the gunpowder plot.

these things, some others, in rapid succession, sometimes i dont know what day of the week it is, and sometimes i get it right –

we open a new squat, an ex indian takeaway, remember remember the 5th of november, it is almost a gunpowder plot, padlocks make an awful clatter as they fall, i am worried about it at first, thinking illegal eviction imminent, but nearly a week later we re still there dealing with it, boxes of candles, bags of plastic flowers, grease everywhere, black in my nostrils, cups of coffee, the possibility of partitions,

the dead rat we found at the back of the closet that i had to remove with a shovel today, the thought of doing it was worse than the actual action, i was convinced that as soon as i touched it with the blade it would jump back to life and gore me in glorious zombierat brutality, instead it just lay flat and eyeless,

i join a website for kinky people and am contacted by certain guys – none of whom i am hugely pushed about – instead i spend ages perving over the girls – and the clowns – i still feel i have not captured my essence, am putting a brave face forward i do not feel – i discuss Red, i discuss Trombone, as if theres any point – i discuss a few of the cheeky things i ve gotten up to over the years – already i m convinced i ll end up a smokey spinster like my aunt – beautiful and complicated –

now that we finally live in a house with running water and a toilet – yes, we managed to turn the water on the other night, i spent half an hour at least filling up every single container in the place just to hear the sound of the flow – scrubbed the floor yesterday, or at least half of it in the big hall, but its so greasy its hard to say its any better – vinegar and bicarb makes the water foam – and now the toilet is clean and smells of candlewax and cleaning product instead of dirt and dead rat –

i play some sax but my lip has a cut on it, the tin whistle is shrill, i need to get offsite tmoro, been inside 4 days straight now, someone comments on my bad breath, (but we all know its just that i unapologisedly loooove garlic), someone pretends to be me, god only knows whats really going on with any of this –

because i have not heard from the First Man in nearly 2 months i send him a message checking he is still alive – ‘yes, why wouldnt i be?’ – almost aggro – i ve been taken for a fool, again, and i thought we had something, sitting in the morning on his bed playing guitar and listening to 78s on his record player – year of love turns terrible sour – whiskey sour, i give up, i want one last blow before bedtime, before i turn the lights out – such an idiot, jaindoh, just go away –

i think, at the end of this one, i will draw back in my tentacles and raise anchor, store my bags and go, just freaking GO, doesnt matter where, even in the cold, bum it, forget it, fucksake –

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And then good days, days when the bitter has not risen to the surface – Riffraff arrives in London, comes to stay at our place, we paint the walls, away with the brash yellow oily greasy sooty dirty walls and a fresh coat of magnolia gives it life, its not magnolia I want but its clean, the squat begins to take shape, Stan finds a suitcase full of an old blue and white china dinnerset on the street, with a gravy boat and a soup tureen, we get a washing machine that seems to work from a longboat on the canal, we just need to plumb it, and things are tidied and people are fed (wicked red lentil soup with spinach plus soft brown bread) and the shutters on the outside of the building are raised to let the light in but the glass is painted white for privacy – the sour note is X – ga ma pa do re mi – I meditate, I plan to get away tmoro, I paint my nails black, like I did Trombone s window yesterday, we had fun, but I was miles away, he mentioned Hannah, I didn’t mention anyone – and today the Bearded Boy is on my phone, out of nowhere, how did he get my number, and am I the Adler to his Sherlock?