Shards from drafts: #1 folder…How real is Camden Town; playing substack instead of talking; invaded; Krapps last tape..

UNIFINISHED POST NOTES

[Saturday April 25th, 19.17, Edgware

Not waving but drowning…not sure what\s going on but I feel shitty pretty well all the time at the moment and my interest in and ability to sit and write anything seem to have left me. I have ideas but the ability execute them…nah mate, not going to happne.

So I decided I might as well push any drafts I have out into the hideous bright like of the world.

The headings above are what I planned to write about.it ….not what is actually here.

The dates below refer to the time the post was written.]

Wednesday 28th February, 2025, the Office, Edgware, 01.11

Well here’s a thing, to be feeling well enough and have enough energy to want to write…And to have an iMac, a comfy office chair and a quiet warm enough little office room to work in…

Now do have enough brains left to write anything worth saying…having written that I slide off the see what I can nick from Anne Carson who I discovered at 8.20 this morning via a post to the Camden Parkie Boxing WhatsApp group had knocked out another brain squirming LRB piece on her Parkie daemon¹.

Monday 3rd March, 2025, my flat, 19.56

What a drag it is getting old…

I spent so long farting about trying to find a piece of AC’s crisp prose (see above) that I ran out of steam and went to bed.

So let’s start again - I’m in a bad OFF at the moment and because when I’m like this I can’t remember if I’d taken my meds or not so surely must quite often double dose […yeh yeh…I know your names not Shirley…FFS…you’re mare so lame sometimes..] Probably do need to use one of those irritating little boxes…[Little boxes, little boxes, and they’re all filled with little pillses and they all look just as lame. There are are pink ones and grey ones and they all don’t make you feel much better so I’ll just have a whisky and get drunk instead…(good on you Pete - but you were so so wrong about Bob - but then so was I - at first).]

Downhill from here on…seeing through Camden

Coming off the escalator and entering the tourist fantasy that has made Camden Town tube the busiest on the entire network - was especially striking today. And I felt a brief shock as it suddenly seemed clear to me this was the high water mark. This was it - the best it would ever get. We’d had the fun - now it was pay back time.

Playing my substack - instead of talking

My old friend S came round for tea, my voice wasn’t great so after a bit I played him the last piece. My justification was that he hadn’t spotted the Anne Carson bit in the 2nd version. I love listening to the Substack AI voice read my pieces. To my way of thinking if a dumb machine reads my prose and it sounds good - then that means it was well written.

It felt a bit wierd the two of us sitting in the garden listening rather than talking. I was aware that this was my way of demonstrating to my mate that even though I could no longer talk for hours - I still had a functioning brain.

My flat…a self portrait…my show…

Since I moved in to my Parkway pad to pay the rent I’ve had to let it out on Airbnb, VRBO, Bookings.com. Which is a drag and a stress - but is also a significant upside. Because my voice is such a disaster I actively try to avoid meeting the people who come to stay, being happy to message them. I make a big thing out of this being my regular and much loved home. The feedback I get - when it is of the right kind - ie from someone who gets what the flat is about - gives me a real hit..’more like staying in the home of a family friend…love all Nick’s things…love the art….Nick has a fascinating collection of books. And of course I lap up all the stuff about me…Nick is a great host…super friendly and responsive'.

I had the thought that the flat was a kind of coded self portrait…writing this it feels more like it is my show…

And I keep making it ever prettier, moving rugs around and improving the lighting. One of my special delights (if I have the energy is to leave it looking all quiet and welcoming with just side lights on…

The idea behind the Insta nicksparkwaypad was perhaps to drum up more customers to my rental business - but it’s really just another way for me to connect to my lovely guests. And as a few months back a place for me to acknowledge the special delight I got from the thank you note and sketch ed and left this charming little sketch and thank you note. I stuck this up on the side of a bookcase and others took up the idea…

So farall thjs has as mellowish tone suddenly writing this in phone on tube to Edgware and my sciatic right thigh is going bonkers / hideous background pain of fizzy jumping with a focus of pain on the involuntary clenching of the core of the

1. Beware the man whose handwriting sways like a reed in the wind.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n04/anne-carson/beware-the-man-whose-handwriting-sways-like-a-reed-in-the-wind