Skinning a Cat

There are many ways to do this. One way would be to write a story about skinning a cat, or rather writing a story in anticipation of the act of skinning a cat, detailing the events leading up to the skinning and taking pleasure in leaving the reader guessing as to the nature of the skinning whilst leaving him in no doubt that the skinning will take place. Another way would be to carry out the skinning alone and with definitive skill and directness, letting no-one other than the object of the skinning and (let's say the cat) and possibly your former mother-in-law (let's say the cat's mother) know that the skinning will take place, then revelling publicly after the act. The third way is to completely ignore the cat, and indeed the cat's mother, in the hope they skin themselves, or get stuck up a tree, or are ripped apart by dogs.

Lettuce

He sat down to write a story without realising that it would turn into one of those stories about origins of words, the type he writes on a fairly regular basis even though his girlfriend hates them. What he wanted to write was a story about an unnamed female character, about how, if she were an edible plant, she would be a lettuce, whereas he (an unnamed he, of course) would be something like a dandelion. But he couldn't resist looking up the etymology of the word 'lettuce' and was hardly surprised when he found out that it had the same root as the word 'lactation' and the French word 'lait'.

He already knew the origin of the word 'dandelion' of course, but had temporarily forgotten the plant's alternative name: piss-a-bed.

Indecision and the Bird Box

First he painted the front panel of the wooden bird box red because that is the colour of his wife's hair, then he painted the roof of the bird box yellow because that is the colour of the shirts worn by his favourite football team, then he painted the sides royal blue because that is the colour of his son's school uniform, then he repainted the roof mauve because that was the colour of the envelope containing his seventeenth birthday card from his first real long-term girlfriend, then he repainted the front with its perfectly circular hole a kind of autumn-leaf orange because it reminded him of the wood fire on the camping trip at the turn of the millenium when he had shared a sleeping bag with a girl whose name he could no longer remember, then he repainted the sides magenta because it looked good, then he repainted the roof pink because that was the colour of the bow in the hair of the girl who worked in the cafe where he had just had two black coffees, then he repainted half of the roof aquamarine and the other half tangerine because he thought the rhyme would symbolise his love of writing poetry, then he painted the back grey like his grandfather's hair and his grandfather is dead now, then he painted the whole thing the same colour as the garden wall because someone told him this would deter cats, then he hung it on the garden wall but it was already the twenty-second of May and the birds had built their nests in trees and eaves.

Shakespeare is a Bread Roll

Human decency dictates that a beautiful girl shouldn't wear a bread roll as a hat, particularly when working with the public.

It is not the bow in the girl's hair that makes her pleasant to look at, beautiful even, but it is this bow that I first noticed about her and that my eyes keep coming back to. It is a simple bow - pale pink and positioned slightly to the left of the girl's head, riding the tight swell of her hair, which she wears up in a kind of wispy bun while working.

The bow is not a bread roll.

But the girl is selling bread rolls, and every time I see the pink bow I imagine that the girl has put a bread roll on her head, and I am forced to look at it, despite or because of her beautiful face.

I have started a story with an observation about bread rolls, and now a bread roll has afflicted my story.

Next to me in the cafe is a boy, roughly five years old, talking to his friend about constructing an army of Lego. I imagine that he is called Fortinbras although his mother has just called him Archie. Now Shakespeare has infiltrated and afflicted my story; like Goethe said, Shakespeare is an overgrown tree that has stifled all of literature.

A bread roll to me is like Shakespeare was to Goethe.

Six Moveable Stories

Alarming shawls fell off obvious shoulders.

Simple jaws moved with certain pleasures.

Soft eyes closed on dubious windows.

Electric fingers clamped over dubious mouths.

Symmetrical shoes hovered about illicit streets.

Prepared animals die for malleable humans.

Dream: Louise Brooks and the Giant Worm

A giant earthworm, its tongue a two-foot poisonous metal rod, drives an eastern European car through a seemingly deserted modern housing estate. After a while Louise Brooks emerges from one of the houses and defeats the worm in unarmed combat.

Later, I spend hours thinking about how a worm with no arms could possibly drive a car. This leads me to doubt whether what I think I've dreamt is actually what I have dreamt, whether it was Louise Brooks at all, and not Katy Perry or Lenny Henry. Whether the detail of the eastern European car was made up after I finished dreaming.

Later still I wake up and pull several long knitting needles out of my ear.

The Philosopher and the Pedant

She has said that their relationship could be on the brink of attaining some kind of Aristotelian eudaemonia, but that in order for this to happen he needs to buck his ideas up. Just a bit, but enough to equal her high standards, she seems to be implying.

But as well as being the type of woman that talks about eudaemonia in in everyday life, she is also the type of woman who says 'fine tooth-comb' instead of 'fine-toothed comb' and 'ATM machine' instead of just 'ATM', and eudaemonia is impossible, he thinks, when such basic principles are violated.

The Colours in the Courtyard

Red, orange, yellow, cream, beige, white. Made-up colours like ochre, terracotta, fawn.

But mostly orange.

A sign warns people to keep off the grass, although the colours indicate, or rather dictate, that there is no grass.

A tiny rodent, possibly a shrew, scampers across the courtyard. From forty feet away it looks like marble rolling down a hill. The effect is heightened by the fact that the courtyard slopes slightly, although the slope is on the very edge of perception.

In the other direction a wonan pushes a hospital trolley on which another woman lies. All that is visible of this second woman is her face, heavily made-up.

The woman pushing the trolley seems to be expending little or no energy, although she is going slightly uphill. She cuts straight across the courtyard, does not take the path around the edge. She is wearing blue.

She has ruined the illusion of steepness created by the dust-coloured rodent.

A Short Story About Joey Barton

Matthew decided to buy his wife a really nice bottle of white zinfandel. On his way to Thresher's he glanced into the front room of his neighbours, the aspirational couple with Sky Sports. On the TV in their front room Joey Barton petulantly kick another footballer as he was being sent from the field of play. Matthew hated Joey Barton, as most sensible people do. The scoreline he saw on the screen suggested that an interesting finish was in prospect, particularly as Barton's team now had only ten men on the pitch, so Matthew decided to find the nearest pub and watch the conclusion of the match. The result went the way he hoped it would, but that's not the point. Luckily his relationship with Ellie did not suffer as a result of Joey Barton's antics, but that's not the point either. The point is that the relationship could have improved. There is no way of knowing what new avenues that one bottle of wine may have opened up.

The moral of the story: Joey Barton is responsible for the stagnation of the human race.

The Giant Squirrel Story

Of course, when he went into work all of his colleagues had turned into giant talking squirrels. That was the predictable bit. He wasn't sure whether or not he was a squirrel too, so he checked the mirror. He was still a human. Slightly hungover, panda eyes, but definitely human.

He checked his emails. There were thirteen new messages, all from squirrels. But work was no more or less difficult than usual. He let the squirrel thing lie.

He went on his lunch break and looked in the fridge in the staff room. Part of him expected it to be full of nuts. But it wasn't. Of course not. It was full of smoothies and Cadbury's Dairy Milks and falafel. Why on earth would intelligent giant squirrels limit themselves to nuts? He was angry with himself for thinking such a thing. It indicated he was losing his grip on reality.

Human Thoughts Are Poisonous To Geese

A thought is something that is trapped. When a thought is trapped inside a human casement the human casement often expires without the potentiality of the thought being realised.

Countless thoughts are lost in this way.

Sometimes thoughts are interred with human bodies and provide food for brainless organisms.

Sometimes human bodies are burned. Rising as smoke, burnt thoughts choke birds.

In Norfolk one evening I saw a perfect equilateral triangle of migratory geese, like a Masonic symbol in the flat sky. The geese were honking out the ashes of burnt thoughts. Human thoughts fell noisily like rain and were gathered by a huge artificial landscape into ditches dug by men.

The Dream of Two Perfect Stories

Both stories took place in the same dream and in the same street. In the dream the sunlight pervaded both stories, and the sunlight was perfect. The bath in the first short story was perfect. The sides were white and shiny, with no trace of limescale. It was so perfect that a man would not be able to climb out of it: a perfect bath shows up our human imperfections. A man in a perfect bath is like a spider. Also in this dream the shop window where the bath stood was perfect. Perfect glass is perfectly transparent, but you know it is there. The light reflects off it in a singular way, only found in dreams.

I was not present in the first part of the dream or in the first story.

In the second story the light was perfect and the glass was perfect, but someone had knocked over the plants. This was what I had been dreading: I knew it would make me forget the first story. The plants were in the front garden - they had been perfect tomato plants, but only one of them was left standing. I thought this was an imperfection, and I thought that because of the imperfection I would remember the second perfect story perfectly, but this wasn't the case.

Blurb

Etienne Cortez's new book examines the importance of geometry in early twentieth-century Russian art, from the early influence, via Ouspensky, of Gurdjieff and the mathematician-mystics on Kasimir Malevich, the doyen of Suprematism, to the parallels with De Stijl and Constructivist design. Cortez makes special reference to the political and social development of the Russian avant-garde alongside the conception and birth of a new Suprematist grammar within the language-world of art.

Etienne Cortez is 18 months old, likes to eat cheese and lives inside a teapot.

9 Conditions

1) It appeals to all ages

2) Its appeal is inexplicable

3) It can fit into a very small physical space

4) It does not seek to play a social role

5) Its heart will beat and its colour stay fresh only for as long as it can be viewed or heard

6) It is shaped like a conch or a castanet

7) It requires no glue or other solvents

8) It is easily transported by hand

9) It has no fur or feathers

Unfinished Sentences

I entered the
On the floor was what looked like a
I kept my eyes on the 20-Euro note until it was lost amongst feet and pierced
At this point I realised it was not a note but
The table next to mine became
I looked at the walls, which were brown and reddish-brown, and noticed that there was no
I found this odd, in fact I
I finished my coffee and got up to leave, at which point I realised that I was incapable of

Mystick

He held her leg in one hand and the tweezers in the other and got a good firm hold on the tick's bulbous abdomen. He twisted slightly and pulled - righty tighty, lefty loosey - but the tick was more stubborn than the ones he has pulled out of his dog. He gave it a good tug. It came free with a sort of screaming sound, right on the edge of hearing. He held it up to the light so that they could both take a good look at it. It seemed to have tiny fists, and was waving them in the air, like a small, pissed-up Irishman.

And the tick spoke.

'Pauper's Faith will win the 3.15 at Redcar.' The voice sounded like a knife being sharpened.

Then it died.

He began to search the rest of her body, gently and lovingly.

Notes on a Type of Non-Physical Pain

It is excruciating, he thought, and thought about the word excruciating.

We get the word cross from the same place on the creased map of Latin etymology.

They both link back to torture, trouble, misery. He would say on another, less preoccupied day that Christianity embodies all of these things.

But at the moment he is not in physical pain. The excruciating thing is the waiting, which can be defined as the time spent thinking about a particular event that may or may not happen in the future; thinking about it to the exclusion of other thoughts.

A waiting man often holds his arms out to embrace what may or may not be coming. In doing so, he forms a cross.