The Lost Lighthouses of Siberia

This afternoon I visited the always fantastic Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, a slightly oddly put together gallery attached to Manchester University and making up one corner of the much maligned Whitworth Park. At the moment there is a fantastic exhibition by Jane and Louise Wilson titled The Toxic Camera detailing some of the after effects of Chernobyl. Chernobyl has always fascinated me: in particular because of the abandoned buildings, slowly decaying relics of a lost time and place. I have always loved abandoned buildings and wondering what stories they contained, what events happened there which are now perhaps lost forever.

The Tunnel

There is a scratching on the floor, in the floor in front of my desk. A frantic scratching a scrabbling, scuffling, scrofulous, scratching which only I can hear. I noticed it when they moved me to the new desk I had never heard it before and neither had anyone else. I asked Diane who sits next to me if she can hear the scratching but she says she can’t hear a thing. I asked Dan in IT if it was something to do with my computer but he can’t hear it either. It has been nearly a month and still no one can hear it but me.

A Confession

I often put myself forward as a Sci-Fi fan. There is a lot to of evidence to back up this assertion: I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Star Trek, one of my favourite films is Blade Runner, I have a collection of Isaac Asimov books on my shelf. Hell I have a selection of flipping Larry Niven books on my shelf. This would seem to be all the evidence to prove that I am both a massive Sci-Fi dork and a boring person to talk to at a party. While the later is certainly true the former is not for one simple reason: I have never seen Alien.

The Trouble With Being a Prophet

Much like half the people on the planet Earth (apparently) I have always been interested in American politics. I'm not entirely sure why that is; perhaps it is the dominance of American culture and media, perhaps it is because their top guy has the ability to blow up the world like some crazy super-villain, perhaps it is because American politics has just always seemed a lot more dynamic and variable when compared to our own moribund democracy. Regardless of the reason I have a lot of fun following American politics and have always enjoyed trying to predict the outcome.

An Update

So I'm dealing with some pretty serious writer’s block at the moment. I've written a couple of stories which I'm happy with but I don’t really feel that they are right for this blog, and I'm actually thinking about possibly submitting them to a competition which means not publishing them on here. Apart from that I'm short on inspiration on the story front. I've though about making some politics posts but they are either a bit derivative or just make me depressed. So what’s the post below? It’s about struggling with inspiration which is a bit self-absorbed and wanky I admit but it’s all I've got and hopefully it’s kind of interesting.

Train Tales

A double feature this week with a couple of observational bits written on a trip to Leeds and back, starring one of my favourite trains: the Trans-Pennine Express. Why is it a favourite? Well I get it a lot and I've got to assume whoever named the line is Kraftwerk fan. Plus the service is generally decent.

Trans-Pennine Express 02/09/12

The iPod cut out. What had once been the soothing sounds of Belle & Sebastian were transformed first to silence and then, more gradually, to the lilting vague conversation of the carriage which moves along in time with the rocking of the train and clank of the points.

He fumbled with the aging music box, desperately trying to return his distraction. But the electronics inside were as unresponsive to his wishes as the machine’s case suggested. What had once been gleaming pure blackness with a bright silver-white apple on its back had faded with the years and was now dull, chipped and scratched.

Against his wishes the sounds of the carriage filled his ears and then his mind. Two pockmarked teenage boys argued loudly over the benefits of orcs, whilst the Chinese girl sat next to them avoided the conversation through the intense study of an empty Burger King bag.

Behind her the fat belly of a man clad in neckbeard and taut My Little Pony T-shirt collided sporadically with the clear Perspex wall separating the seats from the doors. This slapping provided strange irregular percussion to the group of rugby fans who loudly and drunkenly carried the chants they had collected in the stands of Warrington and Saint Helens back with them across the hills.

One of the teenage boys desperately covered his mention of Thomas the Tank Engine by reference to an apocryphal nephew, the fat brony glared.

The iPod sputters back into life.

Trans-Pennine Express 03/09/12

Despite the people the train seems empty of life as it races through the dark and seemingly endless hills where in the gloom the distinction between track and tunnel becomes philosophical to all but the driver. What life there is in here moves so slow as to be almost indiscernible.

A couple are on their way to Huddersfield and then from to their homes in the hills above. Both she and he are worn down by years of weather and drink. She pulls out her phone and finds someone to give her a lift from the station; he feels an aching pain stir in a long broken heart.

Two men from the east of Europe munch on burgers and between bites of waking with the crack of dawn and the dreams they share of an imagined America, the hope that it proves better than the reality found in Britain. There words are whispered delicately as if in fear that should any other hear yet another fragile illusion will be smashed.

Only two others sit in this carriage. One taps and pecks absentmindedly at the screen a glossy red pad, I scribble and scrawl in a beaten black notebook.

The guard walks in then she yawns loudly and stretches against the door, paying no regard to tickets. In the blackness the Trans-Pennine Express rolls on.

What have I been up to lately?

As you may have noticed all I’ve been doing on this blog recently is posting stories, and I imagine most of you are very frustrated at not being able to read about my thrilling life or my opinions on politics, music, and so forth so I have decided to write something which should hoefully lay your mind to rest. Probably one of the main reasons I haven’t been posting all the other gubbins that I originally meant to when I started this thing is that I’ve been saving it for my podcast which if you don’t know is called Errand of Mercy, details on our facebook page. Once you’ve clicked on that link you should almost certainly “like” the page and probably subscribe to the show, and then force all your friends or loved one to “like” it too BY WHATEVER MEANS NECCESARY! I still do have opinions though so I’m hoping that now that I have a bit more time on my hands you’ll start seeing a few more of those from time to time.

“Why do you have more time Geraint?” you ask (I assume), well dear reader that is because one month ago I quit my job. There are a lot of reasons I left the job, and I’m not going into all of them here but essentially:

1)      I didn’t enjoy it.

2)      I felt exhausted all the time and didn’t have time to do anything with the money I was making.

3)      I realised I should probably do what I actually “want” to do rather than what I feel I “ought” to do.

Having free time has been great and has meant I’ve been able to do a lot of things I hadn’t been able to do in the months when I was working, not least of which is managing to get rather a lot of writing done and finally edit some of the things I’d finished quite a while before hand. Of course I’ve also managed to spend a lot of time watching TV, playing video games, and reading comics which while nice is probably a bit less productive and fulfilling us of all this time I have. I suppose the point I really want to reach is demostrated in the picture below where a group of men have done what they "ought" to (chopping down a tree) and have also managed to do what they "want" to (pose for a totally sweet photo), whether I manage to achieve it is a different matter but these lumberjacks fill me with hope.

Where do I go from here? I’m not sure to is the short answer, the slightly longer perhaps more medium length answer is that I’m hoping to do some travelling using the last few pennies I have stashed away and am currently making plans to go and bum round Europe for a. In the longer term provided I don’t win the lottery or get offered some amazing dream job I’m looking at going back to university and actually doing that PhD I probably should have been doing anyway. In the meantime you can continue to enjoy some of my stories and musings and what not which I imagine you’ll be getting on a much more regular basis from now on.