Leah > Recent Status Updates

The crowd, oddly moved, found itself roaring its approval. He had shadow-boxed, he had waved, he had lied and told them their city was aesthetically pleasing. He could have run for mayor on a Nation of Islam ticket and won on a first-round voice vote of the council.

Belfast's default demotic was sarcasm and everyone liked a good joke so perhaps the Champ was only kidding? 'Yes, sir, it's a lovely winter day and it's wonderful to be here in beautiful Belfast, Northern Ireland!' the Champ reiterated, and this time there was no doubt about his sincerity.

‘Hello Ireland! I'm so happy to be here in beautiful Belfast at last!'
The audience was momentarily baffled by the statement. None of them had ever previously considered the notion that Belfast could be beautiful or that anyone would have come here voluntarily, and upon arrival, would have been happy with this as their choice of final destination. Yet here was the most famous man on Earth saying exactly that.

The Administration did not agree with Dr. Norman Johnson that fear was a problem; they thought the predominant human emotion would be wonder and awe.

This, every copper knew, was how it would end, not fighting the good fight but in a random bombing or a police chase gone wrong or shot by a half senile security guard in a derelict factory in north Belfast. It was April 1st. Not a good day to die.

This, every copper knew, was how it would end, not fighting the good fight but in a random bombing or a police chase gone wrong or shot by a half senile security guard in a derelict factory in north Belfast. It was April 1st. Not a good day to die.

I wanted to lie back on my sofa and smoke my hash and melt nicely into a giggly puddle, not keep an eye on Dec while he buzzed around my living room collecting things to use in a makeshift game of bowling and I tried not to glance at anything fragile in case it gave him ideas.

Mrs Gaitskell always came late: she queued for an hour at the Co-op grocer because the shop issued its dividend stamps in double measure on that day. For Noah this lining up for trading stamps had always been beyond comprehension, but for Ali it was altogether understandable that, after a week of evenings indoors with the television and the budgie, Mrs Gaitskell should go along for the female camaraderie of the queue

Sitting in a metal box to mark the beginning and the end of my day was almost like a type of sunrise and sunset for my body clock. The warm artificial glow of the lights tells me when I'm leaving home or coming back again. It's more effective than nature, a good city infrastructure. To realise I rely more on trains than the sun makes me feel terribly modern, and also just terrible.

‘Oh hell and fireflies,’ I said and went out to the kitchen and gobbled a quick drink, before we started. It didn’t do me any good. It just made me want to climb up the wall and gnaw my way across the ceiling.

‘Phil Marlowe,’ he said. ‘The shop-soiled Galahad.’

‘I don’t want to be too cynical, Marlowe. But you’d be surprised how many girls marry to find a home, especially girls whose arm muscles are all tired out fighting off the kind of optimists that come into these gin and glitter joints.’

At the entrance to the dining-room a chubby captain of waiters stood negligently with a two-inch satin stripe on his pants and a bunch of gold-plated menus under his arm. He had the sort of face that can turn from a polite simper to cold-blooded fury almost without moving a muscle.

(I just love the way Chandler can describe things so that you know exactly what he feels)

‘Yes,’ Breeze said. ‘Phillips. Well, George Anson Phillips is a kind of pathetic case. He thought he was a detective, but it looks as if he couldn’t get anybody to agree with him.’

‘His marriage,’ she said nastily, ‘was a momentary impulse. Afterwards he tried to act like a gentleman. I have no such scruples.’ ‘It takes three days to have that kind of momentary impulse in California, Mrs Murdock.’

Patricia had fallen in love with Danger Bookstore on her first ever visit, and whenever she climbed the wooden staircase, she usually felt a little of the packing tape around her soul unwind

On the long drive home, Laurence tuned out his parents explaining to him that life isn’t an adventure, for chrissake, life is a long slog and a series of responsibilities and demands. When Laurence was old enough to do what he liked, he would be old enough to understand he couldn’t do what he liked.

“Listen, I wanted to have a manly talk with you, man to man, as men,” he explains heartily.

“Only, it looks like there’s one… field on your farm that you haven’t… ploughed, so to speak, if you see what I mean.” Having vomited up the laboured innuendo, he makes a grotesque show of waggling his eyebrows.

“Weldon,” I tell him reasonably, “get in the sea.”

…one thing that spins like a weathervane when you change causality is entertainment, and if you have a deft hand you can collect all the really good versions of things, like the final series of Lost where all the loose ends actually got tied up, or that peculiarly tangled timeline where William Shakespeare, Helen Mirren and Orson Welles got together to make a Transformers movie.

It’s a calling. Or, if it’s not a calling, then at least it’s a vocation. Or, failing that, you have to have a hobby, don’t you?

Jackrum marched off, his inflated chest as red as a robin’s and twice as threatening. He shouted at orderlies, harried guards, saluted officers and, despite everything, hammered the blade of purpose out of the red-hot steel of panic. He was a sergeant major in a roomful of confused ruperts, and he was happier than a terrier in a barrel of rats

Besides, she thought as she watched Wazzer drink, you only thought the world would be better if it was run by women if you didn’t actually know many women.

In the firelight the grin of Sergeant Jackrum was a crescent of blood, his coat the colour of a battlefield sky. ‘You are my little lads,’ he roared. ‘And Iwill look after you.’

‘The captain looks bad,’ he said. ‘What did he try to do to poor little you?’
‘Patronize me,’ said Polly, glaring at Maladict.
‘Ah,’ said the vampire.

Look, you know what I mean. You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.

Other people's families were disorienting in the most marginal ways; how they spoke to each other, the taste of their food, the fragrance of their clean laundry, the brand of their biscuits.

The algorithms worked, but they wouldn’t get better unless humans gardened them

“People have been deputized to follow you around and help you carry all of the priceless national treasures that are going to be bestowed on you. They’ll look after the stuff and bring it all back here to the chopper so you can keep your hands free for making those little bows and shaking hands with the king or whatever. As soon as we get back to the aircraft carrier, we’ll throw it overboard.”