Yesterday I came home from work to a room thick with black dust. The plasterers are in, re-doing the upstairs of our crumbling, neglected Victorian terraced house. They’ve taken the ceiling down in Cassie’s room but didn’t tell us beforehand so there was no warning for my poor pile of clean washing, my bedsheets and defenceless laptop on the floor. I opened my door to a room that felt aged, like I was coming into a different time period, one that I hadn’t existed in for a very long time and all my things had been left untouched and forgotten.
I’ve been reading Local Fires by Joshua Jones. A short story collection where all the stories are located in the south welsh town of Llanelli. I haven’t finished it yet. There’s something painfully familiar about these characters, the small town vibes, the decay and grief that comes from being working class. But that’s also what’s so comforting about it. I know these people, I grew up with them, they looked after me when I was a kid, I’m related to them. We both wear grief so brazenly and yet we compartmentalise with as much depth as possible. You can so casually mention someone’s death by suicide or drug addiction or domestic abuse, and yet the scars tissue is so deep that sometimes it’s not until you get out of these places that you start to really feel any of it. It just takes one new person to say ‘that’s not normal' for the heaviness to finally buckle your knees. But then again, that’s the luxury of being able to leave.
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At the weekend, before all the dust and gaping ceilings, me and Kerry got stoned and watched some funny horror films. Our fave. I found Bodies Bodies Bodies on Netflix a little while ago and finally had the chance to watch it. LOVED it Firstly, it opens with a steamy lesbian make out sesh in the woods, followed by a landscape of a car driving to the soundtrack of Daddy AF by Slayyyter. Amandla Stenberg (who is heading up the Star Wars: The Acolyte series right now) is great, I never really know if I like or hate her character and I love a grey energy character. Rachel Sennott who I loved in Bottoms plays a Gen Z bimbo coke queen who brings along her older Tinder date - none other than Lee bloody Pace! I even liked Pete Davison, who I’ve never seen in a film before but he played an insufferable dude with an undertone of vulnerability that made me almost like him. There are probably some great reviews on this film that go into its social comments and cinematic complexities much better than I can, but it was deviously morally ambiguous and full of distrust and fear.
I’m off work on annual leave next week, going to see the queer lord and savior Janelle Monae in Manchester. Might swim in a river on the way home and drive on the motorway for the first time.
Here’s a poem: