KEEP PLANNING – Simon Firth

I. J's error was moving back to the seaside. He likes dogs and they like him. He doesn't remember much about his childhood. His birthday is in two weeks. He lies more than he tells the truth. He has been to the opera twice; objectively, the performances were impressive, but he was bored to death. He thinks Georges Perec wrote more or less everything that was worth writing. He has travelled to twenty-eight countries but could barely tell you a thing about any of them. He reads prefaces more often than he reads complete books, though he's reluctant to make this distinction. Right now he’s lying in a creaky bed in a dusty bedsit. He once stole a pair of blue satin curtains from a hotel. His childhood bedroom overlooked a hospital car park. II. J’s error was believing that he receives telepathic communication from the sea. He wonders if his landlady will bring him some pistachio ice cream if he calls down to her in a feeble voice. His first kiss was with a girl who is now dead. He isn't funny and doesn't tell jokes. He knows the first lines to more books than he's read. He wonders if Perec and Sideshow Bob are related. He believes he will die at the age of forty-two. He once wrote a story about living in a suitcase that nobody collected from the baggage conveyor belt in a Singapore airport. He’s just realised that he can't move his legs. He prefers smooth peanut butter to crunchy. He thinks there’s a ninety percent chance he ends up living on the streets. III. J’s error was never finishing Moby Dick. He is a recent convert to the electric toothbrush. He likes writing like this (which he thinks of as hypnotic or narcotic, or something like living-in-death writing) and doesn't know why he bothers trying to write stories. He doesn’t use gas stoves. He definitely can’t move his legs. He worries that there’s no such thing as an ending. His strategy to get around this is not to start things, or to make innumerable very small, false starts that won’t ever go anywhere. This is one of those false starts, which has to stop at some point. And the message he’s just received from the sea is unequivocal: that’s enough now, it’s over, you’re going nowhere.

*** Simon Firth is a writer from Morecambe Bay. 14 May 2026