Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle (Viking 2021)

Every morning, for ten days – his slot was ten o’clock – he sat at the kitchen table and waited for the call. He held up the iPad with one hand and pressed the green circle.

The screen this time, the camera – he was looking straight at her face. The mask was off, beside her on the pillow, leaning against her ear.

She was saying something – speaking.

—I – heard – one. Joe.

—Did you? he said.

He seemed to see each word before he heard it.

—At first – I was – afraid – I was pet – rified.

He knew the song.

—‘I Will Survive’, he said.

The words were heavy – she worked hard at pulling them out.

—I – might.

—Jesus – I love you, he said.

Something struck him now, the thought that had been lurking for months.

—Your worms, he said. —You’ve been making them up all the time, haven’t you?

He looked at her mouth on the screen, and waited. It was ages before she answered.

(From the short story, 'Worms'.)

Mr Inbetween (2018)

 

Gregory's Girl (1981)

 

The Guts by Roddy Doyle (Alfred A. Knopf 2013)

—You just said you loved it.

—Yeah. Because it’s shite.

—Ah, for fuck sake, listen. Nobody’s buyin’. The kids don’t think they have to.

—They download it for nothin’.

—Yeah, said Jimmy.—Exactly. My age group an’ a bit younger, we still buy. But they don’t buy much. An’ very little that’s new.

—Make a video.

—We’re goin’ to —

—A good one, said his da.—Make us laugh. Get your woman from the Rubberbandits video.

—You know the Rubberbandits?

—Of course I know the fuckin’ Rubberbandits.

The Rubberbandits were a pair of clever lads from Limerick who wore SuperValu bags over their heads, and rapped. Their song, ‘Horse Outside’, was the new national anthem. Jimmy hated them.

—More than eight million YouTube hits, said Jimmy.

—Twice as many as live in this poxy country, said his da.—It’s the way to go.

—But only about nine thousand bought the song, said Jimmy.

The misery in that statistic pleased him, all the noughts in the millions falling away – the state of the fuckin’ world.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013)

 

My Fellow Americans (1996)

 

Heavenly Pursuits (1986)

 

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

 

Reacher (2022)

 

It was coming . . .

 . . .  still lost, mind.

43/50

The Squeeze (1977)

 

I feel unusual today . . .

Fuck me.

Hit another 180 in the next leg . . . and actually won the leg this time.

I might have to do the lottery tonight. My luck's in.

42/50

PS:

Actually, I did fuck up this time. Entered 18 as my score into the app. 

Force of habit. 

'What the fuck you doing, Russ Bray?'

 I've been using the Target Carrera darts off and on for the last week and a half and finally hit a 180 with them.

The Russ Bray Darts App (level fucking 7) then proceeds to reply with a 174, and I eventually lose the leg.

File under 'Fuck That'.

41/50

The Town (2010)

 

Fire and Brimstone by Colin Bateman (Headline 2013)

He gave me a big smile and continued his work. After a bit, two female Seekers emerged from the bus, pristine now in their gowns and wimples but destined to be covered in coffee and juice and vomit as the night wore into early morning. One of them gave me a wide smile and said, 'I remember you!'

'Jane,' I said, 'how're you doing?'

'Fabulous/ she said. 'Can I get you a coffee . . . Andrew . . . wasn't it?'

'Orange juice,' 1 said, 'and you have a good memory.'

'I do . . . but then there was also something happened with you at Ballyferris . . . wasn't there?'

'Oh, yes,' I said. 'I got thrown out for sedition.'

She laughed and went to get the juice. When she came back with it, she asked how I'd been and if 1 was still in that bad place with my life, and I said no, everything was fine and dandy; I had just spotted the bus on the way home and wanted to call over and say hello and thank the New Seekers for their support, and her, in particular, for helping me.

'Ah, it was nothing. Sure, that's what we're here for.'

'Well,' I said, 'I appreciate it.'

I lifted the orange juice and drained it in one. 'Better be getting home,' I said, and handed her the glass.

'Good night, Andrew,' she said as she took it from me. 'And may God be with you.'

She gave me another smile and turned away.

'And may God be with you, Alison,' I said.

It stopped her in her tracks, but just for a moment. Then she continued on into the bus. 1 followed her progress along the inside to the small kitchen area. She began to wash the glass. She did not look towards me.

I smiled to myself and turned away.

She had been right there with me, right at the start, and I hadn't noticed. But a colleague of Jonathan's in Culchie's Corner had picked up the photo I'd left and remembered her from a rumpus in the bar when she was collecting for the New Seekers and someone pulled her headdress off. I had no idea how she had ended up with the Seekers, if the trauma of the Wellington Street massacre had caused her to turn to them or they had picked her up, broken or shot, from the street and then slowly brainwashed her, or, indeed, if she had simply been converted because she believed in Eve, just like thousands and thousands of others. Ultimately, it didn't matter. My job was done: I'd been paid handsomely, the puzzle was solved and Alison was alive and free to live that life as she saw fit.

Perfect.

As I walked away from the New Seeker bus, my phone began to ring.

'Well,' Sara asked breezily, 'what's happening?'

'Funny you should ask,' I said.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (Peter Davies Ltd. 1951)

Grant lay on his high white cot and stared at the ceiling. Stared at it with loathing. He knew by heart every last minute crack on its nice clean surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He had made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it. 

Life of Crime (2013)

Busted . . .

When you're going for a S5 and bust out with the T20  . . . and then keep going. 😂

The Darts App I was playing against didn't say a fucking word. 😉

40/50

Level 39

 

39/50

Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids?: An Indie Odyssey by Nige Tassell (Nine Eight Books 2022)

When Malcolm returned to Essex from university in Sheffield, his ears full of a new band called the Smiths and his head full of Marxist theory, the three of them resumed making music together. This was the point at which the idea of fusing tuneful pop music with political lyrics was forged.

‘It was political almost from the start. “There’s no point writing love songs” became a thing because we couldn’t be as good as the Beatles. We could never hope to write something like “I Saw Her Standing There”. So Malcolm decided what he could do was write political songs because there hadn’t really been any particularly fantastic ones written in the way he was thinking about politics. There obviously had been political songs, but not from a real, properly thought-out Marxist perspective.’

The concept was sound. Pop tunes to get people over the threshold and then encourage them to think about the lyrics. Another iron fist in another velvet glove.

‘It made us stand out from everyone else. We weren’t marching around. We weren’t Stalinists or anything.’ At the time, Billy Bragg was the most conspicuous political songwriter. He was from their home patch, a few years ahead of them at the same comprehensive school. ‘We knew him as one of the big Jam fans in Barking. He was in that band Riff Raff who, for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, played on the back of a lorry in Tim’s street.’

This top-floor office is level with a railway viaduct just outside the window, carrying trains back and forth between Clapham Junction and Richmond. They rumble past every couple of minutes, occasionally emitting a metallic screech. John is clearly used to it. He’s been at Domino now for fifteen years.

‘At the beginning, we always aimed for Top of the Pops,’ he explains. To some, being an anti-capitalist band aiming to work in an industry known for its rapaciousness and greed might seem a little contradictory. ‘My favourite quote about this is from John Cooper Clarke – “There’s no point being an island of Marxism in a sea of capitalism”.

John then cites McCarthy’s ‘Use a Bank I’d Rather Die’, a song written with heavy irony. ‘Just because you think a certain way, you’re not going to stop using the bank. You’re not necessarily going to cut things off.’ (The use of irony and sarcasm – those traits much enjoyed by the Manics – often led to the band being misunderstood. ‘Almost all of the McCarthy songs are sung by a “character”,’ Malcolm explained in a 2007 interview before he fell silent on the subject of the band, ‘like a character in a play. I often don’t agree with the sentiments expressed in the song. Quite the reverse.’)

First of the month . . .

It's always cool to follow up a 180 with 12 (D1 S5 S5). Keeps me in my place:

38/50