By Charles Olafare

The Drowned World

My bedroom flooded in the middle of the night last week. I’d left a valve on the radiator behind my loose and several hours worth of water gushed over several years worth of clothes, comic books, and magazines that I’d left unpacked under my bed when I first moved back home for SCA.

I wasn’t there when it happened. It’s a miracle I got home in time the next day to save more things than I threw away. A lot of the stuff that’s left needs a bit of tender loving care, though. So i spent a lot of this weekend blow drying objects it had taken years to accumulate and just a night to bring close to ruin.

It made me think: the things I love shouldn’t be left to languish and then drown under my bed. They should be kept on pride of place, where they can entertain, inspire and stay dry.

Partnering Up

Is it just me or has there one word on everyone’s lips these last couple weeks?

“Partner.” 

I’ve heard it loads in all kinds of different configurations. Who do you like working with? Who do you want to work with? How do you get your partner into a child-like state? It stresses me out.

It’s just mad to think that we’re supposed to pick someone out from a room of about 50 then and try and build a career with them.

But sometimes it feels like there’s a pressure to already have my mind already made up. Or to be as amenable as possible so that everyone and anyone would want to work with me. Should I be more playful? Perhaps more agreeable. Am I sunning ideas or raining on them? Is the work good?!?!

The whole thing reminds me of dating, which I was shit at anyway. I’ve been trying not to give any of it too much thought, I just want to work my way around the room and let the cards fall where they may. There’s no rush, is there? Like relationships, partnerships can start brilliantly and end terribly. Or the other way around.

Once I went on a date that ended with the woman in question exposing herself to another man, smacking him over the head with a glass, then getting frog-marched out of the pub. All whilst I was having a cigarette.

Had the five white wine spritzers she’d valiantly necked (in just under an hour) got her into a child-like state, or was she just black-hatting my attempts at flirting?

Who knows. I just want to end the year with some good work in my book and as few cuts and bruises as possible.