Return of the dream ghost

Posted on by inkbiotic

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“It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality.”

Virginia Woolf

Word of the day: Alcherina – dream time

This afternoon I was playing the card game Shithead with Hamoudi and Jinjing. That game is known all over the world, turns out it’s even got a Wikipedia page. While we were playing (and I was winning, I want you to know) they started talking about their dreams again. About the sinister man who appeared in Jinjing’s dreams staring in through her window and then followed Hamoudi around the tube in real life. He is now ‘on the move.’

Rather than just being in her dreams, Jinjing has seen him in the street, on a roof and under her bed. Hamoudi saw him on the Central Line last night. While sitting in the bright kitchen playing cards and eating Bombay mix, they sounded to me like teenagers trying to scare each other with ghost stories. But now I’m back in my room sitting on my own and monsters from my own dreams have started scratching at the back of my memory. My dreams have been numerous and miserable recently, plagued with stress and sickness, but was there someone in them? A shadowy figure watching?

Nah, probably not. I suspect I’m just mixing it up with angry staring man from the train.

Angry Staring Man! The Encounter.

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‘There is a point at which you have to stop preparing to do something and just do it.’

Embrace the Soul Backwards – Emily Stardust

So after the success/not success of talking to fabulous woman yesterday (I got a nod!), I decided to try with angry staring man today. For anyone not keeping up (ie almost all of the world) angry staring man is the smart dressed man who sits on the train staring straight ahead. Since me and him were the only ones not looking at our phones or a book, I felt we had a connection. Since he looks like he’s involved in all sorts of dodgy corporate dealings, I have been curious about what I could learn from him. So today was the day.

So I sat opposite  him, trying to keep the expectant look off my face. Would he tell me about the secret shenaninagans going on at Bohemian Grove? Or the dirty deals between politicians and arms dealers? Would he explain where the tunnels lead underneath International banks?

My excitement lasted a happy moment as I looked across at him, prepared to demand his attention, and then…the happy moment wrinkled into one of sickness.

He stank! You know that sickly perfume they pump out in public toilets? Angry staring man smelt like somebody had poured a bucket of that over him. Or like that gross perfume they put on sanitary products for some twisted reason. I didn’t start a conversation, I was too busy trying not to breathe. And I don’t believe that anyone who  goes to Bohemian Grove would smell that bad.

Word of the day: Graveolent – rank-smelling; fetid

Boy meets tiger

Posted on by inkbiotic

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A fabulous tiger lived in an oak
The more she saw the less she spoke
The less she spoke the more she heard
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?

Word of the day: zoanthropy – delusion that one is an animal

Somebody brought a small hyperactive boy onto this morning’s train. Now I know it can be unavoidable, and I felt sorry for the poor mum who looked worn ragged beyond sense, but a kid on the morning train is never a good idea. Everybody is grumpy, groggy and quiet as commuters try to cope with the start of a new day. Just think of the bad karma this kid is building up to work off later in life, all those angry thoughts heading in his direction as he squeals and thumps the seats. No child can properly understand how rush hour trains are, and this excitable boy was simply confused why no one wanted to play. He’d run up and down the aisle trying to start conversations, until finally he spotted fabulous woman. She was sitting opposite me, attention on her phone.

Today, along with the orange striped hair and claw rings, she was wearing orange eye shadow a stripy t-shirt. She looked especially fabulous. Excitable boy stopped and stared for a bit, then said,

‘Are you pretending to be a tiger?’

Fabulous woman gave him an intense glare, one that must have cut right through his hyperactivity and into his soul, and said,

‘No. I AM a tiger.’

Excitable boy slunk back to his seat and stayed quiet for the rest of the journey, occasionally looking over to where she sat. Not fearful, but in awe.

I waved my head about like a snake trying to catch her eye. Eventually she looked over and nodded. Then she stared out the window for the rest of the journey, constantly ready in case another desperate situation called for a tiger.

Betrayed! No nomophiliac!

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“I find people confusing.”

― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Word of the day: Bionomics – study of organisms interacting in their environments

Ok, so today I was going to do it, I was going to talk to angry staring man. I spent the walk to the station psyching myself up, I had a shortlist of possible opening gambits. I was ready. But as I walked down the aisle, I saw him sitting bold as brass and looking at his phone!

He must have known that was a betrayal, we don’t look at our phones! That’s what everyone else does, but we’re the nomophiliacs! We’re different! But was looking at the screen very seriously, as if he was getting some news of a corporate takeover of the mafia. Or plans to replace the Queen with a clone. Definitely something with huge repercussions for society. So can I forgive him?

You may be thinking, If angry staring man is so important, why is he taking the train, wouldn’t he have a chauffeured car? But that’s because you’re wrong and don’t understand the ways of angry staring man.

Anyway, so I went and sat opposite fabulous woman. I tried to catch her eye again, but she had a careful not-catching-eye demeanour. Maybe she is a celebrity and she’s sick of plebs trying to talk to her. Maybe she’s a superhero and is worried if she gets distracted by petty conversations she won’t be ready for when the villain tries to flip the train into another dimension. There is a black stripe in the middle of her orange striped hair now. Tiger!

I haven’t given up yet, but I’m not good at this.

Bigger than you might think

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People are strange when you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly when you’re alone

People are Strange  – The Doors

Phrase of the day: el semaforo de medianoche (Venezuelan Spanish) a pushover, literally ‘a traffic light at midnight’

Today a set of traffic lights was found lying in the road on the estate at my work. Weirdly there was no obvious place in the street missing a traffic light and it didn’t look like sabotage. We tried to work out where it came from using the No right turn and Park closed features, but there were too many options and we’re too easily distracted. The current theory is that some workmen replaced this one with a new set, but then forgot to take this away. I was surprised at how huge it was.

On the train this morning, fabulous woman had dyed a streak in her hair orange and had rings shaped like claws. I think she’s turning into a tiger. I tried to catch her eye, see if I could start a conversation, but she was in the world of her phone screen and didn’t notice me.

Here’s another one of the traffic lights. My muddy foot bottom left for scale.

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So close to sinister secrets

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Phrase of the day: Today I am all tick and no tock (great phrase, courtesy of Colin McQueen)

The angry staring man was on the train chewing gum today. Angrily. Hands on the single crease down his trouser legs. I’ll bet he not only owns an iron, but a travel iron. I really want to talk to him. I feel like his life is so far away from anything I know and vice versa, we could strike up an exceptional partnership. He’d tell me the murky secrets of working in an International bank, arranging coups and investing in stock things for corporate murderers and I’d explain how to get a broken mower started or how to prune a climbing rose.

I know what you’re thinking: he sounds evil, why do you want to talk to him? Well, because I never meet evil people. Everybody I know and work with is lovely, thoughtful and completely without any kind of power or money. And I have this fascination with worlds I can’t enter, with locked doors and hidden truths, however terrible those truths might be. Angry Staring Man has access to those locked doors, I’m sure of it.

Fabulous woman was there too, with lots of huge rings, a skull, a bull, an opal, they look like knuckledusters. I keep expecting the other passengers on the train to start dressing like her. I’m always on the look out for someone else wearing a new pair of fluffy boots or a tiara of spikes. Fabulous woman should be on the television.

Release the cats!

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“I have lost my rhythm.
I can’t sleep.
I can’t eat.

I have been robbed of
my filth.”
― Charles Bukowski, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

Word of  the day: Cryptadia – things to be kept hidden

I didn’t really sleep last night, by four thirty am I’d given up completely. By seven I was on a bus going to Victoria – turns out TFL decided to switch off transport for my town today and a bus going to Victoria was the only way out. However, it was time to release the cats.

 

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I ended up at Westminster Cathedral. Inside was praying and sermons, outside were small crowds of the homeless.

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Anyone who’s been following will know that I recently found a stone cat in the gardens at work, and then I made a few of my own. Today I spread them out around the Cathedral, glad it was early before people were about wondering what the fuck I was doing.

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Mission complete.

Nature’s bubble wrap. And ants.

Posted on by inkbiotic

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“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise”

Word of the day: myrmecophilous – having a symbiotic relationship with ants

This morning my train got cancelled! Which means I ended up sitting in a carriage with all the wrong people, going from the wrong station. I’ll have to wait until Monday to see Angry Staring Man and the twins again.

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Melianthus seed pods ready to be stamped on

 

However I did make two interesting discoveries today. One was that the seed head of Melianthus (pic above) makes a very satisfying popping sound when you squeeze it, far more delightful than bubble wrap. I showed some to Dan and his eyes grew wide as he began popping feverishly away, then I showed Jessica and she was soon jumping up and down on them. I reckon I could market them:

Melianthus bubblepop! The all natural way to relax.

Bubblepop, no plastic, no toxins, just soothing pops to ease your mood.

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The other discovery happened when I pulled back a dead leaf and discovered an ants’ nest underneath. They hadn’t even bothered burying their army in the ground. The swarms of flying and pedestrian ants quickly fled to hid under another leaf, but I got a  photo.

Oh AND the brilliant Calmgrove has been doubting the veracity of some of my words of the day and has challenged me to use them in a story. I’m not sure how that would prove anything, but I think it’s an excellent idea all the same. It won’t be easy, but I’ll see what I can do.

No nomophobia

Posted on by inkbiotic

 

 

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“I could see her fighting an internal battle, her face furrowed and fevered, her sentences trailing off as her concentration kept flicking time and time again. She was tethered by a choke chain to her cell and whenever she tried to pull away into the cafe where we sat, the chain yanked and she was checking for texts once more.”

Our Last Hurrah – Dorothea Wallick

Word of the day: Nomophobia – the irrational fear of being without your mobile phone or being unable to use your phone for some reason, such as the absence of a signal or running out of minutes or battery power.

Continuing on my people-watching on the morning train…

I’ve realised that one of the twins is slightly cooler than the other. He’s a bit bigger, walks with more of a strut and less of a hunch. I wonder if he knows, I wonder if he lords it over the other one, or if the other one is resentful. Could wind up as a Whatever Happened to baby Jane situation. Going to keep watching to figure out the dynamic.

Today biker boot lady is wearing earrings with lizards on them. But not dainty little silver lizards. These are the size and colour of actual lizards. And I’m sure I just saw one of them twitch.

Yesterday I mentioned angry staring man. He was there today, staring furiously.

Because I tend to spend the journey ambling around my thoughts, I don’t look at my phone or read. I stare out the window or watch my fellow passengers. But everybody else, everybody! is somehow engaged with their phone: playing games, watching TV, having a conversation. That rectangle of technology contains everything people want and reality does not.

The only other person on the train not looking at his phone, is angry staring man. He looks straight ahead, occasionally around, with a steely look of impatience. Sometimes chewing gum. He wears a smart suit with a silk lined jacket and shiny shoes. I’m aware when I’m sitting there in my mud streaked trousers, with my hair tied back in what has been kindly referred to as a ‘messy bun’ and my dirty nails, that me and angry staring man don’t have much in common. But it’s just me and him not snagged by our phones, which means we are the only two floating around real life while everybody else is asleep.

I know what I’m thinking about, but what about him? Unlike my vague wandering thoughts, his look is angry and filled with intent. He’s not in a morning fug, he is working things out. Important things.

Ah look at all the lonely people tum te tum te tum te tum te tum te

Posted on by inkbiotic

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“I like to prowl ordinary places
and taste the people-
from a distance.”
― Charles Bukowski, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

Word of the day: Farrago – a confused mass of objects or people, any disordered mixture

I’ve been spending the week paying attention to my fellow passengers on the morning train. I only see for them for a short time each day, when at my most befuddled and slow, and when everyone is sitting silently, also befuddled and slow. But over the months, I’ve noticed little dramas play out and the fascinating oddballs become apparent (this isn’t an insult by the way, I am definitely an oddball, oddballs are my people.)

For example, there are the twins, two young men who aren’t twins, but travel together with the same hairstyle and clothes and rucksack. When one gets a haircut, the other gets the same a few days later; when one starts wearing shorts the other does the next day. They get off at the same station and walk side by side, hands in pockets, the same loping walk. But they never speak to each other. They don’t sit together or acknowledge each other in any way. My conclusion is that either: they are psychic, although I’d assume they’d start wearing the shorts on the same day. OR: one is stalking, following and copying the other who doesn’t know how to get rid of him. One day I’m expecting a punch up.

Then there’s the large, middle-aged woman who wears biker boots with spikes on them, a pink streak in her hair and huge colourful jackets. I love her. She’s my hero.

Then, sometimes, there is the angry staring man.