Sean
I, Calavera
Paul
Alice
ConnorRomanian boy had nothing else in the cupboards, so we decided to cook up the spaghetti with sugar. We'd bought the spaghetti from a Turkish supermarket so we had to guess at the packet instructions. It's not like pasta is hard or anything. We set it going and sat down to listen to music.
We live in an abandoned bar, which we both think is pretty funny. Plenty of people know we're here but we don't make much trouble so they leave us be. It's only been a week so far though. We won't be here for long. It's cold and the faces are hard. I could have just stayed at home if I'd wanted that. I left when I was 15 and I've been a few places since. This isn't one of the best. All the windows are boarded but the area isn't nice enough to put the metal ones on. We don't need the light to get in, because we keep odd hours. There's not much light this time of year anyway. The city is under a shroud. A shroud of cloud. I like poems.
We have three CDs and a player we found one recycling day which really does work if you give it a thump. We've a TV too but we mostly keep it in the cupboard. Last time we got it out was to watch the hockey. Romanian boy likes it with sports in the background. Today we put on the Belle and Sebastian because I like the lines “I was choking on a cornflake/ You said have some toast instead.” But we have to listen to the whole album before and after that otherwise the words don't work properly.
Words are what got me here, because years ago he told me not to tell and I told anyway and then everyone was angry with me. I thought to myself “what could be worse?” and so far nothing has been. I really mean it. When it's better when they're shouting because at least when they're shouting they're not looking at you like that, you have to get away. I come from Oxford and expectations. I'm the youngest of three. We're usually the youngest, people like us. Romanian boy has three older brothers and a sister. He had a little brother who died when he was small, but I only know that because of the day we found the plastic bag with all the whiskey bottles in it.
I woke up when the CD stopped and started coughing, which woke up the boy. The room was full of blue smoke and smelt of bonfire night. I ran to the stove and threw a cloth over the pan. It caught fire right away. I stood there watching the flames rise higher with my mouth hanging open like a bloody idiot. The boy rushed up behind me and grabbed the pan by the handle and yelled “Open the door! Open it!” He threw the whole thing out in to the snow. He shook his hands shouting “fuck fuck fuck” and plunged them into the drift. When it first falls, the snow makes everything look pretty, but that might be because you can't see anything.
The boy was angry, but I didn't care because it meant it would take him longer to think of what to yell at me. I got in first saying “well, that's fucking brilliant. What are we going to eat now?” That pissed him off. He grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me really hard, so I held his dreds and brought his nose down on to my knee. It started to gush blood. He fell down on the floor and put his hands over it but blood came out between the fingers. I had to say something so I pointed down at him and said “That's how we do it where I'm from, you bastard.” I'd told him that I wouldn't let it happen again.
Last time he'd done it was because I'd spent all our money on hair dye. I've got lovely hair and I wanted to be just the right kind of blonde. Men think I'm pretty and I have to keep it up. My arms and legs are long and as long as I'm sat still they can't see the way I fall over things all the time. The first time I dyed it though it came out kind of green, so I tried it again, but it was still too brassy and not honey-y enough so I had to buy a third pack. When he found out he hit me a bit, not in the face because he's not as stupid as that. He kicked me all over the legs though. I never wear trousers, they're too much hassle in a pinch and I look better without anyway.
I picked up my bag and walked out of the open door. I gave the burnt pan with the burnt sugar-pasta a good kick on my way and walked until I was out of sight. Being here a while you get shoulders from bracing yourself as you walk out of a door. God only knows why we came here. It has to be easier hoofing from one hole to the next in Marbella or Lanzarote or something. It gets in your bones, the cold here. Grubby snow all over the place. I noticed I was crying because it made my face hurt. I thought of the crunching noise of that nose against my knee and I retched by a lamp-post. It hurt because there was nothing in my stomach. There aren't a lot of people wandering around here so no-one could see me. I had to be seen though, so I started walking.
We walk a lot. Today, we had decided to visit every Catholic church in downtown. No idea if we hit them all, but there aren't as many as in Montreal. I like the pictures. I like the flaming hearts and the eyes rolling right up in smooth faces. I like the way they painted silk in pink and blue and the tiny shards of bone. In Europe, you see saints with knives through their heads and the stone is black from all the incense and candles for hundreds of years. Romanian boy likes the smell of candles. He hadn’t noticed the way people looked at us and I didn't care.
My feet are vile. Ages ago, I stayed with some guy at his flat a veterinary college and he made me leave my shoes in the hall. I was so humiliated that I do it without being asked now. I have four pairs of shoes and they all make my feet bleed in a different place. I dragged these bleeding feet along the streets for as long as I could stand. It was late so there was no traffic by out-door spots and I couldn't bear it out there anyway, so I headed to the metro and set up there. All my signs are in my bag but fishing anything out of a rucksack is a chore. A sad girl I met in Paris used to say it was like birthing a cow, reaching in up to your elbow to get whatever you're after. She'd say, some days all she wanted was to be able to reach into a drawer or a cupboard and put her hand on the thing that she wanted.
Nobody cares who I am. This is good, because it means I can be anybody. I like to be an American model lost to smack or a long-lost princess from a Balkan country. It doesn't matter that I can't do accents because nobody wants me to talk. I like to let my signs tell my stories for me. Some signs work better than others, but I won't throw any away because I don't have the stories written down anywhere else. Some people like it if you're funny because they don't have to feel too sorry for you if you don't. Others don't like it, like, if I'm going to be a pest then I should at least feel bad about it. Today I'm hungry, so I use the hot meal sign. The Scottish girl dances, probably.
This metro doesn't move you on as much as they do in some places. In Berlin you might as well not bother. Here I can sit for as long as I choose. I think everyone who sits on their backside for hours at a time makes up stories about the people who walk by.
This woman lost her son to suicide. He drove out to an airfield and put a hose from the exhaust pipe to the window. Her eyes tell hollow tales and her memories are tainted. This guy never told his wife that he could only love a man. I like sad stories best and they are easiest to come up with in the half minute I see the faces for. She heard that Toronto was like New York and didn't understand what that meant. She throws me fifty cents and I give her a lover, someone who writes true things for a newspaper. She looks me over for just a moment, no expression, and walks away. I wonder what story she'll come up with for me.
can't remember when I saw Patti Smith's "Eat the Rich" T and decided to rip it off in the most painstaking way I could think of. I researched the idea a little more and found tonnes of variations on the theme, this being kind of an iconic punk slogan. Some of them sucked, naturally, as is the way of slogans that once meant something getting appropriated and ending up as cheap nasty transfers in Camden. But I found enough variation to make me decide to do my own take on it.
So now it's done, and I have a big hole in my life. I can't just flump down on the sofa and watch TV anymore because of the creeping feeling that I should be doing something more productive with my day. In fact, I should have been packing these last several days, but this let me pretend otherwise. And apart from the crooked cutlery, I am Well Pleased. The biro has (mostly) come out with the first wash so the stitching is showing up properly black now, rather than a little bit blue like it was before. The cross-hatching works really well and the whole design look bolder in life than it does in this picture here. I'm already planning my next embroidery project. I'm thinking Dana Scully.
I was using was this bright pink stuff boyfriend was probably never going to get around to using anymore, and was also for use in a washing machine, so I threw in a pair of jeans there too for use in later projects. There's something naff-in-a-good-way about dyed denim. Anyway, it's a nice hands-off approach. I can empty the dishwasher or sew fabric flowers in front of the X-Files, or clean up after housemate's sister's cat or look for jobs. Bascially all the things that I sew to avoid.
Lovely Things To Make For Girls Of Slender Means. The title alone is a winner. It's a follow-up to another book called Yeah, I Made It Myself and they are both really fun, non-scary introductions to making your own clothes and accessories. Since I have so many interesting little bits of pattern fabric now, I anticipate spending much of my sewing time to be spent making flowers, purses and hairbows once ATSAD is done with.
Drew on the motif in taylors pencil, possibly a little high but I didn't want it to look like a pasty. Settled down in front of the TV and got to sewing in concentric circles. Took a few tries and wonky dog-legs to get the hang, but I got into it. just wish it hadn't taken so bloody long. If I'd realised sooner just how far the reds were going to go, I would have done one side of the apple red and the other green. I was expecting to only have to do a touch of green in one corner to fill it out, y'see. But here we have one disco apple and it is only seven o'clock. Laters!
anyway and it took about forever. I have shredded my thumb nails pushing that needle through the card-like cloth. 
