This evening there was a rainbow over London kissing blocks of flats
Blog Posts
National Poetry Month Day 19
La la la don't wanna anything. God. *faceplants* I got the date for the last day of work today: 4th of May. MAY THE FOURTH. Yes I know. Now I just need to not pull any more boredom sickies and just laze about being paid to read Tumblr (well, I have actual work to do now) and then deal with being impecunious until ... September or whenever. OR PEOPLE COULD BUY MY BOOKS/JEWELLERY/T-SHIRTS AND STUFF? Gonna eBay a few things as well. Sorry, I know it's boring. YOU try thinking of something scintillating to say when you spend all day every damn day listening to people arguing about TV.
Oh, mildly ranty interlude goes here: I could live without people ten years younger than me describing the life I have as the kind of failure they want to avoid. I'm really sorry if you don't feel that temping is fulfilling your full potential but it gives me time to writh and your high-powered fucking career will not allow you that.
(I have figured out why the fact that I live on a main road now - or a busy one - makes me happier than living on a quiet one did and much happier than living on a gated estate did: the first house I can remember living in was on a main road. I was forbidden from using the front door, which opened onto a fairly narrow pavement before the road the juggernauts used, and always had to use the back door, which led into the garden. The idea now of houses with two doors seems outlandish. Actually the idea of houses and gardens seems a bit ... exciting. But my point: I came to conscious knowledge of myself as an individual human being in a house past which lorries rumbled in the night, and now I am sleeping between a railway line and a road where cars go on all night. There are train whistles while I'm sleeping. There is the continual burble of voices, not stabbing out of a quiet night like by the park but a steady flow of laughter - my new neighbours laugh a lot, which is much better than the sexnoise people - and on the whole the sound of lives being lived and the sense of connection to the world which feels more comfortable than being shoved down a back road away from everything and everyone, rotting away into early middle age. I can't communicate, I know, but I can at least observe from here).
"I tell you we cannot open this debate to the Newnham girls," Rigglesworth flushed, his cheeks so red with indignation that he was forced to turn to the bookshelf to hide his face a moment. "And Young feels as I do, so the matter is closed."
"Why not?" Edward asked, lounging across the aged leather of Rigglesworth's very worthy sofa with an insouciance he had plagiarised without moderation entirely from his American friend. "Because we'll lose? Do be sporting about it, old man, we have to lose sooner or later, you know."
"I should say not," Rigglesworth snorted, heatedly.
"Oh do go on. You know they would."
"Would you wish to lose to a woman, Batterbee? The last time you passed a comment on the sex as a whole you were less than complimentary."
Edward shrugged: he had been in his cups on the occasion to which Rigglesworth alluded, and ungallant to the point of vulgarity about the supposed aesthetic value of women's delicacy in beauty. Desmond had backed him in part because it amused him to scandalise, in part because it pleased him to antagonise Rigglesworth in particular, and in part because his own tastes as regarded womankind were so very divergent from the common standard.
"I should welcome it," Desmond interrupted. "I adore losing to women." He stretched, competing in indolence with his friend across the occasional table. The American wore riding boots to Rigglesworth's tête-a-tête, which was exceptionally poor form. He wore them not because he had been riding but because they accentuated his calves and Rigglesworth's uncontainable irritation to a similar height. "There is nothing in the world so satisfying as a truly shattering loss to a woman." He looked strikingly romantic for a moment, so as one almost forgot his quite excessive chin.
"Milford, have you nothing better to occupy your time than to sit in my study making music hall innuendo?"
"Well, yes, but you did invite me."
Edward said, "He's loafing, not sitting. Have you ever seen him sit?"
"Besides which, I can hardly help if you see filth and undercurrents - I said undercurrents, not undergarments, you can stop scowling - in my every utterance. You have a very unsuited mind," Desmond said with wounded innocence that suited him even less than it suited Edward - from whom he had borrowed it.
Rigglesworth made a sound of exasperation and declared that he had to be at a lecture very soon, and that Batterbee and Milford were to help themselves to more tea if they wished.
Once Rigglesworth had quit his own study and was clear of the staircase, from the clump of his shoes, Edward helped himself to a very generous portion of Rigglesworth's fruit cake - to which they had not been invited - and said, "Who is she this time?"
"Mabel Cottering. A good name to send to the sire and dam if they ask. Sounds almost respectable, doesn't it?" Desmond took the cake out of Edward's hand and took an ostentatious bite before its return to his friend. Edward grimaced. "They shan't ask, of course."
"And respectable-sounding Mabel Cottering is...?"
"Barmaid at the Lamb. Missing a front tooth, arms like a stevedore, verging on a club foot. I have preliminary sketches and two canvases prepared. Oh, and the most darling scars on her hands from boiling fat." Desmond was in the habit of listing off what others would view as defects or deformities in his various lovers in the same enraptured tones as Edward - were it permitted and not grounds for being sent down and shown to the constabulary - might rhapsodise about the autumnal waves of his colonist's hair or the soft blunt hands he possessed. Many thought this another of Desmond's myriad provocative affectations, but Edward happened to know as a point of confidence that in this the American was quite sincere.
National Poetry Month Day 19
La la la don't wanna anything. God. *faceplants* I got the date for the last day of work today: 4th of May. MAY THE FOURTH. Yes I know. Now I just need to not pull any more boredom sickies and just laze about being paid to read Tumblr (well, I have actual work to do now) and then deal with being impecunious until ... September or whenever. OR PEOPLE COULD BUY MY BOOKS/JEWELLERY/T-SHIRTS AND STUFF? Gonna eBay a few things as well. Sorry, I know it's boring. YOU try thinking of something scintillating to say when you spend all day every damn day listening to people arguing about TV.
Oh, mildly ranty interlude goes here: I could live without people ten years younger than me describing the life I have as the kind of failure they want to avoid. I'm really sorry if you don't feel that temping is fulfilling your full potential but it gives me time to writh and your high-powered fucking career will not allow you that.
(I have figured out why the fact that I live on a main road now - or a busy one - makes me happier than living on a quiet one did and much happier than living on a gated estate did: the first house I can remember living in was on a main road. I was forbidden from using the front door, which opened onto a fairly narrow pavement before the road the juggernauts used, and always had to use the back door, which led into the garden. The idea now of houses with two doors seems outlandish. Actually the idea of houses and gardens seems a bit ... exciting. But my point: I came to conscious knowledge of myself as an individual human being in a house past which lorries rumbled in the night, and now I am sleeping between a railway line and a road where cars go on all night. There are train whistles while I'm sleeping. There is the continual burble of voices, not stabbing out of a quiet night like by the park but a steady flow of laughter - my new neighbours laugh a lot, which is much better than the sexnoise people - and on the whole the sound of lives being lived and the sense of connection to the world which feels more comfortable than being shoved down a back road away from everything and everyone, rotting away into early middle age. I can't communicate, I know, but I can at least observe from here).
"I tell you we cannot open this debate to the Newnham girls," Rigglesworth flushed, his cheeks so red with indignation that he was forced to turn to the bookshelf to hide his face a moment. "And Young feels as I do, so the matter is closed."
"Why not?" Edward asked, lounging across the aged leather of Rigglesworth's very worthy sofa with an insouciance he had plagiarised without moderation entirely from his American friend. "Because we'll lose? Do be sporting about it, old man, we have to lose sooner or later, you know."
"I should say not," Rigglesworth snorted, heatedly.
"Oh do go on. You know they would."
"Would you wish to lose to a woman, Batterbee? The last time you passed a comment on the sex as a whole you were less than complimentary."
Edward shrugged: he had been in his cups on the occasion to which Rigglesworth alluded, and ungallant to the point of vulgarity about the supposed aesthetic value of women's delicacy in beauty. Desmond had backed him in part because it amused him to scandalise, in part because it pleased him to antagonise Rigglesworth in particular, and in part because his own tastes as regarded womankind were so very divergent from the common standard.
"I should welcome it," Desmond interrupted. "I adore losing to women." He stretched, competing in indolence with his friend across the occasional table. The American wore riding boots to Rigglesworth's tête-a-tête, which was exceptionally poor form. He wore them not because he had been riding but because they accentuated his calves and Rigglesworth's uncontainable irritation to a similar height. "There is nothing in the world so satisfying as a truly shattering loss to a woman." He looked strikingly romantic for a moment, so as one almost forgot his quite excessive chin.
"Milford, have you nothing better to occupy your time than to sit in my study making music hall innuendo?"
"Well, yes, but you did invite me."
Edward said, "He's loafing, not sitting. Have you ever seen him sit?"
"Besides which, I can hardly help if you see filth and undercurrents - I said undercurrents, not undergarments, you can stop scowling - in my every utterance. You have a very unsuited mind," Desmond said with wounded innocence that suited him even less than it suited Edward - from whom he had borrowed it.
Rigglesworth made a sound of exasperation and declared that he had to be at a lecture very soon, and that Batterbee and Milford were to help themselves to more tea if they wished.
Once Rigglesworth had quit his own study and was clear of the staircase, from the clump of his shoes, Edward helped himself to a very generous portion of Rigglesworth's fruit cake - to which they had not been invited - and said, "Who is she this time?"
"Mabel Cottering. A good name to send to the sire and dam if they ask. Sounds almost respectable, doesn't it?" Desmond took the cake out of Edward's hand and took an ostentatious bite before its return to his friend. Edward grimaced. "They shan't ask, of course."
"And respectable-sounding Mabel Cottering is...?"
"Barmaid at the Lamb. Missing a front tooth, arms like a stevedore, verging on a club foot. I have preliminary sketches and two canvases prepared. Oh, and the most darling scars on her hands from boiling fat." Desmond was in the habit of listing off what others would view as defects or deformities in his various lovers in the same enraptured tones as Edward - were it permitted and not grounds for being sent down and shown to the constabulary - might rhapsodise about the autumnal waves of his colonist's hair or the soft blunt hands he possessed. Many thought this another of Desmond's myriad provocative affectations, but Edward happened to know as a point of confidence that in this the American was quite sincere.