Oblong Scone

You’ll have to excuse me. I’m experiencing a moment of extreme clarity. I have seen deeper into something than perhaps could be expected of even the most serious man. I have interpreted past the sum of parts and find myself staring into the cold hard centre of a middle distance. What a distance that is.  And just look at the sea, isn’t it big. Bigger than our sulking imagination can handle. Even bigger than a bus. A big bus - multiple decks with each level representing some layer of consciousness or something equally equal.  Layers of a cake with each one a levels on a bus. A maximum of two levels to stop the boss toppling and thus upending the cake as it navigates twists is the never ending road that will eventually come to an end. To think just twenty minutes earlier I was buying jacket potatoes from the Coop, and now here I am, wind blowing through my long hair (I don’t have any hair), standing rigid and reflective on the edge of a cliff on the Dorset coast, realising that ...

My password was about to expire. I've been told this by a personal computer in no uncertain terms. It has been made more than clear to me - more than clear to me - that I am expected to choose a new one.   I thought about what it should be. It had to be memorable, have a mix of capital and lower-case letters, with maybe the odd numeric thrown in. It had to say something about me. Something positive, yet something no-one else would consider about my character if they looked at me hidden underneath this thick thick jumper. It had to have a beginning middle and an end, a driving narrative, a startling beginning and a devastating twist at the end repeated again and again in an infinite line of be-straggled asterisks.  Any missed detail, how ever slight, would leave me open to a savage and violent attack. My account hacked, my Spotify T’Pau Hidden Gems playlist published on social-media, printed on posters, displayed on billboards, read out on American talkshows.  I click...

“Fancy meeting you here” We’re both doing the same dull thing at the same dull time, because it’s the most likely dull thing for us to do. There’s no coincidence, just a lack of imagination. A dark empty void in which all we pretend autonomy. Listen to the beeps of the self-service checkout. Listen as they never, ever stop.   Coincidences are mundane common sense dressed-up in a raised eyebrow. A cheap and broken distraction from the stupid rain that stops you going for a walk at lunchtime.  "Dog," in the lost language Mbabaram, is "dog." This is a supposed coincidence, except what else could you call a dog? “Le Chien”, “el perro”, “Der Hund” are some of the other names you could call a dog if you spoke other languages in an evening class, but none of them really say “dog” as well as “dog”. To me, it’s more remarkable that anyone calls dogs anything other than “dogs”.  So if coincidences aren't going to get any better than this, let's rest our voice inflecti...