Stanley has always been there somewhere right through history but it’s not a mystery you see he’s got this time machine he uses a lot (and that’s why his paws are smoking hot)
for example
that’s him howling with the crowd as the gates go in at the fall of La Bastille further research will reveal a lurcher suspiciously like Stanley behaving particularly badly four years on sans-culottes in La Place de la Révolution adding his bark to the bloody confusion as they lead out a trembling Louis Seize to suffer the verdict of la population Francaise
The travelling circus is leaving town a circle of yellow grass flattened down no flips and tricks but slow litter picks and a clap of pigeons where the high wire ran
Its giant tent is loaded and gone a blurry sun where the spotlight shone no flying and tumbling but a squirrel jumping from tree to bench and back again
The flags and banners are folded and packed the trailers hitched, the bleachers stacked no knockabout clowns but a dog chasing round the reversing lights of a council van
Be not afeard; the lurcher is full of noises, a hundred twangling voices that sound as if they should mean something but do not or if they did the dog hath long forgot as he wakes with a sneeze and a start and a mournful howl that would break’st thy heart and rolls about the rug a lot and his floppy ears begin to swot with shaggy, importunate paws and oft time roars when those grievous and galumphing claws wrought more damage than he witteth whereupon he forthwith doth quitteth to lie in attitudes of bleak despair in a forlorn heap at the top of the stairs and moans, and sighs and everyone’s patience tries and makes them curse that moment when they adopted a lurcher from the rescue pen as he dreams o’ the walk he had last weekend and wakes, and cries to dream again
my guardian angel is late descending boujee, buff and condescending ball breaking, mind bending threatening unfriending an apocalyptic ending website down, patent pending
my guardian angel does abstract flapping claws down her drawers feather fapping spiritually geocaching party crashing me at the window teeth gnashing speed scrolling, hashtag angelsacking
my guardian angel is a fluttery klutz allergic to liturgy, clergy and nuts preens and struts hair out in tufts continually interrupts with glossy brochures of the life deluxe
my guardian angel is a no-good gander half soul poultry half panhandler and I just can’t handle her sorry but NO’s my final answer so bye bye my feathery chancer I’ll find some other spiritual advancer
When I was a kid one thing I did was try to be like my eldest brother who lived in a whole other masculine dimension judo, motorbikes, not to mention an academic ability which gave him the facility to be ridiculously successful on the whole growing up was pretty stressful
I even joined his dojo did it work? no I was basically scared of the other kids their sweaty digs playing ‘British Bulldog’ getting my head pulled off I’d shake with fright every Friday night I mean – Fred the sensei tried alright bellowed I never got past yellow
In retrospect you couldn’t expect a different outcome maybe if there’d been some other stuff I could’ve done something fun like figurative ice skating I think but your ambition shrinks when there aren’t any rinks so that’s that you’re slammed face first through a judo mat
Now I’m free to be me and life goes on more easily but if I had the knack of reaching back I’d say hey Jim whassup? and lead me out of that judo club to a beautiful spot beside the river where I’d dance and deliver a song to make me shiver impromptu you don’t have to copy him if you don’t want to
I had to go to the dentist for a check-up I could only see him from the neck up but he seemed nice enough a bit rough if I’m honest like he’d just wandered in from the forest from felling trees to filling teeth
‘Oh Mr Clayton,’ he said shaking his head ‘Do you floss?’ ‘Yoss’ (speaking’s a struggle with two hands in your muzzle)
‘Okay Let’s take an xray Relax!’ he said, scooting back
Later, when he was studying the plates I thought I’d break the tension with some post-examination conversation
‘At least we’ve got the NHS millions don’t have dentists, I guess.’ ‘Except Cuba,’ he said raising his eyebrows and nodding his head ‘Yes! Cuba has a superb dental system Also, they’re so good it’s insane when it comes to dealing with hurricanes. Everyone knows exactly the part they have to play and immediately snaps into an efficient civic display medical attention, blood stocks, search and rescue what have you everybody out on the streets to help you it really is incredibly neat’ He jumped to his feet. ‘Hurricanes and teeth my friend, hurricanes and teeth.’ ‘And how’s the x-ray? I asked him seen anything nasty, hmm?’ ‘LM2’s worn, doesn’t need drilling But Guantanamo Bay definitely needs filling.’
me, leaning in a plastic dumpster fumbling for a mallet or a hammer to knock in a bamboo marker the dogs had knocked over round a patch of wild flowers singing MacArthur Park? (to be clear – the dogs just bark I’m the one singing the first thing that comes into my head – a song from the 70s by Jimmy Webb)
MacArthur Park!
I mean – not even the cool Donna Summer version but that godawful, barely lawful perversion by Richard Harris
Richard Harris! I’m so embarrassed singing with the same, geriatric warble like Richard Harris had gone to the trouble of building up status with audiences & directors in the theatre, film and television sectors but found himself singing like a vivisector might sing operating on a cat and being suitably horrified by that
mind you it’s true the brain is a crazy kinda organ with weirder projections than a gorgon signals continually toing and froing without you knowing what the hell is going on, and why you’re getting strange looks from strangers because you’re singing and snapping your fingers to Scooby dooby Doo, where are you….? or that advert for Murphy’s in 1992 p-p-p-pick up a penguin flickering round your axons for aeons and aeons along with a billion other distractions
No doubt if you held a gun to my head and said sing us something or you’re dead it wouldn’t be anything I genuinely liked like Iron & Wine, Die Antwoord, or anything I’d been listening to that night on Spotify anything of quality it’d be some lame-arsed jingle an advert for Pringles or Nivea for wrinkles a tune you desperately snatch as they frown and flick off the safety catch as I start singing uncertainly: Ski – the full of fitness food – for all the family….
and of course – I’m sure they wouldn’t hesitate or waver they’d shoot me straight off and they’d be doing me a favour
