Sinister: Exposed! Secret Garden

[Neil Wykes]

Dear all,
	I had quite an exciting day yesterday, full of little pleasures that I
thought some of you might understand.
  Turns out the people sent by my Landlord to come 'look at the windows'
yesterday were actually going to rip them out and replace them, forcing me
to not spend the day working and playing the demo of Freelancer as I'd
planned.

I caught the bus into Hanley and wandered around, bored out of my pretty
head, avoiding adolescents herding around the shops like bad citizens, but
good consumers. If the two could be swapped by everyone  I think the world
would be so much better a place.  I brought my SLR Camera making me look
professional and feeling like Jimmy I took photos of the odd looking
gargoyles  squeezing out of the wall of the church just above head height.
strange this church just over 150 years old was abandoned, it was a
beautiful building.  the graveyard was a strange, strange place, with
unmarked graves and no bodies laid to rest after about 1930, some even had
the addresses of where they lived when they died. I read perhaps a hundred
epitaphs, but I'm ashamed to say I remember none of them. I read about
beloved twins who died at thirty, before their parents and their parents had
to bury them, about sisters being buried together and husband and wives
dieing, leaving young children. were those children buried in the same
graveyard somewhere too?  I saw people, places, and streets. Pit fodder  and
Potters alike, noting left of their neurons and flesh, only the stone of
their skeletons and the gravestones.

  In a book I'm planning I might have the society I'm creating employ people
who read and remember the names of the dead, what's the point of a grave if
no-one remembers?


 I hope some bookish Sinister type reads my gravestone when I'm gone,  I
really should pre-write my epitaph..


  I wandered down to the cinema bought a ticket to see X-men 2 then had two
and a quarter hours to kill.  I spent some in a bar sipping diet cola,
missing the caffeine levels you can find in soft drinks in North America and
reading my Prospect magazine about the wrongs of the economic models of the
same said region. this was all a bit too intellectual for a Saturday,  a day
I normally spend eating bananas and listening to radio comedy, so I dared to
wander the car parks and retail park that the cinema lies on, hating the
pedestrian.  Behind a Morisson's car wash I found a steep set of stairs into
the hill of trees that hugs the retail park and cushions with the dry ski
slope and canal I frequently cycle along.

Turns out I discovered a secret garden, with bridges and a mile or so of
dips  and copses ( I so rarely get to use that word, Joy! copses) and celtic
looking circles of seats and stones, even a artificially landscaped ravine.
and there was no-one there! Just me, pigeons and ravens so I found the
tallest part, sat on a hill and watched the clouds, resting my tired eyes,
but all too soon it was time to go to the cinemas I started heading back and
was hit by a summer shower.

Summer showers are so much better than winter ones, changing the colours of
distant things, turning the world into one more akin to parallax,  the joy
of 16 bit games. with the most distant parts looking desaturated.  and best
of all the tension and frustration in the air which you can feel goes.  at
one point of my meanderings back I was harassed by a large group of twelve
year olds, who immediately commenced questioning my sexuality, being old hat
I had a large repertoire of witty responses at my disposal, but by far the
best form of defence is to agree.  when one tried to offer himself to me to
the enjoyment of the  rest of the group I told him, " No thanks, I'm not
interested. you look too much like a girl." he was laughed at and the
situation disarmed.


I was glad to see that a mailing by  the mailings recently I'm not the only
one who fancies people in bookshops, it's so sexy to see people looking at
books, thinking about their choices whilst secretly hoping they are looking
at your choices too!  that they'll say you like that author too? fancy going
for a coffee and talking about that? It never happens, but I love imagining
it.

Take care of yourselves
Neil





+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+  "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001   +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
 +-+               Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut!                +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+