Coastalblog

What a jolly pleasant few days that was. I always forget how energising just a short change of scenery is. Plus there's the added smug factor of knowing that you've made in effort with family (I'm only half-joking, it is by no means a chore to see my relations, quite the opposite, but my odd days off make it difficult for me to do so, so when I am able to I feel quite the dutiful chap). Lords was enjoyable, even if the cricket was the worst sort of mismatch, and I even found time to get into a ruck with a short fat bearded bloke who felt it necessary to shout racial abuse (as well as a bizarre sequence of non sequiturs) at the action. So that was entertaining. It was also good to be able to put some faces to names vis a vis ILX (and what a strange coincidence that the very next night Jim, Porl and Cel should have their very own close encounter of the FAP kind) and hopefully I shall do so again, as in my sun-dazed state I'm not sure the poor chaps got a great deal of sen...

Right, I'm off for a couple of days to spend some hard earned money on a lovely birthday dinner for my dear old nan, a couple of nights in a posh it up hotel, a day at Lords and possibly a pint or nine with various pleasant chaps and chapesses. Normal service resumed sometime around the weekend (or whenever my hangover clears) Hard old life, isn't it?

I was going to put this here, but pumpkin seemed more it's natural home (besides which I hadn't put anything up there for a while and was starting to feel guilty).

So in order to give myself a bit of impetus with said short stories I've started another blog . Whenever I finish one I'll stick it up there. Okay?

Once upon a time there was a boy who worked in a pub in a small market town. And in this pub in the small market town drank a motley collection of elderly alcoholic perverts, philosophical gas-fitters, drunken cleaning ladies, avuncular portly homosexuals and a whole bunch of other folks. Their stories, banter, anecdotes and miscellaneous crap filled the air with a heady rich of accents and viewpoints utterly alien to the boy. After a few years the boy got the idea to mythologise these people, and to cheerfully rip their lives off so he could pass his masters degree, then he read a poem called "on the neglect of figure composition" by Roy Fisher, which posited a "fresh matter of England" and told the story of an english civil war so absurd as to seem plausible, and so the ormskirk sequence was born. I don't quite seem to be able to shift the sequence from my psyche, the mythologies and characters have burrowed to a level where they are dug in tight, and they are...

Right, this isn't going to mean a damn thing to anybody, but it's something I need to get off my chest (and hey, it's a blog, right? At least I'm not whining about my relationship or detailing my latest self-harm scars), and it is this. LAURENT PERRIER ROSE CHAMPAGNE IS THE BANE OF MY FUCKING EXISTENCE. Now, I'm not about to get into that whole inverse-snob anti-champagne bollocks. I love champagne, I'm not even averse to the odd glass of the above-mentioned BANE OF MY FUCKING EXISTENCE. My quarrel is with the fans of the slightly overrated aforementioned BANE OF MY FUCKING EXISTENCE. It's pleasant enough, but it's not all that. I've tried about fifteen rose champagnes which were far superior, and god knows how many champagnes total. But LP Rose drinkers are the most dogged brand loyalists I've ever met (explanatory sidenote, champagne is made rose due to the skins of red grapes, primarily pinot noir but occasionally syrah, being allowed to pigme...

I wasn't just spouting off when I stated not so long ago that coastalblog is going to become more "writery". I have been working, or at least attempting jolly hard to, but I have this problem to which I have only recently cottoned on. I am, by a combination of choice, genetics and necessity a night owl. I read through an old folder the other night and the handwriting uniformly bore the marks of being written by a shaky, possibly drunk man at stupid o'clock. I know from experience that this is when ideas are most likely to strike, that's always how it's been with me. It's no coincidence, then, that when I moved in with the lovely Mrs Coastaltown who, having a normal job and being a normal person and consequently fond of getting to bed at a reasonable hour the writing dried up. I had become accustomed to writing directly onto the computer, my mind had trained itself to work when faced with a glowing screen at a certain time of the morning (namely between two...

...making me happy at the moment (an occasional Coastalblog feature designedto prove that I'm not a bitter husk of a man the whole time) 1) The bandwagonesque George Galloway's idiotic indignation in the face of some even more facile question from Paxo (who is rapidly becoming a caricature of himself). Just watching the egregious opportunist have his evening ruined was my election highlight. 2) Wireless net! I can type this! Whilst sat at the kitchen table! 3) My ticket for Lords at the end of the month came through this morning. So when the first ball of the test summer is bowled, I'll be right there. 4) Tabbouleh. Chop a bunch of flat leaf parlsey, a bunch of coriander, spring onions and cherry tomatoes. Mix with some bulgur wheat and dress with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, allspice, and cinnamon. 5) Nah, all out of stuff. Back to being a bitter husk.

Ah, Bank holiday weekend. without a doubt the worst shifts of the year. It's not that they're particuklarly hard, though they are busier than usual, it's simply the depressing knowledge that nearly everybody EXCEPT YOU is off work enjoying the sunshine. Which is why I almost died laughing when the heavens opened yesterday and a deluge of biblical proportions caused Ormskirk to resemble little more than a lake (over which our rabidly territorial Model Boat Enthusiasts would undoubtedly wage another duck pogrom as they famously did over the pond in the park). Ho ho. But anyway, why the question marks? Well, it just wouldn't be bank holiday weekend without a bemusing exchange with a clueless member of the general public, attempting to book a table. HIM: Hi, I'd like a table for two at nine fifteen. ME: Sorry sir, but the kitchen's shutting at half eight tonight. HIM: Why? ME: Because we've been open all day. Last bookings are eight fifteen. HIM: Alright then, I...

So a new KP started a little while back, and I was sure I knew his face from somewhere. It annoyed me for several days until I forgot about it. Then this afternoon the KP (a guy in his late thirties, I get the impression this dishwashing gig is the last chance saloon for him) asked me where I was from. I told him and he smiled. "Oh yeah, I lived in Cornwall for a while, worked at this pastie shop in Tintagel" "Tintagel?" I enquired, intrigued, given that I myself used to work in a pastie shop in Tintagel. Can you guess where this is headed? Yep, thirteen years ago he and I worked together as bakers in teeny tiny Tintagel, Cornwall, and now we work at the same restaurant in little old Ormksirk, Lancashire. So that's where I knew him from. Cripes.

You may recall earlier this year I decided to keep a list of the books I read this year (with the vague intention of reaching fifty by the end of it). Well, I've polished off eighteen of the buggers so far, and this increased rate of bibliovorousness has led to some interesting discoveries. I won't gush about Murakami, largely because I find myself empathising to a degree which is, if not significant, then at least an irritant. As such I'd be unable to objectively comment (and there's always the attendant fear that rave reviews can bite you in the arse when you re-read, and what struck you at first as dazzling intellectual conceits seem suddenly hackneyed), so no gushing.But suffice to say that I'm rationing them. It having been many years since I read much in the way of genre fiction it was engaging to get stuck into Dashiell Hammett's novels, I got through Red Harvest in a couple of days. The flat and cynical prose is addictive, though not, I suspect as artle...

Sandbar At low tide, lying flat between two spurs of rock it avoids it’s own extravagances, what am I I am a sandbar a conglomerate what is this poem other than an outpouring what is outpouring but lack of control. Yes but it’s nonsense what is listening but waiting for a pause what is structure but attempting to discern a meaning what is appreciation but the hope of reciprocal flattery what is anger but a tool for getting attention what is a sandbar but the agglomeration of eroded particles what is your point. What is the lying quiet sat on sandbar with notebook. What is the omission of indefinite articles what is. What is the hegemony of adjectives what is what. Obviously two flat planes sky sea must I keep repeating myself there has only ever been one poem written and it is about two big blocks of colour and the contrast between them, all the rest is editing. What is editing but simple compression what is compression but distillation what is what is what is. Out on the sandbar it’s ...

As Philippa Forrester once said (asininely) imagine a completely interactive world! Right, now I'm aware that I don't have a huge amount of traffic passing through my particular corner of the web, but I'm giving those of you (we happy few, we band of buggers) a chance to stake a claim in the outcome of one of the weeks most important decisions. The decision is this, it's been an absolute car-crash of a week, and this evening my spirits are to be revived by a collaborative cooking effort between myself, les freres MacKenzie and esteemed housemate Jim (and anyone else who fancies coming along). The putative plan is to cook up a large mezze or tapas with a whole bunch of dishes. I've already decided on a couple, and doubtless the boys are planning away as I type but wee need your assistance. So coastalblog readers: what should Matt eat tonight to cheer himself up? Remember dishes are to be small and relatively simple, it's all about the cumulative whole. Over to yo...

The process of cataloguing and categorisation continues apace, and a very strange feeling it is too. Reading through old work the writer is often put in the puzzling position of trying to work out what s/he is driving at. I call this ISIATT (It seemed important at the time). What is clear from going back through my dissertation is that a disk with a large amount of writing on it has very definitely gone walkabout, so the manual slog of typing them in again from hard copy is paramount at the moment (I never know when I'm going to feel this organised again). Work is, as ever, an enormous amount of fun (yet another member of staff walked out after a ruck with the manager, who, I fear, is insane). Busy is good, however. Simple common sense, if you walk into a quiet restaurant, you have to ask yourself: how long has the stock been hanging around the fridge then? At least when we're busy we sell out of things, something I always find satisfying on some sad and anal level. The sight o...

Hello. Now This hasn't been laziness on my part, I swer, I've actually been very jollly active recently, and there have been lots of exciting and stimulating events which I've yearned to mull over with you all. However the net's knackered. Ask Jim, he'll tell you. I've managed to get one of those rare windows of opportunities where the damn thing's running fine. A time devoid of internet is a strange thing indeed. You start reading newspapers a lot more closely. Ceefax becomes your boon companion. Your shoulders slope less, you stand straighter and realise that you don't actually care a great deal about the current arguments and obsessions raging the web ( I have yet to go back to ILE to test this theory out). It's been constructive though I have embarked on (and completed) the task of indexing every poem I can ever recall writing (and writing onto the computer those old ones I've only got hard copy of or discovered thast disk is bust / corrupted...

Of late there have been increased sightings of strange new players in the struggle for the town. Clad in grey, and nominally resembling trafic wardens I have encountered these footsoldiers of forces unknown all over the town. That they patrol often my own street has aroused my suspicion, but I am aware that it's not me that is being singled out, I have seeen them from the far eastern woodlands, to skirting the edge of the great moss to the west. Though we are clearly meant to believe that they are traffic wardens I cannot help but notethat they seem to spend most of their time taking photos with digital cameras, and not just of cars either. One bearded specimen seems very fond of taking photographs of walls. Why, I know not, but I do know this. If, as I suspect, they mark the emergence of yet another player in the struggle for Ormskirk's soul I wouldn't want to be those walls.

Well an entertaining time of things I've been having recently and no mistake. Some fairly serious unpleasantness at work, a brief lancastrian interlude with my beloved and the return of along missed friend being just some of the ingredients in the heady cocktail of the last week or so. The unpleasantness I have no wish to go into, other than to note this; isn't it odd that when something momentous or serious occurs the first reaction is one of disbelief, then the thought that someone responsible should be told like, say, an adult. Then finally the realisation that, hang on, you yourself are a responsible adult these days, and it's down to you to deal with. The lancastrian interlude was a brief three day break with Mrs Coastaltown to recover from a straight fortnight in work. There was a great deal of eating and sleeping, and not a great deal else. Absolutely perfect (well, not precisely, as I annoyed her to distraction by repeatedly chewing over the incident above, but I...

Hmm, funny how it comes back to you all of a sudden, isn't it? There you are, leading a relatively blameless, decidedly straightforward existence and then whammo, all it takes is one half baked simile creeping into your thoughts and suddenly it's delusions of grandeur time again, 1999 all over again; a triumph of hope over experience. Any road up, have some poems: Architecture in small English towns Best seen at up beyond window edge pitch of roof, slide of slates carvings with fleur-dy-lys your back in the way, spine like a rope. Silent, these roofs and sinful, there are murders behind them. In a room an absence there is weeping behind pebbledash. A great sweep of crescent, tree lined and decent. You played hopscotch, head back over shoulder sunshine such handsome, handsome houses, Great sheets of glass a mile wide, a building’s giant eye, keeping watch on the chevrons of paving pointing towards bargains bargains bargains. Patchwork, this town, stitched together, studded with ...

Right, kick self up arse time. The more alert among you may note that Coastalblog now links to the AA Independent press guide (present on the website of writer and artist Dee Rimbaud), this link has been reciprocated. Of course, the trouble with this is that Coastalblog has morphed slowly over the year it's been up and running into more of a rambling diary than anything to do with my writing, which was the original purpose of the whole thing. So from her on out it's going to get a bit more "writery". Normal infrequent service will continue, but I'll endeavour to make it all a bit more relevant by throwing in the odd bit of new work, or thoughts on process. Your commments would be most welcome (plus it means I have now stated publically that I'm going to be upping the ante creatively, so I'd better bloody well get on and do it).

Another day another not getting killed by a hatchet wielding weirdo. Gotta love small market towns. Hi, how are you all? Well I trust? Not decapitated? Jolly good. So things at work lurch from bad to worse, connoisseurs of poisonous atmospheres would do well to apply to me for a job pronto. They can have mine, if they like. In fact it's all pretty meh at the moment professionally, thugh I do have a reading in support of one of my heroes Allen Fisher coming up in April. I'll read a limited vocab piece which is constructed from one of his and see if he spots it.... Thank God my personal life is stable and happy. Who'd have thought? It does allow one to approach pretty much everything with calm and equanimity. And now I'm going to go and approach my lunch with calm and equanimity. Peace out y'all.