An Encounter
By Adam | January 25, 2010
An Encounter
I’m sitting in a street side café. You know the scene; early business meetings, housewives on the stop-over after or before gym, single-seaters tapping away, like me, on laptops. Lots of chatting on cells. The bustle and clatter of service; tea, coffee, croissant and bacon breakfasts. The aromas of the morning, while the street outside surges and clears with traffic going to the office.
I’m having a tea, I’m reading a paper, I’m biding my time while I wait for the shop down the road to fix a botched gear lock installation on the car. I’m calming my annoyance with that poorly done job with a good pot of Five Roses when up to the table comes a man. About fifty, I’d guess, shortish in stature, dressed in smart casual that doesn’t tell me much about his calling though by his age and where we are I’d hazard something in sales. ‘Excuse me,’ he says, ‘You wouldn’t happen to be Oscar would you?’ Well no. I’m not. And I’m sorry I’m not. I know what a weird and uncomfortable situation he’s in. Meeting someone you’ve never met before in a busy public place. I wish in a small way that I could have been Oscar and then his search would be over and he, and I, could get down to business.
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Short Story
By Adam | January 21, 2010
Ringo sat in the park. It was another hot day. The hottest summer in living memory. He didn’t believe that. Privately he believed that the English had lied about how miserable their weather was to keep tourists away. Which didn’t seem to work. All around him foreign dialects bubbled up from passers-by and bounced around in groups on the grass. ‘Bloody tourists.’ he thought and he smiled at the irony. He was also a tourist really. Only he’d been there for seven months so maybe he wasn’t. He already had a London bluntness to his voice that accentuated when he was around his London friends. Or if he wanted something from a Londoner. ‘Sorry mate,” he’d say, “Wich way’s Bayswa’er Stayshin?” And they’d give him a straight answer.
Lately he’d begun to feel terrified that he’d never get out. It was an easy thing to get stuck in London. So big. So draining. Exhausting. Weekends came and he almost couldn’t be asked to leave the house that he shared with his girlfriend and a Northerner. The Northerner was from up near Preston somewhere. Ringo had no idea where really. It might even have been Preston itself. Ringo hadn’t really left London yet. The furthest he’d got was Cambridge for a weekend. He and his girlfriend had spent most of the time in a bedroom drinking tequila and having sex. Hardly saw the town or the University.
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HAG
By Adam | January 21, 2010
There she sits,
Teeth sucked in to her palate
By her skull desperate for bone
To shore up her thinning cranium.
Wrinkled lips,
A creased skirt hiding
Her naked gum’s vanity
Smacking embarrassments of saliva.
Hands lap laid,
Twitching anticipation
Of the slow coming end
Last flicking minutiae of life.
Infinity eyes,
Stretching to her past
And the past of those others
She only recalls like whispers.
Sun-mote settles,
Grey dust frosted hair
Hands still in the nest of lap
Eyes fix on the bright opening door.
Death comes,
The whispering shadow
No one sees, she last sighs
Her long last breath, suddenly.
Beautiful again, she dies.
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More Noodling with Balalaland
By Adam | October 13, 2009
Getting back inside these paragraphs just to try and get the juices flowing again… may work… may not… who can tell… anyway here it is…
The good people of Balalaland woke on the morning after the election with a sense of hope. The sun shone a little more confidently, the sky reflected itself in an ever so slightly richer hue, the grass and all the creatures scurrying about in it seemed to be just that bit more alive and vibrant. There was an air of secret expectancy, as if the whole world was winking knowingly about a saucy bit of gossip that was fresh off the smorgasbord of rumour and hearsay.
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Freedom of Expression and the Law
By Nick | May 28, 2009
I have been thinking a lot recently about the various “strands” of thought that govern opinion on what is, or should, be an acceptable framework for the media to use to regulate content.
The reason I’ve been thinking about it is because its a very difficult subject, and one that has a host of valid and contrary perspectives. As someone with lots of bum-time on the chairs of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission’s boardroom I thought I’d try to clarify my own thinking by trying to write it all down. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tom’s got a web site…
By Nick | May 8, 2009
I didn’t expect this site to be top of the google searches for Tom, so apologies if you’ve been looking here for updates. All info on Tom is here www.tomgilessoper.com
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Update on Tom Soper
By Nick | May 6, 2009
To everyone who knows and loves Tom: an update on his situation for those not on my (or Brendon’s email list) Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Uncategorized | 13 Comments »
Brickbats To The Strike Force
By Nick | April 14, 2009
I was having lunch at a restaurant in De Korte Street today where we had a roadside view of the striking truck drivers, and the assorted vandals who either lurk within this sector or (more likely) attach themselves to these mobs for a bit of a lark.
There unfolded scenes that are not unusual by any means, just rendered outrageous to me because of my first-hand experience of it all.
A couple of hundred strikers bore down De Korte, many wielding what I presume were symbolic weapons, because the assorted tree branches, many with leaves still attached, were not particularly intimidating.
What was much more frightening however was the handful of people with thick wooden poles and malevolent expressions, and others of similar ilk holding bricks. Then, spotting a parked Toyota Tazz with the branding of a courier company, they let fly their various objects and completely destroyed the windows. Read the rest of this entry »
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Paging the Spin Paramedics…
By Nick | April 7, 2009
To expand on an earlier Tweet, where are the electoral advisors that are supposed to manage political candidates to votes and glory? Because recent observations make me think that they either don’t exist or they are too busy with their own agendas to help their charges navigate the perilous roads of election season.
I really don’t want to use Obama as a benchmark because he is clearly just so naturally good at this stuff, but it can’t hurt to look at the American election process as an established institution that would eat some of our politicians for breakfast, had they made any of the following blunders in the US of A. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Editors' Fat Chew, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Partner? Seriously?
By Nick | March 31, 2009
The term “media partnership” is right up there when it comes to jargon afflicted by subjective interpretation. But sometimes the definition of “partner” becomes so mangled its small wonder the divorce rate among marketing people isn’t even higher. Read the rest of this entry »
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