Lonely Christmas 2019 by Shy Bairns

Lonely Christmas 2019 It’s Christmas 2019. I think I’ve struggled writing an editors letter this year because the world feels like it’s on the brink of disaster and the apocalypse isn’t very, uh, festive. The general election is in 3 days and it’s all anyone is allowed to think about. There’s pressure to be angry, pressure to be constantly talking about things that terrify you. It’s hard to slow down and make something silly with your mates. Candy cane sculptures and dogs wearing tinsel can seem frivalous in these times, but I think that’s what makes them important. Silliness is good. Hope is good. Love is good. It’s hard to write like this without sounding exactly like a Christmas rom-com opening but y’know what, that works. I’ve never been to Heathrow airport but I’m sure Newcastle is the same and the submissions for this zine are too. We didn’t get any artwork telling us to fuck off. They were all messages of love. Boris Johnson made a Love Actually spoof but Hugh Grant is door-knocking against him in general election. Fascists aren’t allowed to take the things we care about anymore. Merry Christmas, happy New Year, enjoy the end of the decade and send us weird things again in 2020. Love, George and Izzy xoxo

Naughty List

Jayson G Gylen Amelia Mae Gibson Cherry Styles Jessica Burnand-Martin Kieren Mehta Lucinda Purkis Lovish Saini Heather Chambers Kat Rose Krystina Tyrtania Amrit Randhawa Shia Conlon Erin Blamire Jasmine Jenkins 2

Craig David Parr Joanne Gibson & George Gibson Jessica Tayler Cain Jo Kroese Thea Luckcock Izzy Kroese Natasha Loydell Han Trim Molly Cross 21

I’m less snow, more gingerbread. -by that, I mean I’m indian, no tree, off to india instead. & I loved it, till a friend said: ‘how can you not do christmas? don’t you feel like you’re missing out? the tv, the food, the presents fuss! next year, you could come stay with us.’ so, at elf, I wanted nothing more than a white christmas. a real tree, brussel sprouts, a wreath on our door, cracker debris all over the floor. at fifteen we did it! the xmas dream, & we all wore itchy jumpers, eat mince pies with double cream, & it was nice. but it did seem kinda bland? I missed the hot sour spice of corn on the cob off the street in mumbai. nimbu pani & ice. I’d swapped a thali for basmati rice. I still miss it. but now I know christmas isn’t just gingerbread or snow, it’s mariah carey & young jude law & eating enough for a family of four, cooking for friends, drinking mulled wine, or none of that. whatever. it’s christmas time.

I don’t want a lot for Christmas I broke up with him on Christmas Eve and threw his ‘4 piece’ toaster out the window It landed on the postman’s head This postman had no hair. So, I am in jail the Christmas Well, to be exact I am under house arrest. The officers keeping guard are actually quite fit and I’d have a threesome with them if theyweren’t policeman. And if I did threesomes, which I don’t (I can barely concentrate on one person let alone 2) (and Iget exhausted easily so one would probably end up more satisfied than the other and then I’d feel really bad all day and cry) Anyways, my probation officer came around earlier on and she said I have a court date January 3rd, which will be nice, They are going to see if they can just free me and let me get on with my life, seeing as my ex agreed to say (at fucking last) that the toaster was meant to land on HIS head, not some poor postman, who can’t see out his left eye anymore and has to stand on his head every 4 hours (to try and shake out the bit of metal that got wedged in when the toaster landed on his head). My ex’s wife hates me, she thinks I ruined his life, I hate her because she thinks Richard Dawkins is a scholar. I started seeing someone in jail, but he was just a psychiatrist, and when I suggested he ‘come into my cell for coffee and a stolen after eight mint’ he just closed his brief case and left. I was talking to a friend of a friend who looks like a young Terry Jones, but he says he needs ‘’space’’ because apparently my being under house arrest and not been allowed to the shops without a police escort ‘’intimidated him’’. Gah. I’m sat on the sofa, thinking about how much I miss that toaster. It’s very sunny outside and I think I’m getting a very nice tan from sitting by this window for most of the day. I decide to tell people it’s from a yachting trip to Northern Italy when I’m finally released. I am watching tv, it is a program about building a house after the apocalypse, honestly, I don’t see the fucking point- the point of the apocalypse is that we are all meant to be dead.

And the presenters voice annoys me, it reminds me of the lawyer I had that tried to get me to have an affair with him after he got me out of jail, and then sent me a Christmas card even though I hadn’t given him my new address. My parents are coming to collect me on 23rd December at 12.30 prompt, I won’t need a police escort as we decided, I am not at risk of giving postman Brain injuries, or the like, when I am in the middle of nowhere and there hasn’t been a postal collection since Poland got annexed. And also, because, like I have said to too many people ‘’I am not a psychopath’’. So, I have clothes laid out on my bed and I am deciding what to wear to go to the corner shop (black leather dress and trainers or jeans and the ‘vote sex’ t shirt one of my old inmates gave to me, I think she stole it from a Britney Spears impersonator) When my doorbell rings and it’s my lawyer (my new lawyer) (Who is the cousin of my probation officer, but no-one’s meant to know that) ‘’I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t be doing this’’ She has very dark hair and wears a golden cross. She used to work for a human rights firm, she lives in an old factory. She takes her shoes off, she has very small feet. Well not small small, smaller than mine though. She hands me a gift bag, it’s holographic and reminds me of the notebook my teacher at school told me to write all of my worries in. ‘’I’m really really sorry’’ she keeps turning around as if she’s expecting somebody to follow her. ‘’It’s ok, I haven’t spoken to anyone with half a brain since 12 o clock, I thought I might DIE’’ I laugh She doesn’t laugh, she’s sat at the bottom of my stairs with hair head in her hands And then Jack, one of the policemen puts his head round the door to say he’s clocking off for lunch, but that Dex will be back in a sec (pretty sure Dex has been doing poppers in the downstairs bathroom for the past half hour and is as of as much use to my security as a condom with a hat). I look inside the bag, there are several small parcels. I unwrap the first one, it’s a photo of me and her when she visited me in jail ‘’Fuck me I look good in that’’ I say ‘’I know, you were on fire that day, you looked like you were about to have sex with that priest that came to visit’’ ‘’Oh yes’’ (he looked like a young Jonathon Miller and had a voice that you’d expect to hear on Radio 4, not a prison canteen) The second parcel is unwrapped, it’s a knitted pair of gloves

‘’Your hands always look so cold’’ ‘’They are’’ ‘’ And when you do wear gloves it’s those bloody awful green ones’’ I try not to look offended, but I stole those off a supermodel, they are my favourites ‘’Put them on’’ They’re warm, but make my hands look big, like a gorilla on steroids, or what I imagine Gods hands might look like. I decide to send them away once she’s gone. She’s holding my hand, like you want to hold someone’s hand when they’ve just told you their cat might have to put down, or you’re sorry you thought there was leftovers for lunch, but the builders have eaten them. I don’t budge I unwrap the final parcel Dex comes back, grins rather sheepishly at me and her (like the way a dog does after it’s taken a shit by a tree, in a middle class neighbourhood) It’s a necklace It’s a locket! with a silhouette of a Victorian lady at the front Engraved on the back is ‘’for Shelia, with love, Fred’’ ‘’My grandparents’’ she looks up at me ‘’Lovely’’ I say, but in all honesty, I couldn’t have cared less if it wasn’t her grandparents. There’s lots of Shelia’s and Fred’s around here. She asks if she can put it on me I say yes She puts the necklace around my neck I feel sleepy The way I used to when my ex used to stand behind me and we’d watch the children outside fighting over a dead pigeon I turn around My watch is reflecting on the wall behind her and is making a rainbow across her face. Jack comes back He has crumbs all over his face, and he’s vaping She leans over and very quickly kisses me on the cheek, I notice she’s wearing the same gold hoops my best friend from school used to wear (we stopped being friends in Year 9 after she found out my mum accidentally donated her Pauls Boutique coat to a charity shop, and in college she shagged my crush at a wrap party for that year’s Christmas performance, an R n B version of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ with HER as one of the merry wives, even though she had very distinct frown lines) I kiss her back. I hear Jack tell Dex ‘’I hope she doesn’t mind the vape’’ (I do mind it, I mind all vapes, even the ones who can’t help being vapes) I want to tell him to shove is vape pen up his arse, but I think that would ruin the moment.

Tree Walk The other day I was walking from Reddish to Levenshulme because I had a bit of time to kill. Along the way I started to notice these trees that were growing underneath fences, bending the metal or growing round it. I know we’ve all seen it before, and there’s probably more ~epic~ versions of these photographs on National Geographic or some “wow! Cool!” article on facebook. Of trunks wrapping themselves round old cars etc. But it was something about seeing these first hand, on the streets of Manchester that started the cogs working as I walked along thinking about our relationship with trees and nature. Living in a world of China imports, bright synthetic flowers are sold in pretty much every neighbourhood in the UK. I don’t want to discredit artificial stuff, mainly because I love the smell of those plastic shops when you walk in, but also because dismissing anything that’s cheap and easy to get hold of is class A snobbery. Plastic flowers just say something else about humans. Seeing the trees on the other hand, defiantly growing around metal so powerfully, kind of brought myself out of being human, and made me think about other forces at work. As an artist I’m really interested in value systems and hierarchies. In a way metal is stronger than us, and the fact we need tools to cut/melt/bend it reminds us of our human qualities and limitations. For me it comes back to the soft body, always the soft body. Trying all our might to extend ourselves into something more than our messy, squidgy soft bodies. By using tools, strategies and other materials to hold people where we want, we organise, plan and build. As my work as a support worker takes me around greater Manchester I see a lot of spaces outside of the shop-window glamour of the city centre. Like plots of land that have fences around them but nothing on them. The dream faded as the urban designer moves their lense over to the next area after their projects are complete. To leave people living in reality with their designs. Seeing concepts disintegrate is pretty interesting, especially in such a headstrong time to live in (self-made celebrities/politics/competitive jobs) where people are feeling the pressure to constantly push their agenda… to see things not go to plan is a bit of a fuck you which I love. So when I see these trees, I am gleeful, also thinking about their super strength and sort of wishing that I was one part tree to have their ruthlessness and strength. A reminder. Just a reminder that not everything is concrete.

(this is where your wings were) Portrait of the artist as an angel, 2000

Merry Christmas from

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