By: Lydia Crow

Originally posted on Lydia Crow’s tumblr page.

I knew I shouldn’t have gone. There were signs – many signs – suggesting that I shouldn’t go back to the gym tonight. I hadn’t been in weeks due to Things, and I was looking forward to going (that was sign one: unnatural desire to attend gym). I had to pack for my flight in the morning and do umpteen other things before I went to bed (sign two: I had too much to do). My gym partner (that is, the person I’ve bullied into coming along with me) didn’t want to go (sign three).

But I really wanted to get back there. I wanted to get back into a routine, to push myself, to take it seriously for once. So I went to the gym.

Even when we arrived there were problems. Gym Partner (let’s call her Bunny) had lost her card. But still we persevered: we would do this!

On the machines everything felt too easy: it had all gone too smoothly. I was back! I was running!*

After a few minutes running I hit the ‘walk’ button, which I had set to a nice brisk walk, so I could grab some water. So far, so good. Only as I pulled my hand back I caught the wire to my headphones. I snatched my hand back too quickly, which unplugged the headphones from my old battered iPhone and also simultaneously sent said phone spinning onto the treadmill.

If I was the type of person to get embarrassed I would have done. The treadmills were directly in front of a row of cross-trainers and exercise bikes and every single one of them was in use. I spun round to look at the phone and smile at the people behind me with a conspirative “you can’t take me anywhere!” grin. The phone had continued its journey to the end of the treadmill and slid off in a rather dignified manner. It lay there on the floor, patiently waiting for me to retrieve it.

I can’t run without headphones and music. Well, I probably could if I had to, but I don’t really have any intention to give it a go. I pulled out the emergency stop and hopped off the treadmill to retrieve my phone.

Only that’s not exactly how it happened. Clearly, the Universe was bored and decided that it fancied a giggle. I did reach to pull out the emergency stop, but somehow it didn’t come out: my brain, however, didn’t register this. So it was with some surprise I found myself speeding (if brisk walking is speeding) along to the end of the treadmill. In trying to keep my balance, my brain being a little slow on the uptake and not quite understanding what was going on, I somehow slipped and ended up sitting on the treadmill. I let out a squeal but, before I could take another breath, the treadmill had shot me off the end and deposited me on my backside on the floor by my phone, and left me there looking up at the confused faces on the exercise bikes above me.

To be fair, most people tried to look away or weren’t sure what to do or say. All of them without fail kept cycling or cross-training or whatever they were doing. One guy, a legend, let out such a fantastic laugh that I, my body finally having caught up with what had just happened, descended into a fit of giggles. I couldn’t move from the floor for at least two minutes whilst I sat there laughing. Even after that, when I crawled back onto the running machine, I collapsed over the controls and giggled for another five solid minutes, unable to do anything but that potentially deadly brisk walk. And, just as I’d calmed down, another friend appeared on the running machine beside me to let me know that, though she hadn’t seen me actually fall, she had heard the bang when I fell over and had seen me sat on the floor in stitches.

To her dismay, Bunny had been mid-run and missed the entire thing. Bemused, she just saw me disappear and then reappear a couple of minutes later crying with laughter.
On our way out we did check at the reception to see whether there was any CCTV in that part of the gym, so I could perhaps get a copy to share with you all, but sadly there was not. I tried, though, comrades.

Earlier in the day I’d posted on Twitter: “Right then, gym: let’s do this thing. It’s you versus me. And I never lose… #famouslastwords #seeyouontheotherside” I refuse to believe I lost, but I’m willing to concede that my first visit back to the gym in several weeks could probably be classified as a draw.

*Not actually running though, to be honest. Jogging, really. But it counts.

By: Lydia Crow

ShiverWrigglers may recall Lydia Crow’s letter of complaint to the O2 Academy, Brixton in early December 2012. You can read it online here. Well, Nigel Downs, General Manager at the O2 Academy Brixton, has replied. Here is his response in full:

Dear Lydia,

I can only apologise for not replying to your most elegantly written of complaints dated the 5^th December 2012.

Whilst I’m pleased that you enjoyed a fabulous evening with Ben Folds Five, I can only apologise if perhaps your evening was slightly tarnished by what at best can be called an over enthusiastic member of our security team who possibly had good intentions but stretched these a little too far.  I have reiterated that perhaps security staff should allow audiences to find their own spots and only help if requested.

The venues policy is that people of all colour, race, sex, sexuality….and height be treated equally and enjoy the shows together.  My hope is that everyone attending shows at the venue will be made to feel welcome.

I hope that your experience at the hands of one of our maybe overzealous members of security won’t put you off attending shows at the O2 Academy Brixton and that maybe you can find it within your soul to forgive and maybe accept two pairs of complimentary tickets to a show or shows of your choice.  If I can entice you to perhaps give us another chance, perhaps you would like peruse our website (http://www.o2academybrixton.co.uk) and see if there are any shows you might like to attend.

Best Regards

Nigel Downs
General Manager
O2 Academy Brixton

By: Lydia Crow

In the final few months of 2008 my life started upon a curvature of change that was going to have substantial and long-standing effects. Life would, quite honestly, never be the same again.

My creative frustration, that feeling I had built up for years of not having done enough to pursue my own creative interests while I had been trapped by a life that I eventually came to realise I didn’t actually want, was one of the things that had finally reached a claustrophobic boiling point. As a result, over the early months of 2009 I started working on a website to house various creative snippets written by myself and my friends. I launched this, ShiverWriggle, on 29 June 2009. One of the many reasons for doing this was to make myself take my creativity seriously. I struggled to write anything without building it into a bigger overall work, so I forced myself to start writing Shorts (very short stories no longer than 250 words) regularly. When I felt that I had not written anything of a longer nature for a while and was struggling to decide what to write, I posted the opening two-line excerpt of a real-time fictional diary online (“That dead guy followed me home again tonight. He’s starting to irritate me.”) in a bid to ensure that I picked up the larger task and ran with it. I called my own bluff and it worked: by the end of the year I had completed Journal (2010) and I’m now working on drafting it into a stand-alone novel, written predominantly in the third person.

This last point is really important: these things I have written during the last four years of my life are all important to me. Every single one of them. In all this time I have only ever taken one of the things I have written and posted on ShiverWriggle offline, and I also stand by that decision: but now I want to start afresh. These latest few formative years have been more precious to me than, possibly, any other series of years in my life: definitely since childhood at any rate. But four years on I am now at a similarly important turning point in my life as I was during those autumn days of 2008. Nearly two weeks ago I handed in my notice at the University at which I have spent the last four and (nearly) a half years working. I started work at the University of Essex at about the time my entire life began to change, so it seems neat as well as important that I take a step back and reassess everything now.

The truth is, since I made that final decision almost two weeks ago to start afresh and make the final leap towards being the me that I’ve been working on for the last four and also thirty years, I’ve felt more and more uncomfortable about what I have posted online under different pseudonyms. I finally feel at a point in my life where anonymity is no longer necessary, more complicated, and in any case is more or less pointless given that people know who I am. If nothing else, I explained my various pseudonyms on my own personal website when I launched that on the final day of 2010.

This is not to say I regret having written under different names, not by any means. It was important to me at the time that I wasn’t associated with my writing, often for the protection of loved ones who I didn’t want to be associated with some of the things I had written: but I’m now in a delightful position whereby my family and close friends know who I am. They might not understand me entirely, but they know me: and I no longer feel like I have to tread delicately in order to protect their feelings. I have finally unashamedly and openly grown into my own skin, and they still love me. And being loved for who you are, rather than despite who you are, is possibly the most perfect thing ever.

I leave my job at the end of July. I have no job to go to and I don’t know what I will spend the next few years of my life doing. But I do know that I want to do everything as me, for me and because of me. There will be (and still are in some instances) right times for pseudonyms, but I now feel that I want to start drawing together the various threads of the different versions of me across the internet to make a version of a whole me that can go forward in this world and share her multifaceted self with you all as she does so.

What does this all mean? Well it means I’m evaluating what I have posted online over the last few years. A lot of it is going to disappear and what doesn’t will now be attributed to me (that is, the Christian name and surname I was given when I was born). Possibly even by the time you read this, there will be no more mention of Elysia and Tess on ShiverWriggle, though a certain Lydia Crow might already be listed as a contributor. There’s another project I have to decide whether to wrap up or hand over to someone else, and then I’m free to create my own creative world from not-quite-scratch with me transparently at the centre of it.

I love treasure hunts, so I’ve no doubt my online presence will not remain easy to understand for long, but this feels like the right thing to do right now. And, given that this is how I plan to live my life over the coming months and years, I can’t really say fairer than that.

By: Lydia Crow

Dear O2 Academy,

Firstly, I would like to congratulate you on the well-organised and fabulous evening which was the Ben Folds Five gig last night. The organisation at the door was smooth, the venue amazing and the music outstanding.

Sadly, however, I must confess there was something which jarred slightly about the evening. By no means did it spoil the evening altogether, Ben Folds Five were just too delicious for that, but it did leave a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth afterwards.

At this point I should explain I visited the gig with my friend, who happens to be a good few inches shorter than myself. Let’s call her Frodo (as this is what she has asked to be called in this letter). We have never felt judged by society for being friends despite our height difference, and not once have I been made to feel that our friendship was breaking some kind of secret taboo.

Towards the end of the gig, perhaps the last twenty minutes (you know, the point at which everyone is high on music and the entire night is building up to an amazing crescendo), one of your bouncers saw fit to ask me to move because I was blocking the view of two shorter people behind me (who were, I would like to point out, the same height as Frodo). I should also point out that, at the point at which Frodo and I first stood where we were, to the right of the speakers at the right hand side of the stage, no-one was there and no-one was behind us. In fact, when I had nipped to the bathroom only twenty minutes before, no-one had been stood behind me looking glum because a 5′ 8″ lass was stood at the front (nearly everyone else was stood directly in front of the stage: we’d positioned ourselves there early enough so Frodo would have a good view). I also should point out that, directly to my left, was a gentleman who was a good six inches taller than myself. The front of the barrier was littered with male giants of all shapes and sizes, as is the situation at many gigs. Everyone knows it’s every man for themself and everyone knows that you get there early if you want a good spot: never have I criticised a particularly tall man for standing in front of me when it’s been clear he did the legwork (no pun intended) to get there early.

When said bouncer (I’ll call her Maureen, simply because it will make this letter flow better) first asked me to move, I politely pointed out that there had been no-one behind us when we’d first stood there and that I wasn’t doing any harm and, in any case, wasn’t exactly a giant myself. Apparently this was not sufficient for the Messiah of the Vertically Challenged and she proceeded to interrupt my musical experience by continuing to ask me to move. On about the fourth time, I moved: simply because she was clearly disturbing the people around us. At this point, she ushered in the two shorter people who had been stood behind me who looked somewhat surprised (given they hadn’t complained in the first instance). The gentleman of the pair turned to me looking more than a little embarrassed and tried to explain that they’d been fine where they were and didn’t really want to move. I just said not to worry and to leave it, as clearly this was Maureen’s personal crusade, not their issue. They stood there for the rest of the gig looking decidedly uncomfortable, which doesn’t surprise me because if I was short and took my similarly short female companion on a date to a gig then I would have been mortified if Maureen had tried to implement her Short Person Outreach Project and shuffle me and my date around. She might as well have entirely emasculated him while she was at it. Way to go, Maureen.

This was probably a painful enough experience for everyone, but Maureen wasn’t done. Clearly disheartened by the lack of an appearance of a troupe of celestial angels singing her praises (or whatever she was expecting), she decided she wasn’t finished. No, she then decided that I was in the way. Now, let’s think about this. I had just been moved to that very spot by Maureen herself and then she saw fit to barge past me, shoving me mildly into the person on my left, and tell me I was in the way. At this point, when she asked me to move again, I pointed out I was standing precisely where she had asked me to, which apparently was not the right thing to do as her eyes went wild and flecks of foam appeared on her lips (slight exaggeration, perhaps, but nothing would have surprised me at this point). Amidst the spittle she continued to harass me, explaining that she’d asked me to do a nice thing and I’d done it (to which I pointed out that, actually, originally I hadn’t done it and had only moved because she had been spoiling several people’s musical pleasure and, ironically, view: and that if she perceived that as selfishness then that was fine by me) and that now I was being belligerent  She didn’t actually use the word belligerent but I’m pretty sure that’s what she meant. She stayed there, what I believe is commonly referred to as ‘having a go at me’, for some time and, all the time, starting to push against me. At this point Frodo (who, as you may recall if you were paying attention, is not particularly tall herself) came up to me and intervened to calm things down. Maureen then stood there frothing (again, hyperbole, maybe) with her arms folded glaring at both of us for the rest of the gig, trying to get a reaction. Ben Folds Five were just too damn awesome to miss, though, so I didn’t really care, and certainly wasn’t going to miss anything because a self-appointed campaigner for all compact people had a problem. It was a good thing that I wasn’t wearing the four inch heels I’d been wearing to work that day, otherwise I’m half convinced Maureen the Zealot would have pulled out a hacksaw and started chopping my legs off at the knees.

Perhaps I should also point out that Frodo was somewhat upset that our friendship had been judged and tarnished on the basis of our height. When I was first moved, I had demanded that she stay at the front and watch from where she was, but she was so disappointed at not being able to stand with her friend at a gig that she eventually moved.

I don’t want to pass judgement on the person that Maureen may be. I’m sure she’s very nice. She probably has short friends who don’t bother to turn up to gigs until halfway through the night and still expect everyone to move out of the way for them, surprised when crowds don’t part like the Red Sea. She probably has placards printed with the words ‘SAVE THE SHORT PEOPLE’ emblazoned on them, and walks round London in a sandwich board trying to save the souls of those selfish enough to be over 5’5″. This is probably Her Big Cause. I do suggest, however, that she reconsider her career path, because I’ve never met any security firm who pride themselves on intervening in other people’s aural pleasure in order to try and segregate our society based on height. I would point out again that we were the only people in that corner for a good section of the first part of the gig and that no-one had wanted Mabel to intervene (I’m bored of calling her Maureen now). After that, everyone (and I include Mabel’s smaller self-appointed charges here) was so wrapped up in the music and the atmosphere, having such an amazing time, that we were all oblivious to any hint of societal differentiation based on colour, creed or, indeed, height.

My friend and I did discuss this with Mabel’s manager (or at least the person who seemed to be her manager – it was the person she’d run to when she realised that she’d probably overstepped the mark) afterwards and he did want us to stay behind and discuss the matter with his manager, but I explained we had to catch a train and we had another hour or two before we’d be back in our respective beds as it was (one short, like Baby Bear, and one long, like Daddy Bear, apparently).

I would appreciate your thoughts on the above incident and, to make a response easier, I have drafted a list of questions which you may particularly want to consider addressing:

As a venue, what is your policy on the mixing of people of different heights at gigs, for which tickets are sold as standing only in the stalls (inferring that it is first come, first served)?

Do you believe that, as a society, we should demand that people should be staggered from stage to back based on their height? I feel a little uncomfortable at this discrimination, given that I have some particularly tall male friends who would never be able to get close to a stage. (I note that, apparently, the fact the floor in Brixton is sloping was not enough to pacify Maude (please do keep up).) If so, please could you communicate this prior to tickets being purchased? The tickets we’d been given as a gift were worth £75. I’m sure, in future, an unadvertised discrimination policy might impact upon a decision I may take to attend a gig at the O2 Academy (or, at least, ensure my friend wears six inch heels so we are able to tackle this subtle, but potentially incremental, attack on our basic human rights and freedoms and stand together at gigs to which we choose to go together.)

Has Maude ever had an experience whereby she was made to feel inferior due to her height (which I estimated to be 5’6″)? If so, should she consider dealing with her demons head-on and speaking to someone about this? (I understand, due to data protection, you cannot communicate this to me, but it is food for thought for her manager.)

Was I perhaps barking up the wrong tree and the issue of height was a subterfuge and, in fact, irrelevant? Was it, maybe, that I have red hair (technically, it needs dying again at present, but it’s still mostly-red (it’s these little facts that I feel add a personal flavour to our correspondence))? This might explain why Maude asked me to move, not the considerably taller gentleman next to me. I’d hate to think she asked me to move and not him simply because I was of the female variety and she dare not ask him.

I think, given the length of this letter, I shall leave it there for now. I very much look forward to your reply. I would like, once more, to thank you for a fabulous evening for the most part. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves: even the two individuals which Maude saw fit to move in front of me did, even though they were incredibly embarrassed and apologetic (we bumped into them on the way to the tube and they told me so). I do commend Maude for trying to be kind in the first instance (even if it was a very focused, discriminatory act of kindness), but I feel, for her own sanity, that she should understand that it’s a jungle out there. Perhaps sometimes in life we just have to watch from the sidelines quietly, observing perceived injustices. Especially, I like to think, when it’s your job to do precisely that and not intervene where there isn’t a problem in the first place.

In anticipation of your eloquent reply,
Lydia Crow.

By: Vague

It was a dark and stormy night.  Actually, this is a lie.  It was a clear, windy, and typically Northern-Scottish-Autumn night, with the moon shining through the sloped window in my attic bedroom. I had no blind or curtain, not a problem in winter, but at this latitude summers are light, all night.

We had moved to our third (and final, it would turn out) house in Orkney in order to spread. I now had five younger sisters and space had become a premium.  I loved this house, built in the eighteenth century, allegedly by wreckers. Those men and women who lured passing ships onto knives of rock and stole the cargo. The house was squat, stone and smelled of the earth, of old places.

We had our first visitations immediately. I believe the correct term may be “odour experience”, in the parlance of the modern ghost-hunter. We thought they were simply scents trapped in the floor, in the walls. One corner would smell of fresh pipe smoke, one room of wet dog, cooking scents would tantalise, yet nothing was on the hob. And always the smell of the sea.

This last is not especially surprising. We were the last house before Norway, the end of the road and then some. The track up to the house was bleached, dusted by the salt in the spray.

The bed I slept in was a marvel. It had been made in the attic, the ancient structure simply too large to be lifted down through the hatch, or out through the window. The mattress was old too; horsehair would occasionally escape and tickle me through the sheets. It sufficed for a time, before we decided to cut it up and burn it. This act of cultural vandalism was justified; the mattress stayed damp, no matter how often we attempted to coax the moisture from its depths. I would often think of those who had slept in that bed.

One night I awoke suddenly. This in itself was not surprising; I have always been a light sleeper and often wake at odd times. I glanced at the clock; illuminated by the moon I read four. I turned over and closed my eyes, then I swiftly reopened them – something was different. Something I had missed in the brief moment I had my eyelids parted.

I found my gaze drift to the foot of the bed, past the footboard to the woman kneeling there. She was wearing a shawl, pulled up over her head as I had seen wizened Orcadian great-great-grandmothers do, thick coarse wool keeping heat in, wind out. She was facing away from me and I was not scared.

This last point bears repeating. I had awoken in my own room to find someone kneeling at the foot of my bed, and I was not scared. The figure silently turned and I could see she was hunched over something cradled in her arms. A baby. There was a woman in a shawl, carrying a baby, at the foot of my bed. And I was not scared.

Her head lifted to look at me, and in the bright moonlight I could easily see the smile that also lit her face. Here was a woman, wrinkles as deep as time, expressing the joy of a child. I could see my chair beyond her, through her. But I was not scared.

I felt a deep calm. As I returned my head to the pillow, the last I remember seeing was this beshawled Grandmother raising an arm, then slowly fading, slowly…

 *   *   *

When I awoke I felt as though I had slept the sleep of the dead, rested beyond any sense I can transfer into words. I found myself smiling at the memory of my visitation. I should have been, but I was not scared.

Over breakfast I told my Mum what had happened. When I came to the part about the ease the old woman turned, her face became ashen. She pointed to the wall.

‘That was the original level of the floor; she wouldn’t have been kneeling, she would have been standing.’

Ice drifted down my back. And, for the first time, I was scared.

By: Will Roberts

4th February 2011

Just caught my reflection in the window.  With the blue/white light from my laptop reflected in my glasses I look fucking sinister.  I have eaten, predominantly, South African Biltong this evening (ahh, the primal thrill of tearing strips of dried meat with your teeth), I’ve drunk, exclusively, lager and smoked a good handful of cigarettes.  This could be a rough one.  Not that I’m feeling sorry for myself you understand, it was very much in an effort to prepare myself for the experience of knocking the smile off this keyboard’s mush.

You see, there is a fug on the horizon which is shaping up to be something I feel suddenly rather bitter and bent out of shape about.  It’s that hideous plodding of life towards the grave, the listless pissing of time into the ether, those days spent idly idling whilst all the while a world was hopping and skipping passed my window.  Could someone not have warned me that there was a killer at my heels, knife in his teeth and a grin on his mug (if you can grin with a dagger wedged between your canines)?

I met a man I did.  Stood outside a pub he was.  But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself.

Met some boys I did.  Stood outside a pub was I.  The four topshopped, plimsole wearing, tight t-shirted baboons, buffooned out into the street whilst I stood happily smoking and contemplating the nature of existence, the credibility of religion in the modern world and, probably, tits.  You could smell the testosterone in the air, I swear two of them were already sporting semis, their tight bodies fairly glistened with spattered sambuca and there was a hint of mischievousness which, if the alpha felt inclined to show off for his acolytes, could suddenly explode into violence.  They were eighteen.  Tops.  Almost certainly older in fact but they all look so fucking young these days.  I’m a proud man and showed no sign of being intimidated but I sobered up three degrees as they approached and encircled.  ‘We’re looking for, like, where all the main bars with, like, fanny in and cheap drinks and shit are’ they said raising their inflection at the end of the sentence to indicate a question.  ‘You’re of advancing years and have a bald head and glasses, you look like you might have a semblance of intelligence.  Tell us what we wish to know or we shall exhaust our pent up energy bouncing your head off the kerb whilst boisterously singing varsity rugby songs’ is what their demeanour said if not their mouths.  I furnished them with information, attempting to carry myself with the matter of fact air of a man who had barely noticed them but almost certainly appeared to be a man struggling with terrible constipation.  They skipped away into the ebb and flow of the old main drag and woke the next day in strange places and spent the coming days piecing the night back together from the photos of themselves tagged on facebook.  I presume.

At first I was annoyed.  How dare they?!  How dare they treat me like a fragile old man?  How dare they assume I was afraid?  How dare they assume that I couldn’t outdrink and outlast every one of them?  ‘But wait’ I thought ‘you were their age, you were high on your own new found sense of power and drunk on the freedom that comes with release from the family manor and immersion in the life of a student’.  Suddenly I felt happy for them, ‘fly my pretties’ I thought ‘you can have this night, I give it to you.  Now take the baton and run, run like the wind for, just like me, your time will come.  One day you will awaken in your own bed with a hangover you know will last for two days and pass your time shakily checking the NHS direct website to see if you have the symptoms of the early onset of AIDS, unwilling to believe it’s just that your kidneys can’t keep up anymore and that you can’t ‘have it large’ with impunity these days. Enjoy my boys, have one for me.’

On re-entering the pub I saw a man I had somehow failed to notice before.  Mid twenties.  Tops.  Etc.  Near skeletal, Nick Cave hair, immaculately dressed, sumptuously accessorised, cheekbones so sharp his statuesque girlfriend’s face was an ordinance survey map of nicks and scratches.  The glistening cunt.  The slick wide-on of a man commanded attention, captured the eye and the imagination on a heady Friday night but would have looked utterly out of place in, say, a supermarket early on a Tuesday evening.  He popped and fizzed with pizzazz in a way that I don’t and, now, never will.  I’m too old for a David Bowie style reinvention and, in any case, not built for skinny jeans.  I moved on to my table, avoiding eye contact.  If he’d talked to me I’d only have gone weak at the knees and said something giggly and sycophantic.

Later that night, I met a man I did.  Stood outside the pub he was.

He had a voice with more gravel than a suburban driveway and had a good few years on myself.  A fellow smoker, I became a member of his circle and he held court.  ‘I smoke’ he buzzed and drawled ‘and I drink a lot, especially for a nurse, and you’re supposed to feel bad about that, like you’re wasting your life (inhale, exhale) but I’m enjoying myself tonight and I spend my days working on a geriatric ward.  If you spent your time in that place you’d be comforted by the thought that your lifestyle choices will lead to a heart attack in your late fifties ’.  This man was ok with his lot.  He’d seen a lot and done a lot and he knew who he was and where he was going.  Some people plan to be successful accountants and retire to sunnier climbs, others plan to retire in a much more literal sense and skip the whole chintz and nostalgia end of things altogether. Maybe I won’t bother setting up that pension after all, looks like I won’t be needing it.  Fuck, I thought I was just smoking to look cool in front of my friends.  If I’d known it would eventually rescue me from the indignity of the colostomy bag and the crippling price of adult nappies I’d have been inhaling all these years.  Was this man a glimpse of my future?  A voice like Tom Waits, a look borrowed from Richard Hawley and a comfortable sense of resignation to fall onto when I’ve drunk myself insensible?

Who knows? What do you do when you’re never going to see yourself as really being young again but you still don’t feel old enough to take responsibility for planning the rest of your life?  What happens in that limbo between the age at which your tomfoolery can be dismissed as the folly of youth, or the consequence of juvenile confidence, and the age at which you have to know who you are and where you’ll end up?  You write about it I guess.  I survived my twenties.  What the fuck do I do with my thirties?

Will Roberts.  D.O.B. 30/03/1981

By: Hugin

This one follows on from number one, and not only numerically. It is important to remember that, whilst not eating is not such a good idea, not drinking could have some things to recommend itself. I say this because at that meeting I arrived really early…

Well, anyone who knows me will tell you that I don’t really like tea that much and, when I’m out, I avoid it at all costs because people never make it milky enough. So I chose to buy myself a coffee whilst sitting and waiting for my person to arrive. As I say, I was early. But he was late, so I found myself drinking more and more coffee. By the time he arrived I had drunk so much that the caffeine had managed to completely take hold. I bought two more; one for me, one for him and proceeded to talk and talk. Actually the talking was pretty amusing at times, but we’ll get there in good time!

Well I didn’t drink this cupful as, exacerbated by the empty stomach, the last two, three or four cups had completely gone to my head. Alcohol has never affected me as much. So, what do I do instead of drinking the coffee? That’s right, I decide to tip it all over me. Whoosh! and all that planning what to wear becomes void as my smart clothes act as a (very uncomfortable) coffee filter. So, of course, you act shocked and mortified and definitely don’t swear. Right? Wrong. The word was out of my mouth before I could stop it.

Oops.

So, you think that’s as bad as it gets? Oh no, my humiliation continues… I did it all again five minutes later!

And the moral of this story is: don’t spill coffee in a meeting.

Well, if you do spill coffee then don’t swear.

Definitely don’t do this twice.

By: Will Roberts

I’m temporarily residing in a grey satellite town, cowering in the shadow of a slag heap in South Yorkshire.  Though the mine nearby is still, on paper, a going concern it is one of the countless forced to hand over it’s gift-wrapped testicles to dear old Maggie back in the early 80s and the town is bitter, backward and belligerent because of this.  There is a stretch of road near me which always smells like shit, it’s everywhere.  I say this not flippantly but literally and I say this not out of spite but simply as a rather illustrative statement of fact; so brow-beaten is this place that concern for social/environmental issues hasn’t progressed even as far as acknowledging street strewn dog faeces as something to take action against; these guys would charge the beach to roll a stranded whale back into the sea but only because they would consider it to be an illegal immigrant (‘fuckin whales, stealing all our jobs’), the idea of allocating any percentile of your brain’s processesing power to anything grander and more noble in scope than, say, the increasing price of pipe tobacco or the inability of Royal Mail to deliver CASHMYGOLD envelopes in a timely fashion is anathema.  This isn’t entirely true, a man not too far from my current residence has had solar panels fitted to his roof though I believe he was recently burnt as a witch.

There is a community out there striving to drag us kicking and screaming out of the apathetic funk in which we’re mired.  God help me, I should hate these plucky mentalists for hauling me from my comfortable pit of ‘meh’ but, god love ‘em, I don’t.  I speak of the Real Life Superheroes (RLSH for short), the seemingly ordinary citizens around the globe (though obviously mainly in America) who don their gay apparel and patrol their beleaguered streets.  Reeled I did when I saw these bright, becostumed braves admonish litterbugs and hand sandwiches to the homeless.  Swooned I did when I saw our brave new protectors spray mace in the faces of handbag snatchers.

Thanks largely to the 2009 film Kick-Ass and the recent media hubbub around Seattle’s own Rain City Superheroes headed by the erstwhile Phoenix Jones (though they pre-date both by many years), this community has been able to touch more cold hard hearts than ever.  Those unfamiliar with the RLSH should go towww.reallifesuperheroes.org/ immediately.

The friendlier of these folks take their costume tips from the camp and colourful world of the old marvel and DC heroes; it’s all bright colours and capes.  Should you ever see one of this particular breed tackle a mugger you would be unsurprised to see words like ‘PAFF’ and ‘ZONK’ leap into the air as your champion doles out a hiding.  The other type seem more akin to the ‘Dark Knight’ re-imagining of the Batman series.  These guys are all ski-masks and black leather, body armour and army surplus.  Samiritan, for instance, has a photo on his bio in which he sports a futuristic black mask and helmet, milky white Marilyn Manson contacts and a facial expression which screams ‘god I hate you, I hate you so much I could punch your mum and eat your soul’.  Similarly Mr Jack is turned out in a black and purple suit and a black balaclava which gives him a seemingly inappropriate ‘master criminal’ air.  It’s worth noting however that even this physical manifestation of childhood fears is apparently ‘working to create bonds of understanding and help every person I come in contact with to get the most out of their life’.  Well, fair enough.  Carry on.

I had hoped to find that the RLSH were out there fighting crime, hitting on it’s girlfriend and stealing it’s pint but they predominantly act as informants for the police and involve themselves in blood drives, charity yard sales and soup kitchens for the homeless (though the rather darker www.rlsh-manual.com/ offers a guide to the weak points of the human anatomy and hints on the best ex military hardware to buy) but it is comforting to know that there are people out there who care so goddamned much that they’ll put their underpants on outside their trousers in public and show the rest of us up as the lazy, ambivalent, ingrates that we are.  Bet they clear up after their dogs too.

By: Will Roberts

Now I don’t wish to rock the boat, and do stop me if the particular thread I’m picking at here is the one which unravels the cardigan, but I’m currently contemplating something of a quandary and I’m concerned it might be an ‘elephant in the room’ of an issue over which it is unhealthy to mull.

I’ve written before (lyrics, articles for small magazines, short stories for self gratification and profoundly fucking terrible poetry) and have lately begun flinging my particular brand of mud at the internet to see if it sticks. And stick it does. Mine does, yours will and so will that of every shoe gazing poet sat tweeting all the faux intellectual codswallop permeating from under his understatedly charming hair into his iphone with one hand whilst the other absentmindedly twirls a tarnished teaspoon around a soya latte in the back corner of a vegan coffee house. Every crushingly depressed and oppressed teenager without parental internet controls on the high spec, star trek tech PC that daddy bought them for Christmas can ‘wish theyd neva bin born’ to their hearts content and expect their facebook status reflecting this mood to be ‘liked’ by Daz, Gaz and Shaz who will all agree that their parents are wankers for not buying them JLS tickets for their birthday. Lolz. OMG. Isn’t the internet fucking ‘epic’ mate.  Nowadays I can readily read guff flatched out by literally anyone with access to affordable and widespread technology. Every wannabe intellectual who ever got a battered notebook out of their brown leather satchel in a real ale pub and stared into space looking like ‘something might come to them’ but who, if lightly and justifiably tortured, would have to admit that really they wanted someone (preferably an attractive female someone, you know, one of those pretty but they don’t really know it, DM wearing, folksy types who drink beers called ‘Abbots Arse’ and ‘Rat up a Drainpipe’) to ask them what they’re writing can now jump up and down waving their bleatings under my nose. And how do I respond? I become that one who gets out of bed in the wee hours of the morning having been unable to sleep for seething, who pours a little whiskey for sipping, and rattles my laptop fully, full on intending to submit my protestations to a website where I know they can be picked over by large numbers of people who really aren’t obliged to give the finest fraction of a shit what I think.

And I want them to read it. Worse, I want them to like it. Worse still, that bit about the notebook, the satchel and the real ale was me as well.

I’ve been alive for a while now and I’ve come to terms with a lot of things about myself which I used to find reprehensible. I accept that I am a show off. I accept that I feel a ‘need’ for recognition and thrive on people’s praise and approval. I’m not proud of the fact that I clamour for attention like a child tugging on his mother’s skirt at a supermarket checkout desperately trying to negotiate their way into ownership of a kinder surprise, but I don’t beat myself up about it either. A few beers in and ‘yes, actually, I have got a semi for the sound of my own voice’. I do, I might add in defence, attempt to offset this character flaw through other, more laudable, aspects of my personality. I’m not a monster.

It begs a troubling question though, one which I can’t think I’m the first or even the thousandth to ask myself. Is my ‘need’ the only reason I write at all? There is undoubtedly a large amount of excellent material available online to anyone who wishes to look for it but you will have to wade through a lot of codshit (see above). Does the internet provide a medium for the literary talents of those who in the past would not so easily have found a voice or is it simply a megaphone for every needy, self centred and deluded individual who wants to be seen to be a writer?

I’ve tried to tell myself that the first time I write something which I think is truly accomplished and profound, something important; I’ll put it straight into a drawer and never show anyone. This would go some way to proving that I’m more than a dog on its hind legs begging for boneos but I’m not convinced I’ll ever do it. What’s the point in me writing it if no one will ever read it? In fact, don’t read this article. You’ll only encourage me.