The Irritable Writer

also, the patient recounts one of their most egregious manic beliefs
"that's actually a very good point"

~me as a therapist

"is your diet rich in UPF?"

~me as a therapist

gosh that little monster took residence in my childhood's nightmares, but I'd managed to repress its memory until today

“Well, sir”, here the condescending smile returned to invigorate the warden’s face, although it was more of a smirk this time, it evinced a certain self-complacency that had not come through before, “now it’s me who has to censure your example. Even if nothing else changed, you say! But a reversal in the elliptical motion of the earth would alter our very perception of time. From one moment to the next – assuming this hypothetical shift to be abrupt, and disregarding the frightful consequences it would cause: tsunamis, earthquakes, and so on – from one moment to the next, every region would be heading back towards the previous season, instead of moving forward to the next.”

From Traffic Directions, a short story about the wretched Mister Grimm. This traffic warden's really getting on his nerves... #wipsnips

The sedan’s driver had spoken as a private citizen, and although his attitude stood out as injudicious, it ultimately held true that the authorities’ decisions met him as a powerless recipient. The warden, on the other hand, had the task of executing those decisions, and one could go so far as to claim that she embodied the very prerogatives of the whole traffic department. But public offices are known to make mistakes, and no-one, not even the most humble among their representatives – especially not them – should take the side of power in such a blind and thoughtless manner.

Today's prompt takes me back to Traffic Directions, a short story featuring the hapless Mister Grimm

Fun fact: if you google "Cooper Park Elgin", you will come across a few pictures of the very Swans.

Thanks a lot, @carolanneshaw.bsky.social - or, as the narrator in this scene would put it, tapadh leat!

I'm so chuffed with this reading by @carolanneshaw.bsky.social that I have resolved to shed my cantankerous disposition for the rest of the day

Great initiative, I'd be thrilled to be part of it.

I'm a bit stuck with reading at the moment. Any contemporary novels you'd recommend? As in, really strongly recommend? And, what are you currently falling asleep on, as you struggle to get to the end of a chapter?

Thanks loads! (sung in a tenor-ish range with overly long vowels and dramatic facial expressions)

--- there are a few lines left in the story, in which the title finds its meaning. I will post them if more than one person ask! ---

There was a poster of Pavarotti and two other guys at Ennio’s. It had been autographed by Big Luciano himself, as the American tourists would call him, but I was not really sure what had made the man so famous either. In a strange way, he reminded me of Nano, which was uncanny, because apart from the huge build common to both, they did not look like one another. Nano could be taken for a tramp, Pavarotti, in the few pictures I had seen, always sported a tuxedo – the only exception, as far as my memory went, being the bright-red aloha shirt he’d been made to wear in a graffiti portrait painted on some wall in the city suburbs. Nano’s black hair, which he wore in a short, almost military crop, had started to grey around the sideburns and in various spots across his beard. Pavarotti’s traits were delimited by geometrical lines of an unnatural jet black – the rounded comb-over, eyebrows curved like seagull wings, and a neatly arranged triangular chinstrap. Pavarotti always smiled, Nano grinned at best, although there was something strained to the benevolent assurance the first attempted to project. That is the best way one could try and make sense of the unspeakable resemblance between the two: Nano was a Pavarotti who’d given up pretending to be happy.

In the fifth chapter of "The Swans", the narrator is trying to figure out why the protagonist reminds him of a certain celebrity, whose #famous face stares at him on every corner. #wipsnips

“Shall we have ramen for dinner?” shouted Vera from the adjacent room. “Let's order from that new place by the pharmacy, Henrietta highly recommends it.”

Apparently satisfied with the way she had laid it all out, she left the room without adding a word. As he sat alone and the scenario of his immediate future started to sink in, Michael remembered how badly he craved a hot shower, but his body was too weary to move.

In a year’s time, the four of us will come back and settle into a family routine, while Jessica can get on with the life you have so selfishly tried to ruin for her.”

She resumed her search of the open drawer and finally found a red matchbox bearing the emblem of a steakhouse in Chelsea. She lit the cigarette and inhaled for a very long time, during which she realised that an ashtray would have come handy. Taking another, shorter drag, she pointed at the mantelpiece, where a crystal bowl lay beside a picture of the two of them on their wedding day. Save for the hair, which she had given up dying – silver gray made her look “more authoritative in the eyes of the too many chaps that clutter the legal profession” – her appearance had changed little, but there was a sparkle to her bridal smile that could no longer be seen. Michael had gotten greyer too, but also visibly stouter, and the light beard he had grown did not help. He would never have entered in the black tuxedo which had fitted him so perfectly at the altar of Saint Mary’s church.

Vera&Michael are in the middle of a tense conversation, the stakes of which he's yet to figure out. From "Pan-fried crispy pork", a short story that I've serialised for bsky, so to speak. You can read it all starting from a post pinned to my profile; the final 2/3 passages will be dropping this week

In a year’s time, the four of us will come back and settle into a family routine, while Jessica can get on with the life you have so selfishly tried to ruin for her.”

“It matters because we’re adopting the babies. If we move now, before she starts showing, none of our nosy friends will be any the wiser.

He had been taken aback that she had caught him so quickly, he had gotten angry that he had behaved like a fool. Now a new puzzlement was getting hold of him, one that came swaddled in a haze of anxiety.

Thank you both!!

Take that guy by the counter”, he pointed his finger at a big lad talking to the bartender, “he’s a good example. His grandfather founded a huge construction company, which the guy’s old man drove straight into the ground. On the same day that he filed for bankruptcy, he hung himself from the ceiling of his office using a silk tie. The fabric was so good it didn’t rip, and mind you, the dude was a heavy fella, even heavier than his son.” “That sounds awful.” Perhaps I ought to have treaded more carefully, mindful of the outstanding questions surrounding Nano’s own parents. But drunkenness and subtlety do not sit well together. “Almost as awful as the fact that all the company’s workers lost their jobs overnight, while the guy over there, well, he still drives a Porsche. Look, it’s that dark suv parked in the disabled space. His father had stashed away the family assets in a bunch of Swiss accounts, or the devil knows where else.”

#wipsnips In this excerpt from "The Swans", the protagonist lets the narrator into some dark but spicy history of the place that he comes from

He had been taken aback that she had caught him so quickly, he had gotten angry that he had behaved like a fool. Now a new puzzlement was getting hold of him, one that came swaddled in a haze of anxiety.

“But why? Why should the two of us leave, and why on earth would it matter that we are close to Yale?”
He could contribute nothing to the conversation that did not end in a fat question mark.

I had to call in a few favours, but Providence is the perfect place, and one hundred miles from New Haven at that.”

I had to call in a few favours, but Providence is the perfect place, and one hundred miles from New Haven at that.”

Nobody wants you” – she dwelled a great deal on the first syllable of that 𝘯𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 – “it’s been ages since you wrote anything someone other than those geezers at the American Literature Association could read without falling asleep.

“She was watching him on behalf of the Americans. Anyhow, I’ve got you a fellowship at Brown.” She talked as if he had no say in the matter, which he hadn’t. “It’s high time you give your career a fillip, Michael, and let me tell you, that was the most difficult part to arrange.

“I’ll give up the murder case, there must be grounds to invoke improper instructions. Or a fee dispute, Swanston is said to be skint.”
Morris Swanston – that was the guy.
“Tell me again, why did he kill her?”