Commonly used
The most commonly used phrase in blogs is surely any variation on “It’s been a while since I posted…”, and I am not about to buck the trend. The reason for my absence is that I’ve been writing in a very bitty fashion. Bitty, yes, but productive; I did a word count recently and the whole shebang - compiled body text, plus all the bits of memory and narrative that will go somewhere, eventually - add up to 58,000 words. Much of that needs expanding, and there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t even attempted to tackle yet. And what that adds up to is - I have enough material for a book. A whole book, with no need for padding, or illustration, or typographical experimentation.
For a long time I’ve been afraid of having insufficient material. The events I’m documenting took place between July 2003 and August 2004 (with a few diversions, musings and reminiscences) and I’ve been unwilling to stray outside those boundaries. Although I could do a far-future epilogue like in AI: Artificial Intelligence, ‘cause that was dead good.
So here’s a wee bit. I wrote it an hour ago, and when I read it back I smiled out loud. Stay tuned for more wee bits.
I saw a dead submarine once. Down in Portsmouth, coming back from the Isle of Wight in Ali’s tiny old custard-coloured Cinquecento, we passed over a big inlet at low tide; wide, flat bodies of sand bracketed a trickle of water, and on one of them lay this thing, a long ovoid like a child’s drawing, on its side, out of its element. Although it was massive and rusty and definitely deserved the title Hulk, it was comical and pathetic too. Totally emasculated (and, yes, phallic, although the conning tower…you want to get that looked at, mate), like a rubbish fish.
