Blast from the past

I love the time capsule aspect of blogkeeping, my memory for the more sensational aspects of my life being remarkably poor. While searching hopefully, but hopelessly, for a deleted email on Hotmail, I came across this unposted entry from 2009:


Like the Chinese, I’m heavily into enumeration, and the game of Top 5s is amongst my favourites. So, although memes are apparently old and tired these days, when I came across this list on my friend Deirdre’s blog, I had to fill it in (with slight amendments to the categories):

Five things I was Doing 10 Years:
1. Avoiding ‘Tom Jones’ and having an epiphany reading ‘Evelina’ while studying for an MA on the 18th Century novel
2. Throwing a Jackson Pollock party, making and eating JP-inspired food (swirly soup, spaghetti and spun sugar cages) and painting my own Pollock
3. Racing ambulances down the Wandsworth Road on my White Moss tri-bike
4. Living ten minutes away from my best friend
5. Getting married

Five Things on My To Do List Tomorrow:1. tidy my room
2. make sourdough
3. visit Seizure and the 6km domino run
4. pass my Eat Me: London journal to its first participant
5. go to Borough market with my camera

Five Things I Would Do If I Were a Millionaire (presuming multiple millions):
1. buy myself a home (with a garden big enough for chickens, vegetables and compost)
2. travel the world
3. get a dog (because I wouldn’t be working all day)
4. eat out more
5. give some to my very deserving friends and family

Five Places I Have Lived:
1. Pretoria
2. Cape Town
3. London
4. Hastings
5. Shanagarry

Five Jobs I Have Had:
1. Toy shop assistant
2. Buyer for hotel refurbishment
3. Merchandiser (a brief and inglorious career filled with tedium)
4. Public sector marketer (a longer, inglorious career filled with extreme tedium)
5. Caterer

Top 5 experiences of all time:1. Laughing
2. Talking
3. Reading
4. Kissing
5. Sleeping

Five essential food groups:
1. Ice cream
2. Potatoes
3. Peanut butter m&ms
4. Cream tea
5. Tuna snackwich

The man of least resistance

This week our short story brief was to write 250-500 words inspired by a randomly selected object from the teacher's bag of tricks (mine was the phone skin above), with the idea of developing a character in preparation for next week's class.

A bit soppy, maybe, but this is my effort, although I'm sure there will be much tweaking of punctuation and word choice before the next 7 days are up!


The man of least resistance
“I said I was fucking sorry, learn to take a fucking apology already! You know sometimes you are such a fucking dick!”

“Dirty mouth, dirty habits, how about some other words for a change.”

“Fuck off, motherfucker!”

The door to the apartment slams shut, the echo of her words pitting the air like shrapnel. I’m so irritated I feel like I’m having a heart attack, my chest is tight and adrenaline’s making my hands shake.

I heave myself off the sofa. I need to do something. Take action. Take control, that’s what my dad used to tell me. I start the usual tour of duty, defusing the landmines and booby-traps she lays with discarded plates and half-emptied coffee cups, pausing in the bathroom to wipe out the amazing technicolour rim of hair dye on the basin and stuff the discarded snakeskin of her tights into the basket.

There’s something else. Another shed skin, a shiny one. An old phone fascia, hers of course, though I doubt anyone would credit me with a sparkly phone cover with the word SEXY in pink diamonds on the back.

Don’t smile. You’re angry, stay angry. I mean it, don’t smile.

“Sexy texty”, she’d laughed when she first showed it to me, waggling it in my face and giving her bottom a little mock-sexy shake. She does have a nice bottom. 

“It’s so I can send you dirty photos of myself while you’re at work, it’s my new persona.”

“You don’t really need a new phone cover for that.”

“Of course, I do. I can’t send porn from a phone that looks like Clarice Cliffe designed it.”

Yep, that’s her, a girl who references Clarice Cliffe and porn in the same sentence, who can choose her words with surgical precision, but still prefers the blunt instrument of ‘motherfucker’.

“Anyway, I bet Clarice Cliffe girls are all bony and angular, the new sexy, like Keira Knightley, that’s hardly where your tastes run to”

“Yeah, where do my tastes run?”

“More … more like the inappropriately dressed drunk girl on a Saturday night … but with better legs. Look how shiny. It’s really my post-modern tits ‘n’ ass statement. Who wouldn’t want a text from a phone like this?”

The front door opens, keys thunk into the bowl on the hall table, flying shoes precede her into the room. Wading through sofa cushions like surf, she lands heavily on my lap, then nuzzling under my jumper blows a giant raspberry on my stomach. She reappears, static making a bright red halo of her hair.

“Look what I got,” she giggles, brandishing a new phone cover emblazoned with the Union Jack.

“It’s my ironic BNP statement. Rule Britannia baby, we can wave it at the Proms. Don’t you just love it?”

She gives a little bounce, then cocks her head.

“Are you done being cross with me yet?”

I sigh, and smile. I am. I always am.

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

I've been circling the citadel of fiction writing for the last 25 years, with nary a plotline flung from the parapet, and unable to find another way in. Though it's hardly desperate times, I nonetheless took the desperate measure of signing up for a short story writing course in the hopes of locating that elusive key.

Our first assignment is to write a piece of flash fiction, that is a short story with an exact word count (in this case a Drabble, 100 words long excluding titles) that must have at least one character and a discernible plot.

After long hours staring at a blank screen, several anxiety-filled toasted sandwiches, and a reality-denying afternoon nap, here's my first attempt at fiction since my last matric English exam ...


The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

“Picture of indolence”, Fox sneered from his perch. “Fat old man, lazy fleabitten dog. “

Fox nuzzled his pelt, glossy from good eating, and the fat milk-tipped brush that was his pride. He’d been nimble. He’d been quick. Why, he was so fast, he’d outrun his own fleas on occasion.

“And I can outrun that mangy hound too!”

He tensed. He sprang. He flew.

Straight … swift … finding purchase … grappling … nearly there ...

“Hell, yeah!”

But, oh! Oh, that lazy dog! As that saucy tail flicked over his nose, the steel trap of his jaws snapped shut.

Not so lazy after all.