free writing

Last week Ali hosted a series of short bits of writing on her super Split Down The Middle blog, which is something we're going to do regularly - the idea is to spend two or three minutes writing in an uninhibited fashion, writing what you feel and not editing it afterwards. We've had - or will have in coming weeks - short submissions from a variety of friends and bloggers including myself, Victoria, Dan, Ali, Natalia, Kat and Anne-Sophie. It's not the easiest thing to do, writing in an un-selfconscious manner, but hopefully we'll all get better. Next week it'll be hosted somewhere else so if you like the idea keep an eye out here and I'll mention it when it goes up - if you want to contribute then do please do so - just email me or leave your effort in the comments box. The more the merrier. Here are five to get started for this week - hopefully more will follow.

One

"Like a bad dream that has gone away, the air is cleared by rain and the whistling noise that fills the night air in the street outside sounds just fine from safe indoors. Now waking in the middle of the night and walking from room to room within known territory, the creaking board that comforts and does not alarm, the swerving here, reaching out with sideways-turned hand there, to dodge the curve of the wall in the darkness, not needing a light, not needing to navigate the path in any way but from memory: this is home, and this is the right place for now."

Two

"I'm paying the price of being too honest, committed, nice
You say 'get over me', how easy can it be?
While I'm crying and tearing my hair apart
You're in her arms
How can you forget about us so quickly
And the misunderstanding grows with the pain, was I so mistaken all the way
When you smiled it was only a bag of lies
I'm the fool and you're the adult...
Obviously.

Love switches to hate so easily
I wish you all the worse my love
I hope your life turns badly
I wish you suffer and cries
You don't deserve the slightless glimpse of happiness
And if there was a justice, I'd be happy and you'd be down
I'd be loved and you'd be alone

But right now you're in her arms
And I'm working at it right
Working at my little revenge
I wish you all the worse my love
Loneliness above it all
As lonely as I can be right now
Feeling betrayed, being solo
Then I'll be the adult and you'll be the child scared of the dark."

Three

"there's a little green light flashing infront of me and it tells me that the world is at peace and that no-one wants or needs me as soon as the light becomes red I will become compelled to stop everything and grab and find out what and who only to find no doubt it is something or someone deathly dull and I'll wish i hadn't bothered. the rain is falling on the roof today and it's been doing so all day, quite fitting for a monday really, and the grey clouds as well. and tonight I'm heading over for dinner with the family and I'm wondering wherther I can be bothered to deal with polite chit chat and laughing in the right places and looking lovingly at Steve when actually I want to murder him for being 2 hours late again and keeping me waiting again, and then there's all the stuff I want to do other than that. I want to go home and catch up with news and work out what my new clothes will go with. I want to think about what a single life would be like and whether i could cope with it and whether I'd crumble and I'm sitting here dishing out this advice like some fucking gospel to my friends saying cope with it and you'll be better off without them knowing full well that if each day someone didn't hold me close and squeeze me and tell me I'm worthwhile I'd be left feeling empty and hollow and wondering what life held and what to do with my time."

Four

"Another freewriting exercise, another occasion to trawl the depths of my mind and see whats there... I can't help but wonder how the paper towels in the gents at work are so absorbant. They not only dry my hands of any water that may have been left having washed them but they suck up all moisture that may have been there in the first place leaving my hands feeling clean but very dry. Its weird alien technology deployed in those towels I'm sure of it. Still, I am working at Kimberley-Clark I suppose so we are likely to get the top of the range products in our own loos... Damn its late.. I want bed and Radio 4 till I sleep - if I time this to finish when the Shipping forecast begins that should then do the trick..christ am I really only 28!? The wierdist thing is I've being like this for years. I hope no attractive women are reading this and then realising who is writing it. /// Do I know many attractive women? A few I guess and I wouldn't mind if they read this as I guess they've known for some time that I'm a little odd. Right is that 3mins.?? I don't know - near enough.... night!"

Five

"i lift my foot from the ground, having compressed it into the snow - lifting it I see that it has left an indentation in the white carpet - it makes me think of potato waffles, the shape of it. in fact the whole experience is mouth watering, because next the snow is sorbet or icing and then, as I bend down and scoop it into a snowball, well-cooked rice; it's not that powdery snow which just kicks up into the air, it's damp and clingy, and when I roll it it rolls perfectly, as if my hand were an ice cream scoop - it rolls into a curl of turf and then progressively, as I push it along the ground, a snowman's body. the grass beneath is exposed cleanly as if I were shaving my face and leaving a furrow of smooth skin. i lift up the snowman and shake off"