Dear Octopus,
Yesterday was a bleak and gloomy Sunday afternoon. As I sat on a rickety bench in our local Iranian laundrette, trying (and failing) to read a book over the repetitive watery thudding of various antiquarian machines, I thought: 'this is fucking grim.' And that made me think about the phases of our lives as they unfurl around us; some grim, some not so. I'd like to think - after all -that having lived in our nation's capital for five years now that I'd be above this sort of thing. The seed of this particularly abstract thought was planted by my mother Vino Squid, who told me recently that our lives are dictated by chapters; some short, some long, and as such one should never be afraid of ending one and starting another. Don't dwell on the past, was her point. I believe I made reference to it in Part I.
As anyone who knows me in anything other than passing should immediately realise, this situation called for a diagram. But with my sketching skills comprehensively and irreversibly depleted by the fact that I have absolutely no natural talent for it, my inadequacy forces me to make do with a description.
As follows:
2003-2006: The Apple Tree
Three years of university. Cereal, daytime television. X-Box. Beer, mixed with cider, mixed with blackcurrant cordial. Red biros circling illegible notes. Summers working in an actual office (how grown up), evenings drinking red wine (how grown up) and listening to the Toad play guitar under the apple tree. Road trips, elaborate drinking games, scourges of paranoia and a crippling lack of self-confidence. The Postal Service, Bright Eyes, Coldplay. Bright sunny days viewed from the bottom of an unusually dark hole.
2006-2008: The Bar Under The Bridge
London baby. University, but with money. Work hard / play hard our way to Inferno's: boozing inside, fighting outside, drudgery, a girlfriend, the lagging realisation that this is not just another semester between holidays. Ironing shirts of an evening whilst watching reality television. Our landlady's depressing painting hanging on the kitchen wall. Cheap dates in cheap restaurants, cheap talk. Interim appraisals at the bottom of the ladder. Curries on neon Brick Lane, Sunday evenings on Peckham Rye. The art student who ran the shitty pub quiz in the Bar Under The Bridge, his stupid fucking haircut, getting asked to leave for calling him the c-word (he so was). Jamie T, Regina Spektor, The Perishers. The last vestiges of us all living together, now that we are here.
2009-2010: The Loft
A loft on Lydden Grove. New housemates. Saturday Kitchen, eating fish finger sandwiches. Lots of cooking programmes. Nights out in Artesian Well, being ignored. Social networking. A winter so cold there was frost on the inside of my window. A winter so cold I could see my breath when I was lying in bed. Chain-smoking with worry. A fear that something is changing, and can never be undone. Kissing on the Waterloo footbridge. Cat Power, The XX, Joan Armatrading. A book, a new life, and you.
2009-2011: The House That Love Built (And Forgot)
The shared house, the fallout. Strangers. A hospital of living. Bicycles stored in hallways, toilet roll in cupboards. The gradual osmosis of change; Honksy and Pongo sauntering in on a dry Saturday. Nicknames, takeaways, house parties spent mixing martinis for sweet, pretentious children. Lavatorial humour laughing on the sofa. Sunday walks in Wimbledon Park, sleeping under the trees. Dates with very lovely, very sad women. Promotions, roof terraces, nights at the theatre. Coming home from Hoxton Square warehouse parties in black cabs, sidling slyly through the peach-cream dawn. Bon Iver, Laura Marling, Grizzly Bear. Writing letters to someone who cannot read them, thinking it okay.
What next?
(Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't involve that fucking laundrette. He keeps over-starching my collars and I'm just not standing for it.)
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Monday, 31 October 2011
Monday, 24 October 2011
The Only Way To Be Happy Is To Be Good
Dear Octopus,
You may have noticed that I haven't written to you in a while. I was indisposed, and apologise profusely. Nothing too major, you may or may not be pleased to hear, merely a sprained ankle acquired in the pursuit of a well-groomed hedge.
I say 'nothing major'........it was totally major.
Because - as I found out - spraining your ankle is not your average, quotidian injury. In fact it's what I've come to call an Absolutely Unmitigated Disaster. People think that a sprain is akin to a pulled muscle or stubbed toe; a loose, vague ailment with little lasting discomfort or inconvenience. It couldn't be further from the truth. It was totally inconvenient for me.
I'll skip the actual wounding. That grim, sickeningly vile moment when I fell from the bench and into the herb patch, clutching my foot and hyperventilating 'Pongo...fuck Pongo...fucking hell mate...this is not fucking good mate...' while he stood and recalled with wistfully smiling nostalgia the incident where he saw his friend stab himself in the heel with a large garden fork. It's too emotionally and physically excruciating to contemplate, let alone casually retell in the worldwide digital webisphere. Dutch and Honksy very kindly transported me to the Accident & Emergency department of the lovely St. George's Hospital in the thoroughly un-lovely Tooting, and even bought me a dirty magazine and an ice cream in order to buoy my ailing temperament. (I watched Downton Abbey on the waiting area's television set and ate the ice cream, while they perused the dirty magazine.)
I was wheeled up to be examined, down to x-ray, then wheeled back up again to be handed my crutches and told to keep off said offending ankle for 48 hours. Simple.
Not simple. The worst part of being on crutches is the preparation. Nothing is easy. Getting up or downstairs to and/or from my bedroom - three flights no less - goes from a jaunty eleven-second dash to a seven-minute pain-marathon. So essentially you can't go anywhere without planning exactly what you'll need, because any possibility that you might have to come back for something alludes to another fourteen long minutes of Japanese torture. Or, more pertinently, once you're there you're stuck with what you have.
By the second day I was writing a list and then packing a rucksack just to go downstairs. Having no meaningful capacity for carrying, my meals consisted of foods that could be made and then put in the rucksack for the trip from the kitchen back to the sofa. There aren't many. But worst of all was the boredom. There is only so much television a man can watch before his thirst for life is quenched entirely! What of the trees, the sky, birds singing their maniacal pop songs from next door's partially-caved-in chimney flue! What of work, human interaction, the happy discourse of friends' muted concern!
(Plus we don't have Sky.)
Don't ever sprain your ankle little one. But more on my recovery next time.
By the way I saw Bon Iver last night, at Hammersmith Apollo. It was amazing. I did spare a thought for you, and how my last real memory of you is us talking about how strange it would be to finally see them together. Well, I saw them. So I spared you a thought.
Just one though. Dwelling on the past is not conducive to goodness.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
You may have noticed that I haven't written to you in a while. I was indisposed, and apologise profusely. Nothing too major, you may or may not be pleased to hear, merely a sprained ankle acquired in the pursuit of a well-groomed hedge.
I say 'nothing major'........it was totally major.
Because - as I found out - spraining your ankle is not your average, quotidian injury. In fact it's what I've come to call an Absolutely Unmitigated Disaster. People think that a sprain is akin to a pulled muscle or stubbed toe; a loose, vague ailment with little lasting discomfort or inconvenience. It couldn't be further from the truth. It was totally inconvenient for me.
I'll skip the actual wounding. That grim, sickeningly vile moment when I fell from the bench and into the herb patch, clutching my foot and hyperventilating 'Pongo...fuck Pongo...fucking hell mate...this is not fucking good mate...' while he stood and recalled with wistfully smiling nostalgia the incident where he saw his friend stab himself in the heel with a large garden fork. It's too emotionally and physically excruciating to contemplate, let alone casually retell in the worldwide digital webisphere. Dutch and Honksy very kindly transported me to the Accident & Emergency department of the lovely St. George's Hospital in the thoroughly un-lovely Tooting, and even bought me a dirty magazine and an ice cream in order to buoy my ailing temperament. (I watched Downton Abbey on the waiting area's television set and ate the ice cream, while they perused the dirty magazine.)
I was wheeled up to be examined, down to x-ray, then wheeled back up again to be handed my crutches and told to keep off said offending ankle for 48 hours. Simple.
Not simple. The worst part of being on crutches is the preparation. Nothing is easy. Getting up or downstairs to and/or from my bedroom - three flights no less - goes from a jaunty eleven-second dash to a seven-minute pain-marathon. So essentially you can't go anywhere without planning exactly what you'll need, because any possibility that you might have to come back for something alludes to another fourteen long minutes of Japanese torture. Or, more pertinently, once you're there you're stuck with what you have.
By the second day I was writing a list and then packing a rucksack just to go downstairs. Having no meaningful capacity for carrying, my meals consisted of foods that could be made and then put in the rucksack for the trip from the kitchen back to the sofa. There aren't many. But worst of all was the boredom. There is only so much television a man can watch before his thirst for life is quenched entirely! What of the trees, the sky, birds singing their maniacal pop songs from next door's partially-caved-in chimney flue! What of work, human interaction, the happy discourse of friends' muted concern!
(Plus we don't have Sky.)
Don't ever sprain your ankle little one. But more on my recovery next time.
By the way I saw Bon Iver last night, at Hammersmith Apollo. It was amazing. I did spare a thought for you, and how my last real memory of you is us talking about how strange it would be to finally see them together. Well, I saw them. So I spared you a thought.
Just one though. Dwelling on the past is not conducive to goodness.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
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