On being a poet.

I feel creative. That is not always the case and I have no control over it. I have no routine, no writing desk, no typewriter. Almost no readers.

I have written two new stories, Wilbur and Frank. I am going to write one flash piece of fiction each week. Each one’s title will be the name of the man it will be about. I worry already that I will run out of names.

I wonder if Kathryn Scanlon has a new book out and I check on Amazon. ‘Kick the Latch. 262 reviews. Available in 6 languages.’ But she has no new book. I am both disappointed and glad. This is the pendulum that hangs over us all, us people who want to create. Too much success for your peers can break you every time.

Bee Inspired are having a sale, 75% off, and I buy more clothes than I have ever bought at a single time, 2 jackets, a pair of jeans, an over shirt, a jumper. I try them on at W’s. All my deliveries go there. Nothing looks good. I am disappointed. But later, after work, back at the flat I try them on again and they look better. Fit better. I pace up and down in front of the mirror feeling like Josh O’Connor or Paul Mescal on Instagram. For perhaps half a second.

I wonder if they give a Nobel Prize for ‘killer last line.’ I google it. They don’t.

The lightbulb went in the bathroom and I was plunged into despair. The light above the shower cubicle is already intermittent. I will forever have to wash and shit in darkness! This morning I took my mini step ladder out from the cupboard under the stairs and swapped out the lightbulb in the bedroom. I have ordered some new lightbulbs from Amazon. They will be delivered to W’s house. I wonder if they will fit. Like the clothes.

I am going to order these ‘poet’s glasses’. I wonder if they will make me a poet. It is widely accepted in the creative community that poets are cool. But poor. I guess they would make interesting but grateful dates. But what am I saying? I am to be the poet and there are no dates on the horizon. In the blackness of my soul no horizon even.

I am excited that the 1987 film Overboard starring Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn has come onto Netflix. That’s one of my rest days evenings sorted. I mention it to W and he says how much he loves Goldie Hawn and for five minutes we discuss how much we love Goldie Hawn’s films. A quick check later on IMDB shows that most of these films we discussed actually starred either Bette Midler or Meg Ryan.

Someone at work says they are going to see Florence and the Machine. It’s at a massive arena in Birmingham. They only know one song by her they say. I hope they play that, they say, I’ll be disappointed if they don’t. That’s the kind of writer I want to be. To have one hit story and then have thousands of people pay hundreds of pounds to be in my presence. Actually I don’t want to be that writer but am acutely aware that this is how the consumption of culture works.

I book myself an appointment at work to have an assessment by the body composition machine. The machine I discover is in a cupboard. An actual cupboard. The assessor is an American woman. She taps at the screen to say that I’m going to be doing it clothed. You don’t have to be naked, she says. We both laugh nervously. Well, she says, as I step off. We have gone through various figures, 76% muscle, slightly dehydrated. You have a metabolic age of 40. How old are you? I resist the perennial urge to say, how old do you think I look? All the fives I say, like a bingo caller, 55.

Geed up, I return to my desk. Later I go to fill up my water bottle. First time I leave it on the side. Second time I am enticed by the Club bars in the tuck shop. Buy two. Leave the bottle again. Third time lucky! Last week I walked to the coat rack in the office, put on my coat. I wasn’t going anywhere! Surreptitiously I took it off. I don’t think anyone noticed.

Body of a 40 year old. Mind of an octogenarian. You can’t have it all.