I thought I could fill a swimming pool
with my tears. I could bathe in a steaming jacuzzi
of my sadness. But that sounds fun.
I turned the shower on
full blast so my flat mates couldn’t hear
my tears. So I could go full pelt, let it pour.
really sob. I wasn’t allowed to sob anywhere else.
I got so tired of crying I found my sobs
hilarious . They were loud and long and
boring.
I cry all the time. It’s been nearly four years
and I can’t stop crying.
If there is one huge, over-arching TV obsession of mine it is cooking programmes. If the amount of time spent watching cooking programmes somehow translated into skill, I would have 3 bloody Michelin stars. Alas. It, by some weird quirk of the universe, this is not the case.
Not a day goes by when I don’t admonish myself for not blanching my peas in frozen water, rendering fat in a hot skillet or waiting patiently for the water bath to ooze its tender magic. But in the world of slick editing and instagram brunch pics if there’s one TV programme that gives me the most joy, that eschews the trappings of the modern edible-flower-garnishing troupe, it is Keith Floyd.
So little do we see a person so audaciously ‘British‘. Bow-tie clad, paired with a linen suit in the sweltering fire of a provincial kitchen, with a lexicon that evokes boarding school stock laced with an exaggerated, unwavering flirtation. He makes his way from kitchen to hearth, glass of wine in hand charming mademoiselle and parleying with the grottiest of farmers. But in all of it he carries what TV chefs have never in my oeuvre of the art form come across; a real passion for the camera. An understanding of what it really means to sweat in a kitchen and to convey the depth and complexity of taste to the audience. “BRING THE CAMERA DOWN HERE CLIVE”, a phrase so often banded around does not show arrogance to his fellow cameraman, rather it shows passion – an understanding of the holistic nature of virtual cooking. The awkward tete-a-tetes with fellow chefs are full of humility and an endearing self-deprecation so often lacking in stars. It’s classic, full of butter and comforting, just like it’s creator.
Statistics say that 2/3 of us hate our job. For some it may seem gob-smackingly remarkable that the 1/3 even exists. Who are these… these sickening few?
Separating out the reasons behind that everyday Monday-day morning feeling is a tough trough to sieve. Perhaps it the people? Perhaps it’s the location? Perhaps it’s the admin? Perhaps it’s the hierarchy? Perhaps it’s because it’s a job?!
The only sensible thing us 20 year olds can agree on is that we are all at the bottom. We’re sitting at cross roads where each turn sets in motion a series of events from which we can not escape, no road will lead back to where we once came. The smart thing to do? Do we level our expectations – take the gamble and hope that after time we grow to feel valued, experienced, responsible? Or leave and bank on the fact that you managed to suss from the great miasma the thing that made it all so bloody awful. Hang on…. it was definitely the pisswater coffee machine.
Millennials change jobs like they change their status. But we don’t know that in this economic climate, this really equates to job satisfaction. The big ching-ching. Short fused and scatty we leap from one to the next – scroll to the next bikini babe. Apply to love island and trail across Namibia on a donkey. But hey, maybe next time it’ll be better.
“Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.”
What drains into the great big sink of LA is the nomad. The sprawling, low-rise mass of the 88 cities which comprise the city of angels – pierced only by the sporadic inner-city skyscrapers – is a veritable feast of artists and burger-flippers, bel-air beauties and underpass dwellers. As you hike up and down the craggy mountains which surround it or lie prostrate on its thick, endless beaches be careful: the sunshine is served with a side of bitter Pacific breeze. You can enter only by a ride on a six-lane highway whose sides are lined with fast food joints and supermarkets serving kombucha health drinks at ten dollars a pop and the cars either boast the jet black chassis of jeeps, white vintage mercedes or banged up old Kias and open top trucks. The reverie of the smell; the wild cucumber, and the Californian laurel is sweet and heady, but there are signs of drought by the wayside and if you stretch your hand out far enough you can touch the desert where Southern Californian soil becomes burnt and uncompromising. The great big sink of LA glistens, but it is a shallow one.
‘We’re engaged!’
As the years trickle by slowly at first, then at all once – I look around and find that we seem to have indicated off, down our different paths without any real signpost. Some paths well trodden, others less so we diverge, no longer conformed by our surroundings, into the next stage. And we lose something each time we turn, our familiar closeness. A combined consciousness.
Though I’m happy for my friends who have decided to take the plunge, I can’t help feeling that somehow I’ve been left behind. That I live in denial, wishing for the past whilst their future looms orb like over the thick peaks of adolescence to which my nostalgia clings.
While they collate something borrowed, something blue; I am the old and they are the new. They look forward to tomorrow because it brings something better, a heady reminder that I live in the black shadow of happiness. Unable to ever see the point of it all, wishing we were 15 all over again.
7.40 – alarm.
7.50 – snooze.
8.00 – pick up towel.
8.01 – shower.
8.08 – showered.
8.10 – turn radio on.
8.15 – half-dressed.
8.20 – hair dryer.
8.25 – make-up.
8.30 – finish dressing.
8.32 – out the door.
8.35 – wait for the overground.
8.40 – wait for the central line.
8.55 – get off the central line.
9.05 – at my desk.
The wafer thin base of an oven-hardened pizza is my balm to a hard week. Sour dough preferable, ndjua – you fiery temptress (no one can pronounce it..). Delicious. Is £15 too much to pay? Does it matter? Mmmmmm. Paired with a pint of wine, hello Friday!
There’s a plug missing in my kitchen
so the water just drains,
washing is a problem
the suds close rank and pool
and float down, cloud like,
no resistance
whilst raindrops come through the ceiling,
we collect them in a frisbee.
Our walls are half painted,
some blue some cream,
where my Mother sleeps on her side
half empty. She adds it to the list.
Because the wooden panels
that frame the bath are rotten
a leak has sprung and we cultivate
great big mushrooms.
Now the fence has fallen
at the weight of our crab apple tree and
its limbs splay over the grass,
not tended, but wild safari straw.
We are in decay! We moan.
We call another plummer,
polish the floor.
We fell what was.
Snatched from mouths of wicked assailants
the call comes out with a snarl and a click,
clamped jaw, lock-jaw frozen in cool combinations of
twit-woos and orites – clip clop pace fast to mask
a face of burning blood, watery shame.
Fidgeting hands tweak, prod, the whispers cajole
buried dead, beneath barbed cages of ivy and flesh
they echo violent taunts of wet flagellation at the
illusion of exposure supposedly made by sultry
awkward eyes, by the meeting of pink-humble thighs.
is far from empty
a rough guide to your twenties 