Bed Past:
Four balls, blue and yellow, the colours split straight down the middle and held within a wooden frame by steel rods. Each sat waiting on a small spring for a hand to slap them down and catapult the balls up the length of the rod with a hiss and tickle of their tiny plastic beads inside. The bounce was hypnotic, their fall was a gentle vibrating collision of colour and sound. I could slap these things for hours on end. There was nothing else to do. Maybe grab the bars of the bed and rattle the hell out of them during the gaps in mothers incessant sewing machine pauses. Occasionally she’d hear me shouting about getting up, getting out, getting food, getting bored and getting ignored. Running up and down the length of a mattress covered in a piss sheet had a certain crinkling crispness which felt like an inch of new snow underfoot.

Bed Present:
Too cold outside, too hot inside, irritation on one side, blocked airway on the other side. My toes munch and lick the foot board through the duvet cover, just enough to taste the air and wish I’d tucked in the end down there. One pillow, two pillow, one point five pillow, none. Folded once, scrolled twice in an attempt to find something nice under my neck line, but only held long enough to hear my noisy heart beat pad and jump. Did it just skip? It skipped, Oh my god, my heart just skipped a friggin beat. I think things are back to normal. But there’s an app for that. I flip out my phone and call up the ‘SleepCycle’ app which uses the sensitive internal gyroscope to track the motion of my heart. I need a strong pulse, so I lay the phone my forehead with my eyeballs almost pressing on the screen and stick my left hand down my pants and find the main artery on my upper thigh, and my right hand fingers up the snoring nostrils of my dearest, so I can hear the beat, feel the pulse and watch the rhythmic flow of the digital gauge rise and fall. After a few seconds I heard her say ‘what the hell are you doing?’. ‘It’s OK dear. We’re not dying’ I said.
In comparison… the sofa was very comfortable.

Bed Future:
“Innovation has come a long way. Beds these days, don’t just support your body weight during sleep paralysis, they hold you’re entire family unit together. We aren’t dreaming here, we insert the dreams for you by a number of carefully positioned sensors in the head area. Gone are the days of springs and multi layered air pockets and foam tunnels, this baby multi adjusts continually throughout your sleep with 65 million molecular machines glazed in every microfibre. There was a time when bugs in the bed was seen as a bad thing. Today, you pay us to add more of them. But don’t worry, these things won’t be jumping out and scratching away at your skin with their nano-paws, no, they’ll be working away to rid the body of dead skin, pump up the existing tissue as well as identifying and destroying cancer cells. You actually wake up younger and healthier than when you went to sleep. I know, incredible. The best part is, it’s absolutely free. Nothing, no payment. You take it away today or we can deliver it for you. No catch, free return, yes, we collect. 24/7. Free shipping too. OK. Sure. You want to go for it? Certainly. OK then, all we need a signature for the release waiver. No Sir standard practice. Just so we’re all covered in the event of anything not working out like they did in the trials. Hello? Hello Sir? Hello? Damn it”

Hey Mark,

You wouldn’t believe it right now, but your life is going to pan out OK. Actually, I’d say better than OK. I know you’re fretting about going to college and whilst I’m tempted to say do that Art course, the business course is going to really help you anyway. Keep up with the music, however join a band, now! You’re going to regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t. You won’t have to stick with it, but even just a short stint will reward you. Infact start Jamming with Brett as soon as you can. Because shortly he’s going to get picked by a little known band called Kulashaker and travel the world.

When you leave college you’re going work for Clarks shoes. Don’t stay there past 12 months, you’re better than that, get out and leave your hometown before it traps you more than it already has. Head to Bristol, it’s a great place, no matter how scary it seems. Buy a house as soon as you can. Claiming you don’t earn enough is a poor excuse, no-one earns enough, but it’ll be the best thing you ever buy.

Keep skateboarding, it’ll be the thing that keeps you sane, physically fit and will take you all over the UK and America. You’ll even end up on Tony Hawks ramp and your girlfriend will love you for it.

Yes. Girlfriend. You won’t marry or have kids early. It doesn’t matter. You’ll meet an amazing person and you’ll be so glad you didn’t attend all those drunken parties like your mates are doing right now.

Buy a computer as soon as you can. You don’t know it, but your perfect job hasn’t been invented yet. It will bring a decent salary for a couple of decades, long enough to bank some cash and have a great time.

You’re a great photographer too, so getting your hands dirty with a SLR camera too and continue to document all your friends and travel. Try not to give away all your original photos. Make your mates pay or get copies done, because otherwise you’ll end up with lots of shots of yourself and none of your friends.

Mum and dad are going to keep trying to get you to go to Dawlish Warren in Devon for a number of years to come. Keep resisting going with them, there’s better holiday resorts on this planet, so let them down gently but continually. Scatter around some brochures of the Canary Islands.

Dad will not be giving you a cuddle, accept that now, yet still keep loving him and take an interest in his memories, draw them out. We both know he’s not a good talker, but once you get him going his eyes light up and he won’t shut up. Mother on the other hand needs shutting up. In fact, she needs a boost internally, get her on a college course, perhaps a reading group or business. Her lack of formal education has plagued her forever and you’re just the person to talk her into it. Whilst you’re there, get a design patent on her tobacco pouch with integrated Rizzla packet holder, you won’t become millionaires, but I reckon there’s a couple of hundred thousand pounds in it, once this thing called the Internet comes along and changes everything.

Talking of technology, you’re right not to buy a pager, they are a waste of time. However mobile phones, stupid though they appear to be, will stick around, so I recommend collecting those and maybe figuring them out with a set of micro screwdrivers. They will be big business in future.

You’ll always work, you’ll always do OK for money, never make a lot, but enough to have a decent life. Sadly the companies that employ you seem to have a habit of making you redundant, this is fine, but around 2006 you’ll waste your entire cash taking the whole summer off and watching a film called Hot Fuzz being made in your hometown. Whilst sounds like a good idea, skip it. Spend the money on setting yourself up as a consultant instead, you won’t regret it.

Lastly……. get your arm looked at as soon as you break it, and don’t give up seeing the Dr’s until it works properly again. Nothing else will really go wrong, in fact that’s probably an indication that you’re not taking enough chances in life. So go for it… lifes a blast and you won’t regret a thing!

Mark

A Liquid Metal Photography Effect:

1: Get a ‘carpet’ of silver glitter… nice and thick.
2: buried in the ‘glitter carpet’ will be devices that can push out high powered jets of air.
3: Set everything up in a low light / evening location
4: Set a photographic camera to an approximate 2 sec exposure (no idea on aperture btw, experiment)
5: Set a separate flash to strobe during the 2 sec exposure
6: Fire the jets of air
7: Fire the Camera and the Strobe flash

With some fiddling, you will get a unique liquid metal effect with every picture. yay! (maybe… I haven’t tried it… however….)

I produced this photograph some years ago… with a chrome BMX and the same camera set up as above and it has always been a dream to do it again, but the situation never appeared. I’d love to see someone else try it and post the results.

Let me know if you do.

More writing, this time we’re going ‘monologue!’. A 500 word limit, anything we like… go!

—

I have my dog back, that’s all I wanted, even if I was hurt in the process, everything else was a case of mistaken identity.

The dirt on my knees is from the park. I was exercising. In my suit at midnight, what’s wrong with that, I needed it. I don’t know anything about what happened in some guys pool party, I was minding my own business, going about my day, with my routine in the park with a suit on and covered in blood at midnight wearing an Afro wig and sun glasses. It could look suspicious I agree, but we’re in a paranoid world here, I can’t move for conspiracy theories, have you heard about the Chemical Spraying planes? Oh you have, right, OK.

No. I didn’t go to the party. I did end up there, but I didn’t intend to. I had better things planned that evening. None of your business, but yes. I did get in the car I admit, yes I did carry my bag with me and yes I may have had some heavy tools in there, I really didn’t give it any thought, I just put it on my back, locked up and walked to the door. No-one answered, I rang a dozen times or so. But the music was too loud and we made a deal anyway so I didn’t think any more about climbing over the fence, I helped fit the damn thing, they were my fence posts and panels. Technically I was climbing over my own fence and should sue myself for the rip in my trousers.

No, the dog attacked me, Bernard did the sleeves, I did the inner thigh. Yes, the dog is Bernard, despite what it says on the collar. You really think he looks like a Buttons? No, that’s just the start of it. You should hear what she calls her vacuum cleaner. Maureen. Yes. Anyway we’re getting away from the point, the dog attacked me because I was undercover, you know, in disguise. Bernard wouldn’t have gone for me under normal circumstances, but then I wouldn’t have attacked him back if she hadn’t have clipped his entire coat down to a fine stubble. I thought it was a different dog, it could have been a Doberman Pincher for all I know. Yes, that is the same three quarter inch open ended spanner.

Dog blood?

He has quite a jaw and it didn’t have much effect, you can see from my bandages. No I was not molesting the dog. Look the floodlights came on at the wrong time, I was led on top of Bernard and he was clamped around my forearm. Any dog lover will tell you that the only way you’ll free a locked jaw is to undertake a certain position which distracts the dog enough to release it.

A certain medical examination procedure.

Yes I put my finger up the dogs bottom.

So…

…what are you going to do about these FaceBook photos?

Adults suck, kids win. Ask questions like a kid in a Spiderman suit.

——–

Fabric, paper, fluff and fingers. Rattling and clicking against bits of black lining, lightly dusting the leg. 2 finger pinch, 3 fingers, 4. Finally a grip on the ticket, still sharply welded shut containing all 6 highly successful digits. I could hardly see, breathing was like over taking on a bend on a hill in the dark in the fog with horses on the roads. Do-able, but dangerous. Was it the air? Everyone was else was looking OK. Still upright, still expelling and sucking through their face holes. I couldn’t. I mean the soot heaved and pressed against my skin as I sat there, fiddling with the pipe and ignoring the wet of my arm. It some how soaked not just the sleeve, but followed through and weighed down my jacket and shoes whilst the barman, just opened and closed the gap in his head to resemble a bubble coughing. He pulled into focus around 2 feet, warbled a dry line thrown in the sea to catch me off guard possibly. It wasn’t a nice night for it. I hadn’t had too much. Too much of what? Oxygen? That came at a price more than I could afford and more than he was willing to sell in a pint glass.

Focus was lost.

He faded to black and I jolted upright at the sound of a memory being roused from a Kazoo jammed in the mouth of a small child. Phonetically parping, metaphorically revealing and literally annoying  Couldn’t be more than 10. 12 at the most. What irresponsible adult? This space was no place for the young. Only the young of Trolls. I willed the boy to stop his awful noise, using my powers of persuasive satirical smiling, rhythmical head tilting and some asymmetrical eyebrow raising. And this, combination of jaunty juxtaposition, made the guardian smile, possibly. Or snarl, I really couldn’t tell. I was bucked forwards off my stool, aided by the buffed leather hide and my hot fat ass, until my feet wrestled with basic physics and an inner canal of stability. The tide was in, clearly, and my ship, whether I liked it or not, was sailing.

Cloth was snagged by the arm, shrapnel from one of the Queens finest sheets were cast across the bar, and a gentlemanly patron slid a weighty, rusted bolt to one side and yanked scraping wood free from the floor. This staggering hunch popped out from the hole with a poison tipped blow pipe dart to the back of the neck shaped like hands of support and best wishes for the day.

The neat air took some adjustment, initially ejected in scoops of disgust at the temperature change. My peripheral vision somehow sharper than my immediate direction indicated the den was packed with dull colours, now aching for that small crack of sunlight to remain. I dragged my hand along the walls, crumbling as I felt my way in the tunnel. The broken cement brushed my shoes occasionally. This wall hadn’t seen care, the patrons hadn’t either. Increasingly my shadow revealed itself by the overhead lamps, and the padlocks clunked and thudded in echo some more, one by one as the clock slid up to the highest hour of the afternoon.

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The shop blinked in light as the florescent tube starter coughed into action and he could do no more than squint whilst wandering through the biscuit aisle. At the window he pulled out a four folded piece of paper titled “Love Rat Wanted To Wed” with a bitter paragraph about some adulterating male. Clearly another angry bitch, putting some poor soul through hell. His peripheral vision spotted a shape of a figure across the road though the glass in the morning light. It was Janet. His sweet beautiful Janet, the woman that sank his heart and lifted his spirits with a waft of her court injunction in his direction.

Her hair blew wildly about her deep blue eyes and sharp, blood red lips. She caught his gaze, and the world froze. The cup of coffee in his hand fell to the floor and exploded on the Lino momentarily pulling his eyes to his wet feet. Once his gaze returned, she had gone. Had he dreamt it? He rubbed his eyes quickly, pressed his face on the window and glanced up and down the road.

Running to the back of the shop, the doors burst open with his weight and he lurched into the street. She was no-where to be seen. Nothing but tails of delivery van lights and market traders banter. Turning back towards the shop, he saw a flame ignite, flicker and illuminate from behind the glass. Janet stood with a match and something flammable in hand, his breath stopped with his pulse as she mouthed the word ‘Bastard’ before dropping them both.

Now whilst I’m all for encouragement, this feedback from the tutor was glowing, however I can’t help to be a little bit skeptical particularly as she has only seen this one piece. Possibly a fluke. Time will tell.