Wednesday 21 March 2018

Spun

I wrote a poem. This is the poem. Please read the poem.










Spun



And sometime you just drop a spoon


And it hits the ground
And the world breaks open


And the kitchen floor begins to crack
And you can see the black
Through the broken tiles


And all the things you left unspoken
Uncurl like smoke and rise around you


The background hum you tried to silence
A sharp seductive sound
Now rising


This fallen spoon has bent the day around its concave head
This room, reflected, makes no sense


The beams of sunlight through the window,
Twist and curve
Lies and tricks to keep you straight
If they touch you they might burn you
If you stay still
You might die


Quick, shut this down
Bend and reach and grasp
This disobedient, metal tool
This tiny trickster
This little fool that ripped the afternoon in half


This so called spoon that broke your day
This tiny thing that somehow weighs
Nearly more than you can handle


Pick it up and put it back
And surely you will seal this crack
The abyss beneath this quiet life
Will shrink and fold
and leave the real world


For a while.


The hum subsides
Retreats into the background noise
Of normal life


But don’t be fooled


You’re only ever one stupid move away
From the moment
When you drop a spoon

Saturday 17 March 2018

Time is Relative: Season 9: Part one

It's time for more of my thoughts on the world's greatest TV show - Doctor Who. Don't worry if you don't know anything about it. That's why I'm here.

I've watched it all, you see. And I took some photos, so I can show you how awesome it is.

I'm up to season nine, which is from the 70s and thus great.


Day of the Daleks



This story starts with Doctor Who in a big old house, pretending to be an important Diplomat.

The real Diplomat has run away, because ghosts from the future were trying to kill him with laser guns.

Doctor Who has said, "Oh, I'm an expert on ghosts from the future with laser guns - let me live in the house for a bit and I'll definitely catch them all or something."

Which might be true. But it seems equally likely that Doctor Who just sniffed out a chance to steal some expensive wine.

Jo is wondering if the future laser ghosts are going to come back, and is understandably concerned. Doctor Who appears to have already forgotten the basic premise of the story, and might even have forgotten that this isn't his house.







This guy is called The Controller. He lives in the future, which is where the future ghosts came from in the first place.

He's meant to find the future ghosts, and tell them to stop going back into the past and shooting at people. With lasers.

The woman is saying, "The only person I can find is Doctor Who - and he's just drinking bottle after bottle of wine."

The Controller is thinking, "I'm going to have wine the second I get home."






Surprise! It's the Daleks. They live next door to The Controller. It turns out that they invaded the Earth, and now they're in charge, and can do what they want.

It used to be that, if aliens wanted to invade, they had to wait until the story had started. Then they would try to invade, and Doctor Who would run up to them and say, "Not today, you bad aliens!" And then he'd press a button, or build a device, and the aliens would have to run away or explode instead.

Nowadays the aliens invade before the story has even started. Which is pretty smart of them. The Daleks have also cleverly invaded the Future, so Doctor Who isn't even here yet. They've thought this through.





The Daleks have had a door built between their house and the Controller's house. Whenever they are bored, they call for him and have a chat.

This one is saying, "Did you find the future laser ghosts? Did you tell them they need to stop going back in time and shooting at people? With lasers? Did you tell them?"






The Controller is explaining to the Daleks, seemingly for the 19th time, that his job is very difficult, and it's very hard to find the future laser ghosts, and for goodness sake didn't they talk just yesterday about maybe giving him a bit of space?

The Dalek is quite upset by this. Things haven't been the same since they had the door installed between their houses. Maybe it was too much, too soon.







The Controller sends these guys back in time, to find the laser ghosts. This is an Ogron. He's basically on a zero-hours contract for the Daleks, and has to do what they say.

His instructions are: find anyone who has travelled back in time, with laser guns, and shoot them with *your* laser gun.

Right now, he's trying to reconcile these instructions with the fact that he has, by obeying these orders, become someone who has travelled back in time with a laser gun, and is thus doing exactly the thing he was told to stop happening.

"This is an ontological paradox," he seems to be thinking. Either than or he's just trodden on a slug.







Jo, bored of Doctor Who's constant drinking, has wandered off and accidentally ended up in the future.

She meets the Controller, and some Ogrons. They look very impressive and futuristic.

You have to wonder, though, what they were doing before she arrived. The Controller doesn't even appear to have a phone to play with.

Maybe the Ogrons were spinning him round in his chair, and they stopped when they heard Jo come in. That would explain the slightly bewildered look on the Controller's face.







Meanwhile, in the past, the Ogrons are attacking the house where Doctor Who is pretending to live. He has been drinking all day, though, and is more than up for it. He kicks some in the face, shoots a few with laser guns, and then runs off.






Sadly for Doctor Who, he runs right into a Dalek. He is now clearly too drunk to really understand what is happening, so he just gives up.

The Dalek is delighted. He got to capture Doctor Who, and will get to call himself "Best Dalek" all week, and might even get to knock off early for a couple of days.






The Daleks take Doctor Who to the future, and do experiments on him.

They are all very excited by this, and are looking at Doctor Who like some dogs might look at some sausages. They have hooked him up to a machine that shows old episodes of his TV show.

They are probably trying to find the ones where he ruined all their plans, so they can delete them and pretend they never happened.







Jo has had enough of being in the future. The music is rubbish, and no-one gets any of her cultural references. Also, she thinks Doctor Who is dead and now she's going to have to find a real job instead of just wandering round behind him asking stupid questions in a short skirt.

Doctor Who was going to say, "It's OK - I'm fine." But now he's heard the awful noise Jo is making, he's thinking he might just go and see if any of the Daleks would like to be his companion instead. They'd be loads more useful in a fight, and they would hardly ever cover his jacket in snot and tears.






The Controller invites Doctor Who and Jo for dinner. This seemed like a great idea, until he remembered that his only friends were Daleks, and so he didn't have any wine glasses, food or chairs.

Doctor Who's has hit the maudlin stage of being drunk. "Nothing I do matters," he's saying. "Everyone dies, and I'm beginning to think my dress sense is rubbish."

The Controller and Jo are trying to cheer him up, but he's making it heavy going. In desperation, the Controller agrees to betray the Daleks and save Earth, if only to stop Doctor Who wallowing in self pity.







The Daleks and Ogrons go back in time, in a last attempt to blow everything up for some reason. It's very exciting, and everyone has a great time.

The Daleks are defeated and many people die. Everyone agrees this has been one of the best adventures, and they should definitely keep in touch, and come back to the same place next year and do it again.

They don't, obviously.





That's all for now, folks.



Season 9 Part two is here.


Season 8 is here.