Jax Burgoyne Writes

"Are you a sports fan?  If so, what draws you to a particular sport?  If not, what repels you about the sports world?"

There is a good feeling about running around in a teamly way.  Unless you suck.

I don't entirely suck, but often when I think of doing sport I remember a time when I was swimming at secondary school (1st year there) in some competition and I dropped the whatever it was I was supposed to carry.  It was a relay, and the next person couldn't start until I managed to dive down to the bottom of the deep end to pick it back up.  Horrific.

I'm also not a fan of getting out of breath or my knees hurting or stitch or, after what can only be termed a moderate amount of exercise, the aching of my poor little muscles.  I do like walking :)  I can make up stories then.

In terms of watching sport...as a social thing, e.g. if it's the World Cup - well I used to like watching England matches with friends.  But otherwise...why would you?  It is like that thing that went around Facebook about sports interviews - this is how they always go:

Interviewer: Why do you think you lost the sport?
Sport person: We didn't sport well enough.
Interviewer: What will you do next time?
Sport person: We will try to sport better.

I guess sport is a bit like religion.  Something groups of people like to care too much about because it tribes them.

"Respond to this quote from Junot Diaz in any manner you please: 'In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.'"

Now I did this a long time ago.  Looking at it now, I don't entirely understand what I wrote....But here you go, this was my threefold response:

1. This is one of those sentences that says it is very meaningful but is actually seedless wank.

2. (I circled 'you need' from the quote and did a big bendy arrow to...this:) So someone who is dedicated and plans and works hard?  Like today, when I realised I am not a genius writer (in a liberating manner), but that writing could be a job, kept on at: walking up and write and left and one*.  (That bit is gibberish, right?) Or someone who is as messed up as the character they are writing about?  A la Heath Ledger becoming the joker and dying?

3. This sentence is NOT profound.  It is simply so vague and needing meaning that it sucks out our own profundity.  (And NO, that is not the same as being profound.)

P.S. Look what I did with Photoshop!
​*It could be that I just can't read my own handwriting.

"In a few sentences, describe your breakfast routine."

Routine?  There isn't much of one....
Or, at the very least there are several very different ones.  It depends on how early I have to get up.

1. Working at 5pm and nothing scheduled to do until then (hurrah!).  
- I will get up at some point before 12.  Hopefully 10.30/11 ish.  I will come downstairs in my dressing gown and slippers (even in summer), with a book.  I will make myself a pot of tea and sit in Sebastian (my wicker chair) with my feet on the coffee table and read until lunch.  I will probably then have lunch and might then call my parents and at some point in the conversation inform them that I am not (properly) dressed yet.  (To this, they will say, 'Oh Jax'.)

2. I have to get somewhere by 9, 10, or 11.  
- I will get up one hour before that time.  This gives me half and hour to get up, go downstairs, make a cup of tea, bring it, turn on Radio 1 (although this station might be changed as I've now become so old I hate almost all new music), dress, go downstairs, breakfast of some sort, up again, clean teeth, down again: leave.  I walk to wherever it is.  (P.S. I normally set my alarm 1/2 an hour before and then re-set it to varying times until I eventually have to get up.  This is because re-setting wakes me up more than snoozing it, so gradually I become accustomed to the idea of getting out of my bed.)
​
3. I have to be somewhere some time hideous like 6/7 am.  Sometimes I might get up super-early out of paranoia and the fact I just haven't slept.  But more likely I will leave myself 15 minutes to dress and clean teeth, and then bring some kind of food item to eat as breakfast once I'm there.

​"Describe the texture of an everyday object.  It could be the coarseness of denim or the cool smoothness of a pebble."

​The skin on my hand is a bit like soft-focus shrunk-down wrong-colour elephant's skin.

​There are some hairs in places - more on the fingers - and at some angles these gleam near-invisible golden, and at others they are a dark black/grey/brown.

​There is what looks like a very definite x in the knuckle I am currently looking at.  This knuckle says no.  There are, of course, many other little criss-crossing lines, a bit like - is it woodcut pictures, or etchings?  You know those printed pictures from the old days that are all cross-hatched and liney.

​At times there is a hint of whiteness, where winter is trying to persuade me to buy moisturiser.  

​On my thumb, which is straight at the moment, there are deep, roughly parallel (although crescenting) crevices, and what appears to be a white, raised, v-like foam puffy letter.  It looks like a scar, but if it is, I don't know how it got there.

"Conduct a field study of your local neighbourhood.  If you were new to the area, what would be the three things that would stand out to you?"

1. Toucan shop!
2. Death Park (in Summer)
3. The wonderful closeness of both LIDL and ALDI

1. I'm not sure what the Toucan shop...well place...is.  If you go right from my house and along a bit, there's a few things like car dealers (not ones you'd've heard of), random barbed wire fences with what looks like an overdone garage inside each one, a car wash, a tyre selling place, and whatever this Toucan place is.  I just like the sign.  (It's a big toucan.  In case you weren't sure.)

2. In the summer the Death Park is lovely.  You walk through it and there's just a few people sitting here or there reading, talking, or just lying in the sun.  There's the people cycling down Marriott's Way on one side (with the occasional Sustrans person asking for money), and there's the river on the other side.  One time I had a lovely conversation with an old man about his bike (which was also old).  We discussed his old bike, my old bike, and probably how things aren't like they used to be or something.  It was very nice.  Then, finally, about three times a year you can sit in the park and listen to the mini music festivals which the local pub, The Gibraltar Gardens, puts on.  (Or actually go to the pub, listen to the music, and add to that the joy of a beer or a cup of tea or an orange juice. Or whatever.)  So it's a pretty good park, really.

3.  This is just handy.

"Do you have a handbag, a backpack, a briefcase?  Describe the receptacle and all of its current contents."

Uh-oh.  This (as many people will know) could take a while.

This is The Sheep.  It is so-named because it is big, white and woolly.  

It always contains a buttload of stuff, and today this is particularly true because I've been visiting my friend Em.  So there's a toothbrush in a little case (well the head of it is), a roll-on, hairspray and a hairbrush.  (Everything else I nicked from Emma....I think she expects this by now.)

Then of course there's the usual stuff.

I was recently at a cool event for people who like books.  That sentence went wrong.  Let me start again.  I was recently at a book reading at the Book Hive in Norwich.  The book was a load of (fictional) stories written by people in Myanmar.  One of whom was there.  He had been a political prisoner for about twenty years.  It was all very interesting....

Anyhow, I sat on the floor next to a partially sighted lady, and we started discussing 'packing light.'  She was in favour, whereas I felt it was perfectly sensible, if not essential, to have:

1. An umbrella (in case it rains a lot and isn't windy).
2. A cap with a peak for if it is windy and raining a bit.
3. A knitted hat for if it is cold.
4. Gloves for if it is cold.
5. An emergency scarf for if it is cold and I have forgotten to wear a scarf.
6. Plasters.
7. An audio recording device.
8. Gum.
9. Paracetamol.
10. My bike keys (plus various others).
11. Purse.
12. Spare batteries, just in case.
13. Etc.

(Etc.)

However I couldn't justify the spare stick for my glue gun....

There was probably an ending to that tale, but it was a while ago now.  I think she might have laughed at me.

"Fill this space with a list of people and things that you are grateful for."

What am I grateful for?  This is a very difficult thing to answer.  Not because there aren't BILLIONS of things, but because there is inevitably an implication (unintended) that 1st in list = best, and it's downhill from there.  And if I were to try to decide which to put 1st, how would I do this?  What criteria?  History, biology, now?  Or what I'm not?  (E.g. I'm grateful I'm not a refugee trying to get to the UK.)

Obviously there's the Oscar speech horror of missing someone out, particularly someone obvious, or who feels they are obvious.  I often worry about this, when planning my Oscar speeches although, more often, my speeches are just thinly veiled/outright attacks on the *&$%s who bullied me at secondary school and usually my imagination just settles with a double-handed up yours that the tv people aren't able to blur out because it's LIVE!  Mwah ha har.  (Obviously there is no Oscar anywhere near the horizon, but it's nice to daydream.)

Anyway, gratitude.  And how to order it.

Well.  Let's try going the historical route. 

Who was there first?  Mum and Dad!

I'm so grateful to my parents.  Now obviously yes, it's partly because they still make me dinner when I come to visit, and pick me up and drop me off at places and talk to me and help me through things.  But they also showed me the value of learning, kindness and tolerance* (yes, particularly the 1st - that was most overt.  The other 2 are just who they are).  

My brothers.  Tom played with me and taught me to cycle and calls me to chat about this game he is designing.  (Dad tried to teach me to cycle but he gave up in the end.  Tom did not give up.  Hurrah!)  Bob helps me feel better, counsels me, reads my stories (even though I have a feeling one or two might have traumatised him...).

And then random scatter approach:

I'm grateful my mind is getting better.  

I'm grateful the aching is (generally) going.  

I'm glad my hands have been steady the last few days.

I'm grateful for all the friends I have.  I love them so much!  They are my network, that holds me up.

I'm grateful that I have the lucky DNA of a (fairly) able mind, and strong bones and good health.

I'm grateful that I smile as I walk into work most days.

I'm grateful that I can write.

And I'm grateful that, whatever the dangers of it, my mind make stories.  Constantly.  Constantly.  I mean - it's entertaining.

​* You will have to ignore paragraph 2 of this post to accept the 'tolerance' part of that statement.

"In Neuromancer, William Gibson writes, 'The sky about the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.'  Try to create a description - as evocative as the one above - about the current sky."

TAKE 1
It's black.
(Hee hee!)

TAKE 2
I cannot see the sky.  Or not all of it.  Or not the authentic it.  Before the black is a multiplicity of grids of metal and glass, keeping us separate.

TAKE 3
You know flamingoes?  And turquoise (the stone).  I could just say turquoise the colour, but I'm trying to be creative, and also precise.  Those who know the stone will know the colour I am referring to.  (Those who don't - Google it: 'turquoise; stone'.)  

Anyway, put the stone and the flamingoes in a blender.  And soy milk.  Don't fully mix - leave it the texture of brownie before you bake it.  That was the sky two nights ago.

​"Describe your feelings about sleep."

​Sleep disobeys me regularly.  Or, rather, my body disobeys the order to sleep.  ​Or my mind does.  Or, most accurately, both of them.

​My body is a delicate, OCD flower that cannot handle it if I haven't just had a shower (an hour ago doesn't cut it), or if my muscles are aching because I have had the temerity to exercise, or if, when I had my shower, I didn't wash my hair on the required day.  It doesn't matter if it's not clean, if my mind realises I should have washed it - that it was a wash my hair day, then there will be no sleep.  Not for ages.  And if I'm even the slightest bit hungry I will stay awake until I am ravenous, then get up for a snack, then, finally, go to sleep.

​My mind does various things.  Sometimes it is just ON.  Not thinking, not worrying, just a bit sort of nrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (imagine a constant loud drone of something.  Except without the sound.  But it's that feeling - the mind feeling caused by that type of sound.)    

​Sometimes it (part of it) sits there going, 'Doo be doo be do,' while another part of it goes, 'Shhh!'..

​Sometimes I stress about things.

​Sometimes I'm making up way too good a story.  This is when one of my sleeping techniques backfires: I've found quite a good thing is to make up a story (because it makes my brain attach to something, but in a not stressful way - so keeps it still, stops it pinging around).  BUT it must be a boring story.  I find the best things are stories of someone who is ill or very tired and so is lying pretty much asleep in a bed.  Otherwise, I'm kept awake by the various sagas I make up.

​Of course there's the related problem of 'Oh no, you opened the floodgates'.  Lots of you will probably recognise this - I turn the light off, I turn it on, I write a note about a story idea in my phone or on a scrap of paper, or get up and write it in the relevant notebook.  Then back into bed, light off....  Then light on, write note....  Repeat this many many times.

​One time I tried to count sheep.  It went like this: I imagine a fence and some sheep.  They jump over it one at a time.  I count.  THEN the sheep get faster.  Much faster.  And faster and faster!  I count very fast.  THEN several jump at once.  I go, 'Ok so I'd got to 25, then that was 4 so that's 2-"  But THEN some jump back the other way.  ARGH!  That is MATHS!  Lots of MATHS!  Obviously my mind didn't want to sleep that night.

​So yeah, sleep: somewhat problematic.