Whirl up, sea

Posted on September 2, 2009 by blogmywiki

I was clearing out some of my old stuff from my mum’s house – my name’s Alex Drake and this box of old papers has taken me back to 1989 – and, amongst other things, I found this untitled poem I’d written out several times on both sides of an envelope addressed to my then-girlfriend’s mother. I had to look it up to find out who it was by. Good, though.

Oread by H.D.

Whirl up, sea -
Whirl your pointed pines.
Splash your great pines
On our rocks.
Hurl your green over us -
Cover us with your pools of fir.

old NMEs

I also found stashes of NMEs, lots of newspapers from the 1980s, most of which I have no idea why I kept, so I’ve binned them. And a shoebox full (okay, half-full) of letters and cards from an ex-girlfriend. An entire relationship in a box. The one where she tried (unsuccessfully) to end our relationship was a good read. Even better the one where, later, she explains why she cheated on me. Reading between the lines now I think I deserved it and she was doing me a favour. At any rate it made me smile and it’s quite a thing to think that it’s taken twenty years to get from there – standing, alone on Stockport station waiting for a train back home, my life falling apart around me, to now – standing alone in a loft reading her letter about her night with Andrew – with a big, silly grin on my face.

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Tony Wilson remembered

Posted on July 22, 2009 by blogmywiki

On the Culture Show on BBC2 tonight, sometime Durutti Column drummer, old man Bruce Mitchell had this to say about Tony Wilson:

Every crisis he had a positive take on. There wasn’t a negative bone in his body and I found it inspirational then and I do now.

Vini Reilly described the last time he saw Wilson, the day before he died. Wilson had been unable to speak but as Reilly left, Wilson pulled himself up on his bed and gave him a peace sign.

So moving.

Tony Wilson always meant a lot to me, been a bit of a hero since I was a teenager. I’m so unlike him, but I so much wanted to be more like him then. And I still do now.

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Just a joke

Posted on July 19, 2009 by blogmywiki

I deleted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from my PVR, but bits of it keep re-appearing.

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“…after the day I’ve had.”

Posted on July 2, 2009 by blogmywiki

In work early. Open locker. A tin of ground coffee falls out, showering the carpet outside the office. I call the cleaners to get it cleared up. They email me a reference number. As I am going to be working in studios in the morning, I forward the email to the first three people who are likely to find the coffee. They all congratulate me on the wonderful aroma of freshly-spilt coffee grounds. One asks me if I can do the aroma of freshly baked bread tomorrow. I say don’t worry, soon the aroma will be replaced by that of aerosol deodorant from one of our colleagues who thinks that her locker, rather than being in a corridor, is actually in a locker room.

Then a friend tells me some very, very bad news about his wife.

There is some other crap of a work-related nature. And it is still 29 degrees celsius in our office.

On the way home I try to take a faulty Nintendo DS game back to HMV. They refuse to give me my money back. At the exit a man – it’s not me, but it could be me soon – is being told by security that they “never, ever want to see your face in this area ever again.”

At home I cannot get the car off the driveway – I have to shift huge rubber blocks designed to stop people parking on the corner.

I have to visit the after school club and a relative’s house to collect children. Road closed, policeman waves me away. I park a block away from my destination and set off on foot. Normally busy main road closed and oddly quiet – in the middle there is a smashed up motorbike and a pair of sunglasses that clearly belong(ed) to a very small girl. Nice policewoman allows me across the crime scene tape several times to do my errands as the accident scene is right between the two places I need to visit and my sister-in-law’s house is right by the crash scene in the inner cordon.

Go to collect daughter. Reach in pocket and discover I have lost an envelope containing a large amount of cash. Want to cry, want to scream. Swear loudly. Retrace steps with children in tow. No luck. Go back to scene of accident. Speak to policewoman – hello, you again. Yes me again. I need to look for an envelope… The one we picked up in the middle of the road? Yes that one.

I could have kissed her.

When I got home I took consolation from the fact that at least in this heat it is – a rare thing in England – legitimately warm enough to drink pastis.

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The moon is a she unless it’s a he

Posted on June 18, 2009 by blogmywiki

It has been suggested that I and a colleague may have now become the Pete and Dud of our office. Tragically I have to admit that Doug probably makes a better Peter Cook than me, although that means he has to go through a couple of bitter divorces and spend his twilight years pretending to be a Swedish fisherman, while I have to develop a club foot and bed a succession of nubile young women. It’s a work in progress.

Anyway, the other day he was on top form. Somehow we were talking about languages which give nouns gender and he said that the moon is not always female – the closer to the equator you get the more likely the moon is to be male. I was amazed by this. “You could write a book about it” he said, generously offering me his idea, “one you get for Christmas with a fake old-style leather cover. Could even be a film. KENNETH BRANAGH is COPERNICUS!”.

Genius, up there with Andy’s “Robert Plant and the Seedlings” line. You read it here first. Hollywood here we come.

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