Sinister: Math Rock

[Kieran Devaney]

Dear Sinister,

Talk amongst yourselves.

At the post office cum newsagent queuing amongst the jazz mags and so on, 
ones about cars, fitness, computers caravanning cabbage patch kids etc, with 
other pensioners, past birthday cards of all types, Christmas cards, 
anniversaries, weddings, funerals, christenings etc of all kinds all stacked 
together next to stationery, pens pencils rulers of all sorts etc and 
postcards, you can actually buy postcards of tower blocks there down the 
whole length of the shop we stretched from when I got in to when I got out. 
Behind me a couple of women were having a conversation in a language I 
couldn’t identify. Shrug. The British like to queue, natch. Cashier number 
five please served me, with his whole folder full of stamps of all prices 
and stickers of all kinds and colours. Like caged animals they are, post 
office workers. Imagine it. Just on the way out she there, uppity, menopause 
+ Christmas = irritability I guess. Meniscus. She says haughtily “I need you 
to guarantee this will be delivered by tomorrow.” Exhibit A sez, and I was 
well within earshot “Madam, nothing in this life can ever be guaranteed.” 
Just like that. Go team! Score one! I could’ve kissed him through the cut 
glass (of her accent, you know), she was you know, hamming it up as it were, 
I reckon this newsagentcy slash postoffice not be the most salubrious of 
settings, but we all have to use them don’t we? I guess that’s the problem. 
Anyway he, the PO worker, the employee saw straight through it and w/ 
deftness not usually associated with someone who sits down all day batted 
her away, knocked her down a peg or two to back somewhere between envelopes 
and, as the sign said ‘snax’. I didn’t stay to see how it finished, couldn’t 
have been as good as that bit anyway, she either, uh, concedes or does the 
whole ‘fetch the manager’ thing and the moment of folly suddenly yields 
disaster. But they happen all the time, these little urban battles. Um, like 
years ago (though this isn’t exactly proof they happen ‘all the time’ izzit? 
But here’s an example that features me anyway) I used to get the bus with my 
friend Robert, it took us about halfway to school and about halfway along 
that journey sometimes another friend, Naz, would get on. Nice. Great. Every 
now and again instead of the usual chunky single-deckers we’d get one of 
those older style buses which’re a bit smaller and have leather seats and 
haven’t suspension. Well one day one of those older buses came along and me 
and Rob sat down near the front then, as I say these buses are a bit smaller 
you know, so by the time we reach Naz’s stop it’s pretty crowded and there 
are people standing. Now technically I reckon that the seat we’re on can 
maybe sit three smallish people and hey, this was only year eight (I guess) 
so we’re pretty small so we budge up and Naz sits between us. Rock and Roll. 
Only it’s not cos this guy, standing just in front of us now pipes up and 
starts having a go at the three of us, but specially me and Rob cos why 
didn’t we make room earlier on? There are plenty of people standing? You 
kids pay reduced fare, not like us. He motions to some poor woman for whom 
the already probably pretty awful trip to work on the bus in the cold has 
just become more hassle – why didn’t we let her sit down, huh? Being only, 
what, twelve, thirteen? At the time we weren’t really in the business of Now 
see here’s or Just a moment’s which would’ve maybe stood us in good stead 
against this bloke who I, I’ll describe him shall I? I can because, well I 
was going to save this up for the end, but there’s not really much to spoil, 
see we saw him on the buses a couple of times after the event I’m on about 
and then after a while we used to see him just walking up the road instead, 
so perhaps his money worries were really really real – but I saw him as 
recently as last summer trudging up the road, and for all I know he still 
is, knackered jeans, you know how the fashion is now to have pre-worn jeans, 
you know what those look like right? Well. Actual jeans that have been 
really worn, worn from work and too much wear, cut on the job, as it were, 
not fashionably slashed, those don’t really look any good. And one of those 
awful market fleeces, haggard face, nondescript and one of those shapeless 
black hats w/ BCFC embroidered on the front. We didn’t dare stand up to him 
or even defend ourselves that day, so he sort of won but, as I say, a hollow 
victory – not in a ‘who’s laughing now?’ sort of way but no one really gave 
a shit except for him, obviously, we even had a good laugh about it once we 
got to our stop. That’s what I mean though. The cut and thrust. I hated that 
bus though. The number fourteen. Me and my brother even changed our route to 
school because we both grew to despise it so much. Though I think by the end 
I hated the new route even more. So then on the way home I thought about how 
someone could write a play set in a post office queue, stop me if it’s been 
done, but I think that’d work. It could be a new Godot sort of thing. Most 
such battles are smaller though, not even big enough to be verbal, they 
exist just in a glance, or an awkward step round someone who shouldn’t 
really be standing so close to that lamppost on such a thin strip of 
pavement, but occasionally even something like that will flare up and, ok, 
we’ll probably say that it’s just displaced anger, worries about something 
else manifesting themselves in this seemingly innocent situation. Ok. Here’s 
another little clash though involving yours truly. At school this time, a 
few years ago in art class we were learning a bit about colour theory, 
complimentary colours and colour wheels and all that jazz, anyway as a bit 
of an aside our teacher at the time who was a gaunt blonde Ms quote “I am 
married *actually*, but I still use Ms.” Ha. Anyway she went off on a minor 
diatribe about how actually the colour that we call purple isn’t *actually* 
(actually ws her favourite word and she used it all the time) purple but is 
actually *mauve* and actually the real colour that is actually purple 
actually is more of a reddish colour. Well semantics here which in my then, 
as now, pretentio-precocity up shoots my hand and well actually Ms if 
everyone sez that a certain colour is purple, i.e. if we all call a colour 
purple then that colour *Is* purple – English ain’t a dead language, it’s 
defined by popular usage not by dictionaries or whatever. Purple is purple. 
I say it, everyone says it, it is so. Well actually no, actually I was wrong 
cos in the *art* world, you know… So yeah, I won that one, sort of. I think 
maybe I was just bitter though after she caught me chewing gum in the first 
year and made me spit it out into the bin in front of everyone. Even 
Stevens.

“But what about the child?”
“There is no child. There never was.”
(aghast) “You mean?!”
“I’m afraid so.”

Something that’s been recently broached by various members of the upper 
echelons of Sinister, the cogniscenti, you might say the intelligentsia, the 
hamster dance, is how to get, er, replies when you post, how to make it so 
that when you open your email there are some twenty new messages and for 
them not to all be from seedy ‘erotica’ websites advertising their lurid 
wares. No. For someone on Sinister to have been so touched or inspired or 
even outraged at what you’ve written that they felt the need to write back. 
Simple answer then, I spose is to write a) touching b) inspiring c) 
outrageous posts. Or. Actually, thinking about it, I hardly ever actually 
*reply* to anyone’s posts. Fairly often I’ll think ‘that was a really good 
post’ or words to that effect, y’know, but I don’t really think that sending 
an email just saying ‘that was a really good post’ is all that productive. 
Though, I’d be happy to receive them myself – obviously I’d prefer some well 
thought out commentary (ha) or someone answering a question I’d posed or 
whatever, but simple praise is always welcome with me too, and I don’t 
imagine many of you being all that different in that department. But maybe a 
lot of you are also a bit like me, that is a bit reluctant in the replying 
department unless you’ve got something substantial to say. My suggestion is 
this, and if you like you can tie it to celebration of xmas, so that, as a 
gesture of goodwill to all people everyone should reply to at least one 
Sinister post this week, even if it’s just to say that you thought it was 
good. Bonus bonus bonus round too – if it works also more people will post. 
So everyone’s a winner. Baby, that’s the truth.

Luv,
- Kieran

p.s. To those I *do* owe emails to, they are forthcoming - your text has 
been copied onto disk and I shall now go up and write some replies - I can't 
write properly down here, it's too public, you know. So if not later tonight 
then tomorrow. Promise.













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