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Teenagers these days are so Americanized.

The TV they watch, the grease they eat,

The coffee they drink, the clothes they wear.

Even their timezones

Are too far left of the Atlantic,

Each time arisen as if from the flashing lights, rainbow brights,

The maelstrom of sounds of the Big Apple.

They're there at 3am,

Limned in sapphire LCD,

Their own personal halos.

Outside, everything's orange,

Streelights make a muted Inferno.

A cat yowls. 

Later that morning they seek out green mermaids hungrily,

As if searching for the secrets of eternal youth, and it starts again.

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"The Honeymoon Trip"

Prompt used: Photo of London

Rating & Warnings: PG, talking about discrimination and hostile behaviour?

Summary: The couple don't get much of a welcome in the supposedly progressive capital. 510 words.

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The two lovers reclined on the edge of the bridge, interlinked forearms resting on the rough, rusted rails stopping their holiday ending with a dunk in the Thames. Cameras flashed, squinty smiles aimed at the sun trying to break through the cloud cover (Would there be sunshine by the end of the day? Probably not, but that wouldn’t stop it adding a few premature crow’s feet to the traveller’s eyes).

Sometimes people would tut at them or just spit the word ‘tourists’ out under their breath, like it was a dirty word (in London, it usually is). Sometimes they’d openly stare, or scrunch up faces that peered out over starched suit collars and big winter coats, and shake their heads as they strode along past. 

After a while, the lovers got bored of this, and so took themselves and their weakening smiles elsewhere. Even when the fine rain started up and they sat watching it in the safety of a cafe, the tarmac and cobbles glistening with oil and dirt and water, they didn’t fare much better. Waitresses stammered their orders. Their coffee arrived late. One of the couple had the distinct feeling they were being gossiped about, and told the other. Hadn’t they seen anything like them before, one of them asked?

They left.

By now the rain had thickened into spears of icy water and so the couple brought out a big umbrella, prettily patterned with the art from an exhibition they had visited earlier. They still held hands, and bumped faces together every hundred yards, basking in the bubble of young love, but this time there were no smiles and no kisses.

The next time they stopped to take photos of a beautiful statue crouched on top of some building or other, they heard a cough of jumbled words, and when they looked around there was nothing there.

After that, they didn’t stop walking. 

Maybe a pub would be nice, one of them said to the other. An iconic experience, right? England was meant to be a melting pot, they said.

The other reluctantly agreed.

The first three pubs screamed unfriendliness and so they didn’t stop. After the fourth, it was getting dark, and they didn’t fancy their chances. They went to hail a taxi, but it took a while for them to get one to stop for them, even though they all had their lights on and the couple couldn’t see any passengers. When they got in the eleventh or so one they’d seen that evening the driver looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Later at their hotel room, the couple felt much safer. Maybe it was the weather, they thought. Maybe it was just being in a new city, on a new planet. That must have been why they felt so uneasy. They went to bed and set the alarm for 5’o clock in the morning, so they’d have time to cram in all the activities they had planned for tomorrow, their anniversary. April 30th,  2062. This was going to be the best year yet.

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Visited Bob Bob Ricard tonight. Pressed this button. Was promptly refreshed.

(I needed it; I'd been on a train from 3:20 until 20:50.)

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Script Frenzy! 

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One day I will make an art bike.

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Here's a sketch of the background in my first scene for scriptfrenzy! I didn't trust myself to draw the protagonist.

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I can't wait until ice cream season happens again. It's nearly here! In my hometown we have cotton candy ice cream, which looks like this except it has chunks of darker pink cotton candy in it. Delicious.

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I'm no longer interested in full-time lolita, but hot damn I would love to make a skirt with this. It comes in more colourways, too.

From Rouge Aerie designs.

I’m assuming that unlike other indie lolita brands, you’ll just buy the fabric yourself on spoonflower?

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So I started Scriptfrenzy.

It's going to be a graphic novel script. I was originally going to 

a) be a Rebel and work on my 30,000 word story I need to have finished and edited by June,

b) write a radio play or stage piece for my 'calling card' to submit to the BBC,

but I am doing neither of these things.

Actually, I'd like to put some feelers out and see if anyone would be interested in illustrating with me? Here's the logline,

"LAZY WRITER IN BIG CITY IS GIVEN ABILITY TO TELEPORT ANYWHERE FOR 24 HOURS ONLY AFTER BETTING ON THE POKER CHANNEL AT 4AM IN A FIT OF DRUNKEN INSOMNIA"

PAGE 1

1. LEM IS SLUMPED ON A SOFA UNDER A BLANKET, FACING A FLAT TELEVISION SCREEN. IT'S ABOUT 3AM, AND THE APARTMENT LOOKS LIKE A STEREOTYPICAL STUDENT BUTTHOLE. THE WINDOWS SHOW THAT IT'S AN APARTMENT ON A HIGHER FLOOR, WITH LIT BUILDINGS LOOMING OUTSIDE. THE WEATHER IS GLOOMY, BUT NOT DRAMATICALLY SO. THERE ARE SCORES OF BOTTLES OF ALCOHOL ON THE COFFEE TABLE STANDING BETWEEN HE SOFA AND THE TELEVISION, AND BOWLS OF SNACKS ON THE FLOOR. THE TELEVISION IS CASTING A NEON GLOW ON LEM'S DISHEVELLED AND BORED FACE. HER DEEP BROWN HAIR IS SCRUFFY AND FALLS AROUND HER FACE - IT WAS IN A BUN, BUT NOW IT'S ESCAPING. HER BIG BROWN EYES LOOK SLEEPY AND HEAVY-LIDDED.

LEM (NARRATIVE MONOLOGUE)

It started with the gambling channel.

PANEL 2

2. We're looking closer at the TV - a guy who looks like a trucker in a badly-fitting suit is gesturing grumpily whilst a string of numbers run up the left hand side of the screen. Away from the television, we can see in further detail how awful the condition of the house has been allowed to get into. Weird artefacts are everywhere, and books are placed haphazardly, showing that Lem is someone who hoards magpie-like and enjoys the exotic. 

LEM (CURRENT THOUGHTS)

I wonder how much that guy hates his life. How much does he get paid?

PANEL 3

3. Now the entire panel is taken up with the tv screen - we can neither see the tv or the background. An overly painted, smiling woman is beaming/grimacing at the reader as she holds a wheel of fortune and the text 'PLACE YOUR BETS' is emblazoned, perhaps as part of the image, perhaps as a caption or piece of text.

LEM (CURRENT THOUGHTS)

She looks ridiculous.

PAGE 2

PANEL 1

1. The noise has woken Lem up fully and gotten her attention; she looks half surprised and half amused, swaddled up in a nest of patterned and mismatched blankets. Our view has its 'back' to the tv, and we are looking directly at Lem, revealing fresh squalor and letting us have a closer look at her in baggy t shirt/pyjamas and pillow creases, dark circles under her (insomniac, slightly drunk) eyes, face starkly highlighted by the television's glare. This would be one big central panel.

LEM 

Ten quid? Bloody hell, that's expensive. What if I just place my bet anyway, might not notice I haven't paid...

PANELS 2, 3 AND 4

2. Lem is reaching for the remote, which we see is teetering on the arm of the sofa. In the next three panels, it falls, she lunges for it, and falls off the sofa herself, the picture of clumsiness, with maybe a 'fuck!' or 'GACK' in for good measure.

PANEL 5

Lem, triumphant, is clutching the remote and aims it squarely at the television. She is even more dishevelled. Perhaps her tongue is sticking out, and wisps of hair are all over the place - she might even have a snack wrapper comically stuck to her head.

LEM (CURRENT THOUGHTS)

It'd be funny as hell if this worked and I won...

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Just put a jar of suntea on my bedroom's windowsill in the sun to steep, and finished my brunch of banana 'ice cream' and a bacon sarnie - my mother keeps asking where I'm getting these food ideas from. I miss the easy uncaring attitude people have at college.

It's funny, because I swear one day mum will find out that I read things like autostraddle and afterellen and dapperq, and it won't be because of the 'gay' content, it'll be because of the recipes and style advice. Stereotypical superficial asexual, that's me.

I caught the sun at college this week, too. My landlady noticed it first - rosy cheeks and a little blush on my nose, she said. My shoulders were reddish, too, but the kind where it never graduates to inconvenient or painful sunburn.

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Illustration by Alberto Vargas c. 1948

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Snippet from a universe I'm thinking of writing for in NaNo or ScriptFrenzy.

When I was thinking about platonic, romantic, sexual and/or combinations in relationships I hit upon the idea of a society where nonsexual, romantic and/or platonic bonds are (not 'the norm' but) the revered versions of relationships, and sexual ones are secondary in the way society views friendships as secondary right now. Then I got to thinking about symbolism like the four humours, from old medical practises - I'm not sure if this society would ever be one I focus on for a story, but I'd like the revisit the idea. 

White and Red 

“Blood is hot, and wet, and salty and thick, but none more so than bone, white and pure and lasting past death. Blood may be spilt easily, and is easily replaced; bones heal, or are lost. And what remains of a body, when it is still and its life and blood turned to garnet dust? Skeletons, the foundations of our bodies and our lives.”

The priest closed his small book of prayers tight and leant toward the couple, gesturing to the small child behind them, tottering unsteadily in stiff finery and holding a cushion on which two ivory-white circlets lay. The child offered up the first ring and then the second to the priest who held them in his plump fingers, offering one in each forefinger and thumb to the two men standing before him. 

They took the rings. “Flesh, and marrow, and bone,” they each intoned, before slipping the rings on their partner’s fingers, and the ceremony was done.

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Comparative Anatomy 

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I recently visited Nick Darke's house, on a writing trip.

He was a very place-inspired playwright and writer and his house was a beautiful place to see - his widow gave talks on his process, his childhood and showed us around the house and a short film the two of them had made about the local beach shortly before he died.

For a writing task, once on the beach we had to find several items in the course of four minutes, 'wrecking', or beach-combing. We found:

Something twisted

3 white things

3 green things

1 blue thing

1 interesting thing

and one red thing.

Once we had all of our spoils we grouped our finds by 'thing' on the beach and then had to write a poem in about 2 or 3 minutes, looking at the assortment of 'Scummow' (local word for flotsam and jetsam) and describing each pile in turn.

Sand-faded brights

Of plastic shards,

Washed up on mutt-fur sand.

Pinked reds, copper blues, 

Milk-and-greys, saturated

Grass greens like a child's paintbox.

Some is stone, slate discs and fools'-gold pebbles.

Some is creature-shell with Fibonnaci whorls.

Some is feather, fringed bird quills,

Fanned leaves of oil-yellow and white.

Then there are twists and snags of rope and twine, 

Brittle hair plaits snagging black, burnt seaweed.

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