Saturday Night Sunday Mourning
“What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here”
I’ve included the article directly below for sheer fuckery and perhaps as a companion piece to what is sure to follow. I haven’t re-read it but it was a stone cold bummer the last time I did so I doubt it’s changed much.
With the promise of the Great Fire God of the Sky putting his hat on again and a significant rise in the temperature from its Siberia like slumber I returned once more to my spiritual home of Ironbridge on Friday and had what could be reasonably described as a fairly good time in the sun. I took my mate Hunter for company and in between reading three of his longest and finest chapters of anarchic prose I fed some hungry ducks and swans, marvelled as a shaggy dog hurtled into the river at top speed, scattering my feathered friends hither and thither except one, who steadfastly remained by my side throughout the beautiful riverside shenanigans. She reminded me of that evil penguin character in the “Wallace and Gromit” films but I’d like to think I’d made a new friend rather than an enemy intent on my demise and anyway, I’d soon be sharing a bench, my bench, with two delightful characters and tourists from Ireland, Jeremy was all present and correct within his sugary kingdom and the town’s only “Old Fashioned Sweet Shop” and before leaving I treated myself to lunch in the chip shop and dined upon their balcony overlooking both the river and the flat I lived in for nearly 4 years. There were flowers in the window of the kitchen, and a kitchen that provides such a magnificent view of the River Severn below.
I smiled.
As I did watching two paddle boarders flowing along with the river of life, a dog their trusty captain (a dog on a paddle board!) leading the way. “I’m a Stephen with a PH too” I proffered to my two new Irish friends as they discussed a Stephen “with a PH” back home. I couldn’t help but jump two footed into their conversation as their words could have been my Mum’s words and I couldn’t help telling them so. I got a laugh and a “we’ll leave you to read your book in peace now” as they left and I thought of my Mum again as I gazed in sunshine admiration of another grand old lady.
And I smiled.
After listening to the Arctic Monkeys 2006 debut album to and from my picture book toy town I settled on the title for my article to capture the flavour for the day, “A mardy bum in Ironbridge” and early this afternoon I wrote 4 or 5 paragraphs that went nowhere fast and full of fear and loathing, angst and anger. These four foul smelling feelings coexisting together isn’t a recipe for success so I deleted the fucker and tried again before giving up entirely and releasing yet another promotional article for a recently self-published book that I know for certain one person in the entire world has read. Because they’ve told me so, and they couldn’t be more effusive with their praise if they tried. For reasons of national security I cannot divulge anything whatsoever regarding my compliments giving reader other than I believe them to be a secret agent and even possibly a triple agent on behalf of the Kremlin and even now, teams of Russian assets in every corner of our world are going through our private conversations about football, family, films, the rise of a “Goldfish Generation” within our collective electrical Matrix and a general rise in dumbness, as a reason to place me on house arrest for my own protection.
Where this takes us is anyone’s guess and yours is as unwise a choice as mine but to have someone holding your words in their hands in paper published form is a spectacular feeling let me tell you and I can’t thank them enough for taking a chance on a book wholly of my own creation. Hopefully I’m pleasing someone, irritating them perhaps, making them smile, cry or befuddling and bemusing them. Two years ago the idea of publishing a book would have been a strange dream indeed and yet nine books later here we are, talking in surreal terms of triple agents and ducks trying to kill me and a kind hearted soul holding my words in their hands, my published words.
Let me assure you, it’s a spectacular feeling.
The rancid paragraphs I wrote this afternoon were full of fear and loathing but mostly anger and that particular albatross weighs ever heavier upon my shoulders. To say I was angry this afternoon would be akin to saying I bark at a full moon. Some might say I cry in anguish at a cloudless sky but those people shouldn’t be trusted in daylight hours let alone way past the witching hour of a Saturday night into a Sunday mourning (sic). That’s when the creatures of the night come out to play and a penguin assassin awakens a gnarly albatross, the walls begin to bend and I go in search of a full moon. Anger comes easily even for a ghost like me. Images of a grand old lady I can’t shake. The absent father present, but not very correct. A future not present, for the times of many pasts. The shell of my former shadow, the shadow cast upon a son. A mother’s son for a grand old lady.
It’s late and this fucker is going off the rails. I was going to spew forth on the shit show that is medium.com and how so many of the inhabitants proudly exclaim they’ve read your article “for 30 seconds” and how this is so endemic of a “Goldfish Generation” full of fucking fuckwits but I better not. It’s late, the walls are bending shape, a new dawn approaches and the simple explanation is I’m never going to get the required audience to sell my books (whether on Medium or Substack) or indeed any other scum sucking social media platform and it breaks my darkened heart. To go there right now would be another of life’s unwise choices so we won’t but 30 seconds eh? I always want to ask these people which 30 seconds of my 10–15 minute article they read. The first couple of paragraphs I’m guessing but perhaps the really adventurous ones spin the mouse wheel of fortune to the middle of the article and start their stop watch right there. Who knows? Maybe they don’t read for 30 seconds at all, merely pretend to as they gaze out of the window or deal with their own death seeking penguins or a screeching albatross, baying for blood. We’ll never know and perhaps, for good or ill, that’s for the best.
Apart from a couple of lifetime friends, a brother who isn’t my brother, a secret agent who, let’s be honest, probably isn’t a secret agent (but I fucking hope they are) a young man in Canada and a couple of lovely hearted souls on Substack, no-one else reads a rambling word I write. You don’t have to be an accountant to realise this doesn’t make for very many book sales in the credit column of life.
Like you no doubt I put my heart and darkened soul into my writing.
And I don’t know what else to say.
Here’s some more from beautiful Ironbridge Gorge, Friday 5th July 2024
Thanks for reading this balderdash and bunkum. I hope it finds you smothered in human love, happy and content.