Posted in Aberystwyth, Bored musings, Nature at Thu 11 Mar 2010 by Stavros
I went down to the front to watch the sunset. After the other worldly nature of yesterday’s sunset where the sun so vulnerably dim and so blood-red it could be looked at directly with no protest from the eyes, retreated from underneath it’s cloudy covers to sit on the edge of the sea for a few minutes before submitting slowly to the darkening waters. Today demonstrated a beautiful, bright and wholly orthodox picture. The cloudless skies shifting from blue to green to metallic yellows and oranges. Colourful but nothing to blog home about. My eyes averted from the solar theatre to a small group of people stripping on the jetty before diving vocally into the silvery March sea. After their shivering heads bobbed away from view I noticed the gathering crew of starlings above the pier. This undulating wave of busy wings and tiny hearts kept expanding as neighbouring squadrons were drawn to the mass like iron filings to a magnet. More and more gangs arrived from over the rooftops and behind the castle and towards Constitution Hill. As the thousands swooped and flickered like a field of grass in the breeze and the sky darkened the mass seemed to take on different shapes. At once it was a heart then a ribbon then a kite. I ceased to see it as group of tiny birds, it was now a feathered jellyfish and the whole sky was it’s ocean. I was hypnotised by this powerful display, it’s patterns, it’s apparent order, it’s occasional chaos. Another sizeable flock appeared from behind the sea-facing roofs and chimneys, rising and billowing like smoke from an ancient devastating city fire. A hundred at a time they peeled off this biblical swarm and targeted the underside of the pier. I thought briefly of ravens perched gluttonously on the ribs of some poor skeleton.
I was shaking that image from my mind when,”Murmurations”.
Excuse me. I turned to a big faced middle aged man with a mouth like a letterbox. “Murmurations, that’s what a flock of starlings is called”. My hypnotism had been broken. I told him I didn’t know that. He proceeded to barge past the doormen of my solitude and told me some story of dead starlings in a woman’s back garden. I interjected at his designated pauses to offer my one word responses. I attempted to tug myself from this unwanted new friend. I only half succeeded and spent the next few minutes with my feet in a strange position like a disturbed manniquin. The man kept talking to me about birds. He finished, had he exhausted his dialogue. If he left now it would only be a slightly odd exchange of words. Promenade pleasantries only stretched a little too far. I took a step, my shin was starting to smart from the unbalanced weight on my twisted leg. I was going to get away but he reeled me back in by taking out the contents of his little carrier bag. Had he had that bag all along? I wondered what other props he may produce in his attempt at forging a friendship. By this time the sky was showing colours familiar to the screaming figure in front of Edvard Munch’s landscape. I started to understand how that iconic face could distort itself into such anguish. I tried to recall if there had there been another figure in that famous painting? Perhaps a heavy man with wide mouth and jutting teeth carrying a Waterstone’s bag.
I really didn’t want to get into a conversation about steampunk and urban fantasy novels. But I got the feeling that this new friendship wasn’t about what I wanted. After one too many “yes”, “hmmm”, “really?” and “ahhh’s”, I managed to prise myself between the bars of this conversation and wishing him good evening from over my shoulder I strode purposefully away from the sea and found myself in the Spar. I felt I had earned a treat and with the chocolate abstention still in place bought a big packet of fig rolls. Now I’m safely home and interrogating these fig rolls, asking them “why me?”. Why do the oddballs pick me? Hopefully it’s simply because I happened to be standing on my own. Maybe I’m a soft choice and someone else further down the sea front had offered a swift “do one pal”. But part of me can’t help wondering whether they see themselves in me. Am I a kindred spirit? Is it my destiny to one day force conversation on unsuspecting folk, am I to be a boorish verbal rapist? The fig rolls are offering no answer. I knew I should have bought ginger nuts. They’d have told me to chin the fucker.
Permalink
Posted in Philosophy, Bored musings at Mon 15 Feb 2010 by Stavros
Stavros2000 - Alright, you must be Stavros2010. Hmmm, I expected you to be slimmer. That’s a full head of hair though, at least that’s summat. What a coincidence, I work near here. Next door infact. No it’s an accountants not a dentists. Ah the company moved next door and changed it’s name. And you’re still here then? Christ, and I didn’t think you’d even still be in Telford! You must be a manager or summat now then, big money eh? Oh I know what I was going to ask, did you go back and finish that degree I started? I suppose it was a Third, yeah sorry that was largely my fault. Ah well, it’s not as if you’re using it here is it?! OK, see you around Stavros2010 I’m off to the old Red Lion for Spanish lagers and flaming aftershocks. Then Wolverhampton tomorrow for Blast Off and some tepid cans of Red Stripe and maybe a shuffle to The Strokes and Moby. Laters.
Stavros2010 - What a twat.
ps: Apologies to Jorge Luis Borges.
Permalink
Posted in Philosophy, Bored musings at Tue 1 Dec 2009 by Stavros
I’ve unceremoniously deleted the blog I started writing. I was going to compile a top ten albums of the last ten years, charts that are all the rage here at the fag end of the first decade. But I thought that ten years is too long a time. What I liked in the innocent bug-feared days of 2000 is not necessarily what I like now. So what would my ranking prove? Nowt. Even for a quantitive junkie like me, that’s just a list too far.
Also what put me off is the maudlin nature of these decade lists. Years are fine, they don’t hang around long enough to get attached to, but the passing of a decade is like the passing of an old family pet. You don’t realise just how long you’ve had it until it’s on its way out with a bit of a limp and a lot of gas.
The reasons for this includes the fact that I started this decade skint, single, in rented accommodation and not being able to drive. I won’t finish this point lest it turns into some emo’s livejournal.
Also, I have an aversion to nostalgia. I hide when the old photos make an appearance at family gatherings. I’m well aware that for some it’s a comfortable place to be, memories warming them like a worn old blanket. For me though, it’s the stench of a neglected milk bottle as the fridge door is opened. Just now though it’s a fridge door with a broken hinge, opening at inopportune moments embarrassing the dinner guests. It’s not that I have bad memories, far from it really. But, like the beer bottles in the salad crisper, they should have their place.
The odd symptom with this bout of time flu is that these uninvited images of the past aren’t really of people or incidents or half-remembered conversations. They are of rooms. I’ll be working away in the office staring at Excel’s blank canvas like the grid lined Gauguin my company want me to be, when my mind will suddenly fill with the kitchen from my first student flat, or an out room at my Grandparent’s old house, or the faded dignity of the sweeping staircase of a holiday club house.
What can it mean? Is my consciousness building its perfect house, like Dr Frankenstein presenting Grand Designs? Like a ship needs its bottle, perhaps the past need my mental building project. If it’s anything like TV it will go over budget and the builders will go on strike. Ghosts are supposed to haunt a room, yet the rooms are haunting me.
So, contrary to what I want to believe, I’m as shackled to my yesterdays as anyone. But most immediately I must stop daydreaming and get on with some proper work, this pie-chart won’t bake itself.
Permalink
Posted in Philosophy, Internet, Bored musings at Wed 12 Aug 2009 by Stavros
Like a crap cat-burgler, I return to the scene of the crime. And in doing so, you find me in reflective mood. I was puzzling over why I hadn’t blogged for so long, and the few blogs I’ve written lately feel like catch-up, reading as they’d been written, somehow obligated to do so. So I read some of my first paragraphs on here from 2003, and 2004, trying to rediscover what if anything had fuelled that enthusiasm.
What was different then? Why did I feel the need, enjoy even, to write about everyday things and thoughts. I guess the obvious answer is the nature of the internet itself. Updating a blog was the easiest way to keep in touch with a few friends and let each other what we had been up to. Now of course everyone (and their dog, mum, boss and ex-girlfriend) is on facebook. Or Twitter. Microblogging. As apparently even writing a few paragraphs is too time-consuming for the nuevo-internetista. Sad indictment, but true all the same.
Blogging in 2009 can seem to be the prevail of the political types. Those activists bent on changing the world from the comfort of their office chair. Or much worse still those Party cheerleaders who somehow juggle flying the flag for the “new media order” while scrambling for acceptance infront of the cameras of the cosy Aunty Beeb or scribbling pieces for the crusty old Telegraph. Are we already squinting back at a sepia-tinged bygone era? Whither the “I got pissed and fell over and ripped me slacks in the street” blogs? Why blog when you can micro-blog?
Perhaps it’s none of this. Perhaps nothing’s changed but me. Perhaps there are blogs out there updated regularly by the bloody-kneed drunk documenting his last night out, extolling his latest music tastes, typing away in torn trousers. I’m certainly more aware, or more cautious as to who might be reading my blog now. For me the internet feels a much more open, less cliquey place. My ambling prose at the arse end of 2003 would have been read by (at least I imagined) just a handful of folk. Do I have to be more thoughtful and less candid? If so, is it worth it? Who am I writing for, you or me?
Anyway, I hope you bear with me, while I decide how to continue with this blog in the future. I won’t shut it down or stop updating it completely as I still like it being there. My own personal toilet wall to graffiti at will. And of course there’ll always be Stav’s Top 10 albums of the year. So throw it into your RSS reader or whatever app you use on your iPhone and put your feet up, because I could be a while yet. And if it really has been too long, you could always remind me via a tweet.
Permalink
Posted in Philosophy, Bored musings at Fri 15 May 2009 by Stavros
Needless to say, apologies for the hiatus.
I went to Manchester airport yesterday. Here’s what I learnt:
Officially the biggest airport I’ve ever been to. Which is a crap claim. I didn’t go in. Which makes it even crapper.
If I worked as a prostitute at an airport hotel I’d dress as an air hostess so I blended in.
People who work in banking look like Tory MPs or former head boys or vaguely like characters from sit-coms.
Permalink
« Previous entries ·
