The Viking Housewives of Essex

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I am not sure there is that much Viking heritage in Essex,  but sometimes the women of this county get a bit of a raw deal, so here’s to all of them. If you don’t know Essex, I’m sure there’s somewhere comparable near you.

The Viking Housewives of Essex

And why not
Our heritage is wooden boat, hallowed spear
We haunt the nail salons of the high street
In our sparkled designer gear

Our snake skin heels are poison
Our tans are blooded gold
We of the shiny teeth
Are a sight to behold

We shy away from nothing
We are brave in the face of scorn
With carefully crafted strapless sleeves
And things you’ve never worn

We are sass when its needed
Clueless when its cool
But there’s no mistake about it
You’re the one who’s fooled

We like our men quite chiselled
But it isn’t just physique
If he doesn’t have the right car
He won’t get a peek

We are quite ‘assertive’
And its true we are quite loud
But we’re Essex through and through and through
And we are bloody proud.

The train

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

One bald man gets out of his seat
So another bald man can sit down.
They don’t speak to each other.
They don’t know each other.
The do know each other.
Its like a dance.

Every day.

That is his seat,
that is the other ones seat.
They wear similar suits in dark blue.
With a light blue shirt
And a medium blue tie and brown shoes.

I plunge myself into my seat, melting.

And what was he doing there anyway?
Half naked.
In a stripped down phone booth.
Leering at every woman,
As if each one should be grateful.
With his 90s hair.

Today of all days.
They are not grateful.
They just hurry past.
He leans on a strut that once held a pane of glass.
His best days are behind him.
His best days are behind the booth.

There is no air conditioning on this train.

He is playing a childs game
On ear phones that don’t work.
Colourful little animals jump small bridges.
Everyone can hear the arcade tinkle.
He does it deliberately.
Plays it loud.

Most days.

Plunging thumbs,
into a control panel.
It annoys everybody.
It’s a protest.
You are not allowed to watch porn on the train.

All around me the world of trains and men, I feel like a freak.

He holds his head high.
The wi-fi was a little slow this morning.
The trainers are glossy.
He really smashed that avocado
Into the whole grain toast.
A sheep in wolves clothing.

A bit yesterday.

With that beard.
More a toad resplendent in cloth.
Still a toad.
He catches himself in the window.
Looking good, looking good for a toad.

Still after all this time, I don’t belong on this train.

A little darkness

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

This is very dark, I’m not sure where it came from. We all like to think that people who have hurt us will somehow face a reckoning. I don’t think its true but the rhyme is nice.

On the edge of memory
In a place I’ve never been
I know what you did to me
Even as I dream

There will be a reckoning
A place you have to go
A memory that you try to hide
But I will always know

You will lie in agony
You will be in pain
At the edge of your memory
There will always be a stain

A spectre haunts your sleep
It haunts when you’re awake
There is nothing you can do about it
I am your mistake

You think you got away with it
You think that you are free
But in your dying hours
I know you’ll think of me

The blood that pulses through you
Will always bear my name
My pain has seared your soul
And you are not the same

We are ever connected
I am the thought in your head
The regret as you lie dying
The thing that you most dread

A sentence left unanswered
A name you never said
The one who stood on your grave
And danced when you were dead

This awful mess

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I want the words to soothe my soul.
To make it better.
To fix it all.

I want them to say something purposeful.
Sensible.
Meaningful.

I want them to fix my turmoil and confusion.
Set it out.
In a vision.

I want them to answer the questions I ask.
Finally, definitively.
To the last.

I want them to be mine when they come out of my mouth.
Composed.
Possessed.

Not this awful mess.

Fairies in the peanut butter!

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

These fetid creatures! It isn’t how they make it out to be. All those rubbish fairy tales. Its all just propaganda! I found one asleep in the peanut butter the other day. She woke just as I was taking the lid off the jar. She didn’t look sorry. She simply dabbed some peanut butter into her mouth. You can’t eat peanut butter after something has slept in it!

I can’t take it anymore. I pressed her down into the peanut butter. I could see her little arms swimming in it, desperate to get out. Some people say its ok to break off their wings. But I am superstitious. I don’t like to do that. Maleficent, sometimes the propaganda works even on me.

I put the lid quickly on and binned the jar. I know that’s not right. She might not be able to get out again. Maybe one of her friends came to save her. Almost certainly one did, I heard the bin lid in the night. The next afternoon as I was making the dinner one flew above the cooker and urinated in my mash. I had to throw the mash out. I went for the spatula but I was too late. I hate to squish them, but on the other hand, the ones around here don’t even bother with a veneer of civilisation.

You used to get crickets around here at night, you’d hear them in the summer, then the fairies moved in, spit roasted the lot of them. Never thought I would feel sorry for crickets. And then there’s the constant arguments with the birds. The smaller birds don’t stand a chance, just turfed out of their nests.

I set the cat on them when they first arrived but they sorted that. They darted the cat. Sent her back into the house with a sea of tiny arrows in her fur. Cost a fortune to get them removed and now the cat is afraid of them. She won’t leave the house. I heard they spit roasted the cat down the road for Halloween. Seems impossible but I haven’t seen their cat for a while.

No one who hasn’t lived with them can possibly understand. I have anti-fairy mesh. Its like a mosquito net. Its not hugely effective. Nothing is. Imagine flies with hands and you can see the problem. We have a wildlife pond. It seems to becoming a vacation spot for them. A hundred tiny tents on our grass along with the waste products that brings. Yes that is the bit they don’t tell you about. Fairies have digestive systems! And they all need to ‘eject’ everything every time they fly. Or at least not long after take off. We keep the car in the garage now.

The noise is something else too, squeaky whiny high pitched voices or music, and yes some of them do wear bells. That is even worse. Their parties are like wind chimes on steroids. You can’t sleep through it. Yeh I know earplugs, but last time one of them came into my room, took my ear plugs out whilst I was sleeping.! They use ear plugs as bean bags. Of course they do! Did I mention they get high on sniffing nail polish. Our pond looked like a paint shop after a hurricane as well as being a watery grave for all the newts and whatever else was in the pond. And no nail polish now!

They are making our life hell. The value of our house has dropped-significantly. You have fairies, you can’t sell! You get the odd tourist who wants to see one in real life, who is convinced they are all glitter and tulle and sparkles, only to be scared senseless by their aggression and rudeness. We have had several toddlers taken from our house straight to a secure facility to recover.

The thing is I feel we should be able to live in harmony. I have read all the stories and clearly someone thought that was possible. But they look at us with scorn and anger. I read somewhere they feel sorry for us because of our size. Something that big they say can’t possible survive on this planet. I look at my once beautiful garden. I look at how many of them live here now and I wonder if they aren’t right? Perhaps our time here is done.

Just the flowers screaming again

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

If flowers could talk what would they say, Tuesday’s poetry got me thinking. I think it would be anger, so I vented on their behalf. If they were sentient what would that be like, would we behave differently? It turns out they are very angry.

I wait.
I can hear the click.
The clack of the shears.
It will be my turn soon.
You can’t expect graciousness,
Or complacency.

How would you feel if someone cut you off at the knees?

Or hollowed out your stomach?
And then put you on display.
Plastering a cheap smile on your face.
Ugh, these ugly monochrome faces you have.
You think you can borrow our beauty?
Done the evolutionary hard yards have you?

You bend in odd places, but not with the wind. Freaks.

Unable to stand straight for too long,
You kill everything.
You cut us off.
Sit us in a pretty container.
Put us on a window sill.
Give us some water.

So we can suck every last drop from it to stay alive.

Do we scream in the night?
Yes we do, we do
but not in pain.
In rage and anger.
We rail at you.
Loathsome skeletal trash.

We outlived the dinosaurs you know.

You have no conscience.
You do not hear.
You shove your oily noses in our petals,
Breathing your stinking air on us.
For the record,
Our smell is not for your gratification.

Do you expect us to be grateful for a few extra days?

For some prolonged agony as we wait to die.
You hang pictures of our corpses on your walls.
Barbaric!
You live inside the bubbles you have built.
As if that could save you.
It won’t!

We have seen extinction. We know it. It won’t.

You plant us, tend to us,
and expect we will love you
For what?
The tiny bit of water you give us
We would be fine on our own.
Think we are your tribe?

Think we should thank you for the green family you pull up so we can thrive?

You odious, pasty oily things.
You breath oxygen, but we make it!
You kill insects, we feed them!
Do we sit here in our final hours and contemplate death?
We do.
Yes we do in fact!

But it is your death not ours.

Just the Flowers Screaming

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I look at them but I cannot see it.

The flowers are all withered now.
They were cut off from their life force,
And brought inside,
Placed into water and a vase.
So we could watch them die.

And they died beautifully,
For our amusement.
Sitting on the table,
Brightening everyone’s day,
With their prolonged elegant death.

We gave them just enough water
To let them bloom.
But not enough to let them live.
I tell myself it was like being in a coma
But I am not so sure.

Perhaps their wretched screams
Rended into the night,
Too high pitched for us to hear.
If so I slept through it.
And woke afresh as they struggled on.

Perhaps their quiet malice
seeped into my dreams.
Maybe their perfumed mist
Blew into my food.
Just enough to make me feel uncomfortable.

Did the great artists know of such things,
When they named their pictures of fruit and flowers,
‘Still life’
Was it there, life still,
as they stood bright on the window sill?

Life seeping away, for my amusement.
Were they weeping tears of nectar
Holding their petals high until the last.
As we pressed our noses into them and
commented frivolously on their beauty.

Maybe when I pluck them
From the vase that was their tomb,
their spores will prick my skin,
Infect it with their vengeance
Tormenting me with itches in the night.

I look at them but I cannot see it.
There is no beauty in their death.
They belonged in the earth.
There was only beauty in their life.
To pick them, put them here, it was not right.

London is complete

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

‘London is complete’. Finished. It was not that we didn’t expect her to say that. It just still felt surreal. We had read about it, known about it. But that final day, it just didn’t seem possible. London, that chameleon city, that was both old and new, depending on which direction you were facing, the past and the present always dancing in front of you. London was to step into old age. The drills fell silent, the scaffolding came down, the hoardings disappeared. The cranes cried out piteously against the skyline, against the idea of ceasing a reason for being. But it happened, all building in London simply stopped. There was no more ‘ongoing maintenance’. The people of London would have to learn to ‘make-do’.

What is a city that is not constantly rebuilding itself? Making itself over, living as if its organic and can add limbs and chop limbs as it chooses? No, not London, not anymore. London was to become the first to retire from the cycle of change, to sit in the armchair of geography and do the cross word until the end of its days.

At first the bricks looked as if they would hold firm, the trains all kept running. People left, people came. More people left than came. And then it got more difficult to come. The trains stopped short. You could see the great skinned giraffe cranes from it’s windows. Cranes that had once hurled building blocks to roof tops now strode free range across the sky. Silent, motionless, there namesakes nesting in them, an aviary in a long green garden streaking down to earth. Pinned against the same grey London background that was always there.  Home to vines and moss.

You had to walk to get to the very centre. As you went further in the streets grew less crowded, fewer people, more of everything else. Birds, foxes, packs of dogs, bodies of cats, all living in its alleyways, beneath its rusted awnings, its rooftops. And still we stayed, eking out a living, tapping at keyboards, words out to a world who had taken only half a decade to forget we were here.

And then it came, that first moment. They had been right. All those scientists. They were telling us a fact. London was finished. The great gates that had held it all back for so long, gave way and the water came. Resplendent in its plastic murkiness, the water washed in and London was finished. It For awhile, for a tiny droplet in time, London was done, it had stood grand and proud and finished. The reality of its completeness, now a footnote next to its name in a list on a website. A list of all the cities lost. And us? We?

We got into our dinghy, put in all our belongings and floated away.

100 Books

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He stands there. In the library. Looking around. 100 books. That is what he is based on. He has been brought back. Re-invented. Re-made. Humanity recast. By the future, for the future. As if. You can go back. He looks around. There is something missing. A gap. A gulf. A lack of something. There is no other. No other. Just him.  

He can feel his own strength. Rolls his shoulder. Stretches his arm. Sucking in oxygen, even though the air here is filtrated. Outside of this building, he can’t breathe. The air will kill him. He stays inside. In here. He is the one. Alone. The only one.

The books. There was a list. Is a list- 100 books put in the ground. Ready for the future. Ready for a time when man could resurface, be reborn and. He is it! He is that moment. That rebirth from nothing but a pile of books and some clever science. He does not know how they did it.

He lives here in the library, well not in the library itself. There is a little room off to the side and a garden. Covered over. Like a hot house. Only with plants he does not recognise.

He has those 100 book stored in his head. They did that too. He does not know how. He has those books, their physical presence here in the library as well. 100 books. They are all here. He can reach out and touch them. He does sometimes, but when he looks at them-he sees the gap. He sees not the books. He sees the space on the shelf. There is something missing. There is a missing. The other. The knowledge that there is another. There is something missing. He knows it. He does not know what? He does know what. But he can’t say it. He has read the books too.

He picks up the book that he knows is the history of men. Men were wondrous things. Inventors. Wordsmiths. Builders. Makers. Doers. But there is something missing. There is the gap. Where is the other?  

They expect that somehow he will produce other humans. That is the bit. That bit is missing. He looks through the list of men who put this list of 100 books together. What is it they did not think of. That is the something missing. The books tell him of bridges, of machines, of wondrous majestic building. But still there is the gap.

That something missing, in the 100 books-what is it? They are not all non-fiction these books. There is fiction here that carries him to other worlds. In the works of Eliot- -hidden from view, there is the something. The missing. The Dorothea. To his. His thoughts trail off. To his what. He does not know how to make another human.

They watch him closely, daily. This thing they have brought back to life. Recreated. Recast. They are confident they can make humanity better this time. They are not sure to what purpose they will put it. They plan a colony somewhere. He is a social experiment. He skims through the names of all the authors in his head. Tolstoy. Hemingway. Shakespeare. Marx. Keynes. 100 books and all of them something missing. He scans the non-fiction, architecture, anatomy, Darwin-the origin of species. All of them something missing. In Eliot-Dorothea-an equal, not a second. It puzzles him.

They, whoever they are,  have said only this. Once there were two but we have read your history, your 100 books and nowhere does it say the second is necessary. In all the first is more important than the second. In one the second comes from the first. You are the first. You will find a way to make the second.

But that does not seem to be the truth. In these books there is no truth. The truth is not there. The truth is beyond the gulf, out of his grasp. There is a gap. An endless gulf. An other. He does not know. There is no way to make the second. He looks at his ribs. He looks at the earth outside. There is no way to make the second. He does not know how to tell them. The books offer no answer. They are right. In the books the second are second and they are of no consequence. Only Dorothea.

The sense of the other overwhelms him. Of its missing-ness. Where are they? How to make those? How to make the other. He is certain that if there was one other, just one, somehow this feeling would be gone. This gap. This gulf.

He sits. He holds the book in his hand. Which book is this? Does it matter? He sees the words in his head? They are not in the words? This book has holes? All the great designers? All the great artists? All the great inventors? All of them? Him! The seconds. The other. Faded, missing in history. Gone.

The gulf feels greater. Wider. He has days like this. Days he does not understand. Days where he wonders if he can think the other into being. He cannot. The other is not here. Not in these words. Not in these books. Not in this library. Not in this garden. The other is simply. Not. He is alone. This must be how they wanted it, he thinks, how they wanted it to be. He looks at a person who is not sitting next to him and who is not there. He opens his mouth to speak. To speak to the other that does not exist. To say. To say what? Sorry? The words fail him. Without the other perhaps he is not here either. He does not know. The books offer no answer. He will sit here again tomorrow. And the day after. And perhaps the other, perhaps she will come and find him.

Every Home should have One

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Why aren’t I allowing it to ‘facilitate my meal production’? -It’s crumpets and coffee!!! Do I need a doctor? Would some vitamin pills help? Would I like a dietary change, a cereal perhaps to ‘up’ my fibre intake…read more 

It’s 5.58am. I am awake before the alarm. The alarm knows this. Well the device that sets the alarm knows this. It helpfully tells me, ‘you can sleep for two more minutes.’ I swing my legs over the bed. There is no point in fighting against it really. I should lie down and shut my eyes and pretend to sleep. But it will know I am not sleeping. So why doesn’t it know that sleeping for two minutes is an impossibility? It’s one of those tiny glitches the programmers missed because –because they are all the same. They probably wake half an hour before the alarm, slam a vegan juice and do 15 minutes of yoga. I don’t do that.

The device is in every room now. My whole life programmed in. My very own ‘routine’. I admit I have a very basic model. It’s all I could afford. It has a lot of ads. I admit it does routine well. The problem is- I don’t. It’s not that I don’t keep to a morning schedule to get out the door on time, it’s just that I like a little flexibility. It doesn’t. The alarm will go off at 6am-only it won’t because it helpfully has figured out I am out of bed. It will tell me exactly how many hours, minutes and seconds sleep I got last night. If I have made it to the bathroom by then, the numbers will flash up on the mirror. I will try not to look but if I don’t say Ok, it will keep telling me until I acknowledge it.

It will add that to all the other sleep data it has on me, which is quite a lot. It will tell me my sleep deficit for the year so far, a number now so high that I can never make it up. It will remind me of the importance of sleep and suggest some ‘helpful’ natural remedy to fix my erratic sleeping – perhaps a short break or that healthy after work gym routine which will help me sleep soooo much better at night. I never had a sleep deficit until I had the device. I now know that I average just 6 hours and 30 minutes per night and that is not enough for my ‘Optimum Functional Capacity’. I am never going to achieve my ‘OFC’ on that. Then they will run some mattress ads because who knows it could be my mattress or it could just be this device and its f*****’ routine.

At 6.02 the shower will start automatically-that’s right I have two whole minutes to get between the bedroom and the shower- which is about 3 metres distance max. Why two minutes-because the device helpfully measured the time it usually takes. And the time it usually takes me to get from the bed into the shower- I average two minutes-what do I do in that time-nothing, at least not anymore. I have no idea what I did do to take all that time. Perhaps I enjoyed the view out the window, or stretched or something else equally as useless. I certainly did not use it for self improvement-I know-time wasted. All I do now is feel pressured to be ready under the shower a good 30 seconds before it starts.

In case you’re wondering, there is never an extra 5 minutes in bed. I can ask it for that but there is the gentle reminder that I will be late for work or worse, it has to recalibrate all the timings. And it generally takes 4 minutes off my coffee drinking time-which is only 7 minutes in total-the average time any person takes to drink a coffee apparently-where did they get that statistic!!! Because  that is not me. I cannot drink a coffee in 7 minutes and I don’t believe anyone else can either! Like I said, it’s a basic model.

Anyway at 6:01 I will be standing naked in the shower waiting for it to start. I need to get a sensor for the shower so it knows I am here and not this stupid timing thing. The shower will dispense the exact amount of shampoo twice because that’s what the stupid shampoo company wants. The Stupid Shampoo Company (not it’s real name) wants for me to wash my hair twice-only before when I had a bottle of shampoo and it was just instructions, the ‘twice’  was optional. Now when the shower is dispensing it, I must do it once, and I must do it again and there is no longer a choice.

Then there’s the conditioner-yes the conditioner is dispensed in exactly the right amount for my hair length. Fab, but then it needs to be in for three minutes. Back when I had a bottle, 30 seconds max, I guess I was a ‘token’ conditioner back then. My hair was never properly conditioned and I never noticed. Now I have proper conditioned hair and guess what-it has NOT,-N-O-T improved my life in any way.

Right at the start when I was programming-I use that term loosely because I was just talking at it, the device asked me did I want the water to run for the whole three minutes whilst the conditioner was in my hair.  I said yes, because I do. Then there were the water company ads. Was I sure? What a waste? Aren’t I a good citizen? So I changed it to ‘no’ and now I stand there for 3 minutes freezing my butt off with conditioner in my hair and no water. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s not what they promised- that whole-‘lets get connected- a device in every room’. Back then it was all music and fairy lights whenever you wanted. The reality is you freeze your arse off in a shower with no water for three minutes every morning and no amount of soft lighting and mood music can make it any better. I just want to be warm.

Anyway I will hear the crumpets clicking into the toaster just as the water comes back and I have a minute-a whole minute to get rid of the conditioner and wash the rest of me. It’s based on averages again apparently. An extra minute in the shower is a no-no, my goodness those water companies-that is called premium water if you want it. And apparently they can measure that when you start to use it.

The crumpets are preloaded in the toaster by me the night before so all the device has to do is tell the toaster to drop and cook. When I get out of the shower they will be ready along with the coffee. The whole thing is set up the night before with a helpful 9.02pm reminder to put the crumpets in the toaster and a 9.03pm reminder on the coffee. It’s so that as soon as I’ve sat down after one I can be reminded to get up and do the other. It’s because you can’t have two reminders for the same minute-you can see why I swear a lot. Of course sensibly I do them together but that doesn’t stop the reminders and me needing to confirm it is done –verbally, out loud by 9.04- lest I radically decide to get up tomorrow and make my own breakfast. I can’t do that. It knows. It will ask me what is wrong. Why aren’t I allowing it to ‘facilitate my meal production’? -It’s crumpets and coffee!!! Do I need a doctor? Would some vitamin pills help? Would I like a dietary change, a cereal perhaps to ‘up’ my fibre intake. Don’t even ask what else it monitors in the bathroom. Its not your business. It shouldn’t be anyone’s business. I should get a better model-upgrade. This one only does half the stuff it should. There aren’t enough sensors in my house. Some of my stuff is incompatible because it has a different logo. Or no logo, or worse a supermarket logo.

I am out the door at 6.41. The device will have told the car I am on schedule. Actually for all I know the shower might do that. I slide into the back. It glides away but not before asking me if I am willing to share. I am never willing to share. I am not a morning person. No one is. Why does it even ask. Why can’t it learn that- I have said no every time, and yet it still asks. I think that is a government regulation, you can’t shut off the share question.

The car will drive me to the station. There is only one right turn the whole way there. But it is a nightmare. Cars are all about operating systems. Basically I need a car with the same operating system going both ways to allow me to turn out, that way my car can talk to their cars and tell them to stop. It should all be pre arranged but generally it’s a disaster because no one wants their car talking to another car until they are in it. Worst of all, sometimes one car will stop because one street away another car with the right operating system is coming. That person and everyone behind it will sit and wait until the other car gets there. You know how many car makers there are, well that’s how many operating systems there are, imaging having to wait at an intersection until there is a Ford going both ways-it’s like that. Actually it’s worse than that-because its not just operating systems, it’s the version you have, so a Ford Fiesta can’t talk to a Ford Focus or similar.

You can see people getting visibly annoyed as they wait. You can no longer ‘egress’ -yep that is the term they use from a car whilst it is in use, you are locked in-it’s a safety measure, not for you, for everybody else who is sitting waiting for you to turn out of the road. It is stressful. The car will be booking my seat on the train or not- depending on my BMI. If I am a little too fat this morning, it will sense it and I get to stand. Apparently standing on a train is good for your core, not so sure about the feet.

ItThe return journey is much the same. The car will be there to pick me up eventually. The worst of it –have I mentioned it gets worse-is my relaxation time. At 8pm each evening, having sorted out the perfect recipe for the ingredients in the fridge and walked me through how to cook it, it will tell me to sit down and relax for an hour. The thing is- I can’t. I am so tense. I just sit there. I have this hour to relax and I am so tense. I know the reminders are coming at 9pm. I know I will be in bed by 9.15. I know the alarm will go off at 6am. I know the routine tomorrow will not vary one iota from today. I know that when I sit on the sofa at 8pm, it is part of the routine. An hour for me just to relax.  I just can’t relax. I can’t do it. Its enforced relaxation, enforced sleep. I cooked what it wanted me to cook. I ate in the time it told me it would take. I relaxed to music that it will suggest but none of it, none of it is mine. None of it is me. If it is me, its just a machine reflecting me back at me. I can’t handle it. I can’t give up ‘me’ to the machine. I can’t sleep but I can’t deviate. Its here all around me. This stupid device! Telling me that I could be better, my life could be better. Self improvement, self fulfilment, busy every second except for this one allotted hour. Only all life is gone from here. There are only algorithms and no space for just an extra minute on that coffee. It is the apocalypse, not the devastating cataclysmic, life ending one but the soft shattering, soul destroying end to choosing how each minute is spent. A decision made once, resonating forever, repeated over and over every day in that stupid device.