Compared to this little corner of Britain, the Americas had been easy. He had resulted to local knowledge on numerous occasions covering Ireland, Scotland and Wales but he’d never been this stuck before. The people of those Celtic lands had been fascinated by his tale. He always compared himself to storm-chasers but people would laugh and say “don’t you mean stamp collectors?”. He took it gracefully. It wasn’t the pursuit of local knowledge that found him staring into his fifth pint last Sunday. Sorrows needed to be drowned. The trips to his quest’s spiritual home weren’t working and the hours spent trawling the internet were fruitless. How could he have staked so much on this? He was on his way back from his tenth visit to the bathroom, calculating how much the last 3 years had cost him, when he overheard a conversation. Something about elephants, words and an image. He couldn’t make much sense of it. All he knew was that he had to get to his laptop, stat.

He wept with joy when he saw the image. He wanted to go back to the pub and thank the people he’d eavesdropped on but there was no time. He grabbed his cameras, stuffed his things into his battered rucksack and headed for the hire car. He didn’t care that his bladder was full again and that he was probably over the limit. The despair was gone and the old excitement was back. He gunned along the A31 like a maniac, only stopping to take a snap of the sign for Three Legged Cross. He reached the coastal town of Lyme Regis just before dark. He parked the car haphazardly and ran towards the sea. He’d gone through about 9 tourists before he finally found a local that could direct him to the Cobb. The sign was hung outside an aquarium that overlooked the harbour. He savoured it before taking the photo. He had 2 categories; amusing and unusual.

And this was definitely his most unusual to date.

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3. The Poets of Mars

Privacy level: public

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Thursday 10 June

Oh God why is life so unfair? My job is awful. My girlfriend Tina is hogging the tv. And my mum has left an angry voicemail because I haven’t phoned her in two weeks. On top of this the patch for League of Strong Guns 3 wasn’t released when they SAID IT WOULD BE. I am so booooored!

Friday 11 June

The sun is shining and I feel wonderful. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have Tina in my life. She is my breath. The beat of my heart. My everything.

The new Strong Guns 3 levels are awesome. I’ve been online playing with my usual crew and it is SO MUCH better than Strong Guns 2.

It’s actually unbelievable. It’s so good that I stayed up until 4am playing. Very tired for work. LOL!

Saturday 12 June

My boss is such a******* ****. Apparently I’m not giving 110% at work. I told him some days I even give 111%. And I do.

At least I have Tina. And Strong Guns 3.

Sunday 13 June.

Tina has left me.

Monday 14 June

I just need to walk right now. I don’t know what to do. My mind is in a spin. A maelstrom. A churning, bulging mental whirligig.

She says she still loves me but that she needs space. I thought all the time I was spending on Strong Guns 3 was giving her space.

I phoned in sick. Said I had the *****. The boss laughed. It’s fine. I don’t care.

Tuesday 15 June

OMG This is ******* awesome! Level 17 of Strong Guns 3 has parallel demon Finch Winches. Can you frickin’ believe it?

Wednesday 16 June

Crap day at work. Boss has been making *** jokes at me all day. Every time a chair creaks he spins round and points. ‘Watch out everyone – Jinky might **** himself. Watch out!’

****.

Thursday 17 June

Will someone cheer me up, please? I am so depressed. (NOT YOU, TINA!)

{click here to leave a comment}

Friday 18 June

Yay – Friday! I am going bowling tonight.

LOL – I just typed bowking by mistake! Wish I was going bowking,

And I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT IS!

LOL.

Saturday 19 June

Tina says she is pregnant!

Sunday 20 June

It’s okay. It’s not mine.

Monday 21 June

Dear Mum. Yes I do have time to update this diary and not enough time to phone you. I can’t believe you’re on here READING my PERSONAL diary. And then USING it as AMMUNITION against ME.

You make me so ANGRY sometimes!

Tuesday 22 June

Happy birthday Mum!

Wednesday 23 June

Strong Guns 3 complete. My life is empty.

Thursday 24 June

If no one comments on this I really might kill myself.

{Click here to leave a comment}

Comment #1

Sharon Shambles

Son! Just phone me. I will cheer you up. You know I will. I have a great joke about a salmon I can tell you.

Friday 25 June

Been fired.

Sad face.

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Comment #1

Tina Smith

Sorry to hear that Jinky.

Comment #2

Go *** yourself Tina!

Saturday 26 June

Yay! The weekend. Does anyone want to play? (Not you Mum. And DEFINITELY not you Tina!)

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No comments

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~Thomas Gray, 1747

Selina rested on her haunches, her tail swishing back and forth over the carpet. Her head was raised, her eyes darting, her ears perked forward. Every once in a while she emitted little guttural sounds as she observed the colorful tropical fish flittering and floating in the silvery-green water that stood against the wall.

Melinda bent to tickle Selina’s whiskers. With her other hand she pressed her phone to her ear. “I’d like to speak to human resources,” she said into the receiver. She straightened and studied her twenty-six-gallon hexagonal fresh-water aquarium that rose from its black acrylic stand in one piece, and offered no purchase for a cat. “Yeah,” she said. “Hi, this is Melinda Jellinek. I work in the Integrity and Accountability Office. I’ve been sick and throwing up all night — I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to work today….” She paused while she was put on hold. She squatted down next to Selina, and looked up at her goldfish and tetras and ruby barbs. “You’re just waiting for me to make a mistake,” she whispered to Selina. “Just one wrong move when I clean the tank, and those fish are dinner.” She stroked Selina’s back. The cat purred.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t feel I should come to work,” Melinda abruptly said, and stood. “Yeah, well, I’m not going to the doctor. I don’t want to drive myself.” She listened as the voice on the other end explained the consequences of failure to produce a doctor’s excuse. “Yes, I understand,” she responded. “Goodbye.” She turned off the phone. “Assholes,” she said aloud. She quickly punched in a number and began pacing, her stomach tight with nervous excitement. An answering system picked up.

You’ve reached the voicemail of Brad Stubbs, I’m away from the phone at the moment, please leave a message at the tone.

“Brad,” she said, perhaps with too much volume and emotion, “it’s me, Melinda. Pick up.” She waited a moment, then continued, “I called in sick. Let’s spend the day together. Just you and me. We can take a drive, have a picnic. Get back to me ASAP!” She ended the call. She felt a shiver of anxiety, a knot in her gut. “I don’t know Selina,” she said to her pet. “Where is he? He should be home. It seems like the only time he talks to me these days is when he wants to borrow money.”

Brad Stubbs heard the answering machine pick up as he eased Amber out the doorway. “Hey honey cakes, I had a great time,” he said to her, the door half-closed on her hip and upper arm as she resisted leaving.

“Brad,” she said, her face puckering, “why are you so impatient to see me go?”

He took a finger and played with her straight blonde hair as it feathered her shoulder. “I have to go to work,” he said. “And I’m dating someone else, and you know that,” he added. He was dressed in boxers and a white wife-beater. The stubble on his lower face glowed a bronze color in the sunlight streaming through the glass on either side of the entrance.

She inhaled and exhaled forcefully, almost in a grunt, and pushed at the door so that it knocked him back a few inches. Then she turned, and was gone, a sleeve of her jacket trailing behind her.

Brad shut the door, secured the locks, and trotted to his land-line portable perched in its charger. He quickly grabbed it, and pushed numbers. He listened to the ring several times, until he heard her voice say “Yeah?”

“Hi, Melinda. Sorry, I was in the shower.” He walked into the kitchen and opened a cabinet, searching for a clean coffee mug. “What’re you doing still at home?”

I called in sick. I thought we could spend some time together….

“No, sorry, Lins, I gotta be at work in a few minutes and I’m already running late. I’ll contact you as soon as I’m off, this evening, okay?” There was a sound like garbled clicking, then the dial tone. “Hmph,” he said, and threw the phone on the kitchen counter as he secured a used mug from the sink. He rinsed that out quickly, and poured some fresh coffee from the carafe of his grind-and-brew.

He scooped the phone up again, and selected a number using his thumb as he walked back to his bedroom, holding the cup by the rim dangling from the fingertips of his right hand. “Hi, can I speak to Steve Emerlich, please?” he said, setting the coffee down on a night-table beside the bed. He strode to his closet, and reached for one of his suits that hung inside. “Hey Steve,” he said after several minutes. “Hello, man. Are we still on for today?” he asked. He listened…. “Uh huh,” he said. “Yup, okay. No, it sounds like a great deal. I can’t wait to see it.” He ended the call, tossed the phone on his rumpled, sepia-colored sheets.

He whistled and hummed as he entered the bathroom. He brushed his teeth, shaved, then got dressed. “I raised forty-thousands dollars,” he said aloud as he knotted his tie, gazing at his reflection in the dresser mirror. “I begged and scraped and lied and borrowed to get it together. But this is worth it. A foreclosed home I can fix up, and sell for at least a couple of hundred grand.”

Steve Emerlich slipped his iPhone back in his jacket pocket. He grinned and tried to keep himself from laughing. He was already at the house that Brad Stubbs wanted so badly to view. He set his briefcase on the top step, tugged at his vest and adjusted his collar. He used a small screwdriver and metal pick to jimmy the lock of the front door. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was on the street, and he hoped the people across the way weren’t watching. He pocketed the tools, lifted his satchel, and maneuvered inside, into a spacious foyer. He quietly moved the door until it was almost closed.

This was a three-bedroom, two-storey split-level that had been standing empty for over a year. The auction notice had been posted. That’s how he’d discovered it was available, empty, and possibly the perfect bait. He strolled into the living room — some furniture remained. He shoved back his sleeve and checked his watch. Just another fifty minutes. He needed to canvas the property, do some hasty web-searching using his laptop.

His shoes echoed loudly on the polished wood floor as he advanced to the family room-kitchen suite. He planned to spread out the paperwork, his identification and realtor’s license — prepared by one of the best forgers in the area — on the granite countertop next to the stainless steel sink.

“The trick is,” he said to himself, “to get that down-payment and get it cashed with lightning speed, and get out of Dodge.” He had important uses for the money. He yanked out his iPhone once more, checked his text messages. Three were from Julio, again. Steve smiled and used his thumbs to send back: “Will have cash tonight.”

Detective Roland Diaz — a.k.a. Julio — felt and heard the buzzing sound in his back pants pocket. He swiveled in his chair, turning away from his computer screen for a moment while he fished for his cell phone. He brought it eye level and flipped it open. He grinned and said aloud, “Looks like some action tonight. We’ve hooked the bastard!”

Detective Snyder, seated at the desk across from him in the Special Investigations Bureau offices of the Philadelphia Police Department, glanced up from his stack of case-files. “Yeah? Which bastard is that?”

“The real estate fucker — Matthew Murray, currently known as Steve Emerlich,” Detective Diaz answered. “I’ve been trying to catch this mother-sucker for two years now! You’d think he’d stay out of the Philly area, but he keeps comin’ back.”

“Is that the one you’ve been working on with North Narcotics?” Snyder asked.

“Yup!” Diaz answered with zest, rubbing his palms together, his eyes gleaming. “We jacked-up a huge and profitable drug deal for Mr. so-called Emerlich.”

Snyder leaned back in his office chair, making it creak. He pushed back a little on the casters. “Not a bad idea … getting help from the Narcotics Bureau.”

“I want to get him before the FBI does,” Diaz said. He pushed a button on his office phone. “Hey, Tamra, could you put me through to Teddy in Special Investigations — Professional Responsibility, please?” He wanted to say, please, doll, or, that’s a doll, but these turns of phrase were frowned upon by the very people he was calling.

He waited.

Tamra O’Donnell, at the police headquarters switchboard, tried the Professional Responsibility office again, then connected directly through to the Office of Integrity and Accountability, which oversaw Special Investigations. “Come on, someone pick up,” she mumbled to herself. Finally a voice came through the speaker phone. “Sorry, Tamra, we’re short-handed today. One of our new receptionists called in sick,” Officer Rick Levine said. “What can I do ya?”

“I have Detective Roland Diaz — he wants to talk to Teddy in Special,” she answered.

Officer Levine glowered as he said “Okay” to the switchboard operator. He put her on hold — trying to remember how to operate the phone system — and entered Teddy’s extension. “Hey, Ted,” he said after a minute, “Rick here. Diaz wants to talk to you. Probably has something to do with that real-estate fraud case he’s been working on.”

Levine connected Ted to Tamra and stood up from his chair, stretched. He looked across the room at the empty desk where the new girl, Melinda he thought it was, was not sitting this busy Thursday morning. She was very pretty, very efficient, but hard to please. Levine considered, she was the kind of girl who he’d have to manipulate a bit, to get her to give anything up. He’d have to tell her he wanted a relationship, that he was lonely, that he wanted to commit. He’d have to tell her she was beautiful, exciting, one of a kind. He’d have to take off his wedding ring. He darted his eyes to the gold band as it gleamed on his finger under the fluorescent lights. But he could do that.

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On other occasions, however, such misuse paralysed him. He had once placed his bladder under terrible siege as a teenager by refusing to use a public lavatory whose sign had asked him politely to ‘please leave these toilet’s in the condition you found them’.

‘Punctuation marks are the linguistic equivalent of traffic signals!’ he was fond of booming to his wife who, on first hearing this alienating speech on an early date, had sworn never to see him again and often wondered how she had so spectacularly failed to keep this vow.

‘They are a courtesy to your readers, showing them where to pause, where to rush, which words to connect and which to separate; they add drama and effect, they define meaning and, above all, they smooth the process of reading and make it a delight, not a struggle.’

While she conceded that her husband had a point to a degree, Rita Radclyffe suffered regular mortification as Christmas cards from dear friends were returned with corrections marked in a bold hand, public declarations were made over signposts and billboards that made her cheeks blush red and, occasionally, even the counter-graffiti of misspelled graffiti.

Rita Radclyffe spent much time devising occupations for her husband to prevent these public outbursts, or the quieter, but no less irritating, discontented grumbles he treated her to when there were no unfortunate bystanders to overhear. On one holiday, which had turned out to be anything but, she had devised a wonderful distraction for him – deep-sea fishing. One of the few things that Winston seemed to enjoy without rancour, was fishing; here was a golden opportunity to be rid of him for a day and have him restored to her in the evening, a slightly less disgruntled man.

She had even put the deposit down and driven him there in their musty-smelling hired car so there could be no backing out on his part. But, when they arrived, it was not an excited happiness that overtook his countenance but flushed cheeks and hunched shoulders which drew her attention to the sign just in front of them.

A beautiful quote inscribed on the wall was missing a crucial apostrophe and she knew immediately there would be no coaxing him to set sail with anyone associated with this sign.

It was at times like this while driving, teeth gritted, knuckles white, murder on her mind, a day on the beach reading fashion magazines in a normally-prohibited bathing suit shattered, that she clung to The Thought.

Throughout the decades of marriage she had endured – and, at times, this had felt like one long exhibition of pedantry – The Thought had kept her going.

It had occurred to her when a friend had sent a gorgeous bouquet ‘to celebrate you’re birthday’. The card was duly corrected and returned to its humiliated sender who never acknowledged her birthday again.

As she sat, fuming, arranging the flowers in a tall glass vase, Rita thought about her outrageous husband and what was likely to become of them. It was surely only a matter of time, as they grew older and more infirm, before Winston was carried off, probably in a fit of apoplectic rage over an ill-used comma, and, when she had triumphantly survived him, she would at last wreak her revenge.

He had already chosen a quote from Socrates, whom he much admired, to stand sentinel over his final resting place. Rita would oblige him in this wish, of course, but the inscription would appear her way.

“Death may be the greatest of all human blessing’s”

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“Really,” she laughed, “and why is that?”

He looked her in the eye, trying to seem suave and sophisticated, hoping that the glint in his eye seemed attractive and not cheesy. “Because,” he replied, “I can sit at home and not catch fish.”

“I think the point is that you actually catch fish,” she smiled back at him, the glint in her eye was undoubtedly attractive, and he wondered if it had been placed there deliberately or if she just looked at everyone that way.

“No, no, noooo,” he continued, acting just a little more drunk than he was in the hopes that it would be endearing, “the point is to sit and get cold. I have been fishing exactly two times in my life, and there was no catching of fish involved on either occasion.”

“None at all?” she smiled, and he momentarily lost his train of thought.

“Um…” he stammered for a moment, “no! Admittedly the first time I was using a toy fishing rod and a packet of cheesy wotsits for bait…and there may not have actually been any fish in that stream…but that’s besides the point. The second time there was an actual proper fishing pole and actual proper bait, and an actual proper river…”

“An actual proper one?” she laughed.

“Yes!” he exclaimed. “And yet there was still no catching of fish!”

“Actual proper fish?” she asked, giggling lightly.

“Actual…proper…fish…” he nodded in reply.

“So…” she looked thoughtful.

“So,” he replied, “that’s why I don’t like fishing.”

“Yes, you do,” she said, enigmatically, and skipped slightly ahead of him.

“What?” he asked, a little confused, and quickened his pace slightly to catch up with her.

“You love fishing,” she smiled. “You’re doing it right now.”

He stopped and smiled at her, and simply said, “Oh…”

“And so am I.”

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5. Trains in general

4. My bed

3. Nick and Amy’s front bedroom

2. the window seat in my local Starbucks

1. Mum’s garden

Trains for the same reason as Starbucks.

My bed because it’s cosy and surrounded by all my stuff. It’s where the magic happens!

Nick and Amy’s front bedroom because it’s a great place to catch the last bit of sun while the retarded conversations started in the garden gain momentum. It’s full of friends, alcohol and sunshine.

And the window seat in Starbucks because I’m usually alone and have the chance to mull things over while people-watching and perving.

My Mum’s garden is the undisputed, hands-down winner because it’s where I escape to when things get too much. I haunt the other places on the list but Mum’s garden is a sanctuary. I go there to recharge whenever I need to get out of Dodge.

This is what’s in my head when I’m not there…

9to5officepoliticsclockwatchingbankstatementsbillstopayjustaboutgettin gby

wastingmoneyonSTUFFfrustrationWORK,eat,sleep,work,EAT,sleep,work,eat,

SLEEPboredomDISCONTENTendlesssouldestryoyingroutineMeSSyrelationships

ISTHISUNREQUITEDORNOT?!?!?Handstied(butnotinagoodway)morefrustrationmo remelodramaARGUEMENTSyoucan’t

winELEPHANTSintheroomdecidingtodrinkthroughitdrinkingalonedrinking

withfriendsdrinkingtoomuchsamepubssamepeoplesameconversationstoo

muchBOOZEtoomuchCAFFEINEtoomuchREDMEATnotenoughexercise

gettingfatNOTCARINGenoughtostopnotcaringaboutanythinganymoreAPATHY

replacingempathytemporaryescapewiththehelpoffilmsandepisodesof

COLUMBOtorturouscrushingMONOTONYdidImentionfrustration

This is what’s in my head when I am…

Where’s the shade? Shall we have another cup of tea?

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