tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57806946756006617162024-03-07T21:22:08.580-08:00Sack PossetSack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.comBlogger129125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-10059222807117095672012-07-26T01:40:00.000-07:002012-07-26T01:40:00.566-07:00Not Here<a href="http://muckyfat.tumblr.com/">Here</a>Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-70638843522553688022012-05-14T12:09:00.000-07:002012-05-14T12:09:04.548-07:00Turn Around, Bright Eyes<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been
neglecting you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can see you there, in
your electronic eyries, peeping and cheeping with your gobs agape, just itchin’
for me to hawk up a great glob of regurgitated words into your little trembling
beaks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course I won’t desert you
again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m a good mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just look how well Baby Mumps turned out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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After the initial period of mourning (oh those long nights
of Blue Nun through a bendy straw and weepy wanks to Fanny Cradock) I am over
the monkey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve done everything the
magazines tell you to do – I’ve given myself a snazzy new look (‘Disco
Prospector’), had a ceremonial burning of love letters and sentimental trinkets
(I chucked on a few final demands while I was at it, and all those letters from
the council about the Garum pit – never waste a good bonfire) and I’ve even
signed up for something called Zumba.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
am a new woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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So my life has become a giddy whirl of Glamorous Stances and
Executive Business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My Filofax is full
of cocktail parties and conference calls and at any given point in the day, I
have literally just stepped out of a salon. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m pretty much Huddersfield’s Fanciest
Lady.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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There comes a time when one must put away childish things and
move on in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obsession is the finest
hobby you can have, but you must never let it get to the point where you are
slumped in a cold bath slugging warm gin crooning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total Eclipse of the Heart </i>to the memory of an imaginary monkey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<br />
Unless, of course, that’s all part of the fun.
<br />
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<br /></div>
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P.S. Perhaps Zumba was not quite such a good idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently they expect you to be on time AND
appropriately dressed AND relatively sober AND they don’t take kindly to
smoking AND they don’t want to see your Hornpipe, thank you very much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-58847653581060584242012-02-08T10:59:00.000-08:002012-02-08T11:02:24.550-08:00Huddersfield Factfile #2 - A Town of Discoveries<p class="MsoNormal"><span >One day in 2009, a chap walking his doggy in Crosland Moor found the head of a crocodile. It wasn’t a big one, but it really shouldn’t have been in Crosland Moor, no matter how insalubrious that part of town may be (although I here it’s got a lot better since we moved).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span >Huddersfield is a place where things are found. Small boys discover globs of glittering blue jelly after unseasonable showers. Redoubtable citizens awake to find their shrubbery cauled in caterpillar silk. There is Arabic in the tomatoes and oversized pawprints in the woods. Last time they had to dredge the canal they found over a hundred human teeth, but no bodies at all.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span >Not everything that’s found is reported, of course. There aren’t many people who know about the horn that turned up in Honley, or the skink tongues of Scapegoat Hill. A lot of people know about the Appleyards, but they never found anything there, just the little holes in the trees and a sort of achy dread. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span >(I find things too, from time to time, as eagle-eyed readers will attest. Why, only last night I found a letter from Butterface, tucked underneath my Matey bubbles. She’s using my handwriting again and she left a hair in the soap. Without the monkey around I feel defenceless against these encroachments).</span></p> <span style="line-height: 115%; "><span >In Huddersfield you will find exactly what you’re looking for, unless something is looking for you. So if you’re planning a visit, as I’m sure you are, just make sure you bring a camera, a sack and your shrimping net. I’ll be there to keep you safe. You will know me by my skink tongue crown.</span></span>Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-78386526539480415032012-01-29T05:13:00.000-08:002012-01-30T10:21:20.619-08:00The Power and The Glory<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> 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mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">Happy New Year, etherkin.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s going to be a strange one. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Ructions are afoot - I have read the auguries in my laundry.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>2012 is seals in the eelgrass.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Something cold and bobbing. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Seals will be big this year, and sisters, and doggish things dancing on their hind legs through the trees. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’re on the edge of the strange times.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On the plus side, the matador look will be in, and I look adorable in those trousers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Swings and roundabouts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Anyway, here I sit, baht ape, watching out of the window as the headlights climb the hill opposite to the unreasonable black of the moors, picking my teeth with a wishbone and pondering what’s to come.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When looking forwards, it’s always best to start with a quick glance behind you.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Last year was one of yearning, for penpals and monsters and muses and gods.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yearning makes me bilious.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Perhaps it’s time I turned to Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Or to Christopher at least, patron saint of my dog-head daydreams, hot-breathed, slobbering force of faith.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>St Christopher was a definite sort.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the meantime, there is work to be done.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Olympics are coming and I am Team GB’s only hope.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-87879179130154659212011-11-23T06:27:00.000-08:002011-11-23T06:31:29.889-08:00Apres le Singe<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> 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mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">So now I’m in the market for a brand new muse.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Butterface won’t do, of course – I wouldn’t trust her references – and that bastard Baby Mumps is out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It won’t be Michael, who came to stay on Mischief Night and hasn’t left his chair, Michael with his face like a sagging balaclava and his crinkling woolly hands, his hair slipping off at the back of his head and oh my god those <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">thighs</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it can’t be any of my sundry cats – nobody wants a muse that’s always licking its arse and can’t kill anything bigger than a vole. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Nope, it’s an employers’ market out there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve put a card in the Post Office window and am waiting for the phone to ring.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I could be my own muse, I suppose, but I’d be an unreliable worker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’d be tardy and churlish and smuggle stationery out in my hair, I’d clock-watch and time-waste and gob in the guvnor’s tea.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’d end up giving me the sack, for sure, and I’m pretty litigious when riled.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Essential attributes in a potential candidate will include a 2:1 or above in Applied Monstrousness, the ability to mix a perfect Benylin Sunrise, an unapproachable demeanour and unprofessional appearance, advanced skills in burglary, Beggar My Neighbour and Microsoft Excel, experience in dealing with difficult customers and at least five years in the position of muse, familiar or personal demi-god.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>An HGV license is desirable, as are a shotgun license and an elementary swimming certificate.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Unsettlingly suggestive tails an advantage.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I will be accepting bribes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p>Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-87895751804561274812011-11-13T05:51:00.000-08:002011-11-13T05:53:23.962-08:00No<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> 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mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">There’s something I haven’t been telling you.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Something is different, something has changed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Something dreadful has happened.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s the monkey.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s got lost.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It somehow didn’t make it in the move.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I kept telling myself that it would turn up, that it would come swaggering in through the catflap or surprise me in the shower, that I would see a stirring in my sock drawer and a stiffly rising tail, but no, it is gone. It is gone.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">How I managed to pack a Yellow Pages from 2006, the reeking duvet of a former housemate, a tin of pease pudding and a small pouch of hair and yet not the monkey, I will never know.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The only conclusion I can draw is that it did not want to come and remains in the cellar of my former slum, gibbering softly to itself and making little sooty thumbprints on the walls.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My prayers go out to the new tenants.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It was my muse, my god, my disciple and my lover, with its maleficent tail and its jaunty old fez.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We had weathered so much together, skipping through my hinterlands paw in paw, prancing through the places it’s unsafe to go alone.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Without my monkey, I am bereft.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Who will mix my sild martinis and pinch me gently to sleep?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Who will chase the Children from my door? Whose little leather fingers will sneak into mine when it’s 3am in my heart and all my glee is gone?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What am I going to do?</p>Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-865312458657474872011-11-02T07:04:00.000-07:002011-11-02T07:05:22.830-07:00Further Information Concerning the Bus<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> 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Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m always seeing important people on the bus.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I see the Sleazy Cavalier with his slicked-back hair and oxblood boots, the hint of a twizzle to his ‘tache.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Now there’s a man with something afoot in his cellar.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Virgin Mare gets on at the Co-op, pushing Little Baby Bluebird in his Silver Cross pram and cooing all the way to town.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Poor Sad Satchel, getting the bus to school with her mum, the two of them sitting at the front like a pair of pepperpots with matching choppy bobs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The one I call Rosie, all bulging pink Kappa and ginger-grey roots, who I like to think of naked on her leather-look sofa, watching CBeebies and binging on fudge. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Do they think of me?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do they notice me every day and wonder?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do they say to themselves, there she goes again – why doesn’t she do<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> </i>something about that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">hair</i>? <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is</i> she hiding under her coat? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Why</i> does she only have one eye open?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And what is that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">smell? <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></i>Maybe they have little daydreams like I do, imaginary cataclysms that leave The People of The 302 clamouring for survival in a post-apocalyptic Paddock.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I can spend the whole twenty minutes debating which one I’d eat first.</p>Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-664918419142087142011-11-02T04:12:00.001-07:002011-11-02T04:12:59.773-07:00Hints From The Universe #764Last week at work, a spider crawled out of my hair.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-52712320249654404862011-10-23T04:32:00.000-07:002011-10-23T04:33:19.931-07:00Huddersfield Factfile #1 - Emley Moor Mast<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> <w:dontbreakconstrainedforcedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> 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mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes I dream that the mast is my lover or that it is falling with me in its crown.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It gets me every morning over the hills, elegant and terrifying as maths.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It did fall down once, in the blue chapped March of ’69, and when they rebuilt it, the beetles came.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Over land and through the air, thousands upon thousands, darkling, jewel, false clown and skin, long-lipped and ironclad, mud-loving, blister and snout, and to this day there’s a team of coleopterologists up there 24-7.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>More than three hundred new species of beetle have been discovered at Emley Moor, seventeen of which are named after Roy Castle.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">They light it up at night in case of low-flying craft but it doesn’t stop the odd accident, like the stricken kestrel that fell from the sky, causing everyone for miles around to miss <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Bullseye.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></i>Or the incident with the ape. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I can see it from here if I stretch but I only sometimes think about licking it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It tastes like a Lemonade Sparkler and if it ever falls down again, I will be riding it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p>Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-42667131594809330502011-08-19T11:17:00.000-07:002011-08-19T11:20:50.263-07:00It's That Mumps Again<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> <w:dontbreakconstrainedforcedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> <w:word11kerningpairs/> 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mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">Baby Mumps has got his mates round, some lads called Trev off the estate.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The air is fizzy with shell-suit static and the smell of teen semen.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They’re off out later on so they’re getting loaded on cherry 20/20 and Broon.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Mumps has his mixed in his Thomas sippy cup.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">He holds court on a Trev’s knee, tapping fags and taking the piss, showing off his beatbox skills.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Women are the night’s priority.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Mumps cracks mucky jokes about wet nurses and fingers his ‘tache.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>God help them down the roller disco. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">They get a Chinese for their tea and Mumps sucks the batter off a bag of pork balls.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He fists the insides into the Trevs’ hair and chortles ‘til he tumbles over.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When the taxi comes he hops into his car seat and buckles himself in, kicking his little DMs in glee.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">That Mumps is no son of mine.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The little shit gets through five pounds of mince a week and downs more Calpol than Soft Mick.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He mixes it with the gin he nicks from my knicker drawer. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">When they’ve gone I crawl out of the cupboard and start to clear up.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The house is a wreck - bottles everywhere, tab ends in the cheese plant, 70s porn splayed open on the rug.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the kitchen the fridge hangs open, everything edible gone.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Milk pools on the lino.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A tiny bootprint mars the butter.</p> Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-91491961381094957812011-08-13T06:13:00.000-07:002011-08-13T06:26:39.494-07:00Squeeze Me SlowI am not a traveller. I'm not a taker of trips. I'll make an exception for Blackpool, of course, my deep-fried neon holyland. Last time I went to Blackpool, the first thing I saw when I got off the train was a pregnant woman dragging on a Lambert while her shaven-headed toddlers gobbed at the gulls. When I die I will go back to Blackpool and suck suggestive confectionary with the one-armed angels in an infinite Penny Arcade.
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<br />But sometimes you just need to get away from it all, so the other day I packed some sandwiches and a salacious paperback and wriggled off on holiday underneath my bed. It was the holiday of a lifetime - no sun, so sand and no sea, although after one too many pina coladas I had an uncomfortable encounter with an imaginary cocktail waiter and before I knew it, I was up the duff.
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<br />After a brief gestation period, during which I almost did a wordsearch in <span style="font-style: italic;">Chat, </span>my jaw sagged and my gall rose and I hawked up an infant all over the clues. We regarded each other with some mistrust until he slid down the magazine in a log-flume of afterbirth and swaggered off downstairs with my fags under his arm.
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<br />And that's how Baby Mumps came to live in the cupboard under the kitchen sink. Baby Mumps with his bumfluff 'tache and Color Me Badd on his boombox, a flick-knife down his Chelsea boot and a stash of <span style="font-style: italic;">Razzles</span> behind the bleach. I've decided to adopt a rather <span style="font-style: italic;">laissez-faire </span>approach to parenting.
<br />Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-11481438811981979932011-08-04T06:21:00.000-07:002011-08-04T06:27:56.458-07:00In Which Boggarts Become a Recurring ThemeI took a shine to a fat man on the 302 today. He was carrying a tub of luxury ice cream and sporting a panama hat. Clearly a terrible pervert. I got off two stops early to give chase but he got away from me in the ginnels, which annoyed me because I wanted to see where he lived. In the patrician villas with their steep, clipped lawns, where bored doctors' wives stick pins in their poppets? In the honeysuckled cottages with their bowed-out bellies and boggart tracks in the begonias? Or down in the toast-rack terraces with the likes of me? The only thing we can be sure of is that the ice cream met a sticky end.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-80386916005023670172011-08-02T08:56:00.000-07:002011-08-02T09:03:50.313-07:00Turned Out Nice AgainI have taken a holiday, ostensibly to commence my masterwork. This involves a lot of egg poaching (in both senses of the word), impromptu Formby recitals, housework shirking, Mast-Watch, the contemplation of boggarts, Absolute 80s Radio, standing at the upstairs window in my werewolf mask, cups of tea, drunk sewing, sausage-fancying and staring open-gobbed at the wall, but these are as all much writing as anything else.<br /><br />Writing is like a poached egg. Liquid into liquid, flailing hentai tentacles, the impossibility of coalescence. And then. And then it's this, a tiny morsel on hot buttered toast. Perhaps I am not cut out to be a lady novelist. Perhaps I will just perch here like an addled old owl and hack up little pellets of spine and fur.<br /><br />I can't think of any ways in which writing is like George Formby.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-46584000432198819972011-08-01T06:32:00.000-07:002011-08-01T06:50:58.055-07:00Since You've Been GoneWe have moved. Me and the Snout, a small brother and sundry cats have upped sticks and run to the hills. Now we live on a road so steep it has a banister, in a village mentioned in the Domesday Book, and if I crane my neck from my bedroom window I can see Fancy Engine pirouetting on top of the mast at Emley Moor, my favourite thing in the whole wide world. <br /><br />I am at home up here, where the hills roll like breaching beasts and the W.I. hosts jam sales in the churchyard. The local butcher wears a shirt and tie and sings 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' as he's sharpening his knives. Everywhere is up a ginnel. This is my gods' own country and it's in me like the inside of my mouth.<br /><br />So now I'm rendering bones in my subterranean kitchen and making cunning plans. The old house was killing me - the damp and the detritus, the woodchip and the cold, the tiny handprints in the secret cellar and the children calling carrion outside. Here I can hatch myself again, spring back fully-formed from between my toes. Now I can get the sack back in my posset.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-58691274102921076242011-05-21T04:33:00.000-07:002011-05-21T04:39:04.238-07:00Armageddon WearyThe monkey and I are preparing for the Rapture, which is apparently due this afternoon. I've tucked my trousers into my socks and the monkey's set the video to tape BGT. I read that it will be some kind of storm but the monkey says that's just code and the vicars will come for us in blood-steeped chasubles and beat us all to death with acoustic guitars.<br /><br />It's every other day now, the end of the world. I would greatly resent dying in someone else's apocalypse. I don't like to believe in anything I didn't invent myself, which is probably why I'm so bad at maths. I'm pretty sure I'll be safe, anyway. My end of days will come wearing coordinated cruisewear and a tight rubber cap, chin slick with Lurpak and mouth wide as the sea. Butterface will be my Ragnarok. Unless I get to her first.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-63198673062393325142011-05-02T10:40:00.000-07:002011-05-02T11:00:15.875-07:00The Royal WeeThere we were at eight in the morning, perched on the sofa in our matching Wedding fezzes, Buck's Fizzes fizzing in our Fergs 'n' Andy mugs, swan baps held patriotically aloft. Fancy dress had been mooted but I couldn't find a corgi suit in time and the monkey looks a bit like Princess Margaret anyway.<br /><br />Of course we were absolutely trolleyed even before the Beckhams arrived and the last thing we saw as we lapsed into unconsciousness was the grinning maw of Beatrice as she loomed like a peach Cthulhu out of the regal crowd. We missed the dress, the kisses and the car but I had an interesting dream about Mohammed Al Fayed and so it all worked out about even in the end.<br /><br />Later we got out the Formal Axe and did some parading along the garden wall but the children were massing and so we came back inside and started on the Pimms. We were out of cucumber so we ad libbed with liver and we think it gave it quite an interesting tang. <br /><br />After the highlights and something approximating Eton Mess we suffered the inevitable post-Wedding slump and had to take an early bath. We retired bilious but happy and the monkey fell asleep in my fez, still clutching a sticky picture of Pippa. I do love a good Royal Wedding.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-62094251475709945932011-04-28T09:27:00.000-07:002011-04-28T09:43:04.567-07:00PDPWhen I was a little dot I wanted to be a clown, blue faced for bad luck with wire in my plaits. I slack-roped between the turbines up on the moors and pulled extravagant strings of sausages from unexpected spots. Over time the clown turned inwards and I still live somewhere between Pierrot and Auguste, but I'll never forget the feel of greasepaint in my eyebrows or the happy calm of knowing what I wanted to be.<br /><br />They say the secret to a happy career is getting paid to do what you love. I love staring and hiding food, drawing troupes of small dogs in the margins of my diary and pretending I live on an island somewhere with the Very Reverend William Buckland and four and a half of the Mitford girls. The world of work has always been hard for me. And yet I must earn enough money to keep me in the needfuls, at least to keep stocked up on Cheestrings and weed.<br /><br />My skills are many and varied and I'm a personable sort, at least to your face. I can make any animal you like out of cloth, although they always turn out looking somehow like me. I can cross my ring finger over my middle one without moving the others. I have a wide repertoire of untoward recipes. I can write the odd sentence. I have my own dog suit. I am eminently employable.<br /><br />I think I'd be ideally suited to a career as a familiar, or an Executive Imaginary Friend. I'd make an excellent protagonist - or antagonist - and would be a perfect fit for the position of muse. I could find success as a skeleton in a closet or a madwoman in an attic or some kind of half-forgotten god slumbering away at the bottom of the sea. I could be your nemesis and my rates are more than fair. <br /><br />Which is all fine and dandy, but it doesn't go down well at the Job Centre.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-53723808193901936662011-04-16T10:00:00.000-07:002011-04-16T10:16:09.428-07:00Happy Birthday, Gin BagMy Best Girl's a party in a pencil skirt, a leopard-print lifeline with matching ballet shoes. She's the brolly in my cocktail, the bud in my bong, she's Cava in pyjamas, my sunshine and my muse. Without her, senoras wouldn't shake and monsters wouldn't mash, they'd call off Eurovision and all the bunting in the land would fall. <br /><br />The monkey and I raise a toast to you, clink our glasses of egg white and gin. To ladypints and date nights, to the terrible things we say! To butchers and barmen and tossing <span style="font-style: italic;">Twilight</span>, to the money shot and the change! To you, B, for being my bestie and for always giving me something to look forward to. To you, to you, to you.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-32371649296454755472011-04-05T11:20:00.000-07:002011-04-05T11:26:17.967-07:00Horses Cont.Slab-backed, sweating, all nostrils and steam and teeth like slices of bread, clanking and stamping and champing at the bit, gilded hooves and oil on hot leather, flexing straps and straining buckles and the stirrups, the stirrups, the stirrups and nosebags full of liver and chamfrons stuck with rubies and unblinkered eyes, o lente, lente currite, mossflanked and tangletailed, burrs and fingers in their manes, screaming and screaming and climbing carefully up the stairs.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-39910506384789934922011-02-23T08:36:00.000-08:002011-02-23T08:46:42.257-08:00Fancy EngineSo I made myself a goddess out of stockinette and sinew and she is badly-stuffed and gamey with prehensile hair. I made her because I was bored one night and nothing felt like glee, not toads or meat or Romans or the shorelife of Little Sark, not coddled eggs or kittens or How Clean Is Your House. I didn't make her because I was scared, I didn't I didn't I didn't, but it's nice to have something to pray to when Butterface is near.<br /><br />I spat in her mouth to bring her to life and up she stood like a shandied lamb, fully poseable on her pipecleaner pins. She moved into my secret mole and subsists entirely on clams, she talks backwards with her mouth full and she doesn't wash her hands. She isn't kind but she's free with her kisses and she always has plasters in her bag. I've sewn her glyphs in all my gussets and strewn penny sweets outside the Pink Ribbon, but she doesn't ask for much in the worshipping way. She appreciates my indolence and she prefers me fast asleep.<br /><br />So now when I catch a glimpse of Butterface, with her crisp cruise wear and her snowman eyes, I don't feel so terribly bad. Not that I'm afraid of her. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-22785487414465864642011-01-23T09:50:00.001-08:002011-01-23T09:51:50.134-08:00A poemRed hands hanging in the willow tree and<br />those pesky foxes.<br />All women are cats when you turn them inside out.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-82413123677689445672011-01-11T10:26:00.000-08:002011-01-11T10:41:57.091-08:00Everything Is Going To Be AlrightI'm sure I saw a sloth last night, under the laurel in my garden, dragging its belly through the scrag-ends of the snow. I predict sloths will be big in 2011. As will tubular bandages, Beetle Drives and Pierrot chic.<br /><br />It will be a year of austerity, we know that for sure. I have taken measures - the dormice plumping in the jars beneath my bed, the snail farm in the shower. Butterface is saving on stamps by hand-delivering her letters straight into my lunchbox. Even the monkey's giving up online bingo.<br /><br />It will be a year of clarity and pamphlets, the year I finally win a competition in <em>Take a Break.</em> It's the year of the Royal Wedding and I am planning my party already. You should never miss an opportunity for high camp. It will be a gala year, you can take my word for it - a juicy, wriggling piglet of a year. <br /><br />I have left out a trail of chicken nuggets for the sloth. It leads right to my front door.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-90293910325940272182010-12-30T10:38:00.000-08:002011-01-02T05:34:41.094-08:00We All Like Figgy Pudding'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even the monkey, 'cause we'd had a little contretemps over the proper way to make a brandy butter daiquiri and I'd locked it in the downstairs lav.<br /><br />I sat before the fire, reindeer resplendent on my jumper and the Christmas tree seeming to sparkle as the saveloys caught the light. Everything was ready. I'd put the sprouts on when the hawthorn bloomed and they would be perfect, served in champagne flutes with little festive hats of prawns. On the table by the hearth Santa's sherry waited, even though I am old enough to know better. I always leave a carrot out for Rudolph, too, and a little wrap of ket for Blitzen.<br /><br />I let the monkey out to watch Fanny degrade a turkey. When she brandished the secateurs I felt a hot paw slide into mine and I made a silent toast to Our Lady of Culinary Derangement. God bless you, Fanny Cradock. Gob less everyone.<br /><br />At midnight the monkey downed its eggnog and pulled on its balaclava. The snow had stayed, buffed lethal by the cold. The monkey left no prints as it swaggered to the shed. I poured myself a Snowball and pulled my chair up to the window just in time to see the shed doors open and the laden sleigh slide out and snicker away over the spangled drifts, off, up into the sky, the cat that pulled it turning and smiling at me with a mouth just like my own before it disappeared behind the moon.<br /><br />Later on I sewed my stocking shut, just to be on the safe side.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-46472048786476159892010-12-06T06:08:00.000-08:002010-12-06T06:15:21.623-08:00ButterfaceI am worried. Letters from Butterface grow increasingly strange. I thought having a penpal would be all sweetness and stationery but I am beginning to think I was wrong. At first her letters were wonderful. Epic poems about implausible kittens, recipes for treacle gin, her next-door neighbour's bank account details and little doves and orchids of folded Parma ham pressed between the pastel pages.<br /><br />Recently, however, they have taken on a more menacing tone. Photos of me fall out of grubby Jiffy bags. Pages from my diary. She sends me shopping lists with untoward overtones. Cockles, root ginger, Mulligatawny soup. She has started to use inferior quality writing paper. I would go round and have a word, but the only address I have for her is mine.<br /><br />Last night I peeked out between the curtains and she was there, standing under the streetlamp over the road, the orange light tinting her swimming cap and her mouth as round as the moon. I slept with a hand whisk beneath my pillow. I should have known. The people I invent never turn out to be personable.Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5780694675600661716.post-26438501616903133192010-11-02T11:18:00.000-07:002010-11-02T11:26:07.211-07:00On the Mortality of SealsWhat is it that rends the seals, casts them corkscrewed ashore? The Scientists say it's some sort of propeller, but I will have no truck with that, with an answer so human and true. I would rather it were Skalugsuak, the sleeper shark, full fathom five with its wormridden eyes, centuries old and reeking of piss, biting bone-deep into the bias-cut blubber and nosing the corpses ashore. Or maybe the mermaids, holding their black-eyed lovers just a little too tight in their tooth-lined arms, their beaks fast in flesh as they spiral down to the ecstatic depths. Or is it me? Is that where I go at night, eeling through the abyss with my knife between my teeth? Is that why I wake up so salty and cold?Sack Possethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12149646494377478785noreply@blogger.com6