Monday 25 March 2024

An Entirely Separate kettle of Fish




To metavate– a verb you might not have come across recently.


It means to replicate the self by being forcibly tapped on the head in the rain.


It’s not painless, the results are impressive.


It’s probably why teachers, back in the days when they were likely to tap students on the head, avoided doing so outside and in the rain.


Without the rain, metavationwould not occur which accounts for the prevalence of head tapping teachers during the 1950s and 60s.


The enthusiasm for head tapping among the teaching profession disappeared once physical abuse was discouraged .


Self-metavationis difficult to achieve, but since it leads to self-replication anway , it is sufficient to have a friend nearby to help.


Help that can be reciprocated.


That’s probably all you need to know about the practice, except that it is entirely harmless and only lasts the length of a night at most.


Sunday 17 March 2024

No Day a-Dawning




It might be a library.


Might.


There are books there, you CAN borrow them and I have one to return.


One that I borrowed from someone who borrowed one from here, and which I feel incumbent to return.


I show it to the woman at the gate who is asking for I.D.


She tells me to put it on the ‘internet table’.


I cross a courtyard, trees and plants grow in abundance and I am in a park.


A stately home.


A forgotten corner of a half-remembered city that has never existed.


Except in a dream.


It might be a library.


Yet, you can buy shark poison here.


And rope.


And cobwebs it seems.


They have a lot of cobwebs.


A friend greets me enthusiastically, he is leaving by plane in the morning and I owe him money.


We walk together. I am looking for books; he is hoping for cash.


There are a lot of wools, cottons, knitting needles and a room with walls that are so high the sunlight only reaches the upper parts.


This is where the rope is displayed.


In one corner there are photographs covered in a thick layer of dust that make it impossible to see the image.


One is of me.


So I get up.


It’s 4:30 am.


Again.


No new day a-dawning.


Just the night.