Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

Not Near London

Anyway, when she is tired, really tired, she can’t even stand music. Not even Bugz in the Attic, never mind Jasper’s indie stuff. The effort of selecting something to match her mood, the film in her head: it is huge, sometimes, that effort. She looks at her fingers. They are no one else’s fingers. They’ve gone with her all through her life, and will carry on going with her until she is old, which is something that won’t happen to her because she is going to stay young forever. Three years doing art practice as well as theory, and she still can’t draw the five fingers on a hand. They always look like tentacles or soggy chips or erect dicks. A hand disguised as a chip buttie. Her dad had the same fingers, apparently:

long and slender. The pencil just will not cooperate. Soon she’ll be desperate for a piss and she hates loos on trains. They wobble and they stink. She’s had too many wees today already. She closes her eyes and swirls away into slumber. She is singing to some people in a big open party tent with a hammer drill working next door. There are about ten people sitting there in smart kit at the tables and she has to duck under a flap in the billowing sides of the tent. Silky. She looks at the words and wonders what the tune should be: it is an old-style song, an English folk song, traditional with a hand over its ear. What is she doing, pretending she can sing? The words are stapled to the music and the people are waiting.

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