Monday 9 March 2009

Professional Drinking - Penny Lane - And Calego

Coming back home from work on the bus on Sunday, I overheard this woman talking quite loud on her phone. I started laughing to myself with what she was saying. Stuff like "He's a cronic alcoholic," and I was thinking, wouldn't you want to keep something like that a little more privite? This was as the bus was driving through the roughest part of the city, all buildings boarded up and filth in the streets and writing on the walls. I wouldn't walk through there at night unless you wanted some kind of drug. I think this woman was talking about her husband (or just a male she knew) and she said: "He might as well be my professional drinking partner," which I thought was clever. I had this in my head all the was until it was my stop.
The bus gets closer to where I'm getting off and it passes the Penny Lane bus (I think it was the number 62, I think it used to be the number 1). It's not a tourist bus, just a normal bus driving these people home. And I look at them on the bus and I'm wondering if they're Beatles fans. I mean, not everyone in Liverpool are Beatles fans, but everyone respects them to a certain degree. Most the old fellahs still like them. I was wondering if those people lived on Penny Lane, I don't see why not, I think there are still houses there. It's not really a tourist spot for me, just a another road to the South of the city.
It's funny because I live here. You get to say: "Bloody tourists." It switched round when I go on holiday and I'm amazed by a bank or something. My brother showed me this website thats sell American chocolate bars and sweets, he knew I'd like that from when we went to Florida in 2001 and we bought a suspicious amount of American sweets onto the plane.

I think I'm going to Wigan on wednesday. Going to see my friends I haven't seen in a year. I used to live with them in Uni. It's horrible that's been the quickest year of my life. I had the best time of my life in that flat last year. Got some good pieces of writing done.

Looking over last poem with translations, and I like these lines:

"Zal silences me."
"I am calego."
"Mannen stalks annen mann
mann stalks kvinne..."

Might just keep them in the final one.

1 comment:

LMB said...

Hahaha! It is funny reading the 'tourist' comment. Though I am American as apple pie and cheap crack, I currently live in Tijuana, Mexico - been here so long that I mumble 'fucking tourists' at the Americans shuffling past the Mexico curio shops. When I cross the border back into the States - I feel like I am the tourist. Weird. Hey! Just finished a book by JT Leroy entitled 'The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things'. May be your cuppa tea.