Cherrypicked stories

Poem

Sunday 4th December 2005 ' 9:37 pm ...and so, Sunday night at the local, to swamp my miseries. Or so I thought¦ Mad Mack's (The Mad Mackeral to give it it's full name) is the only decent pub in town. It's opposite the clock tower on the seafront, at the apex of a triangle formed by Prospect Hill, Wrack Alley and Eastern Esplanade. The bar is correspondingly v-shaped, looking like the prow of a ship cleaving through an ocean of maroon carpet: Public Bar to port, Saloon to starboard. There's no dividing wall between the two, though. It's just a matter of furnishing and decor. The Saloon is cosier, with its sagged-out armchairs and nicotine-sepia'd pictures. The Public, on the other hand, has red leather stools and a juke box (a genuine Rock-ola 'Bubbler', complete with arching neon tubes and original 50s song list). There's also a TV set in the corner, a fruit machine, a pool table and a dartboard. These last two, given the snug size of the bar, overlap each other's floor space to some extent. If both are being used at once, the players of one have to give way to the players of the other in turn if dart-punctured buttocks or cue-shafted arseholes are to be avoided.

People text and drink bottled water

Santa Barbara: 16th August 12.25pm Basildon Bonds. Even here by the Pacific Ocean. I have stayed in hostels before. Done my time all over Australia in1999/2000 with Jane. So the moment I walked through the door here I knew the score, the rules, or the lack of them. The mess and laziness.

Sunday 4th December 2005 ' 5 minutes later Out of the Square I go and east along the seafront into the gusting afternoon ' my shadow loping off ahead of me like it's anxious to get somewhere. The sea's the colour of cold snot and as rough as a shag in a dock-side alley. But the air feels good ' stinging my sinuses like a snort of chilled vodka.

Afterwards, on grief's ebb, I sorted her things into sacks. In a back pocket of her weekend jeans, on a store receipt, was a list she'd written the day she found out: tickets rubbers

Pull Calm sets like a wish on the night. In your garden, the fruit trees bloom with stars. The sky tilts its last light to the edge. Everything disappears. We step along hushed roads, discussing

Elbows jabbed my side and other feet crushed mine. Beer was flying through the air, dampening my hair and sweat soaked through my clothes. I was in heaven. I worked my way up to the front of the mosh pit, my feet never touched the ground as the sea of bodies helped me drift slowly to the guardrail in front of the stage. Once there, I gripped onto the rail and craned my neck up to face the band. I couldn't hear myself even though I was screaming along with them so loudly, that by the end of their set, I had a voice that was equivalent to a hot breeze through the desert. The bass matched the beat of my heart, and the music was no longer coming to me, but coming from me. I felt it with every inch of my being and although my ribs were being bruised by the mass of people behind me pushing me against the fence. As the last chord sang through the air, my heart and soul sang with it.