Love Is Like A Flatpack (2003)

Short film treatment from October 2003... found it on an ancient DVD backup.

1. Guy in office style work sees a fit, pretty, well turned-out gal walk past his desk; one he’s tried to get off with in the past. Has a flashback to dancing with her (he looks fantastic, nice clothes and really well turned out on a special pulling occasion) as he tries to smile at her but she looks away n walks on whilst he goes red and sweaty embarrassed. – In club some sorta work do. Poss looks around at other workers sniggering maybe; they were all there in the background of club flashback thing.
2. Looks at his work, piles of invoices etc, does some cursory stuff, looks at her receding figure and flashes back to her grabbing him on the dancefloor of the venue where they start snogging
3. Looks at computer screen, outa the window etc
4. Takes keys out of coat and leaves it on his chair as if he’s only gone for a moment and leaves the office, lighting a fag Looks at watch: 2pm; flashes back to 2am where they were outside the club getting off with each other (i.e. club and work doors to outside parallels)
5. Gets in car, checks the mirror, drives outa car park. Slightly shifty but leaves office car park. Flashback to going back to his house in a taxi (still getting off with each other)
6. Pulls up into Ikea or similar / taxi pulls up outside his house.
7. Fag burns down and he opens the ashtray on his driver’s door, which is overflowing; flash to ashtray on floor of his flat, also overflowing as the two are entwined on the sofa (in the dark-ish), snogging etc.
8. Light of flat comes on cause she wants to take off her top and git jiggy etc. They snog again (she’s facing the wall and on top of him). He turns her round n gets on top, they’re going for it but:
9. She opens her eyes and we see the devastation of the flat from her POV, which is a fuckin mess, mags all over the floor, books, porn, vids, games, ashtrays, clothes, bongs etc. Typical lad mess. She pushes him away and covers up; we see her wagging finger and obv disgusted at the state of the place. Lad protests sorta but she slams the door and leaves. He lights another ciggy and looks around the flat, re-surveying the devastation. His eyes alight on the fucked excuse for shelving that would normally have held all the bric-a-brac, and as his gaze sticks there suddenly the shelves transform into brand new spanking ones with a spangly new room and, VERY briefly, his gal with hands over eyes being led in and opening eyes to see v v v tidy room and she reacts with a yay and a kiss etc (close up of her from his POV)
10. The ‘new shelves’ are revealed as a pic on the front of a flatpack shelving unit in Ikea. Cut to him smiling, nodding: The answer, no doubt about it...
11. At home. Obv has a flatpack diagram that looks complex and spread all the bits out in front of him etc etc etc. puts it aside. Has pencil behind ear, lookin very professional. Cleaning up the shit and making room to put up his shelves.
12. Phone rings. Leaves room. Returns. Clock on wall says 4pm. Another flash of tidy room sexy bird now feeling shelves sensuously etc
13. Stared to put things together. Doorbell rings. Leaves room. Jehovah’s Witnesses there there, thrusting stuff at him. He gets rid of em as quick as poss with a copy of Watchtower or similar. – not pissed off yet. As he returns to the shelves the phone rings again and he puts the mag on top of the diagram (obscuring it)
14. At this point, speed tidy - putting all the books, porn mags etc into tidier piles (it looks better though, and he looks pleased with himself.) Doorbell goes. Getting a bit pissed off. Goes to answer it. Two leering fools obv his mates with a bag of weed and loadsa beer. He beckons em in but goes back to his work with the shelves as they skin up etc. He takes a break for a chat and a smoke, as the air gets foggy so he opens a window.
15. As he carries on putting stuff together and they moider on the sofa (one putting stuff in binbags) and they’re all having a laff. Tidyup bloke puts Watchtower into bag cause it ain’t needed (and with it, almost the diagram – but our man rescues it with a smile.)
16. World gets a tad hazy n stoned and the lads are chatting – speed up as pizza is ordered and the lads are getting well stoned, gigglin etc, pizza man arrives, pizza is eaten, everyone fucked… soupy, grainy feel… clock in background says 7pm
17. He goes back to putting up shelves whilst the other 2 chat an start offering beer round. Making decent progress, plenty of laughter etc
18. Shelves lookin good now, all stuff in neat piles on em and a hoovered floor, flash to box but now the things look identical. Another flash of his lady friend in a state of undress by the shelves, which are tidy.
19. All getting dressed up to go out and joshing each other about going back to the club – flashes of entering the club and chatting to girl with confidence at great tidy house
20. All exit house, slam door. A moment passes. Shelves wobble and eventually they fall down as the camera pans to bag of unused washers caught underneath cushion on sofa.

Music:

Early Club stuff: Seventeen (Ladytron)

Workplace / Ikea sequence: Run (The Mighty Saguaro)

Early shelf making: I Want Candy (Bow Wow Wow)

Smokey bits: Lovin Pauper (Dobby Dobson)

Other notes: No actual dialogue but an almost cartoonish nuance of spoken conversations through nonsense language that puts across the feel of the subject matter. Lots of dissolves and fast cuts between internal flashbacks of protagonist and current reality. Contrasts between nightclub movement through colour, drab and staid office, B&W / washed out smoking bits etc.

Location:

Club: HeebieJeebies

Office: Gostins Building

Ikea Warrington

Flat: TBC

Every which way but...

I know this platform,

These tracks,

Those tracks too.

I know this place.

God I know this place;

There I drank,

There smoked too.

I know these platforms.

Once I caught the

Yellow train

And found myself

In Liverpool.

In Liverpool,

The first day,

I moved myself

And I was caught.

Somewhere between there and here I was caught in another way.

I’ve told that story a few times. A kind of movie.

Sometimes your journey starts halfway through another one,

And you can find yourself in a duo for the rest of your days.

I know this platform too.

These tracks

Those take you

Back home, to drink.

Oh I wanted to drink:

To shout and show

These tracks

I knew those platforms too.

Once I said that

I tried to get home

So I went up front

And tried to drive the train.

(I said I tried to drive,

But in actual fact

I just saw the open cockpit.)

But I said that,

Because it was a good story to tell, and I enjoyed telling it.

And I enjoyed believing it. So did the people that heard it.

They wanted to believe it too. And, really, really, who

Was I to deny that? Who was harmed? So fuck it.

And these platforms -

To Wales or Manchester

Or Leeds or wherever -

To countless gigs.

To countless gigs

With mates and magickers

Seeking the pleasure

From these platforms.

I’m here again,

But I don’t know which way

I’m supposed to go, and

I’m confused by this.

I’m confused by this

For a moment; which way

These days is home?

I’m here again.

It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it. Seeing the same brick and rusted iron

That’s stood for longer than I could, though year on year it changes

Slightly, but inexorably. I spose I do too. Some of us can’t.

That’s a strange feeling. Well, it’s not a fun game. I wish these platforms

Could help me travel

Not to different places

But to different times.

Back to those moments.

And back to moments

Where some now-faded faces

Are sharp-drawn and fine.

Only fleetingly can my sad mind travel

To those times.

Lost folk art at a station in the North West of England.

I once took a picture on a long-gone phone. I wish I’d kept it.

Maybe I have somewhere. It was one of my favourites.

In Chester Station, it was. Platform 3B. You had to squat to see.

On one of the tracks, somehow, someone had managed to scrawl

Or scratch, into the actual metal itself, some graffiti.

It always struck me as a stroke of genius, and entirely silly.

Because, to access that track you’d need to drop down six feet

Without being seen; you’d have to lie down alongside it, making sure

That nothing was coming, going, or ready to decapitate you.

You had to lie there, scrap metal in hand, for minutes on end.

And all for the knowledge that nobody would ever be able

To identify exactly who it was who’d written, on the train track,

At Platform 3B, in Chester Station, some time in the early 2000s,

The potent words:

Trains Are Gay

In the Castle of the King

Here now.

The unwashing, the unwilling washed. The computer-illiterate and the coding whizzes. Some with heads in books, some heads in clouds, some heads half-on or not-on-really-at-all.

A thousand languages: fictional and fine alike.

The stragglers, the unstinting hagglers. The losers, the ill-thinkers and the brooding misfits. Rent with haggard hooks, rent yet still proud, rent but belonging. Here, simply. And, more,

A thousand thousand stories: tunnels to minds alive

Here now.

These bricks.

Clay, concrete, powdering one day. Holding in the knowledge. Holding out too. A bastion. Maybe a battlement. Maybe a haven. Maybe none, maybe all

These things are hard to reconcile, depending which

Way the political bounders will sway. Holding onto spirites which hold our few attractions: maybe a befuddlement. Maybe a heaven. Maybe all will fall,

These bricks.

So still

Pounded by the gouging minds of mudruck-progress. Pounded by efficiency, cutbacks, gristle. Pounded and bent. But not broken. But not smashed. Here the call,

Hear the call, in its infinite transience. Variation

Founded through space, time, a fumble-witness astounded by intensity. Call back, whistle: no grounded descent but an open, cut-throat hack at them, all

So Still,

Waiting

And – why? And while we wait we think. We think we have time to wait; but the knowing of the moment is the key. The way. The unforgiving distance

Run. No future, no past, for all under

Stand why futile restraints are sickly. Since Ahab’s fight, the whale’s country showed him that the sea-descent sets you free. Today. The underpinning resonance;

Waiting.

So still.

Hounded through facetime, a grumble-sickness unfounded by necessity, Google’s bristle of growling intent toward doped-up, dumbo-facts. But then, still

Here, a halting, specific sentience of a nation

Astounded by the spicy signs that undercut success. Bounded by a misery so black; a thistle-down malevolent song for the trashed, for us all

So Still.

These bricks

Play the part. Physical boundaries still stay, folding into sites which hold our new distractions. Shining in the firmament, daily a rhythm, daily and daily toward

These things that mark out the endless file of endings which

Play, soul-sweet murmurings as they soar within their passage. Bold, free, stout aromas belong fully to settlements heavy or brazen, daily songs a call to

These bricks.

Here now.

The strugglers, the unstinting jabberers. The bruisers, the still-inkers and the grooving artists seeking Odin’s rooks, tenets bestowed, instant and buzzing. Here, simply adored,

A thousand languages. Passionate, with minds alive

For unwrapping, the shelf-filling staff in the library grasp minutiae as standard. Each morning fizzes along with steady, locked-and-ready crowds, requests for tomes half-known, for books or advice or to talk

About those thousand thousand stories. Wonders for minds alive

Here now.

Sharky bassline

I writ this today after being inspired by Chris Dale, who is a brilliant and very silly bass player.

Self-indulgent bullshit stream of consciousness because of social media photos' way of intercutting timelines and buggering up people's thoughts OK my own fuck you too

Ah yeah I mean yeah I remember and you look sort of the same sort of unbearably twee and that is why I wanted to fuck and that is fucking still stupid and yes I did write a song about you and yes it was a forty or forty-five second harangue about how boring and snobby you were and yes there was an obvious subtext of yes I wanted to well there we were about a few lines ago and a load of decades have past I said DECADES and there you are twee as fuck smiling all the time with sprogs blabbering around and a twee partner and twee house and twee rararara and I wonder whether I was jealous all along because I knew you knew what it was like I mean the way or the method or the secret or maybe just the being of being happy.

And you were really nothing aside from nice as I remember albeit naiive I mean I was but in a different way yeah I was a sort of angsty looking for sort of Rimbaud type naiive even though I still haven’t bothered to read Rimbaud DECADES later apart from a quote that is something about deliberately deranging the senses if you are a poet that is all that is left but I am not a poet and I am all that is left really of myself back then so who is to say I am better now I definitely do not believe I will ever work that one out I just know that all these years later I think my confusion was also quite energetically pursued in one way or another but because I was sat around angsty sloganning and all that I forgot or turned away from the way the method or the secret or maybe just the being of being me

Whoever that was whoever it is whoever in between and if a life is thought of in linear segments then that makes sense I forget the philosophy of it but I liked it because it is an eternal present at every sampling stage and a person is all the people he she whatever ever was like a baby and a not quite man and an on paper middle aged scruff and those DECADES instead represent just like I dunno a jigsaw puzzle no that is not right I think it is more like you cannot see the whole person from the outside in this way without seeing all the people they are and were and will be as a kind of whole and those images are all valid and all correct not just one tiny shitting fiend somehow becoming bigger in size and learning things good or bad right or wrong and all of that crap before getting strong and then immediately weakening again and eventually going back to being a wizened and 

as Lou Reed said 

toothless clod 

once more but no that is not it it is impossible to see it from the inside anyway and the whole exercise is useless and I long for the day I forget and turn away from the way the method or the secret and maybe there will be no being be me be anymore and there will be no anymore anymore and I see these words and think fuck

Fuck

Cufk

Cfku

Why does it make sense one way and not the others

Why do I care

Why do I feel I should care and do not want to care

It has got gets will get in the way of

,