Wednesday 14 October 2009

A Lipogrammatic Snapshot of Youth (Set to the Music of the Kinks)


This is a brief memoir written with the letter ‘I’ abolished. This particular snapshot has been inspired by the Kinks song Do You Remember Walter? The text is included in aural and ocular form for the reader/listener who values the persistence of choice.


‘Uncle Turkeycock’ – Ocular

Mother passes the Camembert. Strong cheese. Rends the coccyx. An uncle, perched on the green-blob futon (the one that honks of menthol fags) squawks about damaged shop stock and the horsebets lost to duff jockeys. He loafs on the settee and brushes the custard cream crumbs from that murderous vest. No one speaks. The seagulls unload lunch upon the louvres. Someone – my mother probably – tuts.

A lone scone rests on the table. The dent turns my stomach. Perhaps the uncle squashed the dough. Those sweaty man-claws: the hands of a worker. That’s what we do, apparently. We become workers. Jobs are clung to desperately. Bacon brought home and slotted between bread. Bacon – the prevalent stench of homemade despondency.

Uncle talks once more. Words leak from that turkeycock neck – blobs of sound, formless, senseless. To me. A remark, made slyly, embarrasses my mother. You’re a wretch, uncle. You smell of Tenants. You’re a dandruffed hump. You make my mother uneasy. We don’t want you here.

The VCR proves better company than the uncle. My toes get sucked through the tape-flap. Perhaps my legs may follow. Then my torso. An uncle-free zone shall unfold. The doldrums smothered through a heave of TV dreams. But… the government. Job cuts. No more scones left. The other half can’t sleep ‘cause of the racket made by the blacks. On and on. Uncle drones.

Maybe, when my day to eat dented scones on settees comes, my words shall be less snoozy. Colours. A range of sounds – no monosyllables or deeply depressed grunts. The rot of the uncle. A memory bleached by the gluey hump of another year. My room reeks of Camembert.


‘Uncle Turkeycock’ – Aural [Read by Fuzzy Pete]


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