Tuesday 9 June 2009

Look Back in Envy

Here I sit, beneath the ‘Crabs & Lobsters’ wall-chart that I got free with the Guardian, toking on a fat one and pondering the future of the female serial killer. Today I read three books about murderous women and shelled a pound of peas straight into my mouth. I lunched on Ritz crackers smeared with Gentleman’s Relish and Danish Blue and I had a soft-boiled egg for breakfast. Why does violence make me so hungry?

Last night I dreamt I went to Junior School again, back to the spire and the hills surrounding. Junior School was a wonderful place. I might not have learnt my times tables, but I did learn how to sew a guinea pig from brown velvet curtains and how to make chocolate mint creams. Sometimes the man who lived as a Roundhead came to give us a history lesson, and once the Great Jam Sandwich Machine rolled in, operated by men riding ostriches, and with much clanking and juddering and eruptions of glitter it produced a perfect sandwich for every last child.

Halcyon days. I still like to sew funny animals and draw lopsided pictures, but these days I try and intersperse my daydreaming and playing with more grown-up activities like washing pants and growing herbs and taking the cat for her jabs and, of course, reading my Children’s Encyclopaedia, because education should never stop. Although if I ever see that Great Jam Sandwich Machine again I will jump up on it and I will ride it to the ends of the Earth.

8 comments:

  1. "The Great Jam Sandwich Machine"

    I can see in addition to your craft with words, you also went to a school equipped with the finest that the food dispensary industry had to offer...

    Frig! I wish I'd gone to such a fine institution, but alas, I went to one which couldn't even find spare parts for the drinking fountain...that's why even today I am still thirsty.

    If you find The Great Jam Sandwich Machine, see if it will float or sail to San Francisco, I am kind of hungry too...

    Great Post!

    Poetman

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  2. Halcyon days, indeed. Last night I dreamed I was in ACDC in the early days. I had no idea how to play the guitar but nobody noticed. It was a wonderful dream.

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  3. Amen to childhood and the place where imagination and reality collide. Off now, to have a jam sandwich: yum.

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  4. Hello everyone,

    I would like to strongly recommend cheese and jam sandwiches to you all. I like raspberry jam and Cheshire cheese in white bread, but feel free to improvise.

    Lots of love,

    Sack Posset

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  5. ooo jam sandwich machine ooooo some butter and chilli and ooo :)!

    my favorite psycho is erzsebet bathory, i couldnt sleep for a whole week after reading her story, proof positive that evil may be rare but not nonexistant :(

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  6. The machinations of the female serial killer is more subtle. Unlike her male counterpart, the craving for attention is muted. Instead of brute action, she resorts to wiles: poison, accidental falls, quiet suffocation of children and invalids, shrewd manipulation of events that culminates in a murder, and sheer henpeckery. Those who are caught have slightly more testosterone.

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  7. MM - Bathory lives in my head, too. Once she's in there, there's no shifting her.

    zxvasdf - Exactly (unless she's killing with a partner), but for how long? Things are escalating.

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  8. P.S. Mental Mist - I have never had a jam sandwich with chilli, but I am going to try it tomorrow.

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