Shreds of Gorak: 1-10: Short reads of Gorak

By Lemmy Gorak

Memoir, anecdote and meaningful other: Shreds 1-10

 

First Dates: An honest account of my adolescent 'relationships' with the models in mail-order catalogues.
Lamb 197: A lost Cumbrian lamb re-unites with its mother, leading to realisations about the relationship I have with my own.
Listen to the Man: Myself and a fellow stoner board a pedalo and take to the sea. Ignoring the advice of the man hiring them out, we head past the buoys and get taken out by the tide.
The Fabricheads: Dark imaginations of a town (in Wales) where trepanning is practiced, leading to improved intellectual function and enlightenment for its residents.
Falling Down, Granola and the Water Bowl: After a hard day's work, I am confronted with mounting bills and suffer a cartoon mini-breakdown.
He Played Eight: Mortifying infant embarrassment when forced to sing in class.
Spit in Me Hat: Lunchtime observations: as I sit on a mound of rubble on an abandoned traveller's site, I question negative perceptions of them.
Pretty Things: In a refuge I stayed in as a child, I sit and watch three women tattoo each other's hands using a biro and heated compass point. Another woman enters, and I become transfixed by her.
The Queue: While waiting to cash a cheque, I imagine those in the queue as a gang committing a bank job.
Dear Mr Hales: A sarcastic letter to the BBC regarding non-payment of my TV license.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lemmy Gorak
• Release date: Jul 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201265762

Lemmy Gorak

After a short time spent sleeping on London's Circle Line, as a child I toured the capital, staying in a succession of refuges, tents and narrowboats. Although traumatic, it was a time rich with experience and freedoms most don't enjoy. Left to create my own life-map, I relied on nothing but hard-wired survival skills to get me through the many schools I attended, leaving with an O Level in Art and a handful of cardboard Sports Day medals. Picking up a guitar - along with recreational drugs - I found therapy through an anarchic yet unsustainable lifestyle. After numerous shitty jobs and spells of unemployment, I cleaned up my act (a bit) and rediscovered a child-like wonder with the natural world - a connection that has ultimately been my saviour. Seduced by mountains, I headed for the wilds of Cumbria, where with a Blues Harp I busked and played in local bars, before a virus with a household name had its way and a shocking end of an unhealthy relationship left me facing homelessness. I love to amuse myself and make sense of things, and have always kept a diary and scribbled on the back of envelopes; caught in the flow. Now with head and heart aligned, I write in earnest, most mornings while it's still dark.

Book preview

First Dates

Twice a year packages would arrive bearing an array of beautiful women in the pages of the Freemans and Kays catalogues. Driven by surging teenage hormones, at the first opportunity I’d whisk them off to my room, where I’d deliberate over which of the models I was to have my sordid way with.

On the first page they’d present themselves in a line and through differing outfits, poses and facial expressions, compete for my adolescent affections. One would stand out as more sexually available than the others, but she’d be saved for my more shallow moments - or for when time was at a premium. What I was looking for was a spark, a connection, someone who spoke to me directly; someone I could commit to.

Once selected, I’d arrange our first date to be in the autumn/winter edition. We’d meet in a cobbled town centre that had out-of-focus backgrounds, where she’d wear rustic-coloured scarves, berets and matching lipstick - maintaining a sense of unrealistic glamour at all times. These were early days, but it was clear there was chemistry.

The spring/summer catalogue would see her in white translucent dresses and large floppy hats. It was a time for walking under arching tree branches in dappled light, ice-cream and heart-shaped balloons. She’d laugh continuously, as if each second of her perfect life with me was an