The Remake

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Hi,

I’m putting this anonymously on a reddit post. Just so the world knows. I don’t think anybody will recognise me but also, I think you will all know who I am. I’m super famous so true anonymity is hard. Plus who wants to be completely anonymous.

I’m making another mega famous movie hit. Its likely to be a cultural moment again. But there’s been a hitch. I just need to say this to somebody. I’ve left in the bits about the oatmilk, because I think it demonstrates a really toxic atmosphere and reinforces the unfairness of the whole situation. Plus I am a brand sponsor for them. Oops.

Here goes.

I thought nothing of it when there was a few extra press on set. I just assumed it was pre-release publicity. A few snaps of the stars, or the star (me). I was happy to oblige. You’ve probably seen them online and in the mags, although not as many as you would expect.

I was a little surprised at their lack of interest in me. I mean, I am the one carrying this project, but there focus seemed a little off. They seemed much more interested in the set and the plot. I mean there is a plot, but I don’t usually worry about the plot until the post production media tour. Plots are not my strongest point, usually I talk about my hair.

So this was unusual. I didn’t question it at the time though. I was too busy honing my craft, making sure my make up was perfect and the camera was getting my best angle. Also oatmilk! They had oatmilk, but not oatmilk from the producer I endorse, so that was making for some tension between me and the Director.

It was a least a week, before I heard anyone refer to the movie as ‘the original’. Again slightly odd, but movie people, we have a language all of our own. Then my agent called about release dates and availability for promotion. She didn’t say anything either.

It was a brief call, and really mostly focussed on the Oatmilk debacle, which was really affecting my performance. There were some shortages apparently, production pipelines, international events (who cares????) affecting things. Dear god, just pay someone to go there and squeeze some oat sheep or whatever. I remember saying that. She said something about oat sheep, that I didn’t catch as I hung up.

I was at an event two weeks after that, dressed by Dior but the wrong oatmilk makes me look bloated, if you look at the pictures you’ll see, so please don’t. I met ‘her’ there. The ‘actress’, up and coming, the new ‘me’. Again I didn’t think that much about it. We were about the same age, to be clear, I think she has had some work done. I clearly haven’t. I was born with a lesser number of ribs and as for my nose and teeth, I was blessed with a flexible nose structure that doesn’t settle until you are in you’re 20’s. It’s a rare gene, not many people have it. And my teeth are naturally white, oatmilk (at least the brand I use) is actually a natural cleaner of enamel, something to do with what the sheep eat, or maybe its bees, or the bees the sheep eat. Its not important. I’m not paid to promote sheep or bees.

The thing is we were in the same room together and naturally the talk turned to work. Actual work as opposed to work done, like I said I am sure she has had some done, I do think I mentioned that earlier. Its it impolite to ask these things and even more impolite to write about them so I will stop.  

Anyway she mentioned our upcoming ‘scenes’ together, which I did not know about????  I did not even know she was in the movie! I think it was in my contract about other actresses, about me getting a veto, about top billing and about the right oatmilk. I smiled sweetly and said I couldn’t wait. I do think her teeth are a little yellow, if you see the shots, let me know what you think?

Before I even got to the next party, I called my agent. 2am, she wasn’t awake. Honestly what is she doing at 2am that she is not out of bed. I remembered then she actually doesn’t do any drugs, so perhaps she was doing what other people who don’t do drugs do at 2am. Whatever the hell that is. I’m going to Google that, although as you will see I am doing my best to avoid Google at this point. She fobbed me off with a, ‘lets discuss in the morning’ and said she had good news about the oatmilk.

Firstly!  She did not have good news about the oatmilk, it was still at least a week away.

But it turns out that actress and I are doing a few scenes together next week. But it is not at all like you imagine.

I need to say upfront, that the ‘original’, the film I am in, has not been released yet, is not due for release until October. It will fit nicely into awards season.

But people, you will have read about it I know you will.

She is in the remake! She is playing my character IN THE REMAKE!

Now I know the time between the original and the remake is getting lesser, but this film is not even out yet. How is that going to work? I can see it on the street, a bus goes past advertising ‘me’ in the original and the bus coming right after it, has her in the ‘remake’.

There is talk about sequencing, is a fortnight long enough? IT IS NOT!

IT IS NOT! If I wasn’t beholden to a contract and being paid a substantial amount of money plus the freebies you get in awards season I would speak out about it. VERY LOUDLY. Instead I am doing it anonymously on Reddit.

As it is, the official line is, ‘its always wonderful when you’re success can be a catalyst for someone else to do well’.  And I have to say that!

What the hell is a catalyst, I hate cats! I wish that other actress a long and painful death and really bad oatmilk as she goes. I want her bloated like a bloat thing while she fades into oblivion on a diet of whatever less beautiful people eat.

And to make it worse I am doing a cameo in the remake, playing the mother of the character that I am in the original but she is in the remake. They are going to age me with either makeup or AI or something. As if it could ever be remotely believable that she is my daughter and I am her mother.

The press is full of, ‘This hasn’t been done before, the remake released two weeks after the original, with a cameo!’.

Critics questioning how long before the remake is released before the original? Does the word ‘original’ still even have meaning anymore?

This is the 21st century people. I don’t know how we got here. Its all over the news and yet nothing about the oatmilk crisis. I’m not political. I don’t have opinions. I am thin. Its always been enough!

The world is changing around me. I know I have to change with it and I am making an effort. I am resolved to get through this. I am strong, although not in the gym sense. Visible muscularity is not for me. I am empowered, although that is via flimsy clothing in photo shoots. I am confidant, although not entirely sure of the spelling of it. I am a team player, provided I am captain and people do what I ask.

Nonetheless I am determined. I am going to change with the times. This week I am resolved. I am going to do something that is going to make a difference to the world.

I am going to wear the same pair of shoes twice in the one week.

I will show them, they cannot mess with me. This is what I am made of.

Venomous Snakes of Britain

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I am sat in my room. The same one I have occupied since childhood. Who am I? It wasn’t a question I asked myself often. At least not since my considerable success as an author.

I turned a copy of my book over in my hands. This book was my one and only triumph in life. And now I was questioning it all.

The book, my book was a work of non fiction, ‘Venomous Snakes of Britain’. It wasn’t a long book, but it was still a book. Being honest the text itself was only a single page encased between two sides of the hard cover. There was a foreword though so that was another page and some printer details on a separate page and a blank page at the end. For effect. It was my idea. I was proud of it. I’m not even British, but I have been to London. Nonetheless, the non-fiction ‘Venomous Snakes of Britain’, was a best seller.

There is, in case you didn’t know, only one venomous snake in Britain. I want to be transparent. I didn’t know that when I started my research. I just had the urge to create, to make a contribution to society, to knowledge.  I thought there might be two or three venomous snakes in Britain. At least that is the story I now tell myself.

I researched that book. I went beyond the second page of the Google search. I did not use AI, except for the picture above the half page of writing. Nor was it just Wikipedia repurposed. I went to two other websites as well.

I actually also did a writers retreat and no one there commented about my topic in  a negative way. In fact they were all very encouraging, and that retreat itself cost me $15,000. My publisher, a family friend, was really encouraging, as was my agent, a cousin on my mothers side, whose previous clients were an actress and an IG influencer.

I put my heart and soul into this book. It is still better and longer than anything I did at school. I sat down at the time and carefully crafted a paragraph or two around the habits and habitat of Britain’s only venomous snake. And then I handed it over to my agent and publisher who released it to the world.

It was a bestseller, number one on the New York Times list or Amazon or whatever. I sold millions of copies. People loved it. Critics reviewed it and commented on my ‘uncanny ability to make the page seem longer than it was.’ Some were mean and called it more of a leaflet than a book, but buyers were undeterred. I had 5 stars on Goodreads, not a single bad review. I call myself an author because I am.

Or so I thought, until today.

Today was my fathers funeral. We are not a sentimental family, the whole thing was more of a business gathering. Neither of my siblings were present. They lead idle lives and were partying somewhere else. It was left to me, the one who had actually achieved something with her life, to do the hard work. I had to choose what to wear, the stylist gave me two options. It was not my usual stylist so the whole thing was quite difficult.  

But now my whole self image has come falling down. I have ventured further into this house than ever before. This house, that I spent so much time in, going from swimming pool to my room, from tennis court to my room and occasionally to another room to eat, also sometimes the cinema room and well the other useful rooms with games and stuff. I knew there were parts of this house I never ventured into but what I have found there is unexpected.  

Hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of copies of my book. Had no one really bought it? Had I been this naïve?

I have done a book tour, I have spoken about my ‘author journey’ at conferences. Readers have written to me telling how good the book was, how they enjoyed it. How it changed their lives? Those few paragraphs that I scrawled down after a google search one afternoon, with a picture generated by AI somehow touched people. Those words, those actions, that afternoon of dedicated work, that process changed my life. I was suddenly successful in my own right.

Before then I wasn’t really into books, I can’t recall reading one after the age of 9, but somehow, against the odds, I became an author. I did something of which I could be proud. I created something. It was more than either of my siblings ever did. I could have done nothing and just lived off the trust fund, instead I aimed to make a contribution to the world, to achieve, to be successful in my own right.

It could not be a lie. The paparazzi chased me down, I gave whole interviews to press about my process. The British adder was and is my spirit animal, although I’ve never seen one and am careful only to visit London if I go to Britain, and even then only the good parts. But I have a scented candle somewhere that is ‘adder’ scented.

None of it makes sense, the whole house filled with copies of my book, as if the sales were not organic, As if my success was not real.

It has shattered my sense of self. And now I sit here with a decision to make, reality staring me in the face.

I must be rational and do the only rational thing. I am having all the rooms closed off, never to be opened, and I am going back out into the world, a successful author. I will never think otherwise ever again.

An Earthen Queen

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its rained for days.  Weeks really.

The sky a dull grey, clouds looming, hour after hour. There has been the odd gap, a shaft of blue but it has been rare. It has not been apocalyptic rain, not sheets of water pounding into the earth. It has been a slow tedious drizzle, falling out of the sky. A steady, stealthy, beat, bent on a ponderous breaking of the spirit, rather than a thrashing of the soul.

It has fallen on pavements and rooftops, on hospitals and schools, in churchyards and backyards and roads and playing grounds. The world is now soggy and damp.

I have not been outside much.

I want to write to the newspaper, to open the machine and type in the words. Tell them this isn’t the first time, this has happened before, centuries ago. I can’t. How would I know that? Its before proper records began.

There are several of them, of us. Spread out across the country, all with the same thought, somewhere out there, something, someone, has called the rain.

English is one of the few languages where the word queen does not derive from the word king. This is why. This queenness thing, born of the land, eked out of the soil. Britain and its earthen queens, I remember them all. Not all queens but all of them queens.

Victoria  was not one, nor the last Elizabeth, although we someone times wonder about both. The Elizabeth before that one, she was one of ours. There was Boudica with all her wildness. She was born this way too, with the rain.  And Aethelflaed, the fearless Mercian prodigy. Each of them, born ready for war.

And this one will be too, a new queen, forged from British soil, literally.

I take out ancient robes, dust them down, ready to begin the journey, to seek out the child, if indeed it is given up as a child.

The rain, a new queens insatiable appetite for the land to nurture her at birth, to give her sustenance. She might be born fully formed. She is a queen with the clouds and the land as her womb and the rain as her milk. Formed in the mud and chalk and the clay, features fine and chiseled by the roots of Oak and Beech, Birch and Ash, Hazel and Blackthorn, succoured on rain tinged with the tang of nettles and blackberries, wild garlic, and wild strawberries.

I wonder what this one would be like, a war monger, or a woman of peace. There has never really been a woman of peace born this way, of the earth itself and not the womb. There is something about this birth, this island, that births them ready for war, even Elizabeth. So almost certainly a war monger, leader of men  but a slayer of men. A warrior queen.

What will that look like in the 21st century?

Will she be born like the others? Boudica was born fully grown. It had rained for months and we stood knee deep in mud as she writhed and fought and finally extricated herself from whatever held her in the earth. She arose like a goddess before us. Her reign short but bloody.

Elizabeth had a more even temperament, she came out of the earth as a child, yet still she had found war. I remember her standing on the banks of Tilbury, still remembered for her urgent message to soldiers, bring me blood. And Aethelflaed, who was born on the winds to the west and stayed there to slay all who defied her. She fought like a mad thing and was the best with a sword I have ever seen.

But it is a different world now. What if CCTV finds some naked woman emerging from the mud and screaming she is queen?

As I start to drive I can smell it already. Its primal this birth, wild, a queen, a thing, caked in mud and grime emerging from the land, an unfurling of limbs from the murky darkness of soil and clay. The rain will stop, the weather will calm and she will be here.

Then if we are lucky there will be days of sunshine before the days of blood. I can feel her, I can feel her power. She is coming. I look at the rain, at the way it is falling, called from the sky for a fickle mistress. I want to pray but prayer has long since left me.

If this must be bloody, let it be short. Let the days of sunshine be long. Let the rain stop. Let there be calm. Before the storm. Because I can feel the power of the storm, of its attraction and I can tell, this one is more Boudica than Elizabeth and the ground that is soaked in mud, will dry and then at her whim, be soaked in blood.

If you like this, hit the button. I wrote it as prose, but am not sure it would not make a better poem. If I was going to write a novel, I think this is how I would start it.

The Farmers wife

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I should not have been a farmers wife.

I spend my days, imagining

A different life.

I carry the land like a festering sore

When the ewes abandon lambs

They come begging to my door

I feel nothing, no empathy

Not motherly

A churl of stomach,

I retch and shake my head

Bloody little lambs, better off dead

I see why their mothers crept away

I bottle feed but I do not play

Unmoved by their plight,

Unmoved.

I am unmoved, by his plight.

Glued to this table

Tied to this kitchen,

Bound to this house.

Unmoving.

With my hands warm around my mug

It isn’t my fault, I am not to blame

He dies slowly with the light

I dream, I live a little

I sit here as darkness falls

I will not miss these four walls

There s been an accident

He’s lying out

In the mud

In the yard,

In the dark

Now, now its dark.

He is lying in the mud, in the dark.

Its been hours

I could hear him screaming as I drove in

It was daylight, maybe late afternoon

I parked the car at the front.

I crept to the door,

Turned the key in the lock,

Crept inside.

I have not looked out

I boiled the kettle, made a drink and sat to wait.

He screamed, and screamed and screamed.

I just…day dreamed.

I expect the tractor overturned.

Does he not know how many times I would have liked to lay down in the mud and scream

I guess its different when you are lying pinned under a tractor

But still there are many times when I would have jumped at the chance

to scream and yell and writhe in the endless bloody mud,

that is farm life, endless and bloody and mud.

Do you think if I’d done that he’d have rescued me,

Come out of the barn to see what the fuss was about.

Unmoved.

Do you think anyone was ever coming to rescue me

He won’t survive the night, not in this cold

I’ll hide in here til morning light,

then go out and look for the missing sign of life.

I should not have been a farmers wife.

If you like it, hit the ‘like’ button!

Yesterday

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He calls from far away
To find out if I’m Ok

Ok?

We left ok behind some time ago
Have you seen the numbers here

His voice just fades away

He talks about the weather
His getting worse, mine getting better

He is just a noise in the background now

He’s read bout viral load
And treatment, maybe cure

No one mentions vaccines anymore

There is just the stunned silence of reality

Immune systems, vitamins

Have you been working out?
Hope you’re well, All good here
Meaningless words,
All tinged with fear

I breathe in, I breathe out

I breathe in, I breathe out

Breathing is in itself,

An act of joy,

Of hope

There are things I want to say

A long lost explanation
About why I went away

I have lived out in the world

I am not sorry for it

It was a choice I made

There is silence on the line

Then he talks of the economy
I try and pretend I care

I look at my nails,

Twiddle my fingers in my hair

I no longer lie awake at night
And think of him
The night is full of horrors
I know that I can’t share
He wants to know if I’m ok
I can’t think of the words to say
The pain of thousands dead
Will never go away

The pain it is unbearable

Intangible

Yet palpable

We are all scarred forever

We will wear it like a mark

For all eternity

They will talk of us in whispers

Stare when we come in the room

I know he’ll call again
And it will still be all too soon
Because we are worlds away
Yet I haven’t got the words to say

Something moved me on

And us, me, we,

That was yesterday

If you like it hit the button and share

Relative darkness

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

In times of darkness
They always tell you there is light
But in the darkness

You can’t see the switch

Do you think there is someone else there
At the end of the tunnel
Who’s going to switch it on

For you

That’s not a real expectation
Instead the darkness becomes gloom
Your eyes adjust, the world becomes

Clearer, less murky

In the gloom
You realise you don’t need the switch
You can walk on in the semi darkness

Because you’re human

And you can adapt
And then one day
The gloom is just

Normal

Its not gloom anymore
Its kind of like living in the light again
There was no

Miracle

No point at which
The switch went on
And if you see the light again, its so

Bright

Its so glaring and so overstated
And you don’t want it
And you feel

Uncomfortable

You can see the faces of the ones you love
In the gloom
And it is all perfectly

Good

And there is no going back
And the gloom is just normal
And we are all, all of us

Ok

Because what you thought was darkness
Was not an absence of light
But a light that was

Different

To what you were expecting
But you got through
And the platitudes and positivity

Useless tropes

In a world that shone

Differently

To the light we have now

If you like it hit the button and share

The Door

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

No one goes out
No one comes in
I look at the door
No one is coming to the door
It is rendered useless now

Purposeless

I worry about the door

I look at it each morning
I wonder if it knows
Doors are not sentient
I whisper that
Quietly to myself

The door is unmoved

Literally

It has not moved to open in days
I have started saying hello to it
To wonder if the whole thing
Is some kind of,
Some kind of front door conspiracy

The front doors of the world just wanted

Rest

I am starting a door appreciation society
Because it can’t hurt
Because maybe it’s the cause
Because it might help us at all
Because I want to do my bit

I have been in this house inside

Too long

Yet the door is there
It remains resolute
It neither opens nor closes
It just remains shut
Like a shut thing

Tall and proud and

Shut

I touch the handle
Some mornings I kiss the glass
Some mornings I rage against its
Steadfastness
The door remains unmoved

It does not express any emotion

Shut

Meanwhile our house has a regime
Of post-it notes
Of rules we neither agreed
Nor can be bothered adhering to
At the end we will tear them all down

But not the door, we will leave

The door

The door is not a post-it note
I speak out loud to the door now
In the darkness and in the light
‘I promise we will use you again’
There will be an end.

The door remains

Motionless

All those deliveries
The days I carelessly flung it open
I fiddled with the keys in the lock
I opened it just a crack
Leaned against it to chat

I miss those days

Door

I stare at it, shut
I wonder if I shouldn’t get the axe
And bash it down
Even though I have a key
And we don’t own an axe

It is not the fault of the door, the door is

Blameless

I need to make my peace with the door
I sit before it and speak
Words of soothing and calm
I do not blame the door
It is keeping us safe

It is then I spy the shoes

The shoes

I turn my attention to the shoes
All of them in a row,
Sitting there unused.

If you like it, hit the button and share

Just People

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I look at my to-do list

And its just people

A list of names.

I have not been on the train for two weeks
I did not go to the supermarket this morning
Right now, the washing seems beyond me

I stare at the list

Its just people

A list of names, to contact

I stayed up half the night
On a video call
We talked about a Zumba class
I will not leave my house for Zumba

The to-do list

It’s right there beside me

Its just peoples names

Each one a twinkle of light in the darkness
Will any of those twinkles go out
I am having coffee without cake
I have given up cake
It makes me feel like I am in control

Its like my list is living, breathing

Beside me

I look at it again

My weekend to do list
The ordinary one that I do every weekend
I have not cleaned her school shoes
Although I went to school with her
Everyday this week
I did a meeting in my dressing gown
But the extraordinary thing is still the list

The list, the to-do list

Its people

Its just people

If you like it hit the button, and share

Love is just a feeling

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I have brought a box of chaos
And left it at your door
You might have thought you’d had enough
But I know you wanted more

If there is a holy grail
I have never seen it
And all those words I said
You know I didn’t mean it

When I played the song
I said it was just for you
But it’s the same song
I played for all the others too

There are dark, dark corners
In the glorious estate of the mind
Thoughts lurk beneath the surface
That no one else can find

Waves on a beach
Pebbles on shore
Lots of lovely ideas
Lots of wild metaphor

But hidden in the silent moment
In places dark and deep
There is evil in our memory
I watch you while you sleep

Will it be you or will it be me
Its always been a gamble
When thoughts reach our finger tips
Never forget we are animal

And so we walk a line
A tender loving stretch
As if tomorrow was our yesterday
And we were not a sketch

A vague outlined idea
Of what our lives should be
A house, a car, a dog,
Two kids and you and me

Wretched, wicked and worn
I toss it into the flame
The world will say I loved you
Because there is no other name

But love is just a feeling
It exists inside your head
It does not exist without you
It goes where you are led

So when you hear that song
Words you thought you’d never say
Remember love is a feeling
And like all feelings, it can go away.

Everyday

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The same woman is in the coffee shop

Everyday

I am in the coffee shop

Everyday

Our lives intersect
but we never meet
We are in a permanent state of never meeting
She looks at me, I look at her
Life plays out around us

Everyday

Take that couple
Who are not a couple
He is talking at her
I note the wedding band
His not hers
She talks work
He talks innuendo

Sometimes its the same words just different voices

Everyday

He is dispensing advice
Like an advice dispenser
About egos
I think he knows about egos
He leans forward, leans back

Which looks best

He is wearing a brown jumper
That never looks good
He blends in with the coffee
She is not getting the vibe
He is being nonchalant
Judging his chances

He takes a misstep

Notices someone else
But she saw
She wasn’t here for that anyway
The world keeps turning

Another one of us comes in

There are 3 of us now,
Another middle aged woman
Clutching a coffee
Sitting alone

Observing life

It is no longer a cool place
The vibe is dying
Literally
It is full of women who dye their hair
And not because they want to
Pale skin and garish lipsticks
They cling to a the ship of youth

But it’s sailed.

He looks around now
Realises his error
He should have taken her
Somewhere the sisterhood
Wasn’t manifest

This place is too lowbrow
The whole thing has cost him £6
For no return
He scowls into his coffee

The coffee does not react

We sit there like guardians
She talks on as if nothing has happened

Nothing has happened

Our coffees have gotten colder
He asks if she knows what he means
She is not a mind reader
I have heard the whole thing
Its not hard to know what he means
She deliberately avoids knowing what he means

Over average luke warm coffee

Six pounds, 35 minutes he won’t get back

The woman who is here everyday
We make eye contact
We have seen this before
We see this all the time

We see this

Everyday.