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I'm just a man but I know that I'm damned

All the dead seem to know where I am

Till it began on the night of my birth

We'll be done in a turn of the earth

Lie where I land let my bones turn to sand

I was born on the lake and I don't want to leave

Every eye on the coast ever more

Will remember the sight of the ghost on the shore

Under the waves and the earth of an age

Lie a thousand old northerners graves

Deep in the night when the moon's glowing bright

They come rising up into the night

Die if I must let my bones turn to dust

I'm the Lord of the lake and I don't want to leave

All who sail off the coast ever more

Will remember the tale of the ghost on the shore

I'm goin' away for a long time

I'm goin' away for a long time

The ghost on the shore

Lord Huron

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A day in Holloway 12:17 Thursday 16th of December

Holloway always makes me laugh. I was born here so maybe that's why I'm so funny. Everytime I'm here, which is often, something or somebody makes me laugh. Or leaves me in awe like for example when a boy sat at the purple old piano in nags head market and played the most furious dancing incredible thing I'd ever heard. Today I was in the charity shop and I bought a rosy pink mid length skirt with small laborious colourful flowers embroidered around the hem. AND a Uniqlo long sleeve pink t shirt! Uniqlo! For £2.50! Its so warm and soft and thick and it's going to help get me through the winter decently I should hope. Paul who works there, he's in his thirties I think, is tall and thin with lots of rings and ear piercings and a really slow mellow voice like the ginger boy from ratatouille. He's a gardener too, which I gauged from eavesdropping on a conversation with a friend of his who came in to talk. They had the most hilariously English matey beginning chat.

'hiya darling! how you doing!'

to which he replied

'alright alright I've been absolutely stretched out I'm working the shop alone today! Not in the greatest mood I won't lie to ya!'

and she said

'oh well I should tell you that that composting tip you gave me saved my life!'

They then started to talk about a child in West End who apparently died tragically ingesting rat poison and they both seemed so enraged.

Paul said

'It's everywhere for god's sake it's no wonder some poor childs stumbled across it and eaten it. That's all they know to just kill, kill kill like my god just leave the rats alone! These people have no regard for the sanctity of wildlife'

and then the woman said firmly with the satisfaction of having just come up with the perfect analogy and a harrumph at the end

'You know what I think? I think that they (?) Are to wildlife and habitat and nature what king herod was to babies.'

And so I

BURST out laughing

so suddenly because what she had said was so unexpected and she'd said it in such a serious abrupt way that I just couldn't have seen it coming. She heard me laughing and exclaimed with a small smile on her face

'its true! They're all criminals!'

Then she started talking about how she wasn't going to be giving away anymore seeds because she was 'financially screwed'. She then left and our next Holloway character a man dressed solidly and warmly and seemingly very clean, wandered in muttering Bible verses to himself. At least I think they were Bible verses but Ive never read the Bible. He kept asking no one but I suppose maybe god or Jesus or something

'what am I supposed to do?'

after proclaiming that

'Everyone's time will come.'

I am very used to seeing people walking around shouting and yelling to themselves around here but this one made me more tense for some reason. I suppose because he didn't seem like someone who would walk around muttering doomy condemnations from the Bible.

But then once he'd left Paul said apologetically

'Dont worry he comes in at least twice a week. Usually Bible verses. Or whatevers he's been watching on TV that day'

at which I laughed sincerely which I don't actually do very often in conversations with strangers because I'm usually too preoccupied with the objective of champing an interaction with a stranger, covering all bases; appropriate eye contact; manners; not mishearing them and embarrassing myself by telling them to keep the change when I actually still have to pay 50p. Which is very specific but also a true story.

Fittingly right after someone outside began to shriek and scream hysterically over and over, making us both laugh and give each other a

'haha. Holloway!'

look. Because that really is Holloway. My sister was on the bus here the other day and a woman threw a mango at the driver. Why a mango?

Our fourth character, was a much older middle Eastern or Mediterranean guy. He was struggling to bend down to pick up a blazer he'd dropped so I asked him if he needed any help and he said

'ah no no I'm good.'

Either way I picked it up and put it back on the hanger. Weirdly, he smelt exactly like my father and he had an accent similar too. He said 'thank you dear girl. You know I got this jacket for 40£! I never pay a lot for clothes. And a shirt that is 200£ in Italy for 15£!!!! Sometimes I look rich because my clothes are good and women want me because my clothes make me seem rich! Some women of course HAHAHAA (RAUCOUS LAUGH). Thank you dear girl.'

He then continued to chuckle to himself and muttered between laughing

'if I don't laugh about life it'll bite me!'

and then started flicking through the clothing racks going

'doesnt interest me doesn't interest me doesn't interest me boring boring doesn't interest me'.

So funny.

It began to rain almost feverishly so I hurried into the McDonald's because I was also pretty starving. These two old men next to me were talking and they seemed to know each other in the way local old people who do the rounds of their area everyday and sit in cafes saying hi to all their mates do. One guy had a bit of an American accent and a green jacket and a distinctly American face. In the way that mark ruffalo and woody Allen do. He had the most funny kind face. And the other guy in a black jacket was significantly older and very British. They talked and I didn't catch a lot of it but green jacket went

'i moved here 40 years ago. And if I've learnt one thing is that everyone gets on. That's what it is you work everyday and you get on'.

Black jacket at some point said

'ive been married for 54 years'

and green jacket replied

'i was born in 1954! What a coincidence'

and then said

'and my dad used to own a 54 Buick! Blue, it was blue. Buick special. 54 is a special number then!'

And then green jacket struck up conversation with an elderly woman sitting across us and I forgot what he said but it was really kind. He said something about her being blessed or whatever. Anyway . I don't know what I'll do for the rest of my day today.

13:29

His name is Gabriel! Green jacket guy! Gabriel L Mancino. I only know this because as I was walking towards my bus stop I saw him with a sign round his neck yelling and handing out copies of a little christmas zine which is sitting in my bag and I'll read when I get home. He told me he hoped it blessed me and he told me liked my bag, so jovially. Then I told him I liked his jacket and he told me that made him happy because it belonged to his brother who died. Obviously I stopped to talk to him and I took one because it was free. I hope I see him again. So yep Gabriel L mancino born in 1954, whose dad drove a 54' blue Buick.

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30th January 16:33

The Fields

The breeze touched my cheeks and cooled my skin, playing with my hair and very gently dancing it around. I felt my heart beat slow and my breath steady to a velvet pace. Warm soft serenity spread in my chest looking at the rose fuzz bloom in the mosaic of pale green, orange, blue and grey that made up the sky. Pink clouds settling towards the sunset line deep rose and saturated with jewels of peach and gold. Outlined with a motley of all those colours. I couldn't see where one colour started and the other ended. They seemed to be one colour extending into different versions of each other. The song playing from my phone as I sat alone, made me cry like it often does. The lyric 'but I can't help falling in love with you' in its sweet melody felt so directed completely towards the sky. I felt that I was telling the sky how much I loved it.

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Jewelled Saffron Persian Rice

Tahdig

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The art of simple rice (Jasmine or Basmati)

- Wash rice three times

- Soak for half an hour In order to get rid of any starch so that the grain can absorb water without becoming sticky (the older the rice the better, 4-5 years)

- use 1:2 ratio of water to rice

- salt the water in the pot

- cook until the surface of the rice forms little holes and all the water has been absorbed

- add green garden peas. Raisins. Or anything you like really

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The smell of water

If he could describe the smell of water, had anyone asked this man, whose knees had long begun to ache with every laborious step he took and whose eyes had grown sore and weak with age, his answer would have been more certain and clearer than his joints or his sight. He knew it, because as a pensive young boy, brows always knit tightly above his eyes, he had begun to make a comprehensive mental list of the smells he loved the most. A fascination like this, with smells, began one day in the golden rustling of autumn when as a small thin child, he watched his mother pour small black hard shelled pods into a pot of shimmering bubbling liquid. Soon, warmth and sugar and a smell that felt like the plump arms of his mother and her mellow comfortable voice filled the air, made his chest feel soft with sweetness. How louse like black beads could entrench his senses with something so delightful made way for a new intense curiosity for all other smells. So when he stood on the tips of his dusty worn shoes, small, splayed, uncertain hands gripping the edge of his homes splintered, old and only table, and positioned his nose above a glass patterned jug of water, the slight chill on the tip of his nose and the sight of the fluid crystal clear water, satisfied his need to understand what could possibly be the smell of water. The smell of water was just that. The delicious coolness that seemed to emanate from the jug and settle upwards onto his sun beaten cheeks. The gentle bobbing of the water casting brilliant shards of white light into his eyes. This had to constitute a smell, at least to a child of six. And so now, as he made his way through a rocky uneven path that would, at this stage of his body's deterioration, have usually proved a challenge, the absence of long accustomed to- pain and the cool relief with which it came, he likened to the smell of water. Not only had his body been returned to feeling the way which he'd taken for granted for years. The fog that had settled over his mind after years of his worrisome gaze fixed to his ceiling in the early hours of morning, of a heart thorned with the difficulty of being human, it had condensed and turned to rain. It washed away and cleansed his head of all the deep set grime of worry and fear that had begun to lodge in his minds corners as he toiled through life's seasons of love, misunderstanding, of grief and of responsibility. Paradise smelt of water absolutely.

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Most days

I borrow from the life force of myself

in the days coming after

The days ahead

To coast through this day

Just till Its time to rest

Till I can shut my eyes

feel my bones crack and break

From the casted mould

I stood in today

If put enough sugar in my veins

If I make myself cosy

With layers when it rains

If I take something quick

To dull the pains

Perhaps I will just get through today