September 21, 2004

• Reading (Advanced copy) “My Trade: A short history of journalism” by Andrew Marr.

  
  

   

  
  

  Text la pipa.
  

  
  

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    I am learning Spanish.
  

  
  

    Because I am learning Spanish. I will only talk Spanish at work.
  

  
  

    No one knows what I am talking about, and I am very angry with their ignorance, everyone should know that el verano means summer, and el teril is the place where bulls are kept until they are needed for the fight, I’ll hace la una paja over their falos if they do not answer in Spanish, the maricons that they are!
  

  
  

    I have few friends at work, one is a Chinese chappie who plays with his glass-eye all day long at his workstation. This poor geezer doesn’t realise that I am talking Spanish, he thinks, when I am saying “por favor!” (with the reverse ! in) that I am talking Welsh. All this Chinaman keeps saying to me is “yes, yes, very sad, very, very sad,” over and over as he rolls his glass-eye from one side of the bench to the other. I wish he will say it in Spanish, because I no longer habla English.
  

  
  

    I am not alone in this, my Scottish foreman will only speak to us in German, and shouts Die Schlampes. sich einen runterholen! at us. I wish he wouldn’t, fancy talking to us in German, when we can’t speak it! I tell you, the man is la tapette!
  

  
  

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  Text Susan
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

    He took a blank piece of paper and named it Susan.
  

  
  

    And for the rest of his life, Susan followed him around everywhere, blowing in the wind & every now & then slapping him in the face so he’d fall off his bike or smash his car, and as he then lay there in a daze, he could see the paper dance with glee.
  

  
  

    But there was never a finer piece of paper in the whole of Christendom, upon the whole of the seven seas, known to the ancient pillars of man.
  

  
  

    People had tried to copy him, and they took sheets of paper and named them the most beautiful names they could think of.
  

  
  

    But no piece of paper upon this planet was the same as Susan, the other blank sheets drifted outside with their owners, but in minutes they will end up on the park’s bonfire, or the park-keepers spiky thingie, or in the mouths of park benches.
  

  
  

    There was never any like Susan, a piece of paper that never tore or stained or yellowed or got uncrisp or dirty or drunk, a piece of paper that followed its owner everywhere, stopping anyone else from ever loving him.
  

  
  

    After his third girl-friend had died in mysterious circumstances, he realised he would never be allowed to replace the piece of paper that he had called Susan; so he rolled Susan up and stuck it into his pocket.
  

  
  

    Now if you ever see a man with a piece of paper in his pocket, ask him if its Susan, you may be making an old man very happy.
  

  
  

  
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  Text 817
  

  
  

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    He could not understand it, the last 17 mornings he had travelled on bus fleet number 817, despite there being 19 other buses on the route, and 17 times on the way home, it was fleet number 817. Eery, the other morning he saw bus number 813 drawing away, he ran like mad, and to his delight he boarded it, but the bus then stalled, and he and the other passengers had to get on the bus behind, yup, fleet number 817.
  

  
  

    On Monday Evening he had just missed fleet number 817, and he felt relieved, he did not care how long he had to wait for the next bus, it was 86 minutes, the buses route is 86 minutes long…
  

  
  

    By tonight he had had enough, he went to the bus stop, and there it was, waiting for him, bus number 817. He ignored the bus, 35 minutes later both he and the bus were still there.
  

  
  

    In the end the driver of fleet number 817, (the drivers have not always been the same person) asked him if he wanted the bus or not.
  

  
  

    He decided to walk.
  

  
  

    He was in hospital for three weeks. Eye-witnesses said that although the woman driver tried to control the bus, fleet number 817 had a mind of its own. No one else was the slightest bit hurt as the bus ran into him.
  

  
  

    He remember the bus laughing at him…  

  
  

  
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  Text Liquorice
  

  
  

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    A bad freak of a day, wham! It falls into a bandaged omnibus “No Griffres de prise directe” The sign said as it passed a charabanc that has been turned into a tramerator. “Did youl sit thy griving test duck?” I asked the tram-driver (still in nappies by the way) “This looks good” he said, and Jenna Bush knocked back her hash-gin and growled “Who you looking at buster?” before opening her legs to Billy Graham who said, “Make my day punk!” (But that’s enough quotes from the internet).
  

  
  

    Beyond the star is a simple man, but il lui echappe des indiscretions, that Sandra was anyone’s after one drink, and that was only a coffee. they say she was a prim child, but at 15 she had her first sex, and has had thousands of men since and she is still only 15, In the doughnut position, she puked all over Slim Thorne who then called a dustbin a plate-moustache. 
  

  
  

    And we left them there, Sandra and Slim, hope like wallpaper torn from the back of a dying octopus, but yesterday Shirley had her hands on her hips and snapped “this is the second time this week you’re been late to finish work, so please go home and play tennis with your kites!”
  

  
  

    When bumblebees are bugs and iron are men, then take out your glass-ear for some damned computer shoot-up your arm full of bytes. Cowcumber-flavoured crisps “Mes vetements de tous les jours” he smiled, showing his bikini to all the male dogs and hoping they’ll be turned on.
  

  
  

    Call the clothes-pegs, its said they have been slowly taking over the uk government, five of Tony Blairs ministers are already clothes-pegs, three plastic, one wooden and one made out of liquorice pudding. 
  

  
  

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  Text “Fairies”
  

  
  

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  I believe in fairies, you-know, those things that potter around at the bottom of my garden. I love the fairies, because of the kind & wonderful things that they do, like leave a penny under my pillow everytime I go for a filling. I like the way they clear the weeds away from the shed.
  

  
  

    When my Mummy was alive, she used to tell me I would never find a nice girl whilst I keep talking about fairies. I don’t know what she meant, because when I get frustrated, I do something naughty with my hand, & I feel the fairies are helping me to be happy, & Mummy liked me to be happy. I remember just before my thirty-fifth birthday, Mummy said to me “As long as you are happy being a fairy”. (That was when that man, dressed up as an angel, put his wee-wee up my bottom, and Mummy saw it.) So she must have realised I love these little ladies very much.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

    One day, I know the fairies are going to take me to Heaven, meanwhile, I dance with them among the mushrooms. I leave the wicked telly switched off all the time now, it is only full of nasty men & rude women. Instead I sit in the shed & read stories to the fairies, sometimes they give me a nice kiss. 
  

  
  

  
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  Text Lepordesy
  

  
  

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  I walk around Huddersfield all day lad, covered in old sheet like, royt, & carrying flippin’ bell. DONG! I’m, a , um Whatheycalledsarah? a leopard? Sometimes I sit in the Cuthbert Centre with a chipped wooden bowl in front of me, & I’m crying, like. Anyroad, I mix with crowds & I’m crying, UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN! & I’m crying out t’ folk to help me, holding  one finger out sheet, saying other fingers 1 nay none. But ot’er day this here copper like, made me take off sheet, but when he found me stark-bollock naked, oh fuck this yorkshire lark! & toadmarched me dressed to police station, I kept shouting: KEEP AWAY FROM ME! UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!They threw me into a cell, because I had a sty on my eye, and thought I had Lepordesy.So I was back at the Cuthbert Centre For The Sarahs: and making pots of dosh, three heads on one body chum! I can change the hour! I can use the computer to pop out anywhere as a stupid man, that was that day’s diary. & they are putting a tenner in my chipped bowl whenever I ring my bell just so I will not touch them…
  

  
  

  ” Here,” one old gal just said to me, Take a bloody bath! That should been green NO! (Cheeky lass! I showered last year!) Done it! 

  
  

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  My First Ever Text.
  

  
  

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  One morning I came down and found a hand on the doormat. “Damn it!” I thought, as I swung on the lightcord, “my letterbox has bit off another postman’s hand!
  

  
  

    I have started selling odd gloves to the GPO, and I had an irate father after me, you see, we have this free newspaper, not “news” as much as “gimme! gimme!” but anyroad, his eleven year old son was delivering these newspapers, and he hadn’t heard about my strong letterbox, so he went home crying, sans hand. I am not a kinky person, but his hand has pride of place in my collection, along side my grandfather’s hand and a neighbour’s cock. How the latter got into my letterbox, I don’t know, but some people round here are very strange.
  

  
  

    Everytime I take a girl home, after shagging her, I get her to put her hand into my letterbox, but there is no sudden snap, and no scream, perhaps my letterbox is queer, I had better not tell the GPO or else I’ll get no more hands! Maybe I ought to get a quack-doctor to see to my door, cos it’s unhinged (in one way).

  
  

  
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  Text Royal Lemington Spa.
  

  
  

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  I am lost in the thick fog, I can’t see a thing, not the early-morning double-decker buses, nor the frozen cobwebs that are supposed to look like lace but looks more like broken cut-glass.
  

  
  

    The trees feel like stone as I barge my way through the dead park, the slashings of light must be cars running me over. Every now & then I feel a bang on my chest, and I knock my head on a hard surface, it happens soon after those flashing lights, so I stumble onto a pavement or fall onto a metal street pole. Someone screams as they are sucked into a hole. I hide from the roar of metal and I feel blood scratch down my cheeks.
  

  
  

    It is as if everybody has gone nearly blind, the mist is so thick. This is Royal Lemington Spa, and the river underneath sends out white spirits that howl over the G.G. buses and flying milkmen arms, and the constant crying of lost people being sucked into holes.
  

  
  

    Everytime the fog drops in this town this happens, and it lasts for days. Later on people clean up the mess and have masses for the vanished ones, and they all blame Global Warming, and it is true, Mr. Warming is a very bad egg.

  
  

  
  

  
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  Text “Samaritan”
  

  
  

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  I am one of those sort of people whom everyone & everybody pours their heart out to, on buses, in bus-queues, outside shops, in pubs…Always there is someone or somebody who comes up to me & tells me their life-history of unmitigated gloom.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  I went to bingo the other night, but I never finished a single game, because all of the time, this old lady was bemoaning how her husband was a cripple, & how she never won anything “Unlike that old bag who’s bleedin’ havin’ it off with the manager!” & how the bailifs called round the last night to take away their telly, her husband’s only comfort, & how their bed was given to them by “Sally’s army”.
  

  
  

    I tried the pictures, & blow me, if this old man doesn’t plonk himself down next to me to tell me how his children wasted money on records & trashy clothes, & how they ignored him & swore at him after he had brought them up single-handed after the tragic death of their mother in a car accident a few years back, & how his ungrateful kids had sold their mother’s jewelery to buy drugs…
  

  
  

    So it goes on, I am thinking of of wearing a badge with the word “Samaritan” on it. I am becoming very depressed myself. I am also becoming very poor, because I find myself giving to every “ill-lucker” twenty quid.
  

  
  

    I have become so depressed at the way people eat their hearts out to me, I have began to stop people in the street, just to tell them what a fool I’ve been all my life. 
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  (From “100 Texts”) (some up-dated!)

  
  

  Published under the name of “Horace Smith Esquire”.

  • 10:26 pm
  • 49 Comments