I shall now bang out some words and call it fiction. Don’t think that this opening paragraph is some kind of pomo meta-narrative conceit. It isn’t. This is just a way of focusing my mind on the task at hand. And a way to suggest that something different might be taking place within the blog. My PhD supervisor complained that he didn’t think this blog was focused enough on a single topic, so even though I’m no longer doing the PhD this is a short bit of prose to help him understand what’s about to take place. Sometimes you have to help academics out.
He scrawled his fingers though the dust that had built up at the side of his keyboard. How long had it been since a cloth had scrapped away the detritus of flaky skin and dust mites?
By the way, this is the start of the story now. I’ve stopped talking about academics. Although, having written that, I wonder if I’ll make this character an academic? So far all I’ve got in my mind is something about diarrhea and household dust!
He staggered his finger to a stop and noted the short, jittery lines he’d marked out. There was something there, something deep and insightful. Something lurking just at the edges of his awareness. He stared at them, wondering if he could just unlock whatever it was through sheer determination.
No, nothing was coming through. Maybe it was only dust after all and not a message from the great beyond? Like a wise and worldly sage, he stroked his chin and passed judgement on the patterns. He would wipe them up with his new dust bunny cleaning cloth. That would do the trick. Besides, he needed to go to the kitchen to see what food he had in. He was supposed to be having a ‘friend’ around for dinner tonight.
“What do women eat on dates?” he asked the sink as he ducked down to pull out a cleaning cloth. He slipped the bunny shaped flannel onto his hand and repeated the question. The bunny looked him up and down and raised its arms in resignation. It had no idea. “Thanks, Bunny.” He’d show Bunny who knew best once he’d washed its face in the sea of dust across his desk.
With the office/spare room tidied and a quick Google search for dinner suggestions completed, he prepared a list of ingredients. Apparently ladies didn’t eat pizza and beer when on a date (according to one website). However, there was no definitive answer to what they did like to eat. He had settled on something by Jamie Oliver: Paella. He was pretty sure that Jamie hadn’t invented the recipe, but it looked like a good version of it. Besides, Jamie reckoned that, “the combination of textures and smoky flavours completely won me over.” If it did that for a cook, imagine what it might do for a lady on a date?
“Dust Bunny, I think that tonight might just be…” Dust Bunny looked at him from the end of his wrist. There was something doubting and uncertain in those black, glaring eyes. “Well, what the hell do you know?” And Dust Bunny spun away into a corner of the room, slipping under a precarious tower of magazines and towels in the corner. He turned his hand around before him as though he had never seen it before. Bereft of faux-rabbit pelt, it felt clean and fresh again. The sort of free and fresh hand that might prepare a lovely paella meal for two.
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