Vol XIX: The Jam Trap

Bedroom Filled with Foam

"If you want to watch something in bed, then I will come and watch something in bed with you. If you want to go straight to sleep, I may stay up a little longer as I don't think I'm ready to go to sleep just yet. If, for some reason, we can't get into the bedroom, say, because the bedroom is filled with foam, not that I'm saying I have filled the bedroom with foam or anything, but if it was filled with foam, we could always watch something down here."

"Is it?"

"Is what?"

"Is the bedroom filled with foam?"

Wet Days are the Worst           

Wet days are the worst, when you always find it impossible to shake me out of my most deeply-rooted beliefs, when I sit in the third bathroom, banging my head against the door, repeating over and over: "I believe the umbrella sellers are in league with the sky."

The ChewLips

"Do you like the ChewLips?" you asked.                         "Yes, I do," I said.

"Do you like that song?" you asked.                                     "Which one?" I said.

"The one about time. We don't want to wait.                         "Oh yes, that one. Yes,
 No time. No time. We..."                                                  I like that one," I said.
                                                                                     
"Do you know what I don't like                                                 "What?" I said, turning to look
 about the ChewLips?" you asked.                                      at your eyebrows moving.
                                                                                     
"I don't like the way their name said aloud                         "ChewLips?" I asked,
 sounds like 'tulips'."                                                               incredulously.

"Tulips."

Why are your Glasses Still on?

"Why is the light still on?" you asked with your eyes closed. "Why are your glasses still on?" I asked with my eyes open. "Touché," you said, "Okay, here's the plan. On the count of three, you go for the light and I'll ditch my glasses, then we'll meet back here in two seconds. Three. Two. One." "Aha!" I said, two seconds later. "I made it back before you. That means I won." "But I've gone," you answered. "I am staying away. It was purely a ruse to escape you."

Take Information Out of One Room

I told you about the lecture and how furious I was at the notion that it is wrong to take information out of the one room in the whole world it is kept in and reproduce it faithfully and accurately in a place where anyone in the world can see it using an internet connection in their own room. "Why do some people persist in hating the internet?" I said in a loud, fast voice. "Well," you replied, "some people just hate free porn."

Clapham is Where You Go

"What's Clapham like?" you asked. "Well," I said, rolling up my sleeves. "Clapham is where you go when you're ready to start having babies. And if you're not ready to start having babies before you move there, you will be after six months or thereabouts. Because everyone in Clapham is either a young undergraduate or else someone who has moved there because they're ready to start having babies." "But we're not thinking about babies now," you said. "That's exactly right," I replied. "We're thinking about dogs."

Jam Trap

"My body is structurally going the way of gravity," I said.
"Your brain will outlast your body, with luck," you said.
"My brain?" I said. "I think I have a brain like a jam trap."
"What does that mean?" you said.
I shrugged, beaming like an idiot.

Look, Look, Look

"Look, look, look," I said, gesturing frantically out of the 91 top deck window into someone's front garden. "There's a dog in that person's front garden that looks exactly like a squirrel!" "Mmm, yes, because of its tail," you said, feigning interest for a moment before going back to your book.

Four Hours Away

I was telling you about visiting my cousins in Italy and how they took me up into the mountains north of Turin where I used to go as a girl and how far away it seems from everything and how my one cousin was telling me about bears that used to roam there while my other cousin was telling me about a trip they did up to one of the mountain lakes that took four hours to walk to and then I agreed with you when you said: "I can't remember the last time I was four hours away from anything. "

Digital Ghost Towns

I forwarded you the thing about the British Library's web archiving project and you said it looked very interesting and I suddenly remembered that time I was trying to google some old poetry sites and kept seeing things like No Updates Since 1997 and how depressing it was and how somehow it was even more depressing seeing these digital ghost towns than it was for a physical magazine to simply stop making any new issues and then how the more I looked the more I realised the internet is full of dead ends and holes and the bits of it that actually work are just bright lights shining in a desert, not like Vegas because Vegas is offputting to lots of people so it's a bad analogy but I just mean that when the lights are working they're wonderful and anything abandoned especially something creative makes me sad but it's part of the process I suppose and we just have to try and avoid these holes and my god how many blogs will there even be online in 50 years' time and have we got another 2000 years of blogging coming up and shouldn't we be setting up grander projects that will last brightly forever without getting lost on the internet and just what are we playing at anyway? "Shall we put the kettle on?" I say.

Tea is Our Solution to Everything

"Do you want a tea?" you asked.
"Why not?" I replied.
"Do you know why this is going to be the best cup of tea in the world?" you asked.
"Tell me why," I replied.
"Because not only is it being made and served in our very own kitchen," you said, "but because we have chocolate-covered hobnobs in the cupboard, and I'm not afraid to use them."