complaints

Excerpts from my diary (January 2025)

Wednesday January 8th, 2025

It was so cold the back of my head throbbed and ached for almost an hour after I got home. I wanted to cry (but I did not cry).

Thursday January 9th, 2025

I bought this diary yesterday and already it scares me a little, every page so huge and empty as I sit here before bed at my ever lonely desk.

Friday 10th January, 2025

-8° this morning. Fields white with frost all the way to Colchester. Paving slabs glittering like diamonds. Breath crystallising the air.

The near full moon rose slowly over the church before the film, shone brightly in a sea of stars after.

Saturday 11th January, 2025

A fox runs across the street, over the green, only finally evading the glare of my headlights by hiding under a car.

I feel guilty for the terror I’ve caused it.
I feel happy simply to have seen it.

Sunday 12th January, 2025

Sunday has to be squeezed in tight
so small here on the page
so unimportant
to the world of work
No need to make any note of events
that have transpired
outside of office hours

Monday 13th January, 2025

A heron flying overhead
a mile from the river
and getting further away
with every flap of its prehistoric wings

Tuesday 14th January, 2025

I didn’t feel very well today
but didn’t feel bad enough
to complain

Wednesday 15th January, 2025

NOTE: What tense to use when writing diary entries a day or two late?

I hurt my back at about 7pm. Sat down and watched the football without moving in the hope it’d fix itself.

It didn’t.

So I went to bed and stared at the ceiling in the dark, pain and worry preventing any hope of sleep.

In the morning it was mostly okay. Well enough to sit down and write this entry out, at least.

Thursday 16th January, 2025

Flicked between the snooker and the tennis all afternoon, which meant I ended up feeling like I’d watched neither rather than both.

Had tickets to the cinema but did not go, With bad backs the terror of recurrence lingers on longer than any physical discomfort.

Friday 17th January, 2025

The page is too near to see with my glasses on, too far away to properly write on with them off.

Which is not so bad at my desk, where I can lean in until I’m an inch away. But outside, when I try to write in my notebook, while sitting on a bench, or in the car, or at the pub, all I can do is hope my approximation of letters are legible enough for when I go back to them later and try to find something worthwhile there in whatever I wrote.

Saturday 18th January, 2025

Shivered all afternoon. It wasn’t even that cold.

Sunday 19th January, 2025

Tonight I know I’ll be unable to sleep
Because tomorrow I have to get up early

Monday 20th January, 2025

Went to Cornwall

Tuesday 21st January, 2025

Today I got attacked by seagulls. Lost an entire doughnut to the horde.

Wednesday 22nd January, 2025

The sea’s so huge
(and I’m so small)

Thursday 23rd January, 2025

The wind
the wind
At times today I genuinely thought
we might all be blown away
into the night
into the sea

Friday 24th January, 2025

Waves
hitting rocks
hitting waves
hitting rocks
forever

Monday 27th January, 2025

Long car journeys always instill in me
the deepest melancholy

Or perhaps its not the journey
but coming home

Wednesday 29th January, 2025

I still haven’t found my voice here.
Who am I writing for
or to
Who is going to read this
and when
What purpose is there to it
and why
(although I suppose that last questions applies to everything)

Thursday 30th January, 2025

Charles Bukowski here
writing a poem about terrible computer software
in 1986

The world is on repeat
anguished howls
of unending
frustration

Friday 31st January, 2025

The weeks go by
the month’s gone by
and nothing changes

Yet still I hope that out of the repetition
and the emptiness
some meaning might emerge

__________

Notes:

1. Written in January 2025
2. Unsurprisingly

__________

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Tales From The Town #66: Minor Complaints

1: Poetical Complaints

“Claire, you’ve stolen my poetry books again!” Tina said. “Stop stealing my poetry books!”

“I have not!” Claire said. “I don’t even like poetry.”

“You do like poetry,” Tina said. “You just pretend you don’t because I like poetry.”

“That might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Claire said. “The reason I don’t like poetry is because it’s stupid and you’re stupid and I didn’t steal your poetry books anyway so who cares what I think of poetry!”

“Well if you didn’t steal them who did?” Tina said. “And don’t blame Daniel or Ethel because I already asked them and they definitely didn’t steal any.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Claire said. “Maybe no one stole them. Maybe you never even HAD any poetry books in the first place and you’ve made all this up to annoy me.”

“Of course I had some poetry books,” Tina said. “I write all my poems in them. Which is why I want at least one of them back right now, Claire! Because I just wrote a poem.”

“Well you don’t need your poetry book back then,” Claire said. “Seeing as you’ve already written this one down somewhere else. Use that as a poetry book instead.”

“But I can’t. I wrote it in my head!” Tina said. “I need to get it out of there as quickly as possible!”

Claire snorted at this in derision. “The only thing worse than poetry,” she said, as she stomped down the stairs. “Is poets!”

2: Technological Complaints

“Have you seen my phone, Oya?”

“No. Actually, I was just going to ask you if you’ve seen mine.”

“I haven’t. I was planning on using it to ring mine.”

“And I was planning on using yours to ring mine.”

“I told you we should buy a spare one for emergencies.”

“Wait, I told you we should buy a spare one for emergencies.”

“If only we’d listened to each other!”

“But then what if we lost that one as well? How many spare ones would we need before it was physically impossible to lose all of them at once?”

“We could glue one of them to the desk.”

“That’s not a bad idea actually. Maybe tape another one to the wall.”

“It’ll be like we’re living in the 80s!”

“One of us could have a pager!”

“I don’t even know how pagers work!”

“They’re like twitter I think. But just one message at a time. And the message is a number that you have to decode.”

“That sounds brilliant.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“Why don’t we still do that? Imagine having to take out a little notebook from your pocket every time you get a message just so you can look up what it means and who it was from!”

“Not a notebook. A filofax!”

(laughter)

“So anyway, I wonder where our phones went.”

3: Artistic Complaints

“Mum, have you seen our paintings of the whale that we made?” Ethel asked

“The whale AND the penguin,” Daniel added. “And a heron.”

“We were going to show them to Lucas,” Ethel said. “But now we can’t find them.”

“Weren’t they hanging from the washing line?” Agnes said. “That’s where I saw them.”

“But we looked there and the only thing on the washing line is some sheets,” Ethel said.

“And some of our paint,” Daniel said. “Which is now on the sheets.”

“So our paintings are back to front!” Ethel said. “We can’t show Lucas back to front paintings.”

“Maybe Lucas will like that,” Agnes said. “Considering you keep telling me he lives in the mirror.”

“But we painted them back to front because he lives in the mirror,” Ethel said.

“So now they’re front to back,” Daniel said.

“Which will be completely back to front by the time Lucas sees them,” Ethel said. “It’s a disaster!”

Ethel and Daniel put their hands in the air and ran out of the kitchen screaming in unison.

“You could turn the sheets round,” Agnes called after them in her ever practical way, but Ethel and Daniel were having none of it. Panicking was too much fun.

__________

Notes:

1. Written on the 18th and the 19th of May, 2022

__________

Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!