Wednesday, 11 July 2012

More ghosts

This note is all that's left of an RSPCA shop:

Please do not leave donations for RSPCA shop outside open 1-4:30
I was going to write another glib/melancholy post about blight but (probably because reading the Patrick Melrose novels is giving my bleakness wings) I saw I'd missed the better, crueller story that what survives of us isn't love or ambition, it's disgrace.

Your great-grandchildren won't know your name, your novel will be forgotten, the house you build will be bulldozed,  but go bankrupt or to jail and we'll treasure your name for as long as our records keep. Open a charity shop to save your soul (and cats) and the pissant note you scrawl on the wall will soon be all that's left.

Alternatively, go read the Patrick Melrose novels. My God in which I do not believe I wish I could write like that. 

6 comments:

  1. I've lived on the hornsey road for about six years. I made this 'composition' a few months ago. I think it captures what the road feels like.

    http://soundcloud.com/benway3000/hornsey-road

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  2. Thank you. This is exactly why I started this blog. Does happy dance.

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  3. If I had written the sentence "He stared at a baroque escritoire cascading with crapulous putti." (From Bad News) rather than just reading it out to anyone who'll stand still and listen, I'd be a happy woman.

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    1. They are infinitely quotable.

      Weirdly, I used to know someone who'd taken so many drugs that he'd thought he was an egg, but he wasn't French and became a graduate student rather than a heroin dealer.

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    2. I've been looking for the meaning of "crapulous putti"..do you know?

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