Monday, Bloody Monday

For the last couple of weeks I have been stalking the barren plains where the exegeses roam, trying to lasso myself a plumptious one. Seldom have I been out of my pyjamas and my once-white slipper-boots and I have drunk more cups of tea than there are teenage mothers in the north of England. Yesterday I helped LoH sew a tiny felt mouse, and that is the closest I have come to normality. I feel like a fly buzzing around my own head.

I have been working on my MRes for ten months now, only two more to go. The next fortnight sees a return to fiction, to my sweet little killer, reeking and glowering in her scabby old Parka. She’s hiding somewhere in the dank cellars of my mind, breathing through her mouth and picking her teeth with a carving knife. I stand at the top of the mossy and treacherous stairs, clutching a single, guttering tea light, and take a deep, deep breath.

The best thing at the moment is the music that my beloved Snout is making and trapping inside his new magic box (a ‘digital eight-track recorder’, if you’ll believe that kind of talk). It’s music that sounds like what you see in the sky on smudged and hallowed mornings when you’ve been up all night carousing under the communion-cup moon. It sounds like our love.

But, to quote Captain Spalding, I must be going. There is a killer at large in my cellar and something must be done.

Bank Holiday and Beyond

Returning home on Sunday from a day out in the Big City, I crested the hill and saw my garden full of my beautiful friends. All the neighbours were out with their beers and their barbeques and their big bellies broiling in the un-English sun. I changed into my Dalmatian suit and sprawled on the grass, drinking applecrisp wine and munching on the foetus-shaped biscuits that Best Girl had made. We stayed out until dusk soothed the sunburnt sky and then I had some fish fingers of inferior quality and the evening was ruined.

There’s a special fuckball game on tonight – Manchester United versus Barcelona. It’s a carnival atmosphere and to celebrate I am cooking my speciality. I will place a bumblebee inside a dormouse inside a kitten inside a cat inside a dog inside a monkey inside a big fat man and then I will spit-roast it in the garden, a process I normally save for premiership soccer stars. Then I will serve it with lashings of melted butter and no cutlery at all.

Twenty past three is too early to start drinking on an overcast day. Or is it.......?

A Pleasure Postponed is a Pleasure Increased

When I grow up I am going to be a Life Coach. People are going to pay me to make their lives better. I will rid them of all the qualities that stop them enjoying life; ambition, aspiration, a work ethic, reliance on others, fear of consequences, high standards of hygiene etc. I will teach them how to love their sofa and forage for scraps. I will make my clients come and live in my house and I will drag them down to my level, down here in the gutter, looking up the skirts of passers-by. I also think that I might start farming dormice for food, in hundreds of tiny jars.

The Eurovision party was postponed. Best Girl had double-booked. We taped it and are going to watch it next week. The gowns remain in their scented boxes, the greasepaint in its tubs, the bridles and bits in the kitchen cupboard. I know who won, but that’s beside the point. Instead of watching Eurovision I spent the evening doing drunken patchwork and watching Snout kick the arses of cocky online Street Fighters.

Someone has written ‘Zoe bum dad’ on our wheelie bin.

Moonlight and Music and Love and Romance

A mysterious car has appeared over the road. Just a normal small car (I think; it could be a pus-powered Rolls Royce hatchback for all I know), but painted yellow with black stripes and with the Transformers logo on the hubcaps and the bonnet. The funny thing is, round the corner near Jimmy’s shop there is an A-Team van. Perhaps I am not the only fictional character who lives on this street. The sign outside Jimmy’s shop reads JIMMY,S. Punctuation-a-go-go.

For tea last night I made Luxury Pie. You could tell it was Luxury Pie because I wrote Luxury Pie on the top in pastry. I filled it with hagfish and Werther’s Originals, durians, hen’s teeth and kelp. The gravy was made of lube. We ate that pie up as though it were a little book, and it made our bellies sing like boys.

Yesterday I tidied my Snout’s music room and lined up all the instruments – two keyboards, four violins, five guitars, a ukulele, a flute and a kazoo. I want some instruments of my own, I think, like a Cat Piano or a Bone Trumpet. I have my own secret music that I hear when the house is still, translucent melodies, musical fetches, half-dreamt ghosts of song. And I’m learning to play Psycho Killer on the ukulele.

Spilt Salt

I am not afraid of mess, I think there is magic in it. Unlike many of my sex I lack the will to cleanliness. I can function in any kind of shambles because my eyes are inside-out. However, even I admit that the pile of festering rubbish we had cultivated in the concreted area at the side of the house was a bit over-the-top. You miss the bins once or twice and it all builds up, supplemented with cardboard boxes, oddments of excess furniture and the bottles. Oh, all those bottles. Strangely enough, there were never any flies, just hundreds of worms underneath.

Now the landlord has taken it all away my thoughts turn to patio furniture. Or at least taking the wheelchair outside. We found the wheelchair in the garden one morning. It was in a bad state, but we took it in and it proved very comfortable. We have found quite a few things in the garden. I found a laminated wooden plank that was perfect for propping across the top of the bath so I can do my puzzles while I soak. We found a painted, totemic stick. One afternoon shortly after we moved in I was in my bedroom up to no good when I heard a chorus of children expressing high disgust. When I went outside there was a snow-white cat lying dead at the door. There is only one explanation. They are offerings. The neighbours have decided to worship me as a god.

Mental Phlegm

It’s a light blue Saturday with all the accompaniments. The general knowledge crossword is completed, the concise crossword is completed, the cryptic crossword is buried in the garden lest it remind me of my inadequacies. Best Girl and EP came over last night and much cricket was played. I don’t much care for games that don’t involve either a board or nudity, but I make a necessary exception for cricket.

I am about to go and commune with my killer. She’s waiting in the spare room with the tip of her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth, her black thatch of hair hacked into a wonky pageboy, her Parka zipped all the way up. Her hands hang like crabs on lines. My endless love.

I might start pretending to be my own twin. I will sneak away from social gatherings and put on a jaunty hat, then come back and speak only in binary code. I will knock on the front door carrying a suitcase of satsumas and claiming I have just come back from Croydon. I will be my own opposite. What is the opposite of Sack Posset? Probably a manicurist.

Gainful Employment

My bedroom smells of daffodils and I am wearing the furry blue dressing-gown that makes Spatchcock think I am her mother. Earlier this evening I somehow contrived to get stuck underneath the double mattress of our bed. I always thought that living in a house with four men would mean I was relatively well-protected, but I roared myself hoarse and they didn’t stir from Fifa ’08. They thought I was one of the children, playing their little screaming games.

I have been looking at the search queries that bring up this wad of words. My favourites are:

Ultimate bionic catfish
Dead hedgehog
The lonely sock sack
Amanda Holden armpit
The killer inside me

And most of all:

Pied Piper to the girl with the naughty knickers.

Let's Start a War

I am my own imaginary friend. When I do something naughty I blame myself and I feed on salt and pepper. I draw on the walls in green ink and I leave footprints in the butter. At night I sweep the hearth with a besom made of eyelashes and I come in shape no bigger than a cubic zirconia on the forefinger of a stripogram. I smoke thyme in an acorn-cup pipe and sometimes I solve crimes.

I am contemplating a campaign against The Observer, specifically against their Woman magazine. The last issue of this monthly menstrual clot included an interview with Scarlett Johansson about clothes, an article about the rise of ‘slapper shoes’, another about male models and how they are more muscular this season, many, many pictures of handbags and lipstick and in general a load of shite about frocks and feelings. I am (more or less) a woman, and I am interested in clockwork toys, toads and Roman dining habits. I am going to petition them for a monthly Man magazine full of tits and tanks, in which every article is written by Jeremy Clarkson.

Last night I ate cheese that was as meat. I wore the Dog Dress, patterned with pugs, and I sported a luxuriant moustache. This morning I am desirous of a return to the womb. I am jealous because the Best Girl and her man have gone to the zoo. I am going to make my own zoo. I will construct enclosures from books; one for the werewolf (who has swapped his fez in favour of a curly black wig), one for all the clowns, one for Spatchcock and one for the boys, who I will hunt down one by one with a butterfly net and a harpoon. Then I will spend the afternoon throwing bread rolls at them.

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.

Thank Crunchie

Friday afternoon and the sky is bored to tears. I am bemoaning my slatternly ways after five hours of tidying up. It was unfair that Snout should have to strap on his crampons and climb a Ben Nevis of discarded gee-gaws in order to find his trousers.

Apparently, it was my hair that strangled the vacuum cleaner. Brother Mine and LoH joked with the vacuum-man, said well, it looks like we’ll have to shave her. The vacuum-man said Christ, is it a dog? and when Brother said no, it’s my sister, VM couldn’t decide whether to apologise or piss himself laughing.

When the last person to try and live with us fell in love with me, he stole one of the little mice I make from my hair. I found it under his pillow. He should have known better. Monsters always know where their fur is.

Now my sheets are cleaner than me. My bed is blue, like a lagoon. Over my head at night I pull the waters. I am otter-born, I float on my side and the tears the crocodiles cry for me are real. My body is the palanquin in which the water holds my dreams aloft, and from the trees surrounding, the monkeys rain their babies down on me.

Morning After

Once upon a time, LoH stole his housemate’s bed and took it on a tour of all the pubs in town. Snout and I once spent a whole week in bed, rattling with pills and frosted with powders, chewing on mushrooms and weeping at the beauty of the ceiling. He proposed to me while I was pleasuring him on a pool table. We were very naughty, when we were younger. Last night we watched some educational television (largely fish-based) and drank wine out of real wine glasses, as opposed to gravy-boats or teapots. Documentaries are the new Class As.

Busting Out All Over

It’s here, for now – sky the colour of hyacinths, crocuses in the grass, heat on the back of your neck and, of course, the obligatory twat with a massive sound system and a love of techno music. Twelve ‘o clock and it’s Radio Wanker. My brother and the Lover of Horses are playing football in the garden. I am cloistered up here, as though I have been walled in and left to die. I can’t complain though, I am having a high old time, smoking and drinking coffee and writing bloody murders. The muse has finally opened her legs for me, the slut.

A bee came in before. One once stung my mother. They are the Columbos of the insect world, they make you think they are all bumbling and affable and then they turn around at the door and POW! They sting you. And then they die. Which is, I suppose, where the analogy ends.

I will sit here until my lover comes home and then he and I, his brother, my brother and the Lover of Horses will all sit down together in the room with too much furniture and we will drink cheap wine and cheaper beer and tell jokes in poor taste until dawn. Or at least until midnight – we’re getting older every day, you know.

Home Sweet Home

Last night I ate fishes with my man Snout. We drank wine and watched a man on the television sew the back end of a goose onto the front end of a pig. Spatchcock the cat came and groomed Snout’s beard. We had the house to ourselves and we sprawled on the sofa and feasted.

Yesterday afternoon the police came to the scruffy-looking rental house over the road, four officers who all looked fresh from sixth-form college. They called for a skip and began carting out hydroponic kit, fans, lights and ventilation tubes. They filled their cars with yellow evidence boxes. In two hours it was all over. I have never even noticed who lives there. If only we had known, we could have staged an advance raid. It was very exciting, all the neighbours came out to watch.

There is always something interesting happening on this street. I am sure that the house with the green door is a brothel – I keep seeing brutal looking men and blasted, skinny women coming and going. The gangs of children keep things interesting, and guarantee a police intervention every few months. There is a little old man who wears a shell-suit and a bobble-hat and drives a Segway up and down the road. Then, of course, there is the cat with the human face, and once, when I was working in the next town over, I plunged myself into the frigid sinkhole of a Monday morning, the streets wet and the stars still staring, and, hearing something skittering behind me I turned and found myself being followed down the street by a semi-flaccid purple balloon. That one unnerved me, I can tell you. I had to spend my lunch-break hunting magpies and tying them together for luck.

I am Sunday

My long-johns smeared with egg and newsprint, I am Sunday. My hair is an independent state. I won’t get out of bed ‘til dusk apart from to find the corkscrew. From the room next door comes the sound of electronic war and over it The Lover of Horses plays the guitar, the same sweet song time and again.

There are children outside, feral children with faces like chicken nuggets and dirty, dirty mouths. When we first moved here, we thought we were in a horror movie. Who puts a red strip-light in their cellar? And weren’t the tiny, sooty handprints a touch too much? I was concerned for my safety. I was, at the time, a bit of a slut. And the slut dies first.

Of all the animals known to science, one in three belongs to the group of insects known as beetles.

Yesterday I saw the cat with the human face again. It watched me as I passed and it was still staring when I looked back over my shoulder. It insinuated itself into my dreams, where it tried to make me touch it in an inappropriate way and then disappeared under the bed.

From where I type I can see a werewolf, screaming beneath the indignity of its fez, and on the wall is the constant reminder that a bread-maker can eat a cat. In this house, it is always the morning after, even when it is the night before. It’s like a shit Noah’s Ark – there’s one of everything in here, on the floor or banked up the walls. The television, our graven fool, gives us gifts, like an old episode of Stars in Their Eyes where Matthew Kelly says he is ‘down with the kids’, and in return, we receive its cuckoos with open mouths.

People and houses have a lot in common. All people have houses inside, with secret corridors leading to forgotten rooms, noises in the eaves at night and infestations in the skirting.
Everybody has somebody shackled to a radiator inside them.

There are toads in my cunt, but they have squatters’ rights.