Best Fishes

Squatinus is a fisshe in the se, of fiue cubites longe: his tayle is a fote brode, & he hideth him in the slimy mudde of the se, & marreth al other fisshes that come nigh him: it hath so sharpe a skinne that in som places they shaue wode with it, and bone also: on his skinne is blacke short here. The nature hathe made him so harde that he can nat almoste be persed with nouther yron nor stole.

On Disgust and Other Things

Squids are the Angels of Disgust, waving tentacles like phalluses covered in toothy, sucking holes. Disgust fascinates me. I am sure that if we could overcome it, we could be unstoppable. Disgust comes from the fear of invasion, the fear that the disgusting thing will get on your skin, inside you, in your mouth and up your nose, and yet the disgusting is often a mere half-inch from the sexual. If we all made ourselves do one disgusting thing before breakfast I am sure that we could take over the world.

I won about three pounds on the Grand National. War of Attrition did not run. I drank a vast amount of Mother’s Ruin with the Best Girl and noticed that the dead hedgehog has moved several feet down the road. Clearly a zombie. Best Girl and I made a Book of Glory for an absent friend, stuck full of tasty pictures and headlines from Take a Break and Chat, like “Thank God for My Bionic Girdle” and the world’s worst Daniel Craig lookalike. Then we wrote drunken nonsense in it and I drew a picture of a small dog. A good time was had by all. I watched us as we played out in the garden: LoH in his cowboy shirt, cardigan and shorts, his shaven hair growing back fluffy; Brother Mine all in cream like Jesus; Snout in his Thundercats T-shirt with his hair a homage to Slash; Best Girl’s boy, who I like to call Extended Play (because it has the same initials and because of his consumption of energy drinks) sporting skinny tee and yellow Wayfarers and Best Girl, her new jeans immaculately accessorised, standing next to me as we giggled ourselves silly. I love them. I was rocking my ancient dungarees. Here’s some advice – never get drunk wearing dungarees. It ends badly.

Now I am back in the spare room scrumping for words, trying to keep my mind out of the sea and inside the killer. Outside the Rag & Bone Man is cruising the street, looking for damaged and discarded things, just like me. Spatchcock is sitting on my shoulder, which I suppose she thinks is funny. Time is getting on, I must away.

Never Watch Blue Planet When You're Hungry

Someone appears to have left me on standby. All day I have managed barely more than a sustained stare. When the house is quiet I can sometimes hear tunes in the silence, musical fetches, half-dreamt ghosts of song. I am waiting for the evening to come, boys and wine and regrettable jokes. In the meantime I am picking away the unfeasible amount of hair that has fallen from my head and gathered under the arms of my jumper. If I go bald, I will compensate myself by getting brass teeth.

My thoughts are on spin cycle, the usual concerns repeating themselves over and over, sea creatures and hoarders and the outer limits of gastronomy, murderous women and cavorting clowns. They once caught a catfish that had swallowed a catfish that had swallowed a catfish. When I was a little girl I was afraid of the river that flowed through the bottom of our valley, surrounded by a pubic tangle of trees. I was afraid of sturgeons and freshwater squid and most of all I was afraid of the black, sucking mouth of the culvert. I have always felt that the sound of water is a distraction, hiding the approach of whatever is behind you. Water whispers, it hides and it lies and it erodes its own banks. Water, insidious as women.

Pie for tea, filled with chicken, or a reasonable impersonation thereof. I would rather eat miniscule fishcakes in the shape of krill, bioluminescent squids served still flashing in a darkened room, crabs covered in gold leaf, potted dolphin spread on slivers of baleen, sugared sprats coated in Hundreds and Thousands, blue whale ribs in barbeque sauce, swordfish plucked from a stone, periwinkle chowder served in nautilus shells or at the very least a fishfinger sandwich.

Mastication and Jubilation

Eggs are the food of gods and monsters. So raw that they are not yet become. Paint them up like beetles, push them still warm into your other mouth, eat them with a tiny silver spoon. I have two hardboiled eggs in my pockets, and a pinch of salt twisted up in newspaper. I will eat them later with great pomp and circumstance and I will save the shells to make boats for witches. Later still when it gets dark I will eat a fish, served curled in a blue bowl with its tail in its mouth. I am very particular about what I eat. Food has magic and it can change you. If you eat enough rabbit you will be able to see behind yourself without moving your head. Honey is immortal and so to spread it on your toast is to eat the future. Bone soup is an aphrodisiac. You should never skimp on your ingredients. Authenticity is key. Use real toad in your toad-in-the-hole, real shepherds in your shepherd’s pie and never, ever serve upside-down cake unless your guests are hanging helpless from the ceiling by their manacled ankles.

Today is a momentous day. Not only have we had the vacuum cleaner fixed, but I have finished the first draft. I will celebrate the best way I know; wine, weed and the BBC’s Blue Planet. I want to see the vampiroteuthis infernalis, I want to see the herring deposit their curds of sperm at the water’s edge, the anchovies in their bait-ball, the slow-motion desecration of the whale carcass, the sea-sponges like sweetbreads and the umbilical eels. Most of all I want to see the lake at the bottom of the sea, the briny unreality of it, lapping at its crab-infested shores. Then I will have a bath with Mrs Gaskell and come out scrubbed and shiny and smelling of coal-tar soap.