The No Name Diary

Ice (cat) and I were staring at each other again. We’d taken to doing it a lot recently; long periods where time ticked by, myself sat on the sofa, Ice resting like a sphynx in the hallway, his black eyes drilling into mine across the shiny parquet floor. We would communicate telepathically in this way, tonight he was just repeating ‘Do it, do it, do it.’, encouraging me again to renew that WordPress subscription, in this, my new living room, on a fourth floor in Asturias, Spain.

It had been a long time, but so what?, he said.

I clicked the button.

Our arrival in this small Spanish town has been a masterclass in how to blend in seamlessly; people eyed me curiously as I walked around wearing an England football shirt on day 1. Day 2 Aleja got into a fight at the butcher’s counter in the supermarket; this because they insisted on putting all her sausages in different bags. Day 3, our first visit to the kids’ new school, Aleja reversed the car into the stop sign opposite the gate, which is permanently bent over, (for how long it’s been that way, I do not know…). Then there was the rollerblading in the rain which turned a few heads. Finally, I think we wrapped up the first week with Aleja being flattened by a killer wave at the local beach, to the concern of myself and onlookers. Here and here again, typing away and feeling a little guilty not to have made more of this website last year. Still, I can’t bring myself to give it up, failure is the pillar of success they say, a slanting pillar, one at a similar angle to the stop sign outside the kids’ school…

The Noname Diary

It was evening in the canyon, Laif repeated her name to herself over and over as she walked on with the horse, she hoped its sound might reveal something about who she was, where she was from, what her story might be. As the horse walked alongside her, its shoulders rolling into steps that cupped the dry ground and echoed out off the corridor of high lined rock walls. It pricked its dark ears, and shook its mane, almost as if it were reacting to her mantric mutterings. Its dark, shiny, dusted hooves had shone with iridescent colours in the daytime, now they began to blend in with the encroaching night. Laif affectionately put her hand on the horse, and wondered at what its name could be; maybe it didn’t have one, would it like one? Then, all of a sudden, the end of the canyon came into view, when they reached it a great open plain stood before them, the quiet, the stars peeking through the dying sky with it’s hues of light to deep blue, a lake in the distance, and further on more high rocks looming. The rustling sounds of the night accompanied them as they gravitated towards the water...