Rob Currie

Kidstreet | Song (Album version)

Fri, 03 May 2013 20:54:41 +0100

Kidstreet | Song (Album version)

I spend a lot of time talking to myself. Sometimes it’s...

Fri, 03 May 2013 01:34:00 +0100

I spend a lot of time talking to myself. Sometimes it’s the only way to write a genuine sounding conversation. When I’m walking home from the day job after a late finish at half past ten in the night, the empty-ish streets are a nice place to try out dialogue. If people think I’m a bit mad, so be it.

I will admit that on paper, this particular idea doesn’t look very conversational, but it’s supposed to be two politicians who can’t stand each other. I’ve been watching a lot of footage from parliament on YouTube recently, fascinated and annoyed by how much of their dialogue boils down to quips and jibes, when it really should be about facts and figures.

Excellent material, though.

You go for a walk in the rain

Thu, 02 May 2013 05:59:00 +0100

The twitter account Tweeter Rater has been running a series of games over the last few weeks, from the creatively crude ‘Fuckronym,’ (where players use the letters in their twitter username to construct a rude sentence) to the more thought provoking ‘Footprint,’ (where players were asked to complete a survey which would calculate their slavery footprint, then tweet a response to their result).

Recently, Tweeter Rater games have been guest-hosted by other users (which is, in turn, a game called ‘Playmakers!’). Right now, twitter user Blaxtronaut is running ‘Cuil Crucible,’ which I’ll try to briefly explain:

A cuil is a unit of measurement when discussing abstraction, and is represented by an interrobang (‽). A really useful explanation can be found here. The aim of ‘Cuil Crucible,’ is to create a seven-part cuil abstraction from ‽1 to ‽7, on the theme of “you go for a walk in the rain.”

I really enjoyed writing this. It’s completely different and new to me - I had no idea what a cuil was until two days ago - but I’m happy with my efforts, and happy to have learned something new in the process.

So, my cuil abstraction in seven parts is below the cut if you’d like to read it.

‽1: You go for a walk in the rain, but it isn’t raining. You wonder why you tried to walk in the rain.

‽2: You go for a walk in the rain. The clouds are on fire and the water falls hot. Everyone takes a shower in the storm.

‽3: You go for a walk in the rain. Instead of falling in drops, the rain crashes down all at once. From now on, the sight of dark clouds heralds only one thing: destruction.

‽4: You go for a walk in the rain. A child jumps into a puddle, but instead of splashing in it, she falls right through. You jump in after her, and end up in a universe where everything is exactly the same, except that you are the little girl, and she is you. Before you can correct the situation, she runs off, and as the last of your residual memories are replaced by hers, you realise that you got the better end of the deal.

‽5: You go for a walk in the rain. Your raincoat is made of rain. The drops from the sky coalesce with the drops of your coat, until you are no longer walking. You go for a swim in the rain. It keeps on raining. Your coat is the size of a stadium. Olympic events are held in your coat - diving, synchronized swimming, the 100m butterfly. You start to get tired in the rain. Your coat is now the size of a town. Several lives have been lost to your coat. Fishermen make their living from your coat. You miss your family. Your coat becomes an ocean. You drown in the rain.

‽6: You go for a walk in the rain. It falls at lightspeed, and causes you to travel backwards in time to the moment of your biggest regret: senior prom. You try to apologise to Cassandra Henderson, but she assumes you’re a sexual predator and screams for help. You are arrested, tried and convicted. They send you to the prison your father was incarcerated at. He somehow recognises you, and tries to kill you to reassert the timeline. You wrest the blade from his hand, and swipe at him. He dies of septic shock four days later, and you spend the next thirty years inside. When you are finally released, the heavens open. You go for a walk in the rain.

‽7: You rain all over the walkers. You ruin a wedding. The photographer captures you in his camera. You wipe the memory card in anger, but it contained the memories of your wife, and she leaves you. You are sold on eBay to a social media expert who can’t forgive her son for chosing to live with his father after the divorce. It is Christmas, and her son drops you in the snow. You escape through the cracked lens and into the ice. An obese man slips on you somewhere, and skids into a set of bowling pins. He does this twelve times, and bowls a perfect game. He is given the key to the city. It is summer, and you have long since melted. You wait to take on cloud form, while birds fly and shit through you. A shit lands in a crying baby’s mouth. His family never let him forget this moment. He writes a best-selling novel on the subject. You rain at his funeral. A teenager googles you, and you are a wikipedia article. You travel through hyperlinks, and become the internet. Your existance becomes an endless series of ones and zeros.

It’s been some week! I proposed to my girlfriend last...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 23:06:00 +0100

It’s been some week! I proposed to my girlfriend last weekend, and we’ve been on a bit of an engagement tour. Visiting family and friends is always brilliant fun, but it was a special week.

We had a family gathering on Friday, which was great. Even though my parents live just five miles from Jen’s mum and her partner, they don’t see each other a lot. It was good to be able to introduce the grandparents to each other - as my granny walked out, she shouted to Jen’s gran, “an fir god’s sake, if ah walk past ee in Morrisons an’ dinnae say owt, tell iz aff! Ah’ve no got ma glesses oan, so ah might no recognise ee the morn!”

My grandparents gave us some glasses as an engagement present actually - drinking glasses though, very appropriate! The best bit though, was they’d wrapped them in the tea-towel above. I was in my first year of Primary School when it was made, just five years old. Have fun finding me!

Birdsong

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 04:58:49 +0100

Here’s the problem: I want to send a tweet that’s essentially a boring moan. I’m trying to sleep, and birds outside my window keep waking me up. That’s not a problem, right? If I want to say that on twitter, I can.

Except I keep thinking about all the people who were killed this week, in Boston and West. And then all over the world … Syria, Iraq, and who knows where else.

Suddenly birdsong seems like quite a nice problem to have.

pushthemovement: Vincent van Gogh

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 01:29:11 +0100

pushthemovement:

Vincent van Gogh

Flash Fiction: Can you write a story in just 50 words? | Scottish Book Trust

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:11:42 +0100

Flash Fiction: Can you write a story in just 50 words? | Scottish Book Trust:

The Scottish Book Trust have a competition each month where you’re asked to write a short story in no more than 50 words. I wrote this blog post for them with some advice on how best to use those words!

Hopefully it’ll encourage people who might have written the competition off as impossible, to have a go!

kcurrie65: Lindy 1997 - 2013 RIP - You were awesome so you were...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:38:29 +0100

kcurrie65:

Lindy 1997 - 2013 RIP - You were awesome so you were x

Good girl. I’m really gonna miss you.

I downloaded my twitter archive today, and found some wonderful, insightful gems from the days when...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 03:19:53 +0000

I downloaded my twitter archive today, and found some wonderful, insightful gems from the days when I had no idea what a hashtag was…

Its dead nice to take your shoes off!
— Rob Currie (@robcurrie) November 3, 2009

So cringe.

Genuinely what my fortune cookie said to me! Anyone who...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:38:02 +0000

Genuinely what my fortune cookie said to me! Anyone who disagrees with this statement from now on will be referred here.

I submitted a short story to Ether, which if you haven’t...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:26:05 +0000

I submitted a short story to Ether, which if you haven’t heard about before, is an app which publishes “made for mobile” short stories, to read while you’re out and about. There are a huge amount of authors there already, including Hilary Mantel and even Paul McCartney!

My short story is called, “What you wish for.” If you have Ether (or now fancy downloading it!), the story is free to download, so there’s no reason not to! Thanks guys.

The first lie

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:17:00 +0000

It’s ten past eight, on the morning of the first day of school, and my little sister has just told her first lie.

“I can’t find my school shoes, mummy!”

She knows full well where they are. She’s hidden them behind her wardrobe.

“Where’s the box?” my mum asks her. “Where’s the shoe box?”

“I don’t know!”

Second lie. She’s squashed it flat and hidden it under her bed.

“Look in the porch!”

“I looked!”

She’s getting really good at this now. It’s sweet in a way, and harmless. She just wants to wear her trainers instead, because her pal Molly’s getting to wear hers

Mum’s gone upstairs to look for the shoes now. She’ll find them – mum finds everything – and she’ll shout out about how cross she is. She won’t consider that my little sister learnt it from her.

Mum tells so many lies, I don’t think she even realises half the time. Last week was her birthday, and the look on her face when she unwrapped her present from granddad. “Oh you shouldn’t have! That’s really lovely, honestly, such a thoughtful gift. Best jumper ever!”

“Check your big sister’s room!”

“It’s not there, I looked already!”

“Look again!”

It’s quarter past eight now. When dad was here we’d do a family photo in the living room on the first day of school. All four of us. Now mum just takes our photo in the hall, and only if she remembers. She look last years ‘first day of term’ photo a week after term started. I’m thinking of going ahead to catch a bus or something, but mum shouts down to me, to come and help look.

When I get to the bedroom, my little sister looks pleadingly at me. She knows I know, and she knows I’ll probably tell mum. She’s so annoying, I usually can’t be bothered. Today though, I take pity on her.

“Mum, just let her wear trainers! We’re gonna be late!”

“No child of mine is wearing trainers to school!”

Mum’s friend Bunsie was round the other day. “Hi darling,” mum said, “how are you? Oh, you’re dieting? Well of course! I noticed as soon as I saw you! Yes, you look very … svelte.”

I had to go look up ‘svelte.’ Bunsie isn’t svelte.

Being ten, and going into primary seven, I’m starting to realise that grown-ups lie all the time. When dad was still around he used to tell me if I put my finger in my belly-button, my bum would fall off. He used to say I had to go to bed for nine PM, because mum turned into a pumpkin at quarter past.

“What time is it now? It’s almost half past! Find those shoes!”

Dad’s lies were always fun. More like stories, because I knew they were made-up. He’d get me good though, from time to time. “Ready for the dentist?” he’d ask, and put me in the car, my face like thunder. Ten minutes later we’d be at the cinema, him laughing, and I’d be happy again.

And then mum lied to me, properly, for the first time. I didn’t know straight away. I probably should have. Her face was all sad, and twisty. She didn’t look at me properly.

My little sister’s crying now, because mum’s starting to flip. “We’re really going to be late, this is ridiculous! Where have you put them?”

“I’ll just wear my trainers mummy, I don’t mind, honest!”

For a second I want to just reach behind the wardrobe, pull out the shiny, clumpy school shoes, and make my sister wear them. I look at my own, black and new. I keep thinking about that lie my mum told.

“He’ll be home soon,” she’d said. “Safe and sound. You’ll see.”

He came home, but he wasn’t safe. He was dead, and I wasn’t allowed to see. That upset me the most. My dad was in a coffin, so near to me, and I wasn’t allowed to see…

Granddad saluted. Mum cried for days. My sister was too little to understand.

The lying never stopped after that. There used to be a picture of him on the fridge, just him in the garden on a sunny day. I used to take it down just to look at it. One day, the picture was gone. I asked my mum if she knew where it’d gone and she said, “no idea.”

She moved it. I heard her telling Bunsie one day. “She kept taking it down Buns. I didn’t want it to get torn…”

“Here they are! Why on earth are they behind the wardrobe? Did you put them here?”

“No!”

“Put them on, quickly! I’ll go start the car…”

I kneel down in front of my sister to help her with the Velcro straps. Her bottom lip is wobbling, like it always does when she’s about to cry. I stroke her leg. “Don’t worry,” I say, “you’ll be fine. All the other kids will definitely be wearing proper shoes.”

I sigh. My first lie of the day.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story.

‘The first lie’ is published in my collection of short fiction, ‘Lies and Concerns: Ten short stories,’ which is available for Amazon Kindle, here, and has a page on Goodreads here.

Saying goodbye to a rabbit

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 01:14:41 +0000

We’ve been pet-sitting for Jen’s brother and sister-in-law for the last week or so, while they’re in France. They left their little house rabbit with us, and she’s very cute. She jumps up onto the sofa to cuddle up next to you for a sleep, and when she’s awake she tears around the living room like you wouldn’t think a rabbit would.

However, she did chew through the cable for our Wii’s sensor bar, so I probably won’t miss her too much.

Yes.

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:33:29 +0000

Yes.

lookatallthisstuff: Owen Pallett - Export 3 (The Great...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:05:32 +0000

lookatallthisstuff:

Owen Pallett - Export 3 (The Great Elsewhere) ft. Shara Worden

Beautiful version of an already beautiful song.

Cove Park. Mission accomplished. I don’t mean to boast,...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 02:07:28 +0000

Cove Park. Mission accomplished.

I don’t mean to boast, but I wrote over 10,000 words, and a short story, and a blog post, and outlined a project, and read two books.

When can I go back?

This is day three at Cove Park. We’ve all started calling...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 19:37:04 +0000

This is day three at Cove Park. We’ve all started calling the “cubes” that we’re staying in “home.”

“Just off home now, see you all later!”

The ducks have started hanging out in the pond outside my house. We threw some bread for them this morning, and they came back again this afternoon so I guess we have some new friends.

Some pictures from my Cove Park adventure so far. The highland...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:56:20 +0000

Some pictures from my Cove Park adventure so far. The highland cows are so gentle (ie they haven’t maimed anyone so far…). They just come right up to your cube and nose at the windows!

This place is unrealistically beautiful.

In a couple of days, I’m going here. Cove Park, in...

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 17:28:50 +0000

In a couple of days, I’m going here. Cove Park, in deepest, darkest Scotland. I’m going on a writing retreat, as part of the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writers Award.

I’ve never been on a retreat before. I don’t know what to expect, but I hope I can at least be productive, and write lots. It’s gonna be great just to have time for that, and that alone.

Also, I mean, just look at that view. I might spend all week on that balcony, just staring.

I was properly excited to get the chance to submit something to...

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:31:14 +0000

I was properly excited to get the chance to submit something to Rahul’s zine. I thought I’d send something a bit different - a poem.

I’ve only written about five poems ever, so I’m still getting over that stagefright feeling, if that makes sense. It’s the same feeling I had when I started sharing stories and scripts, but I got over it for those … sort of.

Seeing my poem, ‘Small Things,’ in this sort of context, helps it to be less weird though. I hope you check out THE WAY OUT, and enjoy it.

(Photo: an extract from THE WAY OUT #5 zine. More info here)