Fucking. It’s all I could see through all the smoke. Fucking. A mound of flesh and limbs writhing and surging with ecstasy. It was the smell that burnt my nostrils. Out of the haze I could make out a huge rock of hash, maybe a few meters high. Once in a while a scrawny ginger one would break from the pack and hack large chunks off the rock, grind them in a pepper shaker, and rejoin the group again. Kevy looked at me from the stage. He was playing his Steve Vai solo to a backing track for probably the 30th time now. He looked like a human tea bag in his vest, the self proclaimed hob goblin of rock scraped in his chest. I blacked out….

‘I miss him.
Maybe it’s not that I miss him. I guess I just miss sleeping next to someone.
You know, it’s not even that.. I just sort of miss having somebody thinking about me. Somebody to cuddle. Someone I could give a damn about.
Maybe I just miss saying I love you.
He wasn’t perfect. Pretty nuts, objectively. And we had so little in common.
He was so immature, so messed up. I’m not even sure if I loved him, how can you tell?’

I shuffled foot to foot uncomfortably. Christ, but Peter’s eulogy was overly honest.

Before us, Henry’s tiny casket sat on canvas sheeting next to the grave. It’s size a tragic reminder of his youth.

Read the rest of this entry »

The tall man in a green polo neck climbed down the fire escape ladder and ran to the car. His shiny brown leather shoes rang on the concrete pavement. As he reached the car he gasped two long hard breaths as his grabbed at the neck of the jumper. His other hand fumbled for his keys.

Read the rest of this entry »

You know how sometimes an overhyped album full of tracks which would sound unoriginal to an fifteen year old NME intern, but which, due to its constant rotation on MTV vanilla / base / 2 / flux / overdrive / dance / mobile / hits, VH1, VH1 Classic and TMF, has sold platinum and won everything from a Mercury to a MOBO, lands in your lap, and surprise, it’s shittier than McCain’s y fronts after half a decade at the Hanoi Hilton?

This is nothing like that.

Zero 7 are a deceptively unambitious band, producing some of the most innovative eclectic chillout since 3D spilled a metric shit tonne of E into the Bristol reservoir in ‘93.

Read the rest of this entry »

She walks with tiny steps, which are designed to make her look as if she is floating. This only works if she wears long flowing skirts, but she only has rags now, the stained and ripped remnants of once fine garments. So her gait looks stumbling, as if her feet are tied together. Perhaps she’ll fall.

He walk, the dress, so much more about her speak of so much forgotten hope, of crushed dreams and dreadful sorrow. Her eyes are shrunken, the dark rings beneath look deflated, as if someone let out all the air. She has cried so much that the wrinkles of her cheeks have formed craggy little riverlettes leading salt water away from her bloodshot darting little eyes.

But there is still strength there too. Again its her walk that gives it away. She’d get further if she opened her legs, a little, but continues her chaste little march.

So is this why you love her, her ever defiant strength, that despite so much she still stumbles on?

You are wrong. This is not strength, its is cowardice and weakness. If she was brave she would lie down and accept her life. She would stop taking baby steps and walk. She’s holding herself back, trying to do nothing, desperate to do something, always moving in a parody of movement, in tiny baby steps, as if her feet are tied together, but designed to make her look as if she’s floating.

As the days lengthened and summer approached, Anton thought of Anna Sergeyevna and her little Pomeranian, white against the hot black cobbles of Yalta. In the mornings he would write, and each evening walk the warming lanes of Alushta. Try as he might, he could not forget her fragile beauty, her grey eyes and tearful countenance.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dublin has a burgeoning café scene, with enough choice for anyone to find somewhere to feel at home in, and after all, what is a café but home with someone else making the sandwiches? Other than your ma. From the bohemian chic of Café Irie and Gruel, to the commercialism and luxury(-ish) of Starbucks and Butlers Chocolate Café, the full spectrum of Dublin’s cafés are united by one central characteristic: they are all cripplingly expensive.

Anyway, for all you lovely people with more money than sense here’s Jackdaw Fool’s guide to Dublin’s cafés.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nazi ducks attacked the swan and killed it. Dark red blood stained its white feathers, and its black eyes misted grey. They were no end of trouble, the ducks, and when the parish council said they’d pay five pounds for every Nazi duck killed Mr Greenwitch got a greedy look across his fat face. He set off down to the pool where the river slowed and the ducks were known to hangout, with a shot gun and a big bag to put his enemies in. The next day he was found floating face down about a mile down stream, the ducks circling him and quacking raucously. They were blood thirsty to be sure and arrogant as anything. The reward was increased and open season was declared, but no one else had the heart to try.

Read the rest of this entry »

‘Any and all extraneous, superfluous or suspicious nipples will be kept private and confidential’.

The sign reassured me a little. Still, I was nervous. This would be my first full body massage. Next to me in the tiny lobby, sat an old lady with one of those permanently slanted, shaky heads. Across from us, filling a seat meant for two, a stout business man fiddled with his tom bowler. He caught me looking, and smiled lasciviously. I smiled back, though not with the mouth he could see. A bell mounted above the door rang softly.

Miss Bloom?’

Read the rest of this entry »

The importance of Hildebrand to his children was negligible. They barely noticed him at all, nor should they, he hadn’t seen them since he’d left to open a beach bar, back when they were three and four, and the last thing he ever said to them was not to trust their mother, ’she’s a bitch’ and to ‘keep an eye on your money ‘round her’.

No, they had never really thought of him at all, except when their mom cried or shouted. They associated that with him. Not that it was related to him at all, she hardly thought of him either, but she was rather free with her emotions. Her own mother had told her that if you felt like crying you should, or it would twist your head, and as such she cried when she felt at all sad and laughed when happy. It made people wary around her, she appeared volatile but was really just honest.

Indeed Hildebrand barely remembered he was ever married, or that twice he had tried to persuade his wife that they weren’t ready for a child and twice she had quietly said it was her decision, and loved him a little less. But then this story isn’t about them next door, and him what used to live there. But it is about their garden.

Read the rest of this entry »