The Notes from Underground columns from Prospect are now here, starting at the end and working back to the start
Actually the Notes from Underground columns are now here with bonus extra unpublished/spiked pieces for you lucky lovely people. What's more they're even in date order. Or they were last time I looked.
Internet people are the best arent they think they are so fucking important. Especially they get into your website and change what you wrote to make themselves look more human and make it less funny in the process give up there time for good cause which they consider so important im far too important to do what you want oooohhhhh you want your internet to be like this well i'm too important to do that so itll have to be like this because thats the hierarchy of importance here today yes we the geeks have been down for SOOOHH long now its OUR TIME yes OUR TIME you HEAR ME BABY!!!
The rubbish men come
& swear & spill the rubbish in the street
& break glass
they feed their giant rubbish truck
an odd animal, which eats from its behind
& then they're gone
leaving the detritus of the detritus
that they've took away
And then comes the street sweeper
with his brush & cart
& look of placid disgruntlement
Such a seamless operation
you'd think they must be acting in concert
But the sweeper has never met the rubbish men
& knows them only by their litter
He's told on Monday go here
on Tuesday go here
and as if by magic, the streets are paved with rubbish
The sun was already at my back when I reached the farm gate. The shadows stretched out across the deserted yard. I unhooked the latch and let the gate swing open. Even if no-one was around, I thought, I should be able to get some water.
I strolled across the yard towards another gate. The farmhouse was down a path beyond. Nothing stirred the scattered hay as my boots stomped down on the dusty concrete. My forehead was damp with sweat. I unclipped the next gate.
Sometimes I feel like crying
I feel like that a lot
Sometimes I have a reason
but mostly I have not
Declan Taylor, thirty-nine years old and in no way reconciled to being forty, stepped off the oxygen-deprived charter flight into a riot of glare. White-painted concrete reflected the Greek sun into his eyes like an interrogator’s lamp. His wife, Jenny, hauling her day-bag behind him, had already snapped her sunglasses into place with immaculate ease. As they decended the steps, Declan felt for his own in his bag and came up short. Both they and, as the sun scalded his scalp, his over-priced Italian sunhat, had not made it this far.
I was asked to submit something to the New Statesman, who were having a redesign and might like some new columnists. I submitted this piece, but was told that if they wanted funny they had famous funny people to do it and they wanted something else, although exactly what I never ascertained.
Harold Pernekins was into his fourth day of fasting when the runny nose began. He noticed it immediately when he woke, the dribble marks cold and wet running down his cheek to his bed. This is only to be expected, he thought, as the toxins clear out of the body, and he quickly recovered a packet of tissues left under the bed in the last flu season. Then he rose and began to consider his day ahead.
