hello sinisterians! today I passed my theory test. I'm one step away from buying myself a car to drive to more picnics. yesterday I bought a thesaurus. When I was little, I used to pronouce it as "thees- ee-a-saurus". I did til I was 15 actually. I've been experiencing glimpses of inspiration recently. I experience it on buses, or trains, or when i go for walks, and then i go to places like work and it gets killed off. But then it jumps up again. And I like that. I just wish it would hang about for longer. I see things, and sometimes I promise to write about them in my notebook, and sometimes I make a memo to myself in my head to write to sinister about them. But then work attacks the imagination. Work is a scam, you know. Its designed to keep us under control by those who want to kill our passions, and to make us make money for them. Thats why its so hard to be a professional creator of things. Only a few, a lucky select few, ever break out of the 9-5ing. I think. wonder about the people I see sometimes, on the train to work. Do you suppose that the middle aged men, in middle management, who prepare endless streams of reports for their collegues to read, that seem to be about the most mindless o things, ever really wanted to be there? I doubt it. What happens to your dreams? And if your dreams die, what replaces them? And how do people cope with dead dreams? I'm lucky. I've acheived a lot of my childhood ambitions. I never wanted much. It just looked fascinating when I was little. My checklist of ambitions: to work in a shoe shop: I used to get a pair of new shoes, and I loved it. I'd take it home in the box, and sell it to my teddy bears, intregued by the illustraton on the label on the front, or the 13G size. The idea that there was a magical room, in the Clarks shoe shop in East Kilbride just filled with boxes was a hidden cave of childhood desires. All those boxes! Think of the toys you could devise from them! you could easily build a fortress from them! And the shoes! all mint condition, all wrapped up in tissue paper, all new, without a single crack or crease in the patent black smoothness. They used to have a big image of the magic roundabout on the wall in that shoe shop too. My mum and dad always sat us away from it, behind an island of shoes, so I wouldn't get distracted. And the wonderful little shoe fitters- I loved that. I always wanted the cool white band that they pulled over the top to be pulled tighter. And when you got bigger, they took you to the machine. You'd put your foot in to this square shaped hole, and then the assistant would use a control, and then the sides would come inwards, and it would scroll across this lit up screen, to tell you your shoe size. tto work in a cafe: When I went to norway, as a kid, I used to play a lot on my own. My dad built me this wonderful play hut. It was amazing. It had a door, and two windows, and a balcony with little steps, and was made from wood, and painted red, with white around the edges of the roof and the door. Its still standing there. It got too hot to play for long periods of time in there, but I made it my own. I used a bright plastic blue crate for a table, and I found this old rocking chair my uncle made . And I found bits of embroidered cloth for table linen. I'd line my mums toys up. My favourite, was this tiny little panda she had. It must have had metal inside under the lining of fur- like the toys you see in childhood musuems or on the Antiques Roadshow from the 1950's, but it was cool. It had moving limbs like a proper teddy bear, and a ragged red ribbon round its neck with a plastic medalion, that once had gold coloured paint on it with some maker perhaps or manufacturer on it, but only a few tiny spots of paint were left. And when you moved its tail from side to side, the head wiggled. I even had a little rug, one like those rag rugs you get from shops like Ikea. Although, when it was wet, and I had my wellington boots on, I used to trail bits of long grass all over the inside of my hut anyway. On nice days, I used to set up a table outside. It would be made from floats used by fisherman that had been discarded and washed up on the rock beach. There were three I needed: two cylinder ones, and a wide, flat, circular one. And I would place the circular one ontop of one of the cylinder ones, for a tale, and the other cylinder one acted as a stool. Then I'd cut out a paper plate from a sheet of lined A4paper. and I'd use my mums old doll china tea set. Dandalion leaves made a salad. As it was summer, I'd go and pick buttercups. When the buttercups have been pollenated, or whatever it is that they do, then the middle of them becomes swollen, and green. And if you pick of the petals, you're left with this little green sphere. They made great peas. My gran had made a knitted bottle cosy, for a glass bottle. It was brown and red, and it had a little face on it, with a pom-pom hat over the neck. I used to take off the hat and put wild flowers in it. Then, I'd invite my mum to eat at my cafe, where I served peas and salad and tea. She was aways a gracious customer, and paid very well in imaginary money. To go to university: I was seven, and I designed a pciture of a house. I remember it was a sunny sunday afternoon, and I sat in the channel of a beam of sunlight, with a new A4 refill pad. I sat drawing cafefully, a plan of a house. When I showed this to my dad, he sat on the sofa, and smiled, raising his eyebrows as he puffed his ever present pipe. He told me it was like an architects drawing. I asked what an architect was. He explained to me. Noticing my fathers impressed face, I wanted t become an architect. My dad said I'd have to go to university for seven years. After that, all my jobs that I wanted to do involved university at some point. The idea of being a scholar, of being someone, so clever and wise and surrounded by books, with leather bindings, and feeling somehow special.. it became part of the requirement for my jobs. I never became an architect, but I did go to university. car driving: I wanted to drive a car. I had two to cars when I was three. Two matchbox toy cars. They went everywhere with me. Them and my bean bag little ted. I had a brown porche, and a yellow ryder van. In the summer, I usedto wait for my dad to come home. And I would run to the end of the street. Some days, he'd let me climb in on his knee, and steer the car into the driveway. I used to wave at my friends, who were mostly older than I, standing there on thhe pavement dismounting their bikes to watch. On saturdays, I used to play at ice cream vans. We had this big White chrysler avenger estate, so it sort of looked like an ice cream van, from my eye. I'd make ice cream cones from more of that A4 lined paper, stuffed with cotton wool. Or if I'd run out of cotton wool, pink toilet paper. And then I'd scream out the open window, and allthe nieghbours kids would come running, and pretend to buy an ice cream from me. Sometimes, they didn't quite get it, and gave me real money. Which my dad would find in the ashtray. flying: I used to want to fly. I use to ask my mum, why jumping off a chair with a teatowel round my neck didn't make me fly. It worked for superman, afterall. I'd run up and down the livingroom, trying to build up speed to lift me off the ground. My mum explained I couldn't fly, and birds could, becuase birds have smaller bottoms than us. Well, I still can't fly properly, although I tried fr years. But I've flown in plenty of aeroplanes, so that has to count. chocolate: the whole point of growing up, is that you can do whatever you want to do. When I was about ten, the one thing I wanted to do in the whole world was take some chocolate ice cream sauce, and EAT it, just on its own, without having to wait for dessert. You used to be able to buy a sauce called "ice magic" in the UK. It was in a chocolate brown shaped plastic bottle, with a brown cap that was perhaps supposed to resemble a snow covered peak, dripping down the sides of the "mountain" shaped bottle. You would pour this stuff over your ice cream, and it would harden to a crisp, if you left it for a few minutes. You'd have to shake the bottle hard though beforehand, or it would come out watery and oily, like when you don't shake tomato ketchup before you squeeze it out, and you get this runny, watery stuff with a tint of red in it. Well, ice magic. I used to want to pour it and devour it by the tablespoonful. but i had to ait til dessert time at the weekends. My friend wanted to as well. squeeze it into a spoon, and let it harden and form the shape of the spoon. Sometimes, I'd mix the ice magic in with my ice cream, making it all thick and creamy, and sometimes, i'd let it harden, then crack it with my spoon and mix it in, so i'd get little bits of chocolate. Well, I've not see ice magic for years, but as an adult, I've certainly eaten as much chocolate as I can. And theres nobody to stop me. Only my stomach. thats all the ambitions i can recall having achieved as an adult. Some I'll never acheive. I'll never become a unicorn, despite all the times I tied paper cones to my head and sellotaped tassles made from paper and string to my bottom. I'll never be a horse either. Nor a magician who can change form, into a cat, or dog. I'll never be a guest presenter on jackanory. I hated the programme- it was far too educational for after school, but I wanted to be on it, telling people stories I made up. But there are still some dreams I might accomplish yet. Not telling you what, they are my special dreams. I had so much moreto say really, but I'm getting tired now. so I'll just try and remember to tell you some other time. Never going to dream of middle management. love idles xxxx ===== http://groups.yahoo.com/group/corduroysmoke/ starting playground gossip and passing notes __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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