Exclusive story: Run Around The Village Quick; The Paradise Kid Live In Levenshulme; Poem - Bars & Restaurants: Tales From The UniversE 60 - newsletter from The Late Joints Of The World
An arcadia of imagination
Welcome - and thanks to my cool as cool subscribers. Any comments, love, tips for the 1.44 at Adlington Spur let me know at the end please.
PLUS:
Purchase an annual subscription for £50 (10% cheaper than monthly) and receive epic poem, Vegas is Vegas, babY, a free autographed copy of my first novel, Night Time Cool, plus a PDF of my second novel, Adventures in LovE. Or take a month for £4.99 and receive the latter bar the signed book.
1. Kid Paradise’s Spring Beach Bar is Wild and Wild. And Wild. And, wait a minute: WILD-ER than last week!!! And is hitting late-April like The Paradise Kid is born a million times each century while exulting in a perma-mid-life non-and crisis
Late April is HERE and
what else
better can you do
than listen
LOUD
to Kid P’s tuuuuunnnnnnnneS
‘The Paradise Kid Live In Levenshulme’
Kid Paradise In The Mix Is Handing It Out!!!
2. It is all art, baby
A field, 17 April 2024
3. Poem: Bars & Restaurants Heroes
in bars and restaurants
at late hours
with lights low and smudged and yellowgold
i sit and the years run through and away from me
and i wonder what occurred
in all of them and what will happen in those
to come
4. Short Story
Run Around The Village Quick
‘An important moment in my life, of my personal biography happened here,’ Elena said.
She stood at the bus stop on London Road before the two men and a woman who were on the 11.30am slot of Elena’s Personal Biography Tour.
All still clutched the flyer which said:
Elena’s Personal Biography Tour
Every Hour From 10.30am
Meet Outside The Farmer’s Arms
Learn All About A Local Woman’s Real Life Own & Personal Biography
One man wore a cheesed off expression like he wanted a different face. The other man’s eyes were edged with smugness. The woman smiled as if she ever stopped smiling she might never smile again.
Elena told them a one sentence story. ‘This bus stop is where, 11 years ago, 7 May 2013, I remembered something I’d forgotten. Which was how individual loneliness is.’
The man who pined for a different face wore a sticker Elena gave him at the start of the tour on which he wrote his name, Big Larry.
Big Larry said, ‘Oh I’m sorry, that sounds sad.’
The man with the smuglit eyes’ sticker said, Scotty.
He snorted. ‘That’s a litte bit deep for me.’
‘What do you expect,’ said the perma-smile woman, ‘we are on a tour of Elena's personal biography.’
Her sticker read, Sylvia. She waved the flyer. ‘The clue is in the word “personal”. And the word “biography”.’
Scotty went crimson.
‘A person’s life,’ he said, ‘does not have to be about woke stuff like feelings.’
‘Why did you come on this tour?’
‘The last place was great.’
Big Larry said, ‘It was a grave.’
Scotty snorted. ‘That was the great Jimmy Murphy’s grave and the personal biography you told us about yourself there, Elena, was touching.’
‘I found it boring. No offence, Elena,’ Big Larry said.
Sylvia poked her smile at Big Larry.
‘She took her daughter there to teach her about the Jimmy Murphy. How he held Manchester United together after Munich, while Matt Busby was in hospital, recovering from the plane crashed.’
‘A very touching story,' said Scotty.
‘“Touching”,’ said Sylvia, ‘That’s twice now. So emotions are fine if they suit you? '“Loneliness” - no. “Touching” - yes.’
Scotty crimsoned more. ‘Is loneliness an emotion? I’m not sure that it-’
‘So what I did,’ said Elena, ‘at this bus stop, after I remembered how personal loneliness can be, I sat on this yellow seat and decided no more. I am going to change my view, my outlook. Approach. So I did.’
‘How?’ said Big Larry.
‘Yes,’ said Sylvia, ‘how?’
‘I began to knit.’
Scotty lurched forward and bent double as if winded and placed his hands on his knees and spluttered like he heartattacked and could barely speak so mirthful was what he heard. ‘Are you taking the piss? Are you taking the proper piss? Knitting’s the solution to loneliness is it?’
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Tales From The UniversE to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.