Sorehead

Goddamn what's that light? It's upsetting me, I want it to go away. I was driving a moment ago, I'm sure. I was pounding the middle peddle waiting for something to happen. The seatbelt didn't fit and the others were all laughing among themselves, ignoring me, they don't notice. Strange smell that. Familiar though, not threatening. Bastard light. Maybe it's trying to communicate, I don't want to talk. Not home. Never home, don't come back, emigrated, redirect all mail to canal. I'm missing something. I forgot to check my limbs, should try and move a little, see what's happening, it's dangerous out there with the enemy listening at every keyhole. The airwaves are rank with codes and coded messages, sticky with secrets. Wasn't I standing in a train station? Unfamiliar bag in my hand, a train is pulling in, there's nothing but jovial winter faces, and then someone shouting, screaming over the crowd. I can't tell what. I stop pushing. Then the platform is empty. On the opposite wall Charlie Chaplain clings to the side of a speeding locomotive. Silent, and there's there's that sensation of wheels turning again.

I stop. I pretend I'm a burnt out car shoved into a canal. My mail floats through my broken windows and mushes itself against the inside of the windscreen with the algae.

07 / 07 / 2004

There's air coming in through the vent, slight but there. Going to rest here, maybe eat a cracker. So cold though. Why does it have to be so cold?

20 / 06 / 2004

Very alluring mix of lights and colours. The band kicking in, the beer coming back up. There's nothing wrong with flickering florescent lights and goddamn anyone who says there is. There's nothing wrong with sleeping on tiles or friend's bathroom floors. There's nothing wrong with jumping at shadows, hiding in the corner or sleeping all day. And there's nothing wrong with feeling shameful while you clean up after yourself either.

29 / 04 / 2004

I can use cardboard and scissors to create cityscapes
I can use cardboard and scissors to create whole civilisations
It's amazing what can be achieved
With just cardboard and scissors

23 / 04 / 2004

Waking hours sometimes come in flurries. Sleep/awake sleep/awake. Were you reading a book or napping? What happened on page 34? Makes no difference as long as you don't have a place to be. The twenty four hour news channels don't respect office hours or the working week. There's a supermarket that stays open all night. Long after the pubs kick out and the kebab houses pull their grills down you can wonder the freezer aisles, absent mindedly collecting dead poultry and frozen meats. A supermarket at 3am is no place for a human being. Paranoia takes over, the shelves close in. You shake a bit as you hand the lady some change and she thinks you're suffering withdraw from some terrible drug. Nothing so glamorous. Back in front of the telly watching Asian language programming with English subtitles. The sun starts to rise around 5:30.

23 / 04 / 2004

They told him the ache would go away. Take a holiday, have some rest. Get out more. Sleep more. Drink less. Phone old friends, take up gardening, have a cold shower. Come back in a few weeks, we'll talk. They were right of course, that wasn't in dispute. All pain is temporary, just sometimes it's temporary like the Ice Age.

21 / 03 / 2004

The internet is strange and awsome. He dreamed sometimes he was carrying it around in his pocket, breaking bits off to share with his friends.

14 / 02 / 2004

There's a lady who walks up and down the highstreet on Saturday Afternoons. Her face looks like a plastic bag caught on barbed wire in the wind. She pushes a pram too. She fills it with empty beer and pop cans picked off the pavement and out of bins. She wears an anorak with the hood up and doesn't really talk much, but waves her fists at the kids when they tease. I once saw her having an argument with a beat policeman. She was shouting and trying to knock him down with her pram. The police usually leave her alone though, everyone does.

I sit in the Crown by the window, watching. At around six when the shops close up she makes her last circuit, empty crisp packets blowing in the breeze behind her. I imagine a slow tilt, the camera traveling upwards before a dissolve, a silence, and the inevitable credit roll.

3 / 2 / 2004

For the last time he walked into a room full of people and forgot what he was doing there.

"Can we help you?"

He says nothing. Then, for want of something better to do, starts feeling for what's in his pockets. Door keys are still there, scraps of paper, notes, tickets, receipts. Loose change too, quite a lot of it. Wonder where all that came from. "Excuse me sir, is there something you'd like to ask? Only we're quite busy here".

"No. No thanks. I'll be leaving in just a moment I expect".

26 / 1 /2004

Pushing past overcoats and bulging plastic bags to get to the machine then fumbling the change into the slot. The floor is wet and the boots leaking. They are not good boots. The train leaves in 20 minutes and it looks like there's a queue at the bar (there should never be a queue at that bar). There's a queue everywhere. This is a queue we're standing in though God knows what we're queueing for. Information probably. Answers to questions. Distractions.

Directions blinking above us: Head North. Head North.

10 / 12 / 2003

Scratching like it's somehow going to stop the itch. Floating, confused but content over foreign soils. Addressing the envelopes ever so very carefully. Following thoughts as they change shape. Turning on all the lights. Writing poems for strangers. The removal of one's own fingernails. Telly on mute. Moon on a stick, then backwards through goo.

24 / 11 / 2003

Try. Retry. Keep notes. Watch the timing. Watch for inconsistencies. Locate the weakest point. Keep your head down. It can't go wrong. Everyone is rooting for you.

10 / 11 / 2003

Inaction is a right. Movement is not mandatory. Photographs are sometimes as good as and sometimes better then real life. Almost all odour is transient, long term. Your skin is not my property. Ideas cannot be copyrighted. Your brain is no better than her brain. You're only right because I say you are. Literature is flaccid. Your station is your definition only insofar as you allow it to be. Fuck the ruling class. Fuck the proles. Fuck ITV. Fuck the New York Times. When bored, why not deface a billboard? Don't eat deep-fried food. Don't eat blu-tac. Unless you really can't stop yourself. Phone your family more often. They miss you. Catalogue all of your misdemeanors in a small leather bound notebook and pass it on to the relevant authorities. You cannot be tried in a court of law for just any-old-shit you know. Except you can. Brush your teeth. Feed your cats but don't feed strays because it'll only encourage them. The health warnings on cigarette packets are a ruse to make you feel guilty. Just like that drink driving thing. Maybe you should consider a blood transfusion. You know, just for kicks. Chew your food good and proper. Buy lottery tickets. Buy a million lottery tickets. Steal from beggars. Send money to random television celebrities. They will thank you for it and you will get into heaven. Don't play offensive music late at night. What use are your toenails? I mean really? Self harm is also your right. Get down on your knees and smash your teeth out on your doorstep. It's your duty to care about other people. Buy everything you can afford then set fire to it. Plastic burning smells good. As an exercise, make up your own rules/morals/ethics. Then try to justify them. Can you? Use your friend's 'phones to dial premium rate numbers. Collect dead animals you find in the street (pigeons, cats etc.) and keep them in your freezer. Talk to strangers at bus stops. You'll make new and interesting friends. Wait around for a large number of years until you can bear it no longer. Everyone over the age of eighteen months is suspect. Ask policemen/policewomen/policepeople what the fuck they think they're playing at. See what happens. Send bouquets of flowers to random people. Smile more. Smile more. Smile more.

You won't let me down. Will you?

11 / 10 / 2003

Damn the floor, the walls, the cupboards and the carpet. Damn the draining board, the soft furnishings and the doorknobs. Damn the drawers, damn the dustbins, damn the hinges and the flaps. Damn the doorbell, the doormat and the letterbox. Damn the coffee table. Damn the drawing pins that hold the idiot photographs on the wall. Especially them. Damn that smell and damn the source whatever it is. Damn the ringing of the phone and smother it with cushions. Damn the breakages and the stains. Damn the noise of hard soles on bare floorboards. Damn the damp, damn the pipes. Damn the tap that won't quit. Damn the bleach under the sink. And the Windolene. Damn the veg gone rotten. Damn the mirrors, the cutlery and the bookcases. Damn the tears in the skin. Damn the bruising. Damn the newspapers all piled up and damn the empty bottles too.

Damn the sound of a radio tuned to no station, although it wouldn't hurt to listen a while. It's as good a strategy as any.

7 / 10 / 2003

Hot political action. If it was possible to pick up and wave something that doesn't exist, this is where you'd see the Great Plan for Sorehead fluttering in the breeze. Also, for those who care: Little Red Book.

03 / 09 /2003

14 / 08 / 2003

14 / 08 / 2003

28 / 07 / 2003

"Conventional wisdom is restrictive," he said to nobody in particular, "I'm certain the square peg will fit into the circular hole if I just concentrate hard enough!"

He also believed he could breathe underwater. That got him into trouble a couple of times at the pool.

02 / 07 / 2003

There was a cupboard under the stairs and he couldn't remember the last time he'd been in there. Not this year for sure and maybe not the year before either. He couldn't even remember what was in it, although he thought there might be a box of books as there were some missing. Maybe some old clothes, old photographs, old records, bits of paper with phone numbers he'd never called written on them. Stuff like that.

He knew where the key was though, he was sure of that. He'd accidentally knocked it off a high shelf in the kitchen a week ago while grabbing at something else. That's why the cupboard was on his mind again now. That's why he was sitting against the wall opposite, tugging tufts of fluff out of the carpet and wondering why things like this never seemed as simple as they ought to be.

26 / 06 / 2003

He painted a sign on an old bedsheet and hung it outside his house from an upstairs window.

"Not dead. Just resting. Yeah yeah yeah. x."

19 / 06 / 2003

"Leave me alone you dilapidated old hag!"

13 / 05 / 2003

He sometimes pushed blank cheques under the doors of Help the Aged and PDSA charity stores. For days afterwards he checked his bank account obsessively, eager to know how much they'd withdraw. It was disappointing that so far the only response he'd had was when a Help the Aged representative sent him a polite letter asking him to stop.

13 / 05 / 2003

Something he liked to do when the mood took him was re-classify the Bible. He'd take big piles of them from the religion and theology sections and find space for them in the fiction department. It seemed obvious that fiction was the more appropriate classification. At least that's what he uselessly wailed to the security guards as they escorted him outside for the third time that week.

As a result he found himself barred from most bookshops and libraries in the area. Waterstones had a CC TV picture of him behind the counter.

- - - -

He never got over his bitterness after having his collar felt for putting graffiti on the side of someone's garage. His defence - which was the truth - was that he was only trying to improve on what was already there. Later on he was told the fine would have been much lower had he not called the arresting WPC a "big-nosed fascist twat".

- - - -

He lost a friend once by illustrating his point in a musical disagreement too literally. He whacked her on the side of the head with a Bert Bacharach LP.

07 / 05 / 2003

Public transport is only hell when the batteries in your walkman run out. On a bus once he overheard two people talking. "Oh yes I love music," one of them said, "I listen to Radio One the whole time." It was probably the saddest thing he ever heard on a bus.

- - - -

Something he tried to hide from people was the absurd sense of comfort he got from the warmth of freshly used photocopy paper. If nobody was around he'd hold it to his face for the few seconds before the glow faded, feeling stupid but enjoying it anyway. Once in the public library someone walked in on him standing like that, with a his head buried in a photocopied Private Eye article. Startled, he jumped violently and got a nasty paper cut on the cheek.

- - - -

He was amazed to discover that his new phone allowed him to record his own ringtones. He made one he was especially proud of. It was a recording of himself shouting: "You forgot to turn your phone off, retard".

21 / 04 / 2003

Something he liked to do every once in a while was make sketches of graffiti he found in underpasses. He'd sit on a tipped over shopping trolley with a pad and pencil and draw the wall opposite. He got strange glances sometimes from passers by but that didn't bother him too much. The only people who ever said anything were a kid with snot on his face and untied shoelaces who yelled "Wierdo" and threw a crunched up Special Brew can at him, and a cyclist who wanted to see the drawing.

If he was in the mood he sometimes tried to guess what the people who wrote the graffiti might have looked like and draw them into the picture along with brief, imaginary notes in the margin. Robin, 15, into his Playstation and films starring Angelina Jolie, loves Sonia, 16, who bleaches her hair, and is hoping for a career as a Veterinarian.

He put some of the pictures on his wall home, but always tried to remember to take them down before anyone came round.

13 / 04 / 2003

He'd spent his whole life with the wrong adapters. All these years and he'd never noticed. It was obvious really.

06 / 04 / 2003

It wasn't being scared that was the problem, he just didn't trust himself. Suddenly that lunchtime drink didn't seem like such a good idea anymore. He was standing at the bottom of the street jiggling from foot to foot, face flushed and with a pain in his belly, trying to dream up elaborate excuses, envelope in hand. There was an off license around the corner, and a pub next to that. He remembered they sold Wild Turkey and he thought about that for a while, wondered if the same people would be behind the bar there. He doubted it. It seemed that places had a way of becoming hostile, as if they were hurt he ever left and weren't prepared to have him back.

Enough stalling. He quickly ran down the street and stuffed the envelope through the letterbox - trying not to make too much noise in case anyone was home - then went to catch a bus. The return fare had gone up 30p.

30 / 03 / 2003

Sometimes in bars he tried to talk to old men who were sitting by themselves. He was always hopeful they'd be full of wit and kindness. He had the idea that with age came a certain clarity of thought and emotional pragmatism. He knew he could learn a lot from those more experienced than himself and he was eager to absorb as much wisdom as possible. Of course, these encounters rarely went as he'd imagined and more often than not he'd get bored and wonder off while his new potential mentor babbled drunkenly on subjects he had no interest in.

"When I'm older," he thought, "I'm going to make damn sure I've worked out something worthwhile to say."

21 / 03 / 2003

He once saw a picture of somebody's wrists after they'd cut themselves. The wounds were healed and scarred, held out close together in front, and the picture was framed and lit in such a way that you could only see the subjects wrists and bluey pale face, the rest was dark. Years later, he found a CD in a bargain bin which had the same photo on the cover. He realised then that the scars were prosthetic and the subject was a model striking an exaggerated and glamorised pose. Looking at it again it was so obvious, almost impossible to mistake for anything else. It made him feel sick and cheated, a winding gut punch.

In the picture the photographer was reflected in each eye, grinning and with his thumb stuck enthusiastically up in the air.

13 / 03 / 2003

He was trying hard to foster harmony between himself and technology but the more diligently he worked at the relationship the more the gadgets and computers seemed to conspire against him. He knew it was his fault really but some days he would swear he caught his toaster laughing at him. He would mutter to himself, "Damn these beligerant robots."

12 / 03 / 2003

He was writing an essay for his counsellor. She wanted him to write about how he felt in certain situations and why he thought he reacted in the way he did. She wanted him to write about the telephone and why it frightened him so much. She wanted to know how he felt. He thought he was writing a pretty good essay, he was capturing just the words his counsellor wanted to hear and putting them down on the paper. He was pleased with it.

She'd given him a story to read too, The Burrow by Franz Kafka. He read it but it made him laugh. It's about a mole who works furiously at digging his burrow, defending himself against enemies he can hear but not see. The mole is convinced the sounds are getting louder, that the enemy is coming for him, closing in, and it drives him to a such a frenzy he ends up using his head to burrow the earth. The point is supposed to be that the enemies are imaginary and the mole is responsible for his own situation and his own lack of power.

He thought his counsellor needed to learn a thing or two about subtlety.

28 / 02 / 2003

He said "Thanks," and then hung up without saying goodbye. He'd seen people do that a lot in films but this was the first time he'd ever done it. He was standing in silence, hand still on the receiver, chewing his bottom lip. He couldn't remember what he was doing before the phone rang.

Eventually he thought "Christ," and he walked to the kitchen with the intention of making a sandwhich. He had decided a long time ago that the telephone was his enemy.

20 / 02 / 2003

Every day for a week there was a shoe at the end of the street. It was a sports shoe. It had a long lace that snaked away to a frayed end and was muddy from people standing on it as they walked past. That end of the street was always pretty muddy because it backed onto a field where they sometimes played football. Sometimes, when they weren't playing football, they drank cider from large plastic bottles and ran accross here on their way home, or elsewhere, shouting and pushing, splashing White Lightning into the dirt. Anyway this shoe was there for a week and then it was gone.

I remember seeing an old man stop to look at it, and prod it with his walking stick. His face was nervous, uneasy. Later, I realised he was probably upset. He was probably upset because the shoe was there and he felt powerless to do anything about it.

13 / 02 / 2003

He took hold of his headache and threw it to the floor. He jumped on it, wrestled with it, smothered it with a pillow. He stabbed it with cutlery and tried to microwave it. He taunted it, "Call yourself a headache? Ha!" He kicked it against the wall and tried to suck it up the hoover. He stuffed it into a box and stuck knitting needles through it, then he threw the box into the cellar and set the cellar on fire.

It's important to let a headache know who the boss is.

08 / 02 / 2003

Sometimes he'd wake up face down on the bathroom floor with his face flat against the cold tiles, naked except for a damp towel half wrapped around him, florescents flickering overhead. He'd find cuts in strange places and bruises he couldn't explain.

"After a while," he often thought as he peeled himself off the floor and struggled groggily to his feet, "This kind of shit gets really tedious."

30 / 01 / 2003

He got into trouble once for punching an old lady in the face. He explained to the police that she'd started it, he said she'd been deliberately pushing her shopping-bag-on-wheels into the back of his legs all over town. He tried to run away but she gave chase, shouting rude things about young people, saying he should show some fucking respect. It was more than he could bear. He remembered being slightly surprised at how easily she went down. He knocked her bobble hat right into a muddy puddle.

24 / 01 / 2003

Message from the sorehead information dept:
There isn't a proper update this week as the author is feeling very tired, emotional and, to be honest, drunk as a weasel. Sincere apologies. Regular updates will be resumed once the hangover eases off and the blood alcohol concentration returns to a point that makes coherence possible. Thanks for your patience.

17 / 01 / 2003

He became slightly obsessed with right wing newspapers and what they were writing about. He was too embarrassed to buy them himself so he always used to steal yesterdays Daily Mail from his neighbours dustbin. In the end his counsellor convinced him to give it up. She said it would help stop him crying all the time.

10 / 01 / 2003

He'd tried all sorts of different filing arrangements for his CDs. He'd tried ordering them by length (shortest to longest) he'd tried ordering them by date (variously purchase date, release date, last played date) he'd tried ordering them alphabetically by the name of the first or last track on the album, he'd tried ordering them according to how happy he was at the time he bought them and he'd tried ordering them by how many memories the songs evoked and how sad that made him. He thought about the order a lot and although it bothered him he knew it was futile. He only owned four CDs and one of them got stuck on a scratch half way through the second song.

03 / 01 / 2003

His ex-girlfriend sent him a Christmas card with cartoon reindeer on the front. On the inside she'd written a message of goodwill in blotchy biro and left her new mobile phone number, presumably as an invitation to get in touch. He thought about it for a long time and in the end decided to cut the card up for roach paper.

"That's showing her," he thought to himself as he sat around chain smoking.

27 / 12 / 2002

A few days before christmas he took down all the decorations he'd put up in a fit of excitement two weeks earlier. He packed them all into a cardboard box and put it on top of his wardrobe. He used power tools to trim the tree into small chunks and then put the chunks in the wheelie bin while his neighbours watched. He couldn't decide whether or not he liked the sudden impression of space and emptyness. He couldn't decide whether he found it lonely or uplifting.

He phoned his family to apologise that he wouldn't be able to visit for christmas. He told them something big had come up and work and he simply couldn't get away. He told them his car had broken down and he couldn't get it fixed in time. He told them he'd promised he'd feed his friends gecko without realising the date. He told them other things too. He told them he'd become a Jehovah's Witnesses. He told them he'd been in an accident and would be in hospital on a morphine drip for the next three weeks. He told them he was sorry and he asked them not to visit.

Later, he opened the bottle of brandy he'd bought for the christmas pudding and drank while he watched seasonal special editions on the telly. Same thing every year.

20 / 12 / 2002

He got so excited at christmas it was all he could do to keep from wrapping himself in fairy lights and hugging strangers in the street. Instead he wrote cards and letters to everyone he could think of. He called radio talk shows and spoke with articulate conviction on the season and the good it bought out in him and others. He even hung out with the Salvation Army choir at the supermarket for a while, until a drunk with uncanny aim threw an empty sherry bottle at his head and knocked him unconscious.

14 / 12 / 2002

A few years later he found her photograph between the pages of a paperback novel. A Polaroid with a crease through the middle from where he'd had it folded in his pocket. In the picture she was at the dining table writing a letter and wearing his shirt. Head resting on her hand, hair covering her face. At some point the back had been used to vigorously test a failing biro and the ridges showed through on the picture, itself slightly spoiled with time.

He kept it pinned on the wall for a while until he could bear it no longer and put it back in the book. Eventually, he put the book in a cardboard box with dozens of others and donated it to the Oxfam shop on the high street.

"You can't fight history and win," she used to say.

08 / 12 / 2002

Standing at the corner with collar upturned against the weather. He tries to work out how much change he has left by the feel in his pocket. Not much, but suddenly he can't remember where he's heading anyway. It's probably not important, it'll come back to him later. In the meantime he walks to the station and buys coffee and a miniature bottle of scotch. To keep from getting bored he recites telephone numbers in his head and watches the people waiting for trains. It's cold but it doesn't bother him too much. There's something familiar and comforting, he thinks, in the wind that blows down station platforms.

29 / 11 / 2002

He was writing a novel and working very hard at it. It was always so important, he thought, to take as much care as possible over the details. He knew it was the minutiae that sold the story, made it believable. He worked hardest of all on the dialogue, molding characters he grew to love.

Every Sunday afternoon he gathered up the newest pages of his manuscript and read aloud to his cats.

22 / 11 / 2002

For a while he became obsessed with the idea that God's chosen medium for communication was the pages of household appliance manuals. He spent his weekends trying to read between the lines of the booklet that came with his washing machine, diligently studying the figs, the safety warnings. Looking for clues and answers.

His obsession waned when he became disillusioned with the notion that life might not contain any user serviceable parts.

15 / 11 / 2002

Before he started drinking he always taped a label against the bottom of the bottle. The label read "happiness".

08 / 11 / 2002

He sent a lot of greetings cards and spent a long time trying to get the messages he wrote inside just right. He was very subtle, he hid messages for those who read between the lines. Confessions and apologies in hints and allusions. Sometimes, it seemed that people understood, they'd shoot him quizzical glances, phone him up and fudge a conversation. He appreciated it but was always too embarrassed to explain himself out loud.

31 / 10 / 2002

The machines aren't broken, they just need a little attention. A respected and well cared for machine is a happy machine. A happy machine will reward you with loyalty and give years of reliable service.

"Dude, that's like, karma and stuff."
"You're so right."

30 / 10 / 2002

Morale was approaching an all time low. He placed an ad in his local newspaper and sold his record collection for next to nothing. He wanted money for a coach ticket to the coast and for spending when he got there. On the journey he met a lady and they talked. She gave him a recipe for a really excellent garlic and herb dressing. She thought he seemed like a good kid.

16 / 10 / 2002

He tried to live his life in clichés as far as possible. When he phoned old girlfriends he always hung up as soon as he heard "hello?". He'd sit with his head in his hands imagining he was being filmed from above. His friends frustrated him because he thought they didn't understand him. He'd get drunk then go round to their houses late at night and fall asleep on their sofas. While he slept he dreamt of happy endings.

06 / 10 / 2002

02 / 10 / 2002

There are lozenges for all kinds of things and they come in all sorts of exciting colours and flavours. The packaging details their effectiveness against particular ailments. The trick is to find the right lozenge to compliment your particular physical and mental state but it's always such a complicated choice.

28 / 08 / 2002

Mostly he stayed indoors. When he did go out he bought air fresheners and windolene. During the evening he watched tv with the sound off and dreamed up schemes he'd never execute. When friends phoned he assured them he was fine and he'd certainly visit soon. His mail was in a pile on the doormat. He didn't like to read it.

08 / 08 / 2002

He woke up one morning to find that a national newspaper had written a story about him and put his photograph on the front page. The phone didn't stop ringing that day and by lunchtime his head was spinning. They wanted him to appear on a television show to talk about it but he declined. He had no idea what all the fuss was about.

18 / 07 / 2002

He had his epitaph written into his will: I die hoping it's all been worthwhile.

14 / 07 / 2002

06 / 07 / 2002

He used driving for therapy. A friend told him he should relate problems to places and just drive right past them. Ignore the turnoff, stay on the motorway. He started to believe that's what everyone else on the road was doing too. Sometimes he would overtake someone and try to work out what problems they were bypassing. At night, when he couldn't see through the windows he invented situations for them that were much worse than his own. It didn't make him feel any better though.

03 / 07 / 2002

"Oh Christ this is terrible," he said.
"I know," she said.

01 / 07 / 2002

25 / 06 / 2002

Every day he would create helpful notices and put them up on walls. The notices said things like "please remember", "try not to take unfair advantage" and "keep your brain in a safe place".

One day he put up a notice that said "you are a special animal". It pleased him so much that he took a polaroid photograph of it and encouraged others to do the same. So many people wanted to photograph his notice that soon he stopped putting up new ones and instead put up the photographs people had taken.

He found that people were sending copies of their photograph to friends who would then take a picture of it and send it back, asking if he would put their's up on a wall too.

Eventually he stopped writing new notices altogether and contented himself putting fifth, sixth (and even, in one case, twelfth) generation photographs up instead.

Of course, by then the image had become so indistinct you could barley read the original words, but that was hardly important.

21 / 06 / 2002

18 / 06 / 2002

Sorehead salutes you!
Sorehead offers you your choice of hot or cold drinks.
Sorehead sure hopes you like pie!

12 / 06 / 2002

Without the hangovers mornings seem to start in slow motion. The urgency is lost and he showers and shaves with a confidence he'd forgotten. On mornings like these it's easy to forget, and he slides into the day.

10 / 06 / 2002

"There's no reasons. There's only whims." Little Red Book is back. For the time being anyway.

08 / 06 / 2002

After watching the coverage on TV for only twenty minutes he burst into tears and didn't stop crying for days.

06 / 06 / 2002

05 / 06 / 2002

There is something in the kitchen that smells. Every word is fumbled and falls to the floor like a balloon filled with warm milk. "I didn't mean to say that." For reasons that will never become clear all the limbs are aching and... just where did that stain come from? The phone is ringing but it might be best to ignore it. It might be best to ignore a lot of things.

It's difficult to keep this in mind but it is important: just because everything on the telly makes you cry doesn't mean it's time to give up. Not yet.

03 / 06 /2002

Invent this: a small machine that can be placed unobtrusively into living and work spaces. The machine emits a controlled level of positive vibe and is silent save for occasional, quiet "phut phut" noises. The vibe is pleasing, calming and in some circumstances might induce slight feelings of light headedness or euphoria. It will improve the quality of your sleep and create a mood conducive to logical thought and creativity.

The machine will have a sensible retail price and it's use will be mandatory in the meeting and boardrooms of all organisations and governments.

31 / 05 /2002

Quite by accident he happened upon something amazingly rare and astonishingly valuable. It became his mission to share it with as many people as possible.

29 / 05 / 2002

People tried to tell him that the books he loved were puerile. They tried to tell him that he should re-evaluate his priorities, change his lifestyle and just grow up for chrissakes. He knew better though and he spent his days watching them from his treehouse.

28 / 05 / 2002

27 / 05 / 2002

Attention lawyers: The open letter to Jimmy Saville comes home.

27 / 05 / 2002

"That's it. I'm not putting up with this any more. Get my mum on the phone, tell her I want back in."

26 / 05 / 2002

He drank Red Bull until he made himself sick but he never found the wings he longed for.

25 / 05 / 2002

He discovered that by pretending to be asleep he could deflect most people's attempts at conversation. In fact, people would usually make a special effort to be quiet, often talking in whispers and sometimes leaving the room altogether. Later on he would apologise and they would laugh at his eccentricity.

It wasn't that he didn't like his friends, it was just that the banality made him ache.

24 / 05 / 2002

Larry ate the detonator. Hooray!

23 / 05 / 2002

From over seven hours of film there were only a dozen or so worthwhile frames. He cut them out carefully and mailed all but one of them back to his mentor with a short, apologetic note. He put the last one in his wallet and tried to forget about it. Later, when people asked him about his film he would say he'd thrown the whole thing out. "It was worth a go". And he changed the subject.

22 / 05 /2002

Check the calendar, count the half-days. Check the announcements in the local newspaper and hang the right slogan in your window. Be polite when they come to your door. Smile. Say the right things. Consult the manual. Remember to make the phone calls and keep the cupboards closed.

They don't suspect a thing but timing is everything. Nerves like wasps in a jar. Stay upright. I know we can make it.

21 / 05 / 2002

20 / 05 / 2002

300 months old today. No wonder bits are starting to wear out.

19 / 05 / 2002

He wandered around for hours in the rain pretending he was seventeen again. Pretending he had something to be upset about. Hands deep in jacket pockets, soles flapping off his boots. When he got home he phoned old friends and spoke in cliches.

18 / 05 / 2002

Today is a Yellow Letter Day. Today we get inside the walls and have a really good poke around. We're not making any more phone calls. Today our eyes are sore but sleeping sometimes seems like such a waste. Got to keep talking. Got to keep taking the vitamin pills because we're not dead yet.

15 / 05 / 2002

Short reflections on a Bob Dylan show (in which the music will not be discussed).

The funniest part, I thought, was watching him continually struggle to get the guitar strap over his silly hat every time he needed to swap acoustic for electric.

The least funny part was all the drunk and overexcited, just-the-wrong-side-of-middle-aged people who were loud and disrespectful throughout.

Sharp suit though.

12 / 05 / 2002

" And, as the indescribable impact fills the heavens, the escaping gasses catch the Silver Surfer, flinging him outward across the endless void...! "

Possibly explaining why he's turned up late.

05 / 05 / 2002

sorehead music and movies week

28 / 04 / 02 - 04 / 05 / 2002

Welcome to the dog end of discontent. It's all peaches from here on out.

26 / 04 / 2002

24 / 04 / 2002

22 / 04 / 2002

20 / 04 / 2002

Pah! Stupid website!

12 / 04 / 2002

He decided that the best course of action would be to sleep, and wake up only when he was sure it was safe.

05 / 04 / 2002

Shhh, please. Please don't cry. We'll make things okay, shhhh.

04 / 04 / 2002

A short passage from a well loved book, memorised and repeated verbatim each morning before coffee. There are worse routines.

03 / 04 / 2002

Find enclosed the charred remains of my little black fucking soul. Please use responsibly.

02 / 04 / 2002

He was making some weighty decisions when Mr Fantastic said: "Stop! You don't know what you're doing!"

01 / 04 / 2002

A key for the lock on the box in the cupboard. The box is marked SECRETS.

31 / 03 / 2002

He thought the internet was weird, and quite a lot of it scared him. He kept it folded up in his pocket where it worried him constantly. "Baby, there's something unimaginable going down here".

30 / 03 /2002

We're wrapped with inoffensive pastel shades. We're plucking moods from the air and selling them on. Our conscience is untroubled.

29 / 03 / 2002

There are terrible things out there and he heard The Phone Company is blocking all calls. You can ride all day on busses for only two pounds fifty but there is no guarantee you'll ever make it back. The banks are closed and there's no cash in any of the cash machines. He's reading a newspaper that's months old, checking the weather forecast. Cloudy with sunny intervals, possibility of rain overnight.

28 / 03 / 2002

City. Heaving, harsh, pathetic.

27 / 03 / 2002

Lots of love from your friend, Kev
x

26 / 03 / 2002

Hey Chuckles, is that an Industry Standard slouch?

25 / 03 / 2002

Check regularly for lumps, sores, discolouration and other abnormalities. If an itch is persisting contact your doctor. Just be careful.

24 / 03 / 2002

He's trying to understand but every other move adds it's stupid complication. He picks up the phone and presses it hard against his ear, screaming nonsense at the dial tone until he falls over, exhausted.

23 / 03 / 2002

He coined the term "low bandwidth terrorism" and he was very proud.

22 / 03 / 2002

He was turning himself into a robot. He'd found out that you could get most of the components through mail order and he eagerly awaited the postman each day. It was even less complicated than he'd imagined as he discovered that there were many parts in a person that a robot has no use for. He could completely dispense with his heart.

21 / 03 / 2002

He kept saying "Ouch, that hurts, please stop". But it never seemed to stop and he became very unhappy.

20 / 03 / 2002

He is not inherently evil and he knows you aren't either. He begs your indulgence while he sketches out some ideas.

19 / 03 / 2002

Why won't you just fall apart? You obtuse mechanical bastard!

18 / 03 / 2002

I'm fodder, come get me.

17 / 03 / 2002

The point being that he just wanted to not have to be ashamed. And not have to do any more work than was strictly necessary. Make a list of all your previous mistakes and pick your favourite. Take a photo, mail it to your friends.

16 / 03 / 2002

Love from Kev (email)

Goodbye.