Wednesday 12 October 2011

Balloon blowing...

I almost didn't bother today. What with the crunch, the canvas holes, the apathy, the words - and ultimately that sense of abject futility.

On days like this I wonder, I really do. It’s almost as if there’s something checking out the good things and balancing then off with the bad. Or it could be just kismet and kismet is such a strange, unfathomable and fantastic thing - blowing us up like preening pigeons to score a point or two should we find our way safely home.

Pumping us up.

And so to the balloon pump.

I guess that most of us have used them at one time or another, pumping up those coloured rubber skins with air. The round ones and the long ones, the wiggly ones and the oval ones - blue, red, green, yellow, orange, and those awful white ones; featureless ghosts screaming as the dark breath of life is pumped into them.

The boy in the balloon with his nanny, or mother, or sister, or lover – who knows? The boy in the bow tie and blue blazer, gold piping shining as he clutches at straws and prepares to burst the bubble.

Only a fantasia balloon pump containing balloons. Don’t blow it. Pump it. Made in England and just insert the neck of balloon in hole in plastic top then pump to inflate.

No need for the 'the' there. So obvious - and containing balloons.

Clipped language made clear by instruction. No 'I' in team, no debate allowed, no different point of view considered.

Kismet.

What else is there?

Welcome to the carnival my friends. Pump away.

6 comments:

  1. Ah, we ffiends always feel so deflated without you to pump up our spirits... So it's good to find you're still here even if it is so late in the evening (and all the music seeping through...). Perhaps it's a mid-October thang... The words seem so much harder as the nights grow darker... Or maybe we're all blown up so tight that we're fit to burst...

    Pop!!! M.

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  2. The stuff of life is blowing with the wind my friend. Can you hear it howling?

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  3. Howling... Screaming... It's all the same to be... Must be the season of the witch... M.

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  4. Sue Mcnally commented on Facebook.
    Sue wrote: "it was lovely to see you today"

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  5. Catherine Halls-Jukes on Facebbok:
    I need to read them (my posts) to keep me going, you send my thoughts running all over the place...and sometimes they need to.....keep looking forward and upwards xx

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  6. Ooh, I had a pump like that - no house could be without one come party time. Now you go to a shop and pay £5 for a helium filled foli one - I paid £80 out for my Dad's birthday balloons the other day. I do like the feel of the old carboard tubing pump though.

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