Day sixty one: dinosaur jr

The final haiku in my triumvirate of Jenny requests is about dinosaurs, and what better way to resurrect my favourite joke as a kid:

They've just discovered
A blind dinosaur. It's called
Dyouthinkhesaurus

Boom, and indeed, boom.

Day sixty: Hugh-bee-do

As part of Jenny's previous (yesterday's) request, she also asked for something on Hugh Laurie and dinosaurs. I am a fan of both of those things. I would have liked to have combined the two, but space didn't permit. Still:

Hugh, you are lovely,
Even your Spanish Schweppes ads
Have a boyish charm

And here's one of them



And here he is in one of my favourite scenes of my favourite of his roles

Day fifty nine: The Three Craws

On Tuesday I mentioned Monday's fantastic Three Craws gig, and my friend Jenny has requested one specifically about it for today. I'm more than happy to oblige.

Blue bleezin' blind drunk;
Home taping is killing Fife;
Beautiful voices

Here's a clip of those beautiful voices in action at Green Man 2008.



Fence Records.

The Beach Boys - Til I Die (alternate mix)

It's probably 10 years since I heard this song, but it still has the capacity to be completely disarming. Those voices!

Day fifty eight: being not there

Lizzie Poulton's just been in Barcelona, and needless to say it's a bit of a bummer being back in the UK. Can't say I blame her, but hey, it's good to look forward to things, and have good memories of places. And on that note:

Not being there means you
Can appreciate the best
Memories of there

Lizzie's 10 weeks of plagiarism blog is quality, and it's here.

Day fifty seven: city at night

Went to the super Three Craws & OLO Worms gig at the Luminaire last night, after which I stayed at Ade Brown's place - Ade's been doing a walk a day for his 100 days project, and a map of the routes he's taken so far are on his blog. It's very impressive, and of course it stood to reason that we should take a brisk stroll between night buses

Walking the West End
I had a slice of pizza
And a quick jimmy

Day fifty six: an ode to pooches in the park

Not much in life makes
Me happier than seeing
A dog having fun

Day fifty five: bladdered

When I asked for any haiku requests the other day, the lovely and talented Chrissy Williams said, and I quote, "I read your tweet just as an ad came on the telly for "...bladder and pelvic weakness...". Any good? Alternatively, dogs!"

So...tomorrow there will be one on dogs, but in all seriousness...

It wouldn't be right
To take the piss out of a
Bladder problem. Oh...

Happy now, Chrissy? Happy now?!

Day fifty four: the taxman

You may recall me writing about Neil's move to Warsaw. Now here's one for Heidi, the other half of we sink ships. She's been having tax return issues, and this is an ode to that.

Tax doesn't have to
Be taxing. It doesn't have
To be, but it is

Here's a song. I've been listening to lots of Brian Eno lately.

Day fifty three: first an earthquake, now this

Rod Stewart, Leona Lewis, JLS and Michael Buble have all agreed to take part in the Haiti charity single, which has been organised by Simon Cowell.

What did those poor souls
Do to deserve this? Bublé?
Rod Fucking Stewart?

I can confirm that 'Rod Fucking Stewart' is my favourite line in the 53 haikus I've written to date.

Day fifty two: Wild Party

I was queuing at the supermarket earlier, and the below photo on the front of one of those magazines covering celebrity gossip/mum stuff/grizzly murders caught my eye, in particular its caption.



You should've been there.
So fucking wild. At one point
Ronan went "wahey!"

Now, I would never claim to be some kind of non-stop party tearaway, but if Ronan Keating going "wahey" behind someone with a ropey facelift* is what constitutes a wild party then I'm like Keith Richards!

*I have been informed via comment that it is not a facelift, for legal reasons.

Day fifty one: No explanation necessary

I'm never banking
With Halifax, due to their
Horrendous adverts

And I think their latest one is the worst of the lot

Day fifty: Amelie Cleary

Wow, halfway through the 100 days project thing. That reminds me that I must buy a ticket for the thing on March 10th. And I suggest that you do too.

Anyway, someone calling themselves 'marancat' left a really lovely comment on my day 49 post. I've had a mega busy day and when I saw read it while speeding northwards from Kings Cross it genuinely cheered me. She also said that her friend Sue was unhappy at the moment, so here's one for her.

Hey Sue, don't be blue.
I don't know you, this is true,
But I bet you're coo(l)

I hope it works. I like the idea of simple acts to make people happy. Maybe I'll do an Amelie and hop on a Eurostar to give chicken to Parisian winos or something.

ps. just checked out marancat's blog. It's here and there's lots of lovely stuff on there for your perusal.

pps. I'm totally listening to the Amelie soundtrack now.

Day forty nine: an excuse to use the word 'moustachioed'

I'd been growing a beard for the last month or so, with the intention of seeing it through, but I've got a few potentially significant appointments tomorrow, and the beard was looking really quite messy, so it had to go. However, shaving a beard off does always have a good side effect.

Shaving a beard is
An excuse to see what I'd look
Like moustachioed

And the answer is: like a sex offender

The culmination of this post was due to be posting a photo of myself moustachioed, but the one I took was so bad that I couldn't even consider revealing it to the world.

Day forty eight: on subtlety

Bianca requested a haiku about subtlety, and here it is:

Some understated,
Brief tirades lead everyone
To your conclusion

Here's her blog, with her 100 days updates and plenty of other things too, and a very aesthetically pleasing blog it is too.

Day forty seven: smiles and trees

I got a request from So-Shan Au on Twitter to write a haiku about smiles and trees. I was going to do two separate ones, but then got the image in my head of marking the bark of a tree with a smile, then leaving it to grow there after I'd gone away. I might actually do that. Anyway, it's a nice thought, so I thank her for that!

I'll carve a big smile
Onto a tree, so it stays
There longer than me

Here is her lovely blog

Day forty six: an ode to leaving

The haiku requests will continue tomorrow, but I just wanted to do a special one in reference to it being my last day in my current job today. Corus has been good to me overall, but things have gone so quiet in the last few months that I really had to go. And also I've been pretty desperate to get out of Scunthorpe for some time now. So I'm making the move to London early next month - haven't got a new job or anywhere to live yet, but I'm working on that. The strange thing is that, while I'm usually not afraid to show my emotions, I feel oddly emotionless about leaving, even though I've been with the company for 5 years, and in my current department for 2.5 years. I don't think I'm in denial either, I just don't really feel anything. I guess this may be evidence that I'm doing the right thing by leaving.

I feel neither joy,
Nor sorrow, just indifference.
Kind of says it all.

I am, of course, going to have a fair amount to drink with my colleagues tonight, which is why I wanted to write this now and not later for fear of drunkenly using the "c" word. Yes, "cry".

Day forty five: mission to Warszawa

Neil, one half of the wonderful We Sink Ships asked me to write a haiku about his imminent emigration from Glasgow to Warsaw, and I was only happy to oblige. Moving to a different country is an immensely brave thing to do if you ask me, and I wish him the best. As for the city he's going from and to...well, I love Glasgow, it's a fantastic place, but...

Bowie named a song
After Warsaw, not Glasgow.
Ergo, Warsaw wins




Edit: ok, it's not imminent, he's actually already gone it would seem, but the sentiment remains the same on my part.

Day forty four: it's a love/hate relationship

I find that whenever I have gin, I could just have one along with a load of other stuff, but if I'm hungover the next day there's only one flavour that's stuck around. It reminds me of the time I had a vegetable curry which contained juniper berries while suffering from a monstrous hangover, and when I eagerly bit into one my mouth was filled with the taste of gin. It was weird wild stuff. Will it stop me drinking it again (and again)? NEVER.

I love gin, but if
I have gin, all I can taste
The next day...is gin

I don't know what the deal is with ellipsis/a dramatic pause in a haiku, whether it's allowed. Oh well, screw you, the rules!

Oh, and the gin haiku was requested by Siobhan (wigglymittens on twitter). Check out her 100 days sketches and drawings here. They're very sweet.

Alasdair Roberts - Willie Leonard

I'm in the mood for some Ali Roberts. That guitar, that voice! Whewee.

Day forty three: haiku on haiku

Disrespecting centuries of Japanese culture by saying

A haiku is to
A poem as twitter is to
A blog or something

But it's not really. Some more requests would be good, as I enjoyed doing that, but failing that I'll work on some kind of theme for a bit from tomorrow.

Day forty two: BADGERS!

A few weeks ago my friend Jenny requested that I write a haiku about badgers, which I said I would do, but then forgot about it (I think I may have been drunk). But she reminded me the other day, so here it is...

Badgers have stripy
Tadgers, and when they talk they
Sound like Bob Hoskins




I can't believe I just used the word "tadger".

Day forty one: an untrue story about a fictional cat

Ok, I got a haiku request from Kate in Melbourne on Twitter to write about black cats. It turned out a bit darker that I had planned.

I had a black cat
Called Lucky. He got hit by
A truck - unlucky

Here's a picture of my sister's cat to try to make up for it.

Andy Cleary: idiot non savant

I was walking back from the local shop earlier when I saw some footprints that were recognisable as being the same as the prints from my shoes, so the rest of the way home I went on a big flight of fantasy about how this other person and I may have had the same shoes, but could be wildly different people, going to completely different places, yet our paths literally converged on this stretch of snowy suburban road, and there was a certain romanticism about that. It was at that point I realised that the prints were pointing in the opposite direction to the way in which I was heading, and were, in fact, most probably my footprints from when I went to the shop. Felt like a bit of a wally after that.

Day forty: eranu, umami

It was only a matter of time before I wrote a haiku about cheese, and Jen B requesting one gave me the perfect excuse to do so. I love cheese. In fact, one of the things I am known as among my friends is a great lover of cheese. I'd rather just be known as a great lover, but you can't have everything.

Cheese plays on the fifth
Basic taste, or umami.
"Ooh yummy", more like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami

I'm enjoying this request a haiku thing, so I want more - go on, you know you want to!

Day thirty nine: a penguin request

It was requested by Jen B, and now it is done:

I reckon that if
Penguins could talk they'd sound a
Bit like Groucho Marx




Check out Jen's lovely 100 days photos here!

New directions - request a haiku!

Hello!

I've been thinking for a few days that it would be nice to have some kind of theme to what I write about, even just temporarily. Something that I will probably do later on is to write made up stuff about countries of the world, but for now I'm asking people to request for me to write about something - literally anything, the weirder and more wonderful the better. Whatever pops in your head. So either comment on this post or tweet me at http://www.twitter.com/accleary100days

Let's go!

Albums for walking through fresh snow

I have, somewhat perversely, been walking home from work a lot more often since it's been snowy. The main reason for this is that my route in is a bit off the beaten track and through a big park, so the snow has been really good to walk on, but a really lovely side-benefit has been discovering what albums sound perfect in those dark, icy cold, crunchy footed conditions. Here are songs from a few of the best ones:



Mount Eerie - Wind Speaks (from Wind's Poem)




Nico - Ari's Song (from The Marble Index)




John Renbourn - The Moon Shines Bright (from The Black Balloon)




No doubt I'll encounter more snowy albums, considering how long it's due to stick around for!

Day thirty eight: considering Gerry Francis

A mullet like this, in this day and age, beggar's belief. I've almost got a bit of respect for him for it.




Really, why would you?
Cut the sides don't touch the back!
The Beastie Boys said

Day thirty seven: Stop press - weather event

I prefer it when
The news reports the news; not
Weather happening

Day thirty six: trente six fois

I like the number thirty six in French - they use 'trente six' like how we would use tonnes, or millions, to signify a lot of something. I don't know why they settled on 36, or what happens when they are describing something which actually happened thirty six times, but I like how a specific number is used to represent a non-specific amount. So I started writing something in French, and typed the words as they came into my head. It doesn't really mean anything.

Je t'ai dis trente-six
Fois, qu'il y ont trente-six lunes
Dedans trente-six boites.

Day thirty five: back to work

I know it's a bit of a standard thing to moan about going back to work after Christmas, but it is shit isn't it. Things have gone a bit tits up at Corus (see here in particular, here, and here) so I've decided to take a redundancy package that is on offer. It is a risk as I haven't got anything else lined up, but I've got so little to do and my department's going nowhere, so every month I stay is damaging my career (not that I'm particularly career driven, but it's nice to do something you enjoy isn't it), and I've been wanting to get back down to London for a while now, so that's what I'll be doing at the start of next month. Gulp! Apologies for the mangled sentence structure of the majority of this paragraph.

Anyway, back to the haiku - I had a load of e-mails this morning, but after going through the meaningless rubbish ones all I had to do was post a brochure to someone. I really don't need to be here.

After deleting
Irrelevant e-mails, I
Was left with one task.

Day thirty four: aren't seagulls horrid

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8438249.stm

Poor whales. Blasted seagulls. We've all been there.

The whales in question
Were carrying bags of chips
On a promenade.

Gentlefolk

After two weeks away, it is good to be home. Here's a very pretty song.

Day thirty three: musical muse

Great artists inspire,
But I try not to compare
All my songs to theirs

Day thirty two: my stepfather, not so much

I love my Mother
But I am tired of "home" now.
One more day to go