Things To Do On A Wednesday

One. Read this.
Two. Learn how to lock someone to a tree without ropes, chains, or any other ties.

Eye Contact

I have a new story on a site I really like. It's all a bit weird and serendipitous, because I wrote this story the night before I got a lovely invite to contribute, and while I'd started on another story to fit the brief (a story without an authorial voice), this other one was still in my head. I interpreted 'no authorial voice' as the story having to be interior monologue/direct interior monologue. Which I think it is. Mostly. But maybe I'm talking bollocks and it's just a story and I shouldn't be thinking too hard about these things.

A Tale of Two Cities (and two houses, and Vimto)

For the last two weeks I've been house/dogsitting. I've also been avoiding the internet, and people in general. I feel like I've been out in the sticks, which I sort of have, since there are a lot of fields and every house has a garden and a lawn in the front. It's a million miles away from my usual inner city living. It's also within walking distance of the library, so I've been walking to work every day, past trees and fields and round winding traffic-free streets. I couldn't tell anyone my exact route, because my method is to just look up, and follow the pylons. They lead me from the house right up to the library. I should've counted them, to see exactly how many pylons there are on my journey. I think there are four.

I’m back at my real house this weekend because an old friend has come to visit. We’ve been walking around the city centre, and she’s been feeling more and more lost because so much has changed since she lived here. I think, because I live here, the change has layered itself over my everyday maps. I’ve never lost where places are, even if they’ve been obscured by hoardings or the surrounding places have been bulldozed and rebuilt. I do feel lost when I go back to Manchester, though. I spent so many years wandering through that city’s mazes, and all the time, I had an internal compass telling me where I was and where I needed to go next. Now when I go back, there are big grey blanks in my memory. I can visualise where places are, but their relation to where I might be is bafflingly absent.

I suppose we expect things to stay the same, even after we leave. And then we feel a bit cheated when someone throws up a whole new building or knocks down one that we loved. There’s a joke about librarians - We Fear Change. And while I don’t believe that’s true in all cases, it is in a fair few. But then I don’t think that applies solely to librarians. I know lots of people who get comfortable with how things are, or ways of doing things, me included. This is the girl who refused to use a computer till after the Millennium, confident in my Luddite mind that the Millennium Bug was going to render the things obsolete. I ate a lot of idiot pie on January 1st. But after change becomes inevitable, I have the ability to launch myself head-first into it. I think that’s my saving grace.

I wonder how much of our orienteering is memory and how much is habit? Or is it the same thing, and when we are no longer habitually using our memory to get us from A to B, then we lose the connection in our brains. Kind of like the way we forget most of the French we learned at school, but when we go to France, we are suddenly able to understand a lot more than we think. I can set off for places and arrive there with no memory of the journey sometimes. Just me wandering along on auto pilot. And it makes me think we might be a bit like birds, with our own SatNav guiding us while we do our thinking of other things. But then sometimes, when I think I’m lost, I’ll see a familiar building and everything rushes right back.

Maybe I need to do some exploring of my old haunts next time I’m up North. See if I can’t fire some brain pathways back into life. It seems a shame to lose that kind of information. First stop will have to be here, methinks. It’s been a while, but I’m sure I remember how to get there.

Hello Hubmarine #3

I've been waiting for a poster, but the event is actually tomorrow, so I've decided "to hell with a poster". I'm not usually one to live so dangerously, but needs must.

So, tomorrow, 8pm, at the Big Blue Coffee Co. on Sadlergate, in Derby, the third Hello Hubmarine will happen.

Jenn Ashworth will be unofficially launching her amazing novel, A Kind Of Intimacy.

Lemn Sissay and Ivoryfishbone will be poeting like there's no tomorrow.

James Hately will be very funny.

Amy Scott and Adam Gallagher will be very musical.

The films will be short and superb.

The coffee will be most excellent, as always.

And the icing on the cake? Entrance is free!

Of Bloomers and Bins

I've got a new story up at 3:AM Magazine today. I got some of the "bread facts" for it from my Saturdays working on a bread stall when I was 13. Oh those bloomers, oh those farls. I was too young to know anything of the secret language of gestures back then. The only thing I knew for certain was I was going to marry River Phoenix. (I still maintain that it was his untimely death, rather than my lack of action, that led to this never happening.)

Today was a Good Day at the library. The high point was trying to explain to a lady that Google were not photographing her house that very second, despite it being "blue bin day" and the blue bin being out. She wouldn't have it, and told me she was going to go home, move the bin, and have another look on Street View. Then she'd know for sure. It kept me smiling for the rest of the day.

No Parking

There are a lot of empty shops in Derby. This started happening around the time that they opened the Westfield shopping centre monstrosity, and has obviously continued with the economic downturn.

Last year, a collective of artists took over an empty shop and created an art gallery for two weeks. It was brilliant, especially getting to see the ancient wallpaper, and wandering around the four-storey building, finding artwork under stairs and in every nook and cranny.

Tonight was the opening of the second No Parking. It's in the same place, 2 Cheapside, Derby, opposite the Museum and Art Gallery. And this year, they're part of the Format festival, too.

There are four floors of artwork, but the stairs to the top two are very very steep. Tracey Meek, who very kindly drew us some pictures for Home, one of which became the limited edition print, had two rooms on the second floor brimming with amazing things.

Like...

and...

and the Houses of Lies...

and...

and my favourite...

and lots more.

I didn't take photos of anything else because there were too many people, but I plan on going back in the daytime and looking around again. Maybe I will sit in the chair next to the projection of the drinking ladies and wave at myself on the TV for a bit, and I will definitely write something on the 'writing on' wall.

The exhibition runs for the next two weeks, and is totally free. There is lots to look at, and it's great being so high up. The views across Derby from the top windows are fantastic. It's well worth a visit.

Tonight

I walked home tonight in a fine drizzle. The ground was freckled with water that glittered under the orange glow of street lights. I felt like I could walk around all night. I wanted to get my camera, take photographs of places in the city I never go after dark.

I stood on the corner, waiting for traffic to pass and the lights to change. And I thought about turning left, and crossing the road the other way, and walking out of the city, under the old bridge and the tall trees, past the big houses and across the pavements with their tunnels underneath.

I thought about being invisible. And how safe I would feel walking anywhere, at any time, and the freedom that would come with that. And then the lights turned red, and the traffic stopped, and I carried on walking home.