downwritefiction

Saturday, 1 August 2015

2015 Summer Beach Book Bitch

Ten Top

Editor's Comment:

A thumping good book does your head good.

No. 1: Teach Yourself Geek

Little Brown Jug, £45

Caught on the bloody beach without your AK47, what you need is a joystick that can move mountains. Spirol Agenue's Teach Yourself Geek was written in a corkscrew elevator stuck on the switchback, forcing its author to face his own existential nightmare. The result is a tome you'll read hiding under your chaise longue, or between gulps of air as you drift slowly out to sea covered only by a sagging Lilo. Bundled free with Kindle Waterproof.

No. 2: Fit On The Fiddle*

Random Bag, £9.04

In last summer's fast foodie fest, Fat For Free, Sally Bumkick's pendulum swung on benefits. Now she's after share issues. Cabinet Miser Ruddy – Great Food Bank Swindle - Rottweiler sheds a few miserable pounds & claws back several million with stock options on charity shops. Just as VAT cashbacks became dole to the rich, Rottweiler's Poverty Bonds are set to reach investment slot No. 1. Sandpaper-backed & cash-strapped for staleness.

*nffs in The Channel Islands, Isle of Gods or Canvey.

No. 3: Dr. Amstrad Pfaertkettle's Bunion Mix

Callard & Bowser, 6/- a pound

An MD with fifty years service on her pegs at nostalgic Woolworth's sweet counters, Dr Pfaertkettle knows what tastes good to eat between snacks. Varicose veins in red liquorice, aniseed toe nail scratchings, marzipan verucas & candied heels all dusted with sherbet foot-rot mean Bunion Mix isn't much of a novel or even a work of fiction. It isn't quite a book either, but at one shilling & sixpence for four ounces, who's reading the tin?

No. 4: Grow Your Own Carbuncles by Cameron Worstcase writing as Beverly Undercoat

DIY part works, free with paint & screws

Jewel in the crown or boil on the forehead? Third Eye Sore or just a wonder to behold? Controversy rages not over the SASCO (size, age, shape, colour & origin) of these controversial gimcracks but the cores of their crabby apples. Which god has given them respite, eh? Fish or goat? Anyhow, with a creaking good plot, writing that is sour-cherry ice-cream & a twist at the end - shampoo corks will be popping out of your ears.

No. 5: Pumpkin on the Couch

HMSO, £95

What constitutes therapy nowadays? Piranha spas for flaky feet, porcupine combs for teeth & gums, bad haircuts for Greek waiters, stolen cheese hats for Guardian readers & English for travellers with second hand luggage? So what's the dose for the psychotic pumpkin? To whom can catatonic cucumbers be taken in a crisis? At which mooring does one tie-up the marrow boat that has lost its canal route? Indeed, few squashes are served buttered. Lydia Hotbathnot's third attempt to novelise Pumpkin On The Couch syndrome should never have left her agent's ash-tray. There is no plot & no characters, beyond a sack of old spuds - tickled pink to their author's whim.

No. 6: Kick Out The Preservatives by Aska Chum

Little Brown Jug, 40 guineas

Natural family planning gets back in mode with a salacious augmentation of the Rhythm Method. Aroused already, eh? Then be a jammy blighter & read this rollicking good yarn of life outside the scum bag. Of course, KOtP is not for the squeamish - or those who require a high fibre content in their moral diet. But anyone seeking a dose of carnal laxative will enjoy this rude romp through the forecourts & alleys of Gotham, Knotts.

No. 7: The Cure For Snoring by Thorp Spinotorque

Cockroach Press, £15

Doubtless the definite article entitling this massive, eleven hundred page bildungsroman, a tome owner/readers are not recommended to hit themselves over the head with, can be used as a pillow. A cure, in fact, is that notwithstanding reference to indie bands of the 1980s still standing... and other even longer, unfinished sentences, hijacked half way through and, like the proverbial key down the back (or is that hiccups?) works or doesn't work either by magic, as if. And there you have itzzz... ZZzzzzzz... ZZZzzzz... Of many, many good tunes, clever lyrics and ¡Free Cherry Lipbalm!

No. 8: Unlearn Redundant Lines by Wolfram Belcher

Random Bag, £9.04

This semi-automated novel parser deletes excess CTRL & REM terms & purges the system of ageing 8- and 16-bit words. Includes options to wipe source directories of outdated, superseded & side-kicked PEEKs; plus prompts to edit out anomalous POKE & empty LOOPs. Machine codes ALL statements up to go-faster mode.

No. 9: Send No Blankets by Toluene Fowlup

Secret Hill, 60p

Disaster for colonists on Mars has alarm bells clanging on Canvey. Who called what from where? Grab the mike, Wilco. Now hear this. There ain't no coming back. Hic. Last orders please. Line 'em up. Can't split a note that big this time of day. No tick - what d'you fink this is, a gas giant? Are we ready, boys? Four, nine, three, eight, none. Stick your head between your knees and kiss Uranus goodnight.

No. 10: Parrots of the Carob Bean

Little Brown Jug, £85

The only graphic novel on this year's list doubles as a colouring book & rainbow number therapy vol.. Winner of all seven Grimm dwarves & children of advanced age, Mariella Pussyfoot's costume romp stars a crew of one-eyed, one-legged, single-minded wing-&-a-prayer ceiling gazers. Contains walk-on parts for lap-tankards, strip-plasterers & bottle-top croupiers. 70s retro riffs by Mat The Hippie.

Now Read On!

Wednesday, 1 July 2015

Boat People - Summer Special

Inflatable on Kos Beach 01

new series old episode

what's novel about reality

is how its never-ending reruns

get us hooked on the heebie-jeebies

meek as lambs braying in abattoirs

mechanised murder goes round the malls

church & school halls its ring o'hell's bells

broadcasting from built-in cameras tells

all from the bombers' Facebook pratfalls

to their teenage genocide boudoirs

just think what flat screens have done for war

what war has done for car sharing pools

how few real men are left now their souls

skit or scat with the heebie-jeebies

for oh what sitcoms are fan fiction's

take on fake this broke reality

Inflatable on Kos Beach 02

10,000 years of improvised seafaring

the turning point came late in the 70s

until then Boat People

were a neolithic eco-culture

archaeologists had conjectured

from log canoes preserved in the silts

of North European estuaries

museum pieces that dated them

to between the 4^th & 8^th millennia BCE

as the last great Ice Age receded

the Boat People were deer hunters

who adapting to the warmer climate

perfected the antler adze

constructed vessels from tree trunks

& navigated coastal waters as sea-fishers

then came the fall of Saigon

after which reporters applied

the term Boat People to refugees

fleeing in overcrowded craft

across the South China Sea

a narrative preserved in press cuttings

on film & through oral history archives

moreover actual memories live on

in flashes of those lost overboard

of others who failed ashore

& in longings for ancestral lands

which nowadays are exploited

by the succeeding eco-culture

whose folk tales also recall the departed

III

apparently escaping religious bigotry

politics & poverty today's Boat People

are POCs taking to the waves again

this time via PVC inflatables

which in typical cases they paddle

from Afro-Asian peninsulas to islands

under Western economic condominium

the quality of pity & revulsion

attendant on these intrepid voyagers

has already entered urban nomenclature

causing the term Boat Person to be vocalised

both as insult & compassionate expression

depending where a speaker's empathies

have taken root or are nurtured

whether arising from act of god

or in human intervention the drive

to call folks Boat People is commonest

amongst politicians pundits

coast guards & reporters

in whose tracts the term survives

insistent as waves persistent

as the surge in ocean levels

we must wait to see if Boat People

undergoes further metamorphoses

as profounder geophysical shifts

& sharper swings in religious politics occur

or if the term acquires universal currency

when the tide of human settlement returns

Inflatable on Kos Beach 03

this human project

as someone press-ganged into the movement

& bound to admit most of its mistakes

were mine I must be pushing it to write

yet all along I felt when opening

the daily gazette Jesus wept who said

nothing could or should be done about it

folks are going down & the world is too

unconcerned about this human project

to save us as a species like so what

they come they go dragging others with them

or not soon it'll be some other lot

Discarded lifejackets on Kos beach 01

Discarded lifejackets on Kos beach 02

Discarded lifejackets on Kos beach 03

Inflatable on Kos Beach 04

Monday, 1 June 2015

Hey what's new, CND?

Squash anyone?

When I see a beat up pair of shoes, a jacket or any old piece of tat laid out on the roadside, my mind flips into Survivalist Mode. I become one of that handful of folk left after the world's been devastated by nuclear war. Because it's hard for us New Age Sewer Rats to get basic stuff like food and clothing, anything we find becomes valuable. Even that oversized pair of trainers - heels frayed, lace missing - could be life-savers. Struggling to shake myself free of this morbid, sentimental fantasy, my eyes are drawn into the pathetic vortex of tat.

Having spent much of my late twenties on campaigns against nuclear weapons, I suppose these Survivalist Tendencies comes from then. Not that it was politically OK at that time to think anyone would get through an atomic war and the nuclear winter that followed. In the Peace Movement, the party line was pretty much against such talk, but I was never one for conforming – even as a non-conformist peacenic, I preferred to think my own thoughts. In fact, I never really believed that humans would be so stupid as to actually destroy themselves anyway.

I held onto my private view whether I was talking with other anti-nuclear campaigners or in banter with the opposition. I believed it was because people like us were protesting that the descent into total madness would be stopped. And whenever someone on the right accused us of siding with the Warsaw Pact and - as they frequently did - asked us why the Russians were not free to protest as we were, I wouldn't be drawn. Too often, we relished the eastern European TV camera crews that followed us around and took more interest in us than the BBC or ITV. I felt the act of protesting was not to persuade anyone that we were right and the other side were wrong. I suppose it was an existentialist thing, a piece of theatre.

Nowadays, living as an exile, I have to be objective in other parts of my life - not able or willing to get too involved with local issues. And on a personal level, I take some responsibilities more seriously than they deserve, and others I just shirk; such as when I know it's time to lighten up, I might still turn moody or bloody minded. Conversely, I can also let things slide and just coast along while the coast is clear. As an exile, I can just say to myself, So what? - as if I don't give a damn (though, of course, I do care). This is a kind of objective corollary.

Scratch A-side

As a result, I believe in recycling ideas to no obvious, immediate end; read old books and review them as though they were just out (click on, "Tatty Old Reads" above). To compose long narrative verses in outdated forms that hip Poetry Magz will but rarely accept. The act of doing is all that counts. So, let's hear it for CND!