goes to Bark Cat Bark. Have a listen.

Or a read.

It’s good.

a st andrews breakfast - two cups of coffee and two marlboro lights, looking at 9am as it trails warm pools in its cloak across the valley opposite. brecon has never looked so pretty as regina sings, and sings and sings, daffs dancing all around me like teenagers at a concert waving unsteady lighter flames. i am in hiding, on holiday from life as we know it - making shows of trading blows, just hoping no one knows. wave to postman - a ludicrous parochial pleasantville truman show wave. i’ve died and gone to cliché. this is the antithesis to mr bergamot strange and mister beasley toast jr. this is the place where time comes before its next posting. no rainbows in the sky - no rain - so let’s have another cup of coffee, and let’s have another marlboro light. duty free, don’t you know. i see my life in a grey non-polyester hoodie - all grainy in sepia like a sunday morning duvet, snuggling caricatures of everything once ridiculous, trading absurdities for the trite. even johnny rockefeller is looking for a silver lining.

13 chapters. 125,327 words. Two and a half years. And several grisly deaths, naturally.

How better to quietly celebrate actually finishing a novel for the first time, than listening to Together in Electric Dreams, drinking a can of Becks lager and gnawing a slab of chocolate?

I’d like you to meet my new cellmate, Mr Chauncey Rapscallion. I found him lying facedown, half drunk behind the radiator. He says he likes it there, that the fluff is comfy and the heat stops him thinking about crows. He’s going to keep me company during the rest of my sentence. Tomorrow night we’re having a Canasta and sock-folding party. Come.

From the journal…

Friday 22nd: The first day of summer

I watch the leaves wave like abandoned wives beyond the glass as clouds roll majestically away behind them - moving west, always ever further west. I sit unblinking in my almost empty room and watch the world move, change and grow - the clouds cruising away like a mighty fleet. I try not to feel somehow left behind.

Saturday 23rd: A week today the clocks go forward.

It snowed this morning. The clock has only now just folded past twelve. I lay in bed and watched the clouds fall in graceful showers as if the world and its thoughts had slowed. Then came the gales. Then, soon after, the sun. I lay in my warm sheets amidst the chaos of my soon-to-no-longer-be room and watched the sunlight sparkle from the snow-speckled rooftops like perfectly polished glass. Like looking at the world through a diamond. It was the purest light I’ve seen.

Betty and The Key have now moved out and most of my stuff is in a lock-up in Romford. I feel like a little like I should be wearing a wedding dress and spouting misandry. Have started mooching about the place and sitting in my empty former flatmates’ rooms sighing whistfully at coffee rings. Cats do that sort of thing when another cat dies.

Sunday 24th: Variations on time as a theme

Today, clearing out my baubles and trinkets from my old metal cabinet, I found my old watch. Time stopped as I found myself clutching it. The watch stared up at me, its hands fixed into an awkward easy smile. Old friends. I gently blew dust from its face and, on a whim, opened it up to see what time had preserved inside. With all the serendipity of a text adventure, I found a spare battery in another drawer that fitted it perfectly. It is now wrapped snugly about my right arm as I type, breathing in the fresh minutes, the hours, as the seconds tick backwards in a steady anti-clockwise heartbeat. As of today, I once again control time.

Wednesday 27th: All of these voices

I sat in the pub as The Key went to the bar. He’d come back to the old flat from his new one, where both of them are settling in. Suddenly I felt alone. People sat around me living their lives, eating, arguing, flirting with each other. Already I felt like a stranger in my local. The Black Moods were slowly soaking into me, like a coat tail touching dirty water. Before I could wonder what would become of me I head a familiar sound, friendly words - a song. It was Regina Spektor singing Fidelity. I smiled and sang along, playing an unseen piano atop the table, indifferent to the strange looks from stranger people and The Key as he returned to the table with my drink.

Thursday 28th

I watch a single raindrop sparkling on a leaf outside my window - brilliant brief flashes of of blue through to green, purple - there’s a yellow, a burnt orange. Back to blue. Subliminal snapshots of infinite colour, reflecting the sun, the universe - all in a tiny opal of water.

Friday 29th: All the strange, strange creatures

I loathe the West London sky. I stare at it, the past beyond it and myself like a traveller from the future incased in plastic amber and glass. I catch my reflection - is it smiling more than me or less? I close my eyes and let words and noises be whatever they want, not what we hear them as. “The next station is almost there. Change here for the Fault Line. Please ensure to take all your problems with you when leaving the train.”

Saturday 30th

exhausted. mother. tired. hungry. feel like bursting into tears. feel like getting drunk. feel like not feeling anything. feeling too much. done so much, survived so much, got rid of so much. so much still to do.

Tuesday: April Fool’s Day

My first morning in her house. Tried to have a much needed lie in after ten days of four hours sleep. Woken up at 7:30 and again at 9:00 with cold trivial demands as if they’re the most important thing ever. Couldn’t fulfill them. “Oh,” came the reply. Pulled the duvet over my head as the door slammed. Your own problems are a luxury. Independence is not a right. Your feelings are no longer significant. Thought about last night’s discovery - how I can no longer afford to leave. How I’m stuck here, away from my friends, away from love and joy and life. Pretended I didn’t exist. Felt nothing. Suddenly fitted in.