For Tomorrow

You could say:
These days, life just seems to slip past in a blur of non-events, non-days, non-weeks where nothing happens to no one and everything stays the same while imperceptibly fading in colour, imagination and joy.

Or if that's too dark:
As the days blend into one, a calm sense of normality wraps itself around, a warm blanket against the chills of the world; the firm belief that nothing changes without reason.

Less abstract:
It's bloody hot outside, and the stifling heat frankly kills any desire in me to go and "do stuff". I'd rather just sit inside and hide my skin from the burning sun, tearing through a DVD collection and chuckling at daytime repeats of ancient sitcoms.

Existential pessimism:
Life is like sliding down a muddy slope into a hole. We cling on to any sodden clay that our fingers can grasp, but ultimately it is all a futile resistance of the inevitability of slipping deeper and further, down into the dark, away from the light, until eventually we hit the bottom and are trapped forever.

Grounded practicality:
Why is it that the one repeating coincidence in my life is that between my sudden desire to write on my blog and my desperate need to get a haircut. Does my power come from my hair?

The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect

"Take a seat please, sir."

I meander towards the coat rack, shrug my jacket off and in one move swing it round and up onto the hook. I feel my feet slip a little on the thin layer of human hair that lies slick on the tiled floor. The humus layer of the hairdresser's salon. My nostrils wince from the constant sensation of sniffing the tip of a bottle of shampoo.

The leather chair is too low for me, and it takes a couple of awkward shuffles in the seat to get comfortable. It's slightly clammy from the previous occupant, having been vacated only seconds before, and my jeans stick a little as I moved around. The leather lets out a pained groan.

The top I'm wearing zips up to about halfway up my neck, just gracing the bottom of my hair at the back, and the Man comes over and wordlessly unzips it by about six inches, folding the collar down into a V-neck.

"Arms out, please!"

I catch a glimpse of the baffled look that contorts my face in the monstrous mirror facing me. As I slide my arms into the plastic tent that will shield my crotch from the cascades of falling curls, my mind registers that I need to remove my spectacles. The tent is pulled tight around my neck - so tight that I let out a little gurgle of shock.

"Just a bit off the length please, and sort of smartened up around the sides."

This is pretty much word-for-word exactly what I have said to any person about to use scissors to decimate my horrendous white-man-fro in the last 10 years. And yet this time, the Man looks at me as if I've just asked him to shove two cabbages up his jumper and pole dance to a CD of Ukrainian electro-funk. I return his facial puzzlement in kind.

"I need to wash your hair first. The hair, it is too curly and I think you have hair gel in that will stick to my scissors."

I try to hide my embarrassment at what is clearly his disgust for my dirty hair. In actuality I washed it a little over an hour ago, but I acknowledge that the hair putty I liberally applied yesterday may have lingered and could cause problems. Maybe I smell.

"Erm, well only if you think it really needs it..."

His eyes narrow.

"It's not going to cut very well without it. I need to put some conditioner in."

I'm trapped, so emotionally pinned into this chair that I may as well be handcuffed to it. I feel like a kid who's grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, being forced into admitting culpability for a crime he didn't commit. A crime of fashion - a crime of curly hair. It would be absurd to leave now, and yet the Man has all but told me that if I don't pay the extra to get my hair washed that he's going to be reduced to lopping it all off with the sort of industrial shears usually reserved for sheep.

I admit defeat and agree. Only then do I noticed the sink in front of me. This is the first time I've ever had the wash-n-cut treatment, so I'm not quite sure how this is going to work, but I'm fairly confident it will involve some sort of rotation mechanism being brought into action. I will leisurely recline and take the chance to reflect on an article I just read in The Economist about a recent coup in Madagascar. Maybe even pick up the magazine again and have another quick browse.

"Lean forward."

With a snap I realise that I've been living in a fantasy world. The Man's instruction is laughably simplistic - far more than having to lean, I have to arse-wiggle my way to the very tip of the chair (the leather moans with each squirm), and gingerly tip my head over the sink. I'm fairly certain that my underwear is showing at the base of my spine above my jeans.

A large, rough hand grabs the back of my head and shoves me face first right into the sink, so that my nose is mere centimetres from the plughole. Around it congeals the remains of whichever poor sod last had this treatment. A ginger, by the looks of it. I try to escape from my current predicament by imagining the terrible bullying this poor ginger must have faced as a child, similar perhaps to my own torment as a curly.

The next few minutes are a hazy blur, a collage of sound and darkness, but afterwards I recall a warm wet sensation, a lot of rubbing, the dizzying smell of freshly-cleaned public toilets and a vague sense of violation. My eyes sting, as does my sense of pride and English reserve.

"Tissue."

I'm flung back in my seat as the Man massages my head and growls perversely.

"I love your hair."

As he begins to cut, I settle into my more comfortable hair-cutting rhetoric. Oh yes, I say, you may love this curly hair but I guarantee you wouldn't if it was yours. I try to point out the horror of having to contend with a monstrous, wilful mass of wiry curls that scream defiantly from your scalp, laughing in the face of any hair-product / comb / rage based offensive. The Man banally mutters some unlikely annoyance at having straight hair, his outrageously well-controlled coiffure cackling in its pointy fascism at my ever-depleting Brillo-pad mop.

"Is your mother Asian?"

Sans spectacles, I can't tell in the mirror whether a look of dry irony has painted his face, so I try to suppress my puzzlement and explain that I get my curly hair from some long-forgotten Scottish ancestry. His only response to this is to brutally shove my head to the left (a twinge of whiplash) and start cutting, a little too close for comfort, around my ear.

This goes on for some time, with intermittent conversational niceties invariably being interrupted by an unexpected assault on my spinal column. At one point he helpfully points out that I should get myself a nice London girlfriend, before puffing out his cheeks and blowing the detritus of my former fringe into my reddened eyes.

Eventually the agony is over, and I'm invited to put my spectacles on to feast my eyes on the new me. As the world blinks back into focus, I stare expectantly at my own head in the mirror. The hair is a fair bit shorter than I wanted, revealing rather too much of the bulk of my obese cranium. It's far shorter at the sides than at the top, and has been slicked back by the Man's strong hands. The net effect is somewhere between Will Smith circa the early nineties, and Christian Bale in American Psycho. I feel slightly sick.

"Yeah it's great, thanks. New man!"

I stretch my mouth into a smile, which is reciprocated.

"Hair gel?"

I shake my head kindly.

"No, thanks."

His eyes sparkle. A smile plays about his lips. I hear his stomach rumble as he prepares to administer the coup de grâce.

"Chili sauce? Mayo?"

It takes me a second to realise this is a joke. I try not to look like I'm about to spew my lunch all over the plastic tent covering my knees, and reject the offer through a judder of nervous laughter.

"No, thanks."

I get up from my seat as a previously unseen hair monkey (read: trainee) scuttles out, apparently from under my chair, to snatch the plastic cover off me. We make our way to the cash register and I pull my wallet out of my jeans. The Man meets my eye and smiles.

"Hope to see you again!"

I grab my coat off the rack. No longer do I notice the coating of human hair across the floor, nor the acrid burn of shampoo in my nostrils.

"I'm sure you will."

I shove ten pounds into his outstretched hand, the scissors still hanging off his little finger, and sharply turn and walk out the door. The breeze is cool on my scalp, and I quickly pull my hood up round my ears.

It's Raining Today

As the rain falls lazily from the grey sky, he sits inside feeling the chokehold's absence. Breathing space has afforded a momentary awakening. A loosened grip on the throat of his mind's voice, usually held firm by the hum-drum, cash in hand, out of pocket, day in, day out existence, has lifted the dizzying fog, and gasping for air he reaches for the nearest bowl and thrusts his face into it.

A purge of thought, emotion and control leaves him shaking, a steadying hand reaching for a towel. Hot and damp, it burns his skin, searing the expression of disgust, and cauterizing the gaping wound in his intellect.

He collapses back, breathing deep, feeling the cool air percolate through his nostrils. A reflection catches his eye, an unrecognised figure, haggard, distant and stern. It's lips purse, and then open to speak.

"Get a haircut."

Long, Long, Long

I'm sitting on a train heading South. The chair is uncomfortable and creaks when I move around. In the air is a faintly stale aroma that permeates my clothes and belongings. The picture on the window makes me think of Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd.

When I look out the window, I see the suck of air from the carriages ahead fighting against a strong headwind. The sun is starting to get higher in the sky, and peers squinting through a break in the clouds.

The trees outside are starting to disappear, being gradually replaced by a vast, threatening expanse of square corners and tarmac brutality, the red bricks of the buildings by the track giving way to giant sheets of tinted glass, in which I catch the reflection of tired eyes. On the horizon ahead looms the choking smog of metropolitan isolation.

The train slows and I get off, but this is not my final destination. I'm just waiting for my next connection.

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

I've never been one for logistics. I'd rather tackle a problem with an email than a phone call, my logic being that I can collect and rationalise my thoughts better in the written word than over the telephone. Unfortunately, this choice is invariably the slower of the two, and more often than not results in being ignored.

I happily sit in limbo. Only days remain before I am to move home and start work, but through the comfort of other people's delayed actions I am immobile. I cling to a nostalgic and blind sense of entrenched normalcy, and sit in the headlights, waiting for the impact. In my life, I find more often than not that I can face any problem that hits me and find a way round it, but I'll be damned if I can ready myself before it comes.

With the right impetus, I'm lightning quick, I rush forwards, rugby tackle the headlights and bring them crashing to the ground. Throw me into a boiling pan and I will leap out. But it is my fear that, like a cold-blooded frog, unaware of the danger, I will sit content in a pool of calm as the heat builds and builds until I begin to cook.

On a more practical note, I should probably cut my hair soon.

Moving

The reason things have been so quiet on Curious Quill recently is, in essence, I have been getting myself a career. Terrifying as it may seem to me now, I am about to join the ranks of the tax-paying, flat-renting, shop-on-Saturdays, living-for-the-weekend masses. As I alluded to in my previous - and embarrassingly abstract - post, this will involve me packing up and moving out.

The curious thing is that the stress of finding somewhere to live on the other side of the country is probably a blessing in disguise. It seems to have blanked out the sheer terror I should be feeling at being tied to the tracks, wriggling to escape the inevitable and speedy approach of a high-speed train called The Worrying Prospect of Independence.

My labels are all going to change. Sure, I've recently moved from the era-defining "Student" to the deliberately vague "Graduate" (occasionally prefixed with "Unemployed" or the more optimistic "Job-Seeking"). But to abandon these luxuriant titles in favour of the more harsh "Young Professional" is something I'm perhaps not quite ready to do.

I'm sure the following months for me will consist of an immersion into (the deep end of) my new life, and I will probably live in a constant state of backlash. Hopefully I'll not be one of those slightly embarrassing types who really have no excuse to be hanging around watching bands full of people five years younger than them. Or those who continue to go to the local art house cinema to catch the latest existential Polish crime thriller, long after it has ceased to be "trendy" to do so and is instead "unnecessarily pretentious".

Then again I've never worried about labels anyway. They never really seem to stick.

Return To Sender

Time to break the ritualistic, self-imposed leave of absence. No apologies for a lack of presence; I had better things to do, and I was busy doing them. No explanation of the what and the why, maybe those can come later, but not now.

No longer stood at the crossroads. I have chosen my path, and I prepare to take my first baby steps. Choose shoes. Find the way among the rocks and snakes. The lack of choice does not make choosing any easier, and I will have to feel my way in the dark. A new beginning maybe, and the end of an era. Exciting prospects and a freedom I have most likely never experienced before.

More than anything, I feel like I'm leaving home.

Throw Away Your Television

Television is a strange and dangerous beast. Strange, because it confounds expectations, despite never being anything other than predictable. Dangerous because the uneasy comfort it provides is an opiate, a sucking tentacle wrapped around our mind, placating and digesting.

This morning was good. I got up early, ate a bowl of pecan and oats cereal. Had a shower. Teeth brushed, hair (sort of) combed, I sit in front of the computer and progress. For the first time in a while, I feel I'm getting somewhere. Short breaks here and there to read the news never fully interrupt the flow.

Its just after one, and I decide to have lunch. I'll watch a bit of telly, I think. Scrubs is on at half-past, so I'll make my sandwiches to eat then. Kill a bit of time first, and come my appointment with the grey, imposing structure in the living room, I'm sat, food in hand, ready for a thirty minute treat in the middle of a productive day.

Only its never thirty minutes. A tiny bit of channel-hopping and one episode has become three. And I don't even want to be here, its just a sickening compulsion, a hypnotic trance that I slip into, broken only by the lull of a four minute advert break. This in itself is a further ploy; get some crisps, have a banana, put the kettle on, glass of coke. I consume. And then I can't move, I'm just stuck there.

Television can be a wonderful thing. Educational, partisan or unbiased, entertaining, a conduit for information or analysis, a great way to watch films cheaply and easily. But as an accompaniment to eating alone, it is a sweet and sickly poison.

Trash

Given a long enough period of time, some storage space out of sight and a lack of sufficient willpower, it is truly amazing how much junk you can amass from nothing at all. The sort of stuff that you don't need or want, but fail to dispose of without sufficient incentive.

This morning, I got up uncharacteristically early to clear out the loft and garage of some such unwanted junk, to deposit in front of the house as part of the wonderfully named "Bring Out Your Rubbish Day". There have been no children in this house since I was a child (now in my twenties), and yet there was still a surprising amount of child friendly rubbish lying around. Items disposed of include:

- one King-Size mattress;
- two sponge single matresses;
- at least seven cardboard boxes, empty or packed with other boxes;
- three spare bathroom panels, 8' by 3';
- one 7' three-piece wooden tree, stage prop;
- one huge plastic bag filled with other bags and torn boxes;
- one large metal fireguard frame;
- one gas fireplace;
- one staircase guard for toddlers;
- three large empty paint tins;
- one suitcase, broken;
- one plastic training potty;
- one child's digging truck, yellow.

To be honest, I think we beat the other people on our street.

This Hollywood Life

And so it was that the packing was done, and he looked upon it and smiled, for he saw that it was good. And he was to wait only until dawn to depart across the seas, to a land where the sun shines brightly and the locals bite, and stay there for one score and one nights. And he promised to keep in touch, not to leave the old ways of his world behind. And so he prepared to depart.

And, in all likelihood, he will have forgotten to pack any underwear.

Wandering Star

First up, an apology for the previous post. Incoherence is not cool.

After my pointless and rushed post last night, I went and sat outside under the stars with a glass of wine. It was one of those warm, balmy nights where its impossible to do anything but sit back and crane your neck up at the stars.

As the spinal spasms gave way to an enduring rigidity, my eyes became transfixed by a bright point of light travelling across the sky. At first I assumed it was an aircraft, but the constancy of the direction and speed, as well as a lack of flashing lights promptly scoffed at this theory. Too slow to be anything in the atmosphere, and too fast to be anything far away, I realised it must be a low flying satellite catching rays from a sun that had long since set for me. It maintained its fluorescence across much of the sky, and then suddenly dimmed, presumably as the sun slipped below its horizon.

I sat there for a few minutes, experiencing one of those wonderful moments of calm clarity. Maybe I should write a book. Or go jet skiing. Isn't it funny how tissues always have two layers? There seemed to be little noise apart from my own breathing.

The pacifying calm was suddenly broken by a large smashing sound on the patio, inches behind me. I jumped up, startled, trying to see the cause. My mind flicked through a couple of possibilities: a roof tile had fallen; I was under attack from aliens; a bat had crashed.

A torch revealed the presence of a presumably distraught snail slowly regaining its posture. I looked up at the roof, and down at my glass of wine. A snail had fallen from the roof of my house? A thrill seeking, skydiving snail?

At this point I decided it would be sensible to stop drinking wine, and head indoors for the safety of my bed.

The moral of the story is avoid drunken, nocturnal gardening. One of my neighbours had come home to find a snail on one of her plants. To protect the plant she picked it up and tossed it, but chose rather the wrong place to direct it.

Introducing The Band

Welcome to Curious Quill, a blog written, managed and edited by someone with opinions, informed or otherwise, and an arrogant need to inflict these opinions on others. Over time ground rules may be established for what is to be posted on this site, but for the time being it could be anything. Music I've listened to, films I've watched, bands I've seen, television I've endured or otherwise, books I've read, photos I've taken, people I've met, places I've been, thoughts I've had; anything really.

As with any of these things, feedback is greatly appreciated. This is my first blog, so if I commit some terrible blog faux pas, such as using italicised French phrases, please tell me. Is it acceptable to ever use the word 'blogosphere'? Will I be blackballed by the blogging community if I mention watching QI last night? Should I be using question marks so frequently? I don't know. You do. Tell me.

Here's looking at you, kid.