A rather good week, if you’re asking

I was in London’s Free Word centre last week, where the brilliant Throwaway Lines project has become an exhibition. This project is all about turning litter into literature – or litterature, as those of us in the know call it.

The idea is simple: give 26 writers 26 different scraps of paper found in the street and tell them to use the scrap to inspire a piece of fiction. These aren’t any old bits of paper, but evocative ephemera gathered by Andy Hayes. I had two: a will and a kind of megalomaniacal to-do list, so wrote two stories. (You can read them here and here)

For the exhibition, Andy took a selection of the stories and gave them – along with the inspiring scrap of litter – to a selection artists. They had to read the story and then “frame” the inspiring scrap so that it could hang on a wall.

My piece was framed by Gitta Gschwendtner, an amazing furniture designer. The contrast between the piece I wrote and Gitta’s frame is stark. I went off on a wild, baroque, biblical fantasy; Gitta got a cheap black frame and balanced it on a nail. “Your narrator seemed unstable,” she said, by way of explanation.

Perhaps the blush-inducing, ego-stoking highlight of the evening was meeting popular-science writer David Bodanis, who told me how great he thought my story was. The next day, he emailed me a lovely “blurb”. He said:

“Neil Baker has the remarkable ability to mix two things which few writers manage: his language is beautiful; his stories drive along with a compelling plot. Either one of those on its own would be attractive. The two together make Baker a talent to watch. I’m not a publisher, but if I were I’d want to sign him up before anyone else nabs him.”

Thanks Dave.

A couple of days later, another lovely surprise. The people at the Free Word centre had arranged for Vincent Franklin – a familiar face from the Thick of It, 2012, and other brilliant stuff – to record an audio version of the second story I had in the exhibition, Docile Creatures. You can listen to it here.

All in all, a very special week.

Where I write about a Chopper

Would you like a peek inside my messy broom-cupboard of a creative mind? Really? Well…

The exhibition I’ve been working on with the V&A’s brilliant Museum of Childhood is now open. Their idea was to tell the story of post-war British childhood through a series of iconic objects. Part of my role was to write a sestude – a sort of 62-word poem – about one of those objects, a Raleigh Chopper bike. (If you reside on foreign shores, the Raleigh Chopper is an icon – possibly the icon – of British childhood in the 1970s). I also edited a lot of the sestudes written by other writers and ran a blog about it all.

“My” Raleigh Chopper, as it stands proudly in the exhibition

My sestude is at the bottom of this page. But as part of the project, I also had to write a ‘creation story’, explaining how and why I wrote whatever I wrote. That’s pasted just below. So, take your pick – read the creation story first, then the sestude; do it the other way around; or close this browser tab and do whatever else might brighten your day.

The exhibition booklet (I think I went to school with her)

Without further ado, over to me and my creation story….

A Raleigh Chopper. I felt a twist of anxiety when John Simmons told me this was the childhood treasure chosen for me. The museum hadn’t located an actual Chopper yet, but it was bound to be big, bright and popular. If my sestude was boring, it couldn’t be hidden away in a quiet corner.

I ought to be grateful, really. Being given such a high-profile treasure was a privilege – or that’s how I saw it. And a bit of fear was a good thing. It added to the creative challenge and gave me a heightened sense of responsibility.

But I had another problem. I don’t like Raleigh Choppers and I don’t have happy memories of them. I know many people love them. The Chopper really has become iconic. I imagined museum visitors would want to read something loving and respectful. That wasn’t what I was feeling.

I first saw a Chopper when I was maybe eight years old. I wasn’t impressed. They were heavy bikes, and hard to ride. Not just because of their weight; they were badly balanced and prone to tip into an unexpected wheelie, especially when there was a passenger on the back rack – which was most of the time. I also remember them as rusty bikes, with broken gearshifts; owned by flash kids and moneyed kids – and neither label applied to me.

My friends and I rode around on bikes assembled from whatever we could get at the council dump. They had buckled wheels, no front brakes. We called our bikes “track bikes” and formed our own gang, The Trackers. There were five of us. I made membership cards. I thought I still had mine in the loft, maybe 35 years old, but I looked just now and couldn’t find it.

I wrote my first draft in the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall. I often work there. It’s a good place to fill time between meetings. I decided my sestude would juxtapose the innocent simplicity of our cheap, homemade bikes with the vulgar, commercial faux-Americana of the Raleigh Chopper. Maybe I was feeling grumpy.

It all seemed a bit too pretentious, but after much revising and cutting and more cutting, I had a draft I was happy with. I sent it to my editor and she liked it. But I was still unhappy with the tone. It sounded too bitter, kind of whiny. The ending was about rusting dreams.

It also seemed to sneer at anyone who ever owned a Raleigh Chopper or who felt affection toward them. I don’t mind making myself unpopular with Chopper-lovers – well, I do a bit – but I do object to sneering.

The writing also felt inauthentic. I wasn’t sure whether the “I” speaking in the sestude was me or not. Sometimes I’d tell myself it was me, other times it wasn’t. I started a new draft.

The version I ended up with is less bleak and I’m happier with it. I still mock the flash boy cruising around the park on his expensive bike, and romanticise the poor kids on their dump-found scrap. That is drawn straight from my memory, and felt valid. I sent off my finished piece, which is the version that’s now in the exhibition.

It was only afterwards, when I was watching the Tour de France on TV with my nine-year-old son, Will, that other memories started bubbling up. Will asked me why it was important for sprinters to “hold the wheel” of their opponents until the finish line was just a few bike lengths away. I explained the benefits of slipstreaming.

To illustrate my point, I told Will about the races I had on long summer evenings against my friend Gavin Costick, when we were nine. Gavin always beat me, I said, because he knew about the need to “hold the wheel” of the rider in front (Gavin had a mountain of Continental cycling magazines piled up in his bedroom). And then, sitting next to Will on our sofa, I remembered a childhood scene:

I am leading Gavin all the way down Garth Road – as usual – when we get to the crematorium. This is where he always makes his move, coming off my wheel and accelerating away on the beautiful yellow racing bike that he built in the shed with his dad. But this time I think it will be different, that I will win.

Why did I think I had a chance? It was only now that I pictured in my mind’s eye the bike that I was riding. It wasn’t a cobbled together assemblage of dump-found junk – the kind of bike I rode in my sestude. No, it was a very classy 10-speed Peugeot racer, a birthday gift from my parents. It must have cost them a small fortune. The poseur on the fancy wheels was me. I hereby apologise to the boy on the Raleigh Chopper.

A footnote: after writing this I Googled “Gavin Costick”. He became a very accomplished bike racer and still competes for his club. Chapeau, Gareth!

The sestude…

And here is the piece that all that thinking and scribbling and rescribbling produced:

California Dreaming

We built our bikes from dump-found junk.
Oily fingers. Buckled wheels.
Then you cruised into our park,
burning bright like a boardwalk sunset,
a foreign fantasy.
Had Dad got a job? Did Nan win the Bingo?
Kids queued for a backy.
Begged and nagged.
You dazzled them, for a summer.
But chrome corrodes, banana seats split.
Dreams should remain in mint condition.

My sestude, as it appears in the exhibition booklet

A turning point at the seaside

I have decided to draw a line in the sand.

Running with my dog one morning this week, I thought more about what I might have learnt on my Dark Angels course in Spain. Having made such a big investment – both in time and in cash – in my development as a writer, shouldn’t I be seeing a few changes?

Mr Turning Point
Looking for an answer, I thought about George Orwell. I reread ‘Homage to Catalonia’ as a kind of pre-Spain warm-up. His journey to the country was a huge turning point. When he got home, he drew a famous ‘line in the sand’. Every word of ‘serious work’ he produced thereafter, he said, was “written,directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.

Orwell’s experience was a bit different to mine. He was in Spain fighting in a civil war; I was writing sonnets and drinking too much red wine. But even so, I liked the idea of drawing a line in the sand.

I do feel like I’m on a bit of a threshold, actually. I’ve got a few big changes happening behind the scenes. Good ones. Really exciting ones. So I thought, yes, Spain will be a turning point for me, too. I will also draw my line in the sand.

Now, I was going to leave it there. I thought I might blog about this turning point moment, but that would be it. I’d need a photo of a line in some sand to illustrate it, but a Google image search would do the job. But then I felt I was missing the point. This wasn’t just a metaphorical turning point. I needed a real line in real sand.

So I put the dog in the back of the car and drove to the seaside. Our nearest beach is Camber Sands. Midweek, it is empty. The tide seems to go out for miles. There was plenty of sand. I wandered around a while, found the perfect spot and drew a line with my finger. I took a photo and walked down to the water line to reward the dog with a swim and to reflect further on my achievement.
Me admiring my first line

Then I realised that I hadn’t actually crossed the line that I’d drawn.  This bothered me. I’d gone to all the trouble of driving to the beach, but hadn’t completed what I started. I walked back to my line, so I could take a symbolic step over it, but couldn’t find it. So I drew another one.

This time I was determined to make the crossing of the line properly meaningful. I reflected for a while about what the act I was about to perform meant to me. I wanted this to be something that I could look back on in five or ten years’ time and say, yes, that was a turning point. I came up with a form of words and spoke them aloud (remember, the beach was empty). Then I took a deep breath and stepped over the line.

The line I actually crossed. Oh yes.
The line I made for public use

I must say, it felt very good. So good in fact that I drew another line, for public use, in case anyone else came to the beach that day and wanted to create their own turning point. The tide will have washed it away by now. But blog readers, I urge you: give it a go.

The one where I interview myself

Oh the narcism. As part of the writers’ collective 26, I’m working with the V&A on a project about british childhood since 1948. Part of my role is to run the project blog, on which I’ve been publishing interviews with other writers. Yesterday I got to interview… me. You can read the results here.

Dark Angels in Spain

I’ve just come back from a writing workshop in Spain. This was the “advanced” version of the Dark Angels course I took in Scotland last November. When I came home from Scotland, I wrote a long blog post about what I’d learned there. So, what did I learn in Spain?

It’s hard to say. Dark Angels isn’t the kind of course that has learning outcomes. On the second evening we sat around the dinner table and took turns to share what we hoped to get from our five days in Andalusia. My answer was simple: Scotland had been fun, I hoped Spain would be too – and hotter.

The lovely pool
Writers “at work”
Fun it was. I ate a lot, drank a lot, wrote a lot, laughed a lot and talked, talked, talked. By the end, I was sick of the sound of my own voice (oh God, it’s him yapping away again.) I made friends, and got to see myself as others see me, which is always revealing. People said I was driven, focused, committed, tall (really?), sporty (I wish), bitchy (in a fun way, I hope) and funny.

But for this to be a tax deductable expense rather than a holiday, I needed to learn about writing, creativity and business communications. Yesterday I sat down at my desk, back in my study, to write about what I’d learned. After 30 minutes of nothing, I took my dog for a run instead.

Out in the muddy fields, I was reminded of something that I literally took away from that first Dark Angels course. On the final morning in Scotland I gave our two tutors – John Simmons and Jamie Jauncey– a card each on which I’d written, “The one thing Neil needs to do when he gets home is…” I asked them both to complete the sentence. I’m sure they can’t remember what they wrote, but it has proved very valuable over the last year.
I thought I’d repeat the exercise in Spain. This time we had three tutors – Stuart Delves was there, too – so I’d get even more guidance. Excellent. But when we were waiting for our airport taxis, I decided not to get my cards out. It might have been that they were too busy, or the moment wasn’t right, or I didn’t want to bother them again. But I like to think there was a deeper reasoning taking place (I like deep reasoning).

I got a sense of what that might have been when I was running with my dog, thinking about Spain. One moment came back to me. Jamie was setting up an exercise as the course neared its end. He finished explaining what we were supposed to do and all the other students got out of their chairs to make a start. I remained seated, and asked for a small detail of the activity to be clarified. Jamie laughed. “Neil,” he said, “you are always waiting for instructions.”

Stuart, Jamie, John and Me
That was a little light bulb moment for me. In Scotland, I got a better sense of where I was in my life and in my writing (both creative and commercial), but perhaps I expected other people to tell me what to do next. In Spain I realised that I don’t need to be told. I’ve got a good idea of where I want to go. Of course, it may turn out to be further away than I think, and there will diversions along the way, but I don’t expect someone else to draw me a map. Advice is still appreciated, especially from people who know the terrain so well, but I shouldn’t expect instructions.

So maybe that’s what I learned.  Or maybe that’s just a load of sentimental tosh. I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll decide next week that what I really learnt in Spain was how to make chorizo. But I take comfort from number 11 of Brenda Ueland‘s twelve rules for writers: “Don’t be afraid of yourself when you write. Don’t check-rein yourself. If you are afraid of being sentimental, say, for heaven’s sake be as sentimental as you can or feel like being!”

Brenda, how right you are.

And if you don’t know Ueland’s rules, here are the rest. They are from “If You Want to Write”, one of my favourite books about writing:

Brenda, honorary Dark Angel?
1/ Know that you have talent, are original and have something important to say.
2/ Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

3/ Write freely, recklessly, in first drafts.

4/ Tackle anything you want to- novels, plays, anything. Only remember Blake’s admonition: “Better to strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.”
5/ Don’t be afraid of writing bad stories. To discover what is wrong with a story write two new ones and then go back to it.

6/ Don’t fret or be ashamed of what you have written in the past. How I always suffered from this! How I would regurgitate out of my memory (and still do) some nauseous little lumps of things I had written! But don’t do this. Go on to the next. And fight against this tendency, which is much of it due not to splendid modesty, but a lack of self-respect. We are too ready (women especially) not to stand by what we have said or done. Often it is a way of forestalling criticism, saying hurriedly: “I know it is awful!” before anyone else does. Very bad and cowardly. It is so conceited and timid to be ashamed of one’s mistakes. Of course they are mistakes. Go on to the next.

7/Try to discover your true, honest, untheoretical self.

8/ Don’t think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and His messengers. Remember how wonderful you are, what a miracle! Think if Tiffany’s made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was!

9/ If you are never satisfied with what you write, that is a good sign. It means your vision can see so far that it is hard to come up to it. Again I say, the only unfortunate people are the glib ones, immediately satisfied with their work. To them the ocean is only knee-deep.

10/ When discouraged, remember what van Gogh said: “If you hear a voice within you saying: you are no painter, then paint by all means, lad, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working.”

11/ Don’t be afraid of yourself when you write. Don’t check-rein yourself. If you are afraid of being sentimental, say, for heaven’s sake be as sentimental as you can or feel like being! Then you’ll probably pass through to the other side and slough off sentimentality because you understand it at last and really don’t care about it.

12/ Don’t always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. “I will not Reason & Compare,” said Blake; “my business is to Create.” Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.


Bespoke stories, written on the spot

A simple question can take you to some very interesting places.


I had my second outing as a writer in residence yesterday. This time I was in Oxford Street Books, Whitstable, writing stories inspired by whoever came into the shop. To make life more difficult, I decided to try and write these stories – brief flash fictions – on the spot. Give me the inspiration for a story, and you can take the resulting slice of literature away with you. Now.

Partly, I wanted to demystify the process of idea generation. I wanted to show people – and myself, too – that ideas can be found anywhere, and that the writing process can be very quick, when necessary. I also felt that I, like many writers, spend a lot of time hanging about in the shadows, eavesdropping and observing, finding small details that could form the beginnings of a character or a story. I wanted to be more open about this process, I wanted to thank the people who inspired me, and show them what I had produced as a consequence – even if it was rubbish.

So armed with my now familiar toolkit of 3×5 cards, BlueTac, paperclips and pencils, I set about my task. I picked customers at random and said something like this: “Excuse me, but I’m a writer and I’m working on a special project here today. I’m writing stories inspired by the people who come into the shop. Would you inspire me please?”

This question tended to generate a nervous laugh, a look of terror or just blank incomprehension, so I quickly followed up with a simple instruction: “An easy way for you to inspire me would be to tell me your favourite word. What is it?”

Now, the answer to this question wasn’t very important at all. But it opened the door to further probing. It was remarkable how quickly I could go from a simple question (“So, why is peace your favourite word?”) to something much deeper (“So, do you feel that your life is in a dark place at the moment?”) I had no idea these brief conversation would be so revealing.

I’d furiously scribble notes and when the conversation seemed to have run its course – and people wanted to talk for a lot longer than I expected – I would ask them to browse the shelves while I wrote something for them. Every time I sat down to look at my notes, I had no idea what I would write. But I always managed to produce something. I would give the result to the customer, and stick a copy to the wall or a shelf for other people to read.

It was an exhausting, but inspiring day. Massive thanks to the great people at ReAuthoring who – yet again – made this all possible. Here are some photos (be kind – keep in mind, each piece of writing took about 90 seconds! And apologies for the handwriting):

This is Anne, reading “Anticipation”, which she inspired

Anticipation, inspired by Anne
Start Counting

This guy had a great attitude. He inspired Start Counting

Brilliant Brian – he owns the shop and makes great tea

Jane enjoying “On the Edge”, which she inspired 

On the Edge

Some of my stuff, pinned in place

The Woman Who Married a Parrot

Wendy with “The Woman who Married a Parrot”

The poster I put up in the window

Poster for inside the shop

I wrote stories on the reverse of these “thank you” cards


Stories from the festival writing shed

Sometimes it’s worth making a plan, if only for the fun of ripping it up

I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would spend my time as a “writer in residence” at the Lounge on the Farm music festival. I experimented beforehand with new technologies. I spent ages downloading apps and trying to get them to work. I wanted my iPhone to be a pocket-sized multi-media publishing hub.

But I abandoned most of what I’d planned to do within maybe 30 minutes of arriving on site. There were so many actual, real-life walking, talking and partying people to interact with. I wasn’t that bothered about tinkering with my phone or reaching out to a virtual audience.

Instead, I went analogue. My creative tools became sharpened pencils, 3×5 cards, paperclips and string.

I accosted passers-by and asked them to reveal their most and least favourite words. I strung these together, hung them in the breeze, and made a story out of them. I wrote flash stories on my 3×5 cards and gave them to people as they queued for burgers or sipped their tea – “Would you like a fresh piece of fiction with your Earl Grey, madam?” Nobody said no. I wrote provocative lines on cup-sleeves for the owners of a coffee stall – their customers loved them, they reported later.

I sat in my writing shed – shared with the rest of the brilliant ReAuthoring team – and answered endless questions from curious people: what are you doing? why? are you really a writer? like, properly?

I learned how easy it can be to slip a little literature into someone’s life – just a scrap of paper and a few words will do the job. And how varied, surprising and pleasant the effects can be. Ten words in the right order can make someone laugh, call over their mates, stop, laugh again, then go away “for a bit of a think”.

I’m a writer in residence again next week, this time in Whitstable, where I’ll be taking over Oxford Street Books for a day. I’ll be writing on-the-spot flash stories and other literary morsels, inspired by the customers and the books they browse, from 3pm to 5.30pm. Drop by and I’ll write something for you.

A quiet moment, writing outside the shed
A story left on the grass for anyone to find

A coffee customer enjoys his shot of words
A line on a coffee cup
Fun people enjoy a story I wrote for them

One of the many lines I pinned to the shed

In my tent, I reside

I’ve wanted to be a writer in residence for ages. Next weekend I finally get my chance, though not in the circumstances I imagined.

What I had in mind, I think, was an august yet innovative institution – maybe a university or an arts organisation, a theatre. I would have a comfy office, a grand title, a small but welcome stipend. I would “say a few words” when called upon, and graciously accept whatever plaudits came my way. I might potter about in slippers and be a little eccentric.*

Instead, I will be in a field, sleeping in a tent. My great wish is that it doesn’t rain. Actually, rain is inevitable; I just hope it won’t rain too hard or too persistently.

I will be at the Lounge on the Farm music festival in Kent, just outside Canterbury (July 6-8). I’m a member of the LoungeStories team. There will be five of us working shifts. My task is to wander around the festival site, talking to people, eavesdropping on occasion, taking in the experience and then using it all as inspiration for fiction – stories, poems or maybe just an interesting line or an arresting image.

We’ll be publishing and even performing our work on the spot, for festival-goers to read and enjoy. They might even recognise themselves in writing they inspired.

To get the words out, we’ll be using a wide range of social media – Facebook, Instagram, Audioboo, Tumblr and others. There’ll be old media in the mix too, I hope, even if it’s just the odd haiku on a Post-It note.

The idea is to experiment – with how we find inspiration, what we write and how we make it available. I have no big plan for how I’ll use my time, just a willingness – perhaps a determination, even – to make a bit of an arse of myself.

It should be fun. I will report back.

* On reflection, this sounds like the kind of writer I might be in 40 years’ time, but not just yet

The weather will be like this, won’t it?

Why I love my typewriter

I am writing the first draft of this blog post on my new typewriter. It is a Brother AX-100. Later, when I write the second draft on my very lovely MacBook Pro, I will add a photo of my typewriter, and perhaps some links to some information about it, and where I bought it. But not now. Now I am just focusing on writing down some words.

And that, of course, is the reason why I love my typewriter. It does what it does, and nothing else. It has no means of distracting me. There are a few functions that I might tinker with one day. I can write in single-spaced lines or double. I can change the “pitch” from 10 to 12, whatever that means (I’ve tried it and can’t see any difference). There are a few other controls to do with tabs, I think, and margins. They hold little interest.

I’ve wanted a typewriter for such a long time. I don’t know why I’ve not bought one sooner. Partly, I think, it’s because it seems such a step backwards. I love technology. My iPhone, iPad and MacBook give me great pleasure. They are the kind of devices that I dreamed of owning as a child. When I ask Siri questions, I am Captain Kirk.

Like many writers, I hate Microsoft Word with a passion. Every new version of it seems worse than the one before. My laptop, with all its gigabytes and megahertz, takes as long to open a simple document as my Mac Classic did 15 years ago. And when I work in Word, it crashes just as often. I use Scrivener as much as I can. It is simple and aimed at writers. But it still invites me to fiddle with fonts, window arrangements and such like. And anyway, it’s not just the simplicity of a distraction-free writing environment that I crave.

A typed manuscript is a beautiful thing. Words bashed out mechanically onto a scrolling sheet of paper, the criss-crossing of edits, additions, deletions – ideally in different colours. I find the result of typing aesthetically pleasing. And when I am done, when I reach the end of the page, I have made something physical, an object that did not existing in the world previously. I have not simply rearranged bytes of data. I like that.

I like to write with pen and paper for the same reason. I will continue to do so. The typewriter is not meant to replace another writing technology, it is just another tool weapon in my armoury.

Oh, and I just love the noise it makes: whirr, clack, clack. By contrast, the near-silent hum of my MacBook’s whispering fans, the click and shuffle of its hard drive, I find infuriating. No, the noise of the typewriter is a good noise. I can sit here now, at my desk, with the window open, a brisk breeze bending the sycamore trees and barging its way through the tilting fields of rape seed and feel connected to it all in a way that I wasn’t previously.

Ah, I’ve reached the end of the page.

What a beauty

A tapestry, a story

This tapestry has hung on the wall at my in-laws’ house for at least the twenty years that I’ve known them. But it was only last weekend that I had a close look at it. My daughter and I sat in their kitchen and tried to decode the story that it tells. We struggled.

It begins clearly enough. A man feeds a goat – presumably with some kind of poison? – and then feeds the goat to a crocodile. The crocodile dies, and the man shows its body to a group of other people. He then sets off on a journey that seems to involve him recruiting a lion to his cause. There is a lot of finger pointing and bargaining along the way.

I don’t know where the story is set. One drawing features what looks like a pair of pyramids. The script that captions each frame is, according to Twitter sources, almost certainly Amharic. That would put us in Ethiopia.

I do know a little bit about how the tapestry came to be in the family. My father-in-law did a lot of work with Oxfam in its early days. When its staff went overseas, they would often return laden with gifts and curiosities, which they auctioned to raise money. He bought this at one of those auctions, in the early 1970s, I think. It cost about £70 – or about £700 in today’s prices. That seems rather generous, but perhaps this is a priceless artefact – who knows.

I’m not sure why this tapestry has suddenly piqued my interest. I suspect it’s that my father-in-law, who I’m sure would have known its provenance, died recently. This could be the first of many “I’ll ask George… oh no, I can’t” occasions.

And so if I want to unlock this particular puzzle from the family’s past, I’ll have to find the answer on my own. That’s something I’ll need to get used to.

A close up of the mysterious text