Spider Babies All Over The Toaster

I wake up and it’s sweltering and I go over to open the door to the jungle-hot-enclosed room that I am sleeping in. The air is stagnant outside here too. But we manage don’t we I mean this is England. I flip open the mac and I instantly recognise that out here it’s much cooler, this is because of two reasons:

1. The windows here are like wide open lids of an alert monkey and 2. This side of the building is westward facing and so doesn’t receive the early morning sun.

All I remember is my 92 year old neighbour Peggy telling me that she detests the summer when it’s sunny because her side of the building gets it first and for the longest.

She said to me, ‘It may very’well be a bonus in the wintertime but today and every’morning of this summer I’ve sweltered in my bed and had to move out of my room by 6 o’clock. It’s been very uncomfortable.’

An image of a charred old lady sat upright in an armchair embeds itself in my mind and I can’t do anything to dislodge it so bare my teeth and shake my head in disgrace.

Then I smell toast and it must be wafting through from a neighbour’s branch of housing. And I think, I have frozen bread and we do have a toaster but it’s been stored away in a cupboard. Why not make the added effort this morning to get it out - dust it off - and then make some toast as that’s what you’re wanting. I look around for someone to confirm that this is a sound idea and as there’s nobody here but me I do an awkward pirouette on the spot and dig in to the cupboard. I reach in to get the toaster, and I knew it would be dusty but not this much, and the moment I have it mid-air to position it down on a kitchen surface I notice things creeping slowly decrepitly like hellmonsters all over it.

Agggghhhhhhhhhhhcccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Spider babiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiies

Aghch

Fu-

Ck

The toaster has a colony of spider babies in it and the little brats cascade out on to the floor where I'm barefooted and unarmed and I just run out of the kitchenette to watch them fuck about and enter crevices and just die right on the spot. I have to clear up this graveyard of tiny legs and fragile cobwebs in a moment with tissues; it is a horrific early morning task.

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I sit down with my cup of tea by the mac and burnt toast. Yes, I did make toast out of the toaster (I’m a murderer so shoot me) but I'm sceptical as to whether I consumed half a dozen dead baby spiders with the melted margarine that tasted of plastic forks. Basically the breakfast was a disaster and a genocide.

And then

Bang.

A man appears swinging outside the window and doesn’t say anything and I freak out and spill my tea on the library books by the computer. Oh Christ, I have to return these and when in hell did we have window washers here? It amazes me. Have I not been paying attention or am I just of the jumpier kind when it comes to fully-grown men suspended outside my pane of glass. I feel like this morning has already got off to an inauspicious start and I really thought to myself that this week was going to go better. It has to compared to last week. But maybe not, maybe the forces of Fate are after me and they’re coming to get me with the shit toast and spider corpses and random men attacking my view via sky. It all seems very kitsch tragic to me.

Fluster

A lacklustre approach to life.

That’s some criticism no? Imagine a person saying that to another person.

‘You know what you suffer? Lacklustre.’

You know what else I suffer? It’s a condition found in the indie-flick female: Fluster. I suffer from fluster. God I wish I was a mum and had to take everything on the chin, god I want to be Californian so bad and have beachy hair with a don't-give-a-shit attitude. Why can't I be cool? I suffer from Fluster and this is how it is:

I have a conversation with a stranger and he’s male but I think that’s besides the point (and it never is besides the point). They come back to ask for my number and then I suffer from Fluster and give it over to him. Why? I don’t know what else to do in the situation, so to avoid embarrassment from his side and awkward apologies from mine, I just give him my number. Crumbs. I’m never going to respond and then I’ll feel bad. Fuckfluster.

So lacklustre and fuckfluster. The two traits of cutesy modern girls. I bet this didn’t happen in the 70s. They would shove men out the way with their shoulder pads. I bet this didn’t even happen in the 60s. They would surreptitiously uncross their mini-skirted legs, sweep their immaculate hair aside and bat heavy lashes. Cakes of mascara. But today it’s Converse and Fluster-sufferers.

Coconut

And the cat has never come back.

I was standing at Waterloo station looking up at blinkering blackboards reading the times for the next train to Reading, in my hands I had a tub of fresh coconut cubes all the way from Ghana. Ghana. Anything is possible these days, me in London foraging on tiny coconut cubes cut from the flesh of a Ghanaian fruit only a few days ago judging by the sell-by date.

Anything is possible

Or,

Everything is possible,

These days.

Maybe that’s the problem. I don’t see anywhere in the papers that some things are not possible, it’s all this fuck here for this cheap now, you know, photoshopped thighs and massacred civilisations. We’re ready to nail the future. We’re curing cancer. We’re refining the pursuit for love. It’s all a bit easy and blasé, who wouldn’t be with all this abundance and lost time we’re having to spend. Youth is a big deal. If you’re young you're alright because you don’t have to think about the boring things in life, like the daily in-out of an office where you share nothing in common with the people but the place. The paying off of bills and sharing a carload of children with other parents’ children because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Growing old isn’t a problem in itself, the problem is the link between old and boredom. When you can’t grab the bull by the horns because you’re wiser and seen it all before -it’s sort of - considered weak and unimaginative these days. We love the entrepreneur. He is the new superhero. The corporate equivalent of the DJ.

I wrote:

Summer was long and boring. I didn’t manage to do the things I wanted to do, and I should have visited the grandparents before they died. That I regret.

I thought:

That would be a good opening line! That sounds like a meaty yet readable novel.

I cringe:

I have no story.

But later, I write:

Worries get nobody anywhere

Heartbreak gets somebody everywhere

And I was satisfied. The days are getting longer but the nights are getting shorter; the zenith of youth is reached and now only the pull back to earth will revive our lost hopes.

Diary of a Deli Worker. Milk & Burns.

Sunday 29 June.

Mother bought 2 pints of milk again forgetting that I had bought 2 pints of milk upon her request yesterday. Whilst at home she keeps asking me the same question, ‘Do you want a glass of milk?’ So tonight before bed I have drunk 3 and a half glasses of blue-top milk and 3 digestive chocolate biscuits (which will pass their sell-by date in July).

Monday 30 June. 

‘Our ears have become tuned to it’, says Barbora briskly as she cradles a salad bowl and stirs a carbonara, ‘I don’t want any of this “Marco, could we have the bolognese please, thank you very much.” No, that will go over his head. I want to hear - 

Bolognese please!

Prawns please!

Spaghetti please!

Mushrooms please!

Chilli tomato garlic… please!

Ok do you hear? Good. Now stir the pesto.’

I have served no coffees today and have been told off for saying thank you and sorry too much. A lesson learned, don’t be gracious in deli situations.

Tuesday 1 July.

Proudly the bearer of my first catering burn. Barbora tells me, ‘How else do you learn apart from getting a few cuts here, a few burns and bruises there? I’m not wishing it on you but that’s how I learnt. We learn from experience.’ The local Gardener popped in to the deli bringing his own mug for the teas, very green indeed. A small gentleman perched on a stool asks him what small tree he should plant from a seedling in his back garden? The Gardener replies any, because by the time you’ve deliberated over what seed would be best suited for your back garden you’ve run out of time for the tree to grow at all, so stop umm-ing and ahh-ing and go and plant the seed. Once the seed is in just wait. The wait will take years so act now and make the decisions that follow. I very much believe the Gardener has imparted advice one would not hear at life-coaching. I had 2 glasses of milk tonight and 2 digestive biscuits. I cannot tell if the biscuits are washing down the milk or the other way round. Still 2 and half pints of milk left.