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what..

ab thoori cheating toh allowedhi na aar. its not even really cheating. i had written them afer all. but phir uper sai order aagaya. hata doo BC. so i did. but ab phir laga diya. proper desi style. phir order aajai ga. hum phir hata dein gai . no stopping!! no stppng ad stop deleting purana rule nahin bhilnay bholnay ka tph ab kya horaha hai. im still blocked. not blocked. bored. bored and passe and little passe dont you know dahling. i cant quite find the motivation that i need to summoun to create the workof art that is truly worthy of my name. chup ar bK. BK BK. yeh you know twta. not that! WHAT that mena means. i ws taking the piss btw. reader. not that you exist. you were suppoed to read the previous post in an Absolutely Faboulous voice DAHling. isnt it called Ab Fab . its a bit too close to Abay thn they would have like. aur yeh charahter count ka chakkar tumblr pai kab sai shuru hogaya? trying tostay relevant are we. fuck my spelling has become really horrific now. spell check bhi off kar daina chahye. taakay waqaye baira gharak hojai. i actually mentioned trump in some of the previous post. hopefully andar chala jai ga sala. but aur kitnay aagai hain ab uski jaghan. hummare khan sahab bhi toh koi kum nahin hopefully woh bhi under heee rahaingai. order aanay wala hai bhui! band karo yeh nanga naach.

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5...

i feel like bitcing about google again. again? have i mentioned google in the first two posts? i cant remember. i bitch about google all the time anyway. its ruined my ability to remember anything! yes yes yes information is now at the tip of our fingertips etc but i would still like to be able to rememeber infomation rather then having to reach for my phone everytime i need to recall something. i bitch like an old man. my wife tells me that all the time. so does my mum, my sister, the few friends i have. oh you dont know how old i am do you. i dont think i’ve mentioned it. i wont. lets just keep it casual yeah. i dont hate everything online. i love love love Wikipedia. im addicted to it aswell but thats a good addiction i think, how can gaining knowledge not be a good thing. and its not just superficial education its deep indepth insight into so many things its unbelievable. i think jimmy wales deserves a knighthood for his work. it’ll be nice if they actually gave one of those who has made a concrete contribution to society rather then Cameron’s and Cheire’s mates. hmmmm new rule. no politics. it just feels crass i think. something that would be in twitter. yes i like this new rule. there must be somewhere i can list these rules on my page without having to read every single post indepth. fuck i’m gonna have to google it arnt I? mutherfucker

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4...

i miss my old laptop. bastard collapesed on me six months ago and i’m stuck using my dads piece of shit. i keep putting off going to the apple store (yes it was a mac. i wasnt always a cheap broke, starving writer[make that pretend writer as i havent actually been published anywhere]) because i’m terrified that theyll tell me that there’s nothing that can be done and i’ll just have to buy a new one. as if i have grand to throw away! oh and something about sweat shop and kids being paid 1p an hour etc etc. lets not forget that! ok im going to cheat and read back on what i was writing before my fucking laptop froze because i’m blanking and that seemed fairly intresting, sorry. not like you care anyway its not like you had to pay for this. always remember something else is only a click away. im wrting this for me not for you. yes I lie aswell. i thought i should let that in evetually, fairly early, of coures i’m writing for you. its why all writers write, to feel worthwhile, to feel substantial and influential. and to get laid ofcourse. define me, define me, love me, love me! thats from friends by the way, no cliched literary refernce today just shitty tv references. OH SHITTY TV. thats what i was talking about, how i use shitty tv as a dont do guide for my writing. i didnt have to cheeat after all. or maybe i did and i’m just an unreliable narrator. hehehehehe you’ll never know. wow i need to stop watching bad tv. i should cancel Netflix. its got so much shit on it. i know seven pounds a month isnt much but still, more then half of thee stuff there is crap and i really dont like how they moniter peoples watching habits to make more crap tv because lets face it most people watch crap tv. oh you know its true, dont call me an elitist, fucking shit like coronation street and eastenders have been running for years and making millions and its just crap. I’d like someone to find me a fucking square with four or five streets ofshooting from it with as many fires, rapes, murders, kidnappings and robberies and i’ll withdraw this post altogether. i’ll leave tumblr even. i’d bitch about corrie except i dont know anything about it, yes yes i used to watch eastenders, get over it, everyoe goes through that phase and that shit is addictive. i’m getting tired. and i need to find more hastags. what the hell is spilled ink? it sounds cool at first, but if you think too much about it, it starts feeling a little silly. oh unless its like one of those ink blots, the kind that shrinks use in bad TV, fuck i’m starting to reapeat myself, which means i should stop wrting this, i’m done for the day. i miss word count. hahaha that came from the heart. if its like an ink blot then its pretty cool. thats essentially what this is i suppose. and ink blot giving anyone reading it a glimpse into me. okay i’ve added it. i’m tempted to add inblot aswell but then i dont want to run the joke too much. i wish i could remember what theyre called. i know it starts with an R. there an o a c and ch in there too. Roch something. i hate it when that happens

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..3....

there has to be a better title availible then that? I have to continue the series I suppose but i’m not officially blocked anymore. i dont think i am. i’m writing everyday, its shit, but its still writing. so im not a blocked writer anymore I’m just a shit writer now. its still progress if you ask me, eventually i’ll progress to being a mediocre writer and then i’ll die. because everyone dies and because the next step up is a good writer and to predict myself becoming a great writer would be immodest and i’m nothing if not modest. i broke another rule didnt i. i promised to write one of these everyday and i havent. this is my first...post (yech) in a week nearly. maybe two weeks. I cant remember now, i would have to go back to the old posts and then i would have broken two rules. technically the first one isnt a rule. it was a promise I guess. a mission statement if you think i’m a ponce, which you probably do, but if you do then you wont have reached this part yet, you would have clicked onto something else by now, in which case fuck you (dont worry its only there for dramatic effect), even though i dont blame you i can still hate you. i dont really, i just wanted to get rid of you and if you havent clicked off by now you will definietely will now. if you havent then youre just a glutton for punishment in which case welcome brother! have seat, let me get you a drink because we are gonna get along just fine. I’m adding hastags onto this so we’ll be able to find more people just like us, S&M seems to be a popular tag but i wont be adding that, i have enough weirdos following me who only seem to be intrested in half naked man. sorry new message from tumblr. i have no followers. awsome! i am so glad, freedom at last! i can finally be myself. i can finally let go and speak my mind. its so easy to say that but if i really think about it it can be exteremely confusing because it will essentially depend on where my mind is at that particular moment becuase there will be times i will just feel like screaming and shouting at and everything and everyone (which will be no one since it is the only time i wll truly let this happen) and other times there will essentially be no noticable change in me at all. except my clothes will come off ofcourse. of course! who in their right mind would possibly choose to remain clothed if they didnt have to. i totally understand people who move to naked communes and choose to spend the rest of their lives with all their bits hanging out. clothes are just another form of prison arnt they? a confinement designed to make you self concious of yourr real self. to hold you in and keep you hidden from the real word. why havent i moved to a naked commune uet? its fair questuon there are plenty of them around arnt there? atleast i think there are, thats certainly the impression television gives you. everyother person seems to be oving to a naked comune in bad movies and rubbish television shows. i dont wwatch bad movies and rubbish tv mind you, i just like keeping up with whats happening. sort ofna of like a cautionary....oh shit shit fuck fuck fuckity mutherfucker! my fucking laptopn just froze so i had to hold on kickeing and screaming to my train of thought in the fear that i might losee it have nothing to talk to you about, like that i bit i just wrote a little while ago about the state of your mind and when youll see a difference while letting go. that was so boring, i apologise for that, i wish i could delete it, but i cant ofcourse, see previous posts for details as to why, i wish there was a way to just put up a cautionary sign when you come onto this......webpage...(it is not a blog mutherfucker!) oh comon! my fucking laptop keeps freezing.

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unblock...2...

thank you gobstikelsa1970..although i blame you for having to break one of my earlier rules. this was supposed to be all part of the same post. which started yesterday and was supposed to continue and continue until tumblr officially decided to kick me off their website altogether for being a nuisance and a show off at which point i would be forced to roam the face of this earth with words pouring out of my fingers into the thankless earth. sorry. i kind of got ahead of myself there. but ive decided to continue this on a seperate post, titled the same with a few sad dots and a 2 at the end. perhaps my two followers wont hate me so much anymore, and they might even ask other people to follow me. although they seem to only be interested in large naked men with bulging muscles. i hope thats not why they added me for i can only ever be a large naked man with a bulging stomach. they might be into that, after a few beers, maybe a couple of tequila shots and five hundred years of solitude. another cliched literary refernce. see earlier post for reference and explanation for terrible grammer and spelling. fuck dead white old men! were they old? i cant remember. and I cant go back and check either. you certainly can. but you wont. because youve got better things to do, like continue reading this post. emoticon alert. okay this is starting to get repetitive. I’m making the same jokes as yesterday. its probably a good thing i cant go back and reread my posts because then i definietely would be cracking the same jokes again and again. or i might be able to build on them and improve them. isnt that what all writers do? Bukowski certainly does. I’ve read three books by him and countless short stories and it seems to be the same books over and over again with very similar characters, especially women. doing the same things over and over again and him just finding us better ways to tell us about it. so I guess I can do that. but I cant rered what I wrote yesterday so I cant. and I’m not great. by any stretch if the imagination. but then neither was Bukowski. another reason why my wife cant read this, she’d pick up the laptop and smash it over my head for saying that.                          (FORCED DELETION)

I FUCKING HATE DONALD TRUMP. compared to him, i’m jesus christ. i.e. impossible to hate. everyone loves jesus, even the people who hate bible bashers because the man just talked about love. and he had cool hair. the poor guy was even ready to marry a prossi. how fucking awesome can you get. my mum called me jesus the other day because she was yelling at me and i just kept smiling at her. thats how amazing the man was. although it does kind of help the argument that he might have been deluded. even mad. huh. i didnt think of it like that. not a very nice thing for my mum to have said. hmmm. i’m blanking for a bit. oh new rule! i have to tell you, i say you even though i know nobody is reading this, and if someone is…cringe!!! but yes i have to tell you why i stopped writing yesterday because i wrote down i have to go to work but thats not good enough as an excuse because i’m actually at work as i write this. my work involves sitting behind a counter with a laptop infront of me and ignoring every customer who walks in as much as i can. yes i’m a till jocky and not the cool kind like randall from clerks, but more the sad kind like Dante because he hates being there but has nowhere fucking else to go. my parents own this place. hence my dad being a rich capitalist and my being a fake socialist. and ive been stuck here for the last six years now and i reconize 90% of the people who walk into this place and i want to punch atleast 90% of those 90%. I cant punch the rest of the 10% because theyre too fucking old. not because I like them. wow I hate a lot of people. no. no. this is just a symptom me hating myself again. it has to be I’m starting to come out like a monster in this post, my two hypersexualised followers are going to be defollowing me any second. can you find out if someone has defollowed you? do you get a little notification for that? like you do when someone is following you. such and such person is no longer following you. LOSER! me. not them. i’m the dumpee remember, not the dumper. maybe this is me. maybe this is why i’m writing this, because i cant possibly hope to tell anyone any of these things. not face to face anyway. who would want to listen? God knows I wouldn’t. except maybe if i was getting paid for it. even then. clearly ive gone through medical school or at least graduate school to be sitting there and getting paid to listen to this crap and eventually i’d reach a point where i’d want to get this person out of my room, out of my face out of my life, just as far away from me as possible, wow. i want to stop writing this now. i suddenly dont feel great. and i feel tired 

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4...

google isnt an independent being, even though it is beginning to feel like one, its a collection of thoughts from all around us. so the bookmark worked, which is probably a good thing because if it hadent i probably would have given up on this very soon. i have a tendency to get bored of things very easily. hence the fizzling and burning out mentioned earlier. maybe bored is not the right word. apathy is a good word. i suffer from apathy. making me apathetic. get it? yes i apologise. not just for that terrible joke but also because i just realised that this post is going to turn into a tremendous pain in the arse for anyone who might be foolish enough to be following me. I’m so sorry thyajapumti1973, although you only just started follwing me a few minutes ago, i.e. after I posted this, so i shouldnt be apologising to you at all, but nevertheless i will feel sorry for you because this post will become the bane of your tumblr existence because it will get longer and longer which means more scrooling and more scrolling. ah so that how you spell scrolling. dont worry i did know that, it was hidden in there somewhere, just needed one red scwigly line for it to make its way out. but as soon as it came out i seem to have forgotten how to spell scwigly. nope. still nothing and I cant even google. but if google is just a collection of other people then is it other people who are killing my capacity to think independently? or is it just access to other people? this must be why people would become hermits. I like the idea of that but i wouldnt want to become a hermit unless other people knew that I was a hermit. sort of like old ben Kenobi living in thee mountains. yes I romanticise hermithood. oh comon! i know its not hermitage, that makes no sense. shit, it’s nearly 12 and I have to go to work. 

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its ten now and i still havent written anything yet. i feel like reading something. wish i could have a career as a reader. not at a publishing house though, i want to read the classics and the modern classics and the great books for a career. i feel like if i just had to read unpublished manuscripts for a living i’d never find the time to read any of the good stuff. oh i forgot to mention this is surprisingly hard to edit. i thought you could just click on it and continue typing but no you have to click on it wait for it to load on a new page and then click edit and then wait for it to rload again. ive added the last page as a bookmark now and will update on whether it opens or not next time. i feel like a blogger again. i feel dirty. or worse, a youtuber. agaain they’re worse because they make a lot more money. my wife calls me a fake socialist because i hate people who have money even though my dad does. and i hate paying taxes. there are other reasons as well but i cant remember them now. because theyre bullshit and no man ever really listens when his wife is criticising him. oh yes, i have a wife and she has to figure in to the rules somehow to i just havent figured out how yet. i just reread that and it came out awfully. she just came into the room and i turned the computer screen away from her. i think im embarrsed because it feels like i’m writing a blog. shes a poet and a playwright and a fucking good one too. but shes also one of the twitterarses. o i like that! i’m going to call her that today, but yes that brings her back down to my level. hence her agreeing to marry me. she’s always the first person to read my work but i’m not sure if i’m going to let her read this. it almost feels like it would lose its integrity if she comments on it. especially because she’s actually in this. i’m totally intimidated by her. shit. i wish i hadnt written that because theres no way i’ll ever let her read it now. her poetry’s been published and she’s performed it at countless venues and so have her plays. twitterarse. i really like that. i nearly googled it to see if its been used by anyone yet. but then i remembered the rules. i feel like google is killing my capacity to think independently. to analyse anything. i just called her a twitterarse. she didn’t seem to impress. apparently it doesn’t work. what does she know. stick to rhyming keats. damn it. i dont like it all that much anymore. maybe its not just google that’s killing my independent thought. maybe its everyone else.

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3...

i have to come up with a different proverb. maybe a new one. this is harder then i thought. but im really enjoying doing it. it feels like a wrting exercise. shit! it is a wrting exercise and i hate those. i absolutely hate them because they feel gimicky and unimaginative. but i came up with this on my own. so is it unimaginative? wait isnt there something called free association writing? is that what im doing right now? im not sure. i dont think youre allowed to think in that you’re just supposed to write and write and write and write. but how can you write without thinking? okay charger has been plugged back in and i can stop and think again. full disclosure by the way i am cheating to a certain extent because i keep editing every fifth mistake i make. im still leaving a lot in there to make this feel authentic. i felt like adding an emoticon there. cue self loathing. but no wait. old white men dont like emoticons do they? that good we like that. but young white girls do like emoticons. and justin bieber. dont know which way to turn now. lets move on. and i’m blank. i cant get justin bieber out of my head. good thing its not young white girls because that would be creepy. andd liable. is liable the right word. i want to google but i cant. new rule! no googling allowed. just train of…no no no. we cant use that either no trains allowed. old white men use trains. river of thoughts? cheesy. to similar to stream of consciousness, which isnt so bad because Virgina Woolf is a dead white woman. and i hate to love joyce. Love Dubliners. Love the idea of Ulysses, despite never getting past page 50 and not understanding what the hell happened in the forty or so pages i do read. except a young jesuit was or wasnt shaving. no word count either. new rule. im always checking word count to make myself feel good but we wont be doing that anymore. but i cant do this in the mornings anymore. not when i have to write. i mean seriously write because i would like to get published one day. read my name on the cover of a book. a hardback thak you very much because i do still love those (dead white men be damned) even if i dont particulalrly like paying for them. 15.99 for a book is ridiculous. especially when you can get it for 1p plus shipping costs in a few months time. i just cheated again. i deleted a whole paragraph i dint like anymore. its just felt repetitive like i was just telling you the same thing all over again in different word. filler. and we don’t like filler. its something EL James would use. i’m so glad EL James has become the by word for bad literature. she fully deserves it and im not just saying that because shes made a shit load of money. it does help though.it also helps that everyone seems to know who she is. James Patterson is equally shit, actually hes a different kind of shit. those alex cross books werent too bad to begin with. they certainly made good movies. anything with morgan freeman is a good movie. i hope if god does exist he does look like him. i wouldnt mind listening to him for all off eternity then. but then he started buying up unpublished manuscripts, polishing them up and printing them as his own with the real author getting a co-write. that fucking pisses me off. and he has the nerve to defend it by saying that he’s helping young unpublished authors. no you’re not asshole youre just printing money and using struggling authors just like every other arsehole looking to make a quick buck is. but you cant badmouth patterson because most nonreaders don’t know about him. but everybody knows EL James. god bless anal beads. okay im back. its the same day but i just posted this went downstairs to make some more green tea and came back up to add a little more to it. had two slices of chocolate cake too. i thought i was eating more because i was having a hard time writing but apparently i just like cake. and stuffing myself to point of explosion. edited slices and explpsion. there must be a way to switch off the squiggly lines that come up while im wrting this. typing. i’m only typing this.

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2...

i choose to use the word type theere because this isnt wrting. this is just typing. infact its not even typing because im still thinking as im writing this its the wrttten down equivalent to talking. there doesnt seem to be a word for that. not one that i can think of anyway but there should be. were unable to edit our conversations the words that come out of our mouth when were talking to another person which is what im doing here ineffect. im speaking to the millions and millions of people. maybe not millions because tumblr is a dying medium. like all the good ones. except mybe facebook. i’m glab ffacebook is dying. that what everyone says anyway although i find it hard to believe because i can still see mark zuckerberg’s smug little billionare face evrywhere . shit i just miss spelled everywhere and i had to physically restrain myself from correcting it. but no i wont. i cant. because ive aleady said it. ive already said it to every tumblr user. is there a verb for that? fuck is it even a verb? or is it a noun? i cant remember. dead white men dead white men. who cares i dont. im brown and im very much alive. i cant edit the words that come out my mouth so i refuse to edit the words that are coming ut of my hands. i like that. im a craftman whi works with his hands a nd words are my trade. shit i should have said tradesman. well i can say it now. because thats what i would have done if i were saying these words. but i dont say words. i just write them. and if they were good enough to come out my hands then theyre good to be read as is. definietly not good enough to be published on a actual physical paper ofcourse because that costs money. (ignore that a) and resourse are finite etc etc. i studied economics so i should know. but publishing on the internet is free. and we like free. everyone likes free. so that what i’m doing. im starting to lose my train of thaough here. so perhaps i should stop for the day, but i cant for some reason. and i just read back over what i wrote. im not sure if i can do that because when you lose your train of though in real life youre unable to physically go through it word by word to…find it? do you find yoyr train of thought? that really doesnt sound right but it must be. what else could be the oppisite of losing your train of thought. dead white men and theire proverbs. who needs them. i felt pride and being able to remember the word proverb there. but i shouldn’t!!!! fuck english grammer and its impreialistic agendas. i refuse it and i aim to use this…blog..oh god that was painful to write, because i usually hate bloggers, theyre always trying to sell something to you. and yet they none of them look like willy loman, who is the only salesman i’ve ever felt any kinship towards. a literary refernce there to make myself feel good, even if it was a cliched one. but yes i suppose this is a blog even if id like to tell myself its not. but ive just decided to make it long enough to no longer be considered a blog. im just going to keep adding to it. after all the whole point of a blog is to have a point. yech that came out terribly but i cant edit it! oh battery running low. okay okay okay think. and…i cant of course…because that how it always work. but i can stop typing. because i can stop talking. theoretically. but i cant reread. and im losing that fucking train again.

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haawwww....

Three months now. More then three months if im honest with my self but I don’t want to sit here and count the number of days and hours because it may sound impresseive but its only going to depress the living hell out of me, more so then the three month figure does already. I haven’t written a word for that length of time. Not a word worth reading anyway. I begin and end sentences nearly everyday but the minute I finish typing them I want to delete them. They embarrase me. They embarrase my laptop. They embarrass me more then muy spelling has ever embarrassed me. I’ve always told myself a writer doesn’t need to be able to know how to spell. Punctuation grammer spelling these are all just rules created by dead white men and nobody listens to them anymore, everyone just listens to twitter now, we live in a world of 140 characters and if you’re unable to express the entire vision of your thoughts and philosophy within a 140 characters then you’re a dinosaur and should be put out if its misery. And you will be. By a barrage of abuse from the twitterati who live in a world where context has no meaning and a sentence that can’t be expressed in a 140 characters has no relevance. The modus oparandi is simple. If you’re not with is then you’re against us and we will gang up on you and shame you into irrelevance. but i still cant spell. and my grammer is horrendous and if it wornt for spell check i would have crashed and burned out of every educaional institution i ever step foot in. which i sort of did anyway. maybe not crash and burn. just fizzle and slink out. a lot like the sentences ive been typing and the thoughts ive been trying to express for the last three months. maybe everything ive ever done has fizzled and slunk out. im still editing this document. i cant help it. i choose to type this onlne so that autocorrect which i’m addicted to like crack wont jump in and start correcting my mistakes but i keep doing it myself eveerytime i stop to try and think. the squiggly red lines come underneath and i start right clicking and improving what i have already typed.

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1....doosri baar

So….my wife is a few days away from becoming a veritable TOPE in the world of British Theatre, capital B and capital T, which doesn’t always allow black and brown people in bt when it does it makes sure that they ar the correct sort aik dum saaf shafaaaf andnot connected to anyone who might hav or even DOES have some questionable views…i.e. me. Jee. Mein. Mein houn KHALNAYAK! Never ever been confsed for a Nayak. Either way. Point being that I have been asked to remove my old posts Jahan pai some of the views stated were lets say thoray questionable. Only by those who have no understanding of nuance and no understanding of the point of these posts which is to say whatever the fuck comes in my head. No filter. No mercy. NO EDITING BC a rule I have already brokenmultiple times as I type this latets latets latests hahah fuck! Latest latest bakwas no breaks for laughing keeptyping bastard hahaha I cant stop. Okay okay clm down. Chill maaro. Haan toh no rereading. No stopping just diatrabing. Which is te whole pointof social media. Lets face koi toh sach boool dai. This is a new trick by the way. You might not have realized but ill throw in the odd phrase in urdu/roman to thrown the members of the british theatre elite who have stumpled accorss this blog to find ammo againt my lovely lovely Mrs bcause who khud toh doodh mein dhule hain aur main hee who RAKHSHAS jo inko giraaaaaa sakta hain.

Fuck. 259 words ina. Gono stopping to breath. Haven’t done this in a while. No I haven’t written anything  a while not even just general hought or other sorts of rubbish.ab toh BC haath mein bhe dard hna shurur ojatahai when I pick up a pen. Bohoth editig horahe hai aaj. Koi baat nahin. Ll be better from tomorrow. Aby tum kall phir aao gai.. haan BK harr dnn aaounnga mein tumhara sarrr khaanay.

Im atualy really enjoying the writing in urdubit. Sahi ka dil ki baat nikalti hai. Maybe this is the future. This is the way of making desi literature cool again. Because im sick of reading the works of brown people without hearing the old totototototto Apu head shake in my head. Jisko daikho BC waise hee likh raha hota hai. Kab take hum yeh bardaaaasht karein gai. Kab tak hummaraa muuu mitti mai milaya jaaaiga!!!! Too much politics. Ive definetly been following too much politics in Pakistan im seeig fucking saazish everywhere. Down with Khan BC

428!! Uski maaaa ki. Not Khan ki. Bichari she died to give us Shaukat Kahnum. The only good thing he has ever done. World cup toh Miandad nai jitaaya tha. Don’t belive the Punjabi narrative. Just because the guy was from a karachi working class family and spoke with a lisp they made him out to be a joke. Theek hai baad mein he married his daughter off to Dawood Ibrahims son. Ghalti toh insaan sai hee hoti hai na!

Oh I should have said..the blank page ki maa ki. That’s who uski maa ki. Dikha diya na aaaj.

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BABY STEPS

*Thank you to the wonderful Jellyfish Review, which closed down this year, for accepting this story all those years ago..when i still had hope**

Baby Steps

Ally Phillips took her first steps, all by herself, late on a Saturday afternoon, when she was eighteen months old, and relished the squeals of joy and laughter that surrounded her.

“Oh my god!” her mother screamed as she ran towards her daughter.

“Wait! Don’t touch her!” her father called out, digging in his pockets for his mobile phone.

“I want to get this on video.”

He started fiddling with the buttons while her mother formed a perimeter around her precious baby with her arms, ready to grab her if she fell. Ally lifted her stubby left leg up and held it in the air for half a second. Sensing a wobble, her mother reached her arms out ready to grab the falling child.

“No! Let her!” came a cry from the door. Her Nan had shuffled through from her bedroom across the hall to see what all the noise was about.

Ally dropped her left leg in front of her and the room erupted with cheers. “Look at you, look at you! Clever girl!” said her mother, still keeping her arms out, while her father trained his mobile phone over his wife’s and his mother-in-law’s beaming faces. “She’s going again, she’s going again,” he said, as Ally lifted her right leg up, again holding it in the air for half a second, teasing her audience. But this time there was a wobble and her mother reached her arm out to grab Ally. “No!” came the cry again from the door as Ally landed on her bottom with a soft bump, laughing. “Everyone falls honey,” said her Nan as they fawned over the laughing child.

Ally took another crack at it later that night. She took the first step easily but fell again on the second. Everyone in the living room laughed and cheered but her father’s mobile phone stayed on the living room table, undisturbed. An hour later she tried again. Her mum and her Nan clapped while her father smiled, his hands stayed holding the remote on the TV. She tried one last time before going to bed. Her Nan looked up from her evening newspaper and smiled while her mother planted a kiss on her cheeks. Her father wasn’t in the room to witness it.

The next morning Ally crawled into the living room ready to give everyone a show again. Her mum hadn’t come downstairs yet but her Nan was sitting in her usual chair, remote in hand, her head resting on a cushion, the news running. Ally pulled herself up onto her legs, using no support again and lifted her left leg up, just like she had done yesterday, she held it in the air for half a second, building up the tension and then dropped it in front of her. Her Nan’s eyes stayed on the telly. She never saw her. Ally lifted her right leg up, there was the customary wobble just like there had been last night but this time she was able to keep her balance. She dropped her right leg in front of her and let out a little laugh, pleased with her progress. But the TV was too loud. Her Nan never heard her. Her mother came downstairs just as her father walked in through the main door.

“Did you remember to bring eggs?”

“Yup,” he answered.

Neither of them noticed Ally standing in the middle of the living room. Confused Ally dropped on all fours again and crawled over to where her Nan was sitting on her chair. Determined to claim attention she grabbed her grandmother’s free hand and pulled herself up onto her feet. The force caused her Nan‘s still chest to lurch forward and she fell face first onto the floor with a giant crash.

“Oh my God!” Ally’s mother screamed running towards them.

“Wait! Don’t touch her,” called her father digging into his pocket for his mobile phone.

Ally held onto her Nan’s cold hand and laughed.

Sadiq Jaffery is a monologist and short story writer living and performing in London. He explores themes that are relevant to society and its practices, specifically looking at what encourages people to conform and behave in certain ways. He is currently working on his first short story collection. He tweets @sadiqcanramble

Image by Dermot O’Halloran