative fucking soundtrack. Now where is my shitty happy ending?

Fingers fumble across strings, across flesh, across keys
It fills the small holes, where I’m told things should be
To squeeze each note, each gasp, into longing emptiness
And reverberate around heavily breathing souls

Choked up with cigarette smoke, and other small things
Designed to block harsh light from getting in
Absorb wooded tones, and metal scratchings
And drink one more glass

Of a clear spirit, prone to turn misty