Some people say Docklands is 'soulless'; excuse me, what does this mean? How on earth can a place have 'soul'? How can you find 'soul' in bricks and mortar, building and streets? And, even more interestingly, what sort of soulless booby insists on his environment having 'soul'? It's people who are meant to have soul; if we're for some reason incapable of this, its going it a bit to try and pass the burden onto our poor insentient neighbourhoods. It's like those people who insist on wearing slogans on their t shirts, yet they haven't got two thoughts to rub together. People do; things are. I may be more of a visual person than a verbal one, but even I've got that one worked out.
So Docklands is as good a place as any for me to live. Its got good shops, and to me that makes it a neighbourhood, though unfortunately Ive got neighbours too. But my life, like most peoples I know, is the room where I work and taxis and the wild west end. You'd be suprised how much of London, real, inner London itself, is actually a collection of dormitory towns. people live where they can afford to live, and play elsewhere; this is just as true of an alleged part of London like Stoke Newington as it is of an honest to God dorm like Ilford.
When I used to voice my dreams of coming to London as an innocent teen, my mother and father would mutter about the 'loneliness' and lack of 'community spirit' extant in our fair capital. Ofcourse, the cretins couldnt see that this was red rag to a bull time to any solitary, embarassed adolescent worth their salt. (whats that mean?) The sheer, moletn, golden joy of not being known! not being watched! Being born again just the way you wanted to be! the perfection of loneliness!
In fact it didnt turn out that way. Before I took up wit Jill the Knife and moved out to me riverside palazzo, i lived in a broom cupboard over a shop in Southampton Row. Now you look at Southampton Row; its shops isnt it? its shops with traffic in the middle. its central, its commercial, its solitaire heaven.
Wrong! above those shops are hundreds of apartments, great and small. Now your neighbours are easy enough to keep at arms length; you just stiff them. You dont need anything from them , do you? But the shopkeepers, thats different. You do need stuff from them, obviously. I mean, I can live without the milk of human kindness any day, but I definately need something to stick in my coffee when I awake. I was young and healthy, for goodness sake; I needed cigarettes, vodka, pot noodles and all other basic provisions. So I had to have some sort of relationship with local shopkeepers.
When I say relationship, I meant like 'please' and 'thankyou' and the occasional smile. Did I ever have the wrong number! I dont know if you've ever watched postman pat, this kids puppet show, but it was very popular when I was at school and we'd smoked too much dope. Anyway postman pat lives in this mythical English village called Greendale, so ofcourse everyones real tight with everyone else: Mrs Goggins, Alf Thompson, Miss Hubbard, Major Forbes, Mrs Pottage, the Reverend Timms.
Excuse me, did I say 'mythical'? Well, I was wrong! Because, within three weeks of moving into what I thought was my own padded cell in the asphalt jungle, London West Central, in the roaring traffic's boom, I discovered that I had in fact moved to Greendale! Yes Postman Pat himself was on a sabbatical, and the faces here were of varied hue, and not the queasy putty pink of the puppets. But hot damn is that community spirit, that friendliness, that (some would say) pushiness wasn't thicker on the ground than Hubba Bubba.
Item: cute young girl at a newsagents next door asks me if im a model. Yes I know!1 i couldnt believe it either. goaded I let slip im an art student. For some reason, this lights the touchpaper and from here on in the comic genious of Carla and her six co-workers lnows no limits. Routinely, infront of up to twenty paying customers Im asked if I've cut my ear off yet. Im asked with mandatory leer, if I 'do nudes' and if so where do I put my brushes? One of the brighter employees seems particularly interested in 'action painting' and repeatedly enquires, like twice a day, whether I am wont to strip off my clothing, cover myself in paint and roll about on a large sheet of paper. Just passing the shop, I am regaled with cries of 'Oi Picasso!' I end up in the surreal position of walking through three streets to get a pint of early morning milk rather than go next door and become part of the living, breathing London story.
You might say, 'Oh, they were just being sexists! Harassing a single man!' But they weren't. Three of the gang were men, and two of those were black. And besides, I saw this routine pulled with so many people, most of them women. Exhausted young doctors were mercilessly teased about cold stethoscopes and being struck off for sexual misconduct, Earnest young lawyers suffered through light years of banter about 'briefs' and exactly what the ywore under their gowns. I once saw a vicar vomit on the shop floor from sheer nervs after a sustained campaign of insinuation vis-a^-vis the Virgin Birth. there was a shocked silence before they sent out for sawdust, and i realised that this apparent tormenting of certain customers was actually meant as a compliment. We were regulars, in a city of randomness, and this constant reference to the hilarity of our professions was a rather manic, but basically well-meaning, gesture of recognition. In a small community, such incessant harping on our individual identity wouldnt have been necessary; here, for some reason, it was.
Somewhere around the fifth day of sobriety, I was queuing up to pay for my booty when i sensed something about to blow, and big, with this troupe of too-long frustrated comedians. David and Claudine her main feed, kept catching the others eye, then looking towards one of us punters with one united gaze. Then they'd snap out of it and glare crankily at eachother, like illicit lovers blaming the other one for putting temptation in the way.
I really thought we were safe when a young nurse from middlesex who I knew by sight from seeing her in the shop came in. i dont know if you've seen people who've been up all night on drugs trying to go out and function the next day; well, it doesnt matter a bit whether theyve brushed their teeth, combed their hair and shined their shoes - they're different. The texture of their skin is different, their eyes are different, their movements are different. they seem not like a person, but like an alien pod trying to pass as a person.
Thats the way this young nurse, gita, looked. but she hadn't been on drugs, She'd been doing life and death, and it showed. I don't know if she'd been working on a birth, or an abortion, or a painful death. but her wild eyes, and the purply sheen in her brown skin, signalled one thing: that she'd been out there the night before to a place where most of us won't go until we're forced there. And even when we're there, giving birth or dying, we won't really know whats happening because people like Gita will be doing our dirty work for us, and we'll be flying high on morphine. Well, she'd been there stone-cold sober, looking at the whole horrifying thing for twelve hours non-stop, and you could tell that it had driven her a little mad. but mad in that utterly selfless way that only nurses can do; all she wanted was a cup of tea and she'd be ready to go all over again.

masochist

He smiles when you hurt him
Because all he has ever known is pain.

Saras mask dedicated to lustlost

The first time I saw you I thought that I
Would just make another
And then I realized that in life you were
Just another mirror
The first words you spoke were the ones that I
Vaguely remember
But tied in a knot all the times that we
Haven't spent together

And is it your face
That's got you down?
Or is it your mind
When no one's around?


And is it your face
That's got you down
Or is it your mind
When no one's around?

And now when she leaves in the dark
Behind amber waves of cancer
A stroll in the park is a walk from her
Hopes to be a dancer
A light at the end of a tunnel that's
Been going on forever
You don't understand why these people
Are looking unfamiliar

So take my hand
I will walk you around in a mask
Why don't you tell me now

Is it your face
That's got you down?
Or is it your mind
When no one's around?
(Thinking thoughts of a suicide)

And is it your face
That's got you down?
Or is it your mind
When no one's around?

And now when you leave in the dark
Inside everybody's answers
You're planning a way to abandon us
And live your life the way you like
Avoiding the urge to go sulk
In your remedial appearance
But Sara I only expect to see
The whole thing a little bit clearer

So take my hand
I will walk you around in a mask
Why don't you tell me now

The end of the line

When the sirens flash is gone
And were left to carry on
All the memories are too few

When the pastors music plays
And that casket rolls away
I could live again if you
Just stay alive for me

Now that you are dead and gone
And Im left to carry on
I could never smile cause you
Wont stay alive for me

Finally
Your final resting day
Is without me
I weep
And think of brighter days
What about me?

You cant take back the one mistake
That still lives on after life, it takes
In that one day that changed our lives
And bitter memories are left behind

You cant take back the one mistake
That still lives on after life, it takes
In that one day that changed our lives
And bitter memories are left behind, oh yeah

Please stay now, you left me here alone
Please stay, I cant make it on my own,

Rest in peace Andrew Ireland. I knew you for a brief moment in this split second of an existence.

RIGHT

So i could say things are back to normal... but what I mean to say is that im ready to start being normal. When im into the swing of working routine I think I may just sort out that law and history degree!
Has been a strange month, seeing old faces and its just like getting back off summer holidays.
I think I have seen more women this month than I have in the whole year.
Gotta get out there.

Wispa chocolate bars are a bit lovely though...

So I can tolerate the radio again now, after 2 or 3 weeks of listening to ckys new album carver city (its fucking great!) oh blog how I have missed you. Too much partying and being socially alert. I dislike a lot of stuff thats happening around me but the good outweighs the bad BY FUCKING FAR! And I only have time for the good.
I had this wierd idea or mottoe or way of life or whatever.... its like ... praise the good and punish the bad. Its pretty self explanatory but it works on so many levels... i think im going to call it the #'puppy method'#
Cant wait to be working and doing driving lessons. I dont wanna be too old learning to drive.
So my buddy was like so what have you been up to since i last saw you? And i had to answer nothing.... it was a shock to me really even though he was like Yeah just like everyone else! But still its time for me to get moving now. Ive gone for years just seeing what happens and being peaceful. Its time to stop acting so disengaged and seeming plain stupid.
I have decided im going to sort out all the snidy cunts who give funny looks to people and try to sway how people think.
Time to fuck some shit up!!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_millennium_BC

.

To be human is to be curious. And one of the things we are most curious about is how we came to be who we are--how we evolved over millions of years to become creatures capable of inquiring into our own evolution.

memo to self
Read The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE
Ian Tattersall