John Gilroy
Bio
I'm a writer from London, now based in Leeds. Anecdotes, trians of thought and poems are what I write.
Stories (17/0)
Giving Myself Time
You know for the past five years I thought that being productive meant being out and working. Or performing or anything other than just being inside. I had this idea in my mind that it meant being busy that staying in and not doing a thing was a negetive and then today I just stopped and did some painting. My mum had said to take some time off until the new year. I'd been working non stop. Both working physicaly and mentaly trying to figure out my next move constantly not stopping to think about what I had done. There was bits of writing on paper all over my living room/ here living room, the space that I had occupied since coming back from university. Sleeping on the sofa and now the futon that had been dragged out of my sisters/ my old room. I thought that staying in was a luxury that I can't afford. As though to stay in the flat was somehting that meant that I wasn't connected to the outside world anymore and so I spent all of my time and money trying to get from place to place, trying to make the most of those wasted days. Two lines that I have repeated from a poem that I wrote called Ashtray. A poem that I recorded whilst studying smoking culture. It was something to do at a time when there was nothing to do. At the time of writing that all I had wanted to do was perform my poetry to people. Then a year or maybe even less later I was performing every night going from Leeds to Macnhester often and being invited back down to London by art collectives that wanted me to join in on their Jam nights. Life had become exciting and any moment between performing was a waiste of time or like some form of waiting loby if I wasn't working or performing there didn't seem to be any point to what I was doing unless I was around my girlfriends or in the pub with my mates there wasn't much point to doing nothing. I was always walking or trying to have a conversation with someone. I had hated being in my room. The past seemed to bounce off the walls behind my closed door. I would smoke cigarretes in my room, listen to the same songs over and over again on my lap top and stare at my un-made bed, simply pacing as I waited to do the next thing rather than sort my life out or my room for that matter. I would stand by the back door and try to figure out how I would be able to make some more money having sold everything of value that I owned to pawn shops or CEX. I was truly living that starving artist lifestyle things were pretty shit. And so nights of spoken word and laughter seemed to make it all worth it. The constant hang over from free drinks given to perfromers and the black out drunk nights were forgotten the moment I woke up the next day there wasn't even a chance to have a feeling of hangxiety what would eb the point in that. All words and conversations simply whistled over head like the airs of breath that they were. Cigarettes inhaled in the smoking area and spliffs shared with other performers. To fall asleep and do it all agin the next day at another place. Leeds was simply a place to keep moving. It sounds strnage to hear that, that was the way to live life in such a small city but there you go it was. To stop there scared me. I was haunted by the past in some way. Fragile memories echoed around my head in paralysed states leaving me unable to move anything in my room. I'd become the opposite of agoraphobic. I enjoyed that. I strived for that. Agoraphobia was somehting that my dad had suffered from hence his absence. I didn't really want to stop to think about that one. It was only after a conversation with my mum last night that I realised I could stop. On returning to London I had been trying to find trade work. I had realsied that my university degree might not be put to work staright away and that I needed to sort out a strong form of income and so I set off looking for trade work. Signwriting was the main idea. I found a point after a few months of working at a pub job where I could do the signwirting at a boatyard in Richmond there I also learnt the trade of boat building and hence with that carpentary. That last until I was chucked off the lot by the owner who said that he didn't have time for idiots. I felt stuck after that. Slipped into a bit of a depression and carried on looking for quick fix work. I gave myself a day to recover and then I was back out again. Going back to work at the pub on odd shifts and then going back to agency work something that had kept me going through the winter and summer breaks of university. It's soemting that I would come back to pick up everytime that I had run out of money in Leeds that was until I had managed to find constant work up there at Leeds united and Middlesbrough matches. Running the bars there and the odd paid gig with the spoken word and student loan bursts. I hadn't stopped to allow myself the time of signing up for the bursery amounts that are offered to students there for some reason I didn't think that I would qualify. I thought this against all of my housemates suggestions where they said that I definitely would. I would ratehr struggle through. I had this sense of self sabotage. Getting myself addicted to smoking and going out drinking everynight. Trying to cure something that I didn't know what it was, this feeling of complete loneliness. I would try and find myself in books but could never really sit down long ebough to sit through one of them so I was always reading three or four at once other than the Catcher in the Rye which I ended up taking with me everywhere, to bars and cafes, days that turned into nights out. I would find my solice in that novel for a while. I would sit and sketch that day of reading it. I managed to read it in two or three days. I thought that I might try and get it returned to the bookshop that I bought it from had I read it quick enough and then I thought that I'd hold onto the copy to pass it onto my children. This reading so quickly only happened with two or three other books in my life; Get Carter, To Kill a Mocking Bird and Giovani's Room. The last one because I had borrowed it from my friend Omar Abufares and I thought that he might have wanted it back quickly. I realsed then that I had a very quick mind or something like that. On meeting my cousin in Leeds I found out that we have a family trait of ADHD. This might have been the answer to the problems I guess it is, I dont know though. I still haven't been tested. My mother thinks it's trauma based, that's her theory anyway. I don't know I just like being outside. In the outside world you know. Theres some peace there in England anyway. London's busy. Leeds had characters. I was always talking to someone or getting into something with people there. I would share cigarettes with the homeless or pass by the cafe. No phone just following what had felt right to do. Whilst my mind ran a hundred miles ahead of me almost like a child as they ran ahead of there parents and then back to them as they carried shopping bags down a busy highstreet. That's how it felt anyway. It had felt just liek that to me. I was the mum with the shopping bags the thoughts were the children that get under other peopels feet. The mother shouting something at the child in a foreign language trying to get them to calm down. The shopping centre they're leaving could be my room I don't know I'm just spitballing here now. The language is something only me and the child could unferstand. Do you understand me? Anyway today I did something that I'd not allowed myself to do sometime now. I just sat down and painted. Whatever I liked. Last nigth after getting a Papa John's pizza after a day of searching for quick fix work. I did a self portrait. It wasn't very accurate. A biro skecth carved essentially into a blcok of wood that my mum was going to through out but I thought that I would save to do some practising of signwritting on. Instead I wanted to the painting. I thought fuck it I want to do this I want to do it, so why don't I just fucking do it. I painted lightly over the biro and white paint white sky blue enamel and let it try whilst I went to get the pizza. Then I came back, looked at it thought people might like that, watched some skateboarding videos for a bit and then fell asleep. The next morning I woke up and cracked on with the painting again. I thought about what I wanted to do with it. I stopped thinking about what other people might think about it. Why would that matter anyway. Why should I care? It's my fucking painting anway. So I added to it. Painted it Van Gogh style. It wasn't intentional really. I'd squirted acrylic paint straight onto the painting and had to do quick slashes with the bruch to move and spread it out a bit, you know cover the canves and form the image to how I wanted it. I did that. I went onto the balcony and smoked a cigarette. I saw the sunlight shine off the block of flats in front of me. I thought, you know what I'm going to paint that as well so I did. I went back inside. Poured some more paint onto another 'canvas' realy just another square of wood that I had saved from being thrown out. I'd had another idea for it a skerry boat with a team of people on it riding a wave, this was my pre cigarette idea then when I came in I had my mind changed, the skerry painting came later just now actually. Right before I decided to right about the painting and just stopping and doing exactly what I wanted to do for once rather than doing what it felt like I shoudl be doing. So there. I guess you have it. That's what I've done and so is this. It feels good to feel so lucky for a moment to gave that peace to do soemthing like to accept the moment that I've given my after years of hard work or whatever you want to call it. Now that I'm hardly working I can afford the time to do it. Strange that isn't it. The opposite of what you think you need to do soemthign is actually what matters. I guess that's were over thinking gets you nowadays. I wish that I knew this sooner.
By John Gilroy4 months ago in Humans
Cigarettes thrown away
Cigarettes thrown away gone to wast in the train or at least that was where I aimed, its a bit off these days, I used to be on the basketball team don't you know, who actually cares its a half joke said at the bar to hide the subtle self embarrassment of missing the gaps in the floor when flicking away that cigarette butt don't worry it'll pass in a moment. I tell myself and whoever else can read my thoughts.My partner maybe. We enter the bar. We enter the house. Whereever I am I feel the door close behind me. I let it close yet I dont close it, my hand is simply there as a crutch for the weight to lean against. We're inside now the moments over. We're warm and the ligths are on. There's noise and some sense of reality. Waiting for the time to pass anyway. We either put the kettle on or go to rejoin our mates and put a smile on our faces as we sit back down amoungst everybody, or alone.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Poets
I miss you
Its twenty to three in the morning and I miss you. I wanted to write that out as a letter to you. Pen and paper would have been preferred but the laptop will do its by my side as I listen to Lost In The Night by Palace the album that fills me with nostalgia whenever I hear it. It fills me of nostalgia for anymoments that have come before and any that are yet to still arrive. I can't describe it or maybe I have perfectly with that sentance. I know that I wont be able to capture them the way I should. Making the most of everymoment of them the way that I should in youth. I know that I'll regret these moments if I do not act accordingly inside them so I try to make the most of every second saying yes to almost evey offer of substance or plan. Oh the joys of youth I can hear the elders say to my brain. I can imagine myself saying it soon, to a friend or a nephew or grandchild. I can see them pulling a face when I might have smiled all of those years ago.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Beat
I dunno
Written whilst taking a break from work. Not a proper break and not proper work this is coursework that I'm avoiding doing. I've forgotton a password to a website that I need to use and in the mean time when I could be deciding to get that sorted out I am writing. I'm going to write out what I've been thinking about all day whilste I've been doing my other mundane tasks. Such as takign photographs, going to the shops or going in and out of lifts. I've been thinking about Notting Hill a lot. That scene when they sit on the roof and go through the actor's lines. "Cartwrigth, Wainwright whatever the hell your name is..." This is in my head for some reason maybe I just want that life right now. To be sat on a roof in Notting Hill or Ladbroke Grove doing anything but this right now with a partner. I was thionking about what they were wearing and how I might be able to recreate the scene somehow in a video of my phone. A poetry visualiser of some sort. I love what they wear and what they read and talk about. The house they live in and the food that they eat and drink. It's all just so relaxed. I say as I sit writing into a laptop that I just stole from another classroom.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Journal
Balham
You're getting paid to be here and I paid to be here that's the difference I thought to myself as I imagined the change to fall from my pocket as I gathered tobacco, papers and filters from the inside of my jacket. I need to stop smoking I said to my partner as I sat down again at the table that we have our laptops laid out on. I'd just had a roll-up outiside the cafe. Half of one anyway. I'd bounced it off the curb and into a drain. I stood there and watched people pass by. It was busy for some reason. We'd spent the whole day here. Well in this cafe and the one across the street. Clara's got deadlines coming up and I'd been writing for my own leisure. I watched people pass as I stood by the lampost. I thought about the area. 20 years ago it was a shithole though twenty years ago I was in SOuth-East London unaware that this place ecver existed, I don't think that I even knew about it seven or six years ago for that matter. A boy watched me from the other side of the road. Trains passed the hotel to my right that I have fond memories of being inside andj the there was a taxi halfway over the corssing of the road waiting to turn around. People walked past. I didn't wonder who actually lived here. I belived them all to. Bussiness women and the people that weren't wveryone walking past. It's 7:14 now. I guess people are heading home. I don't live here. I've stayed here for the past month now but I don't live here. I'm just staying with my partner and her family.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Poets
The day that we filmed Simple
We woke up that morning hung over me and Charlie Samuel. We had a job to do it was about 7 or 7:30. We were meant to get up sooner though we were hungover from Pizza and wine the night before maybe even Rum and coke but I think the previous is the truth. We woke up twice. The second time we woke up we spoke. We were talking as I lay in my bed, a futon that I slammed into the corner of my room, the walls a dark navy blue. The sunlight came in through the gaps in the corners of the blinds that I hadn't dragged fully closed after we smoked out of the window. You could see the trains pass in the early hours, through Isleworth station. There were lights that flashed on the windows of the other estates terraced houses and the silent sirened lights that lit up the ones closest to the main road. There's always a scene to see when you're staying at my mum's. We spoke until the early hours myself and Charlie. We knew that we shouldn't have but it was like a childs sleep other again. We woke up hungover. I was feeling rough. Extremely rough and 'unslept', if that is even a word. To write about that moment sends me right back to it. I imagined it again now as I smoked out of the window where I am now with my partner. We arrive at that scene later. The house that is, not why I am writing now.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Wander
Estates with Mates
As I sat searching up a video to go with this story I was reminded of my school days of watching BMX and skateboarding videos when I should have been doing work, revising or listening to the teacher. I would have a video open in another tab one hiden from the teachers view and I think one on a whole other browser.None of the speakers used to work on the school computers apart from the teachers one so we had everything covered if you wanted to phase out for a while, killing time.I would watch the same ones on repeat. BSD videos were my go to ones. Kriss Kyle, Alex Donnachue, Dan Paley and the rest of that gang. I would sit there watching old London's Calling videos waiting to leave DT or whatever mty last class might be so that I could walk over to the bike lock areas and grab my bike and meet my mates to cycle over to East Acton or catch the train to Waterloo if it was a Thursday for the House of Vans BMX night. If it was a Friday or a weekend or any other day off we might have we'd head over to Fulham or Hammersmith probably both if we were over those ways of London or even get the train over to Kingston if we weren't some days if we were out riding for a while we would do all three. We once went over to Clapham Common but that was a bit of a slap and you'd have to pay to get there so it wasn't ever really worth it. Riding around in our school uniform and going back to my nan's estate to get changed quickly and meet my mates on theirs.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Journal
The Essentials
65p potatoes. Sainsbury’s are having a laugh at the working class and all of those that pass past us in the aisles of the local 24 hour shopping centre. Hummus is a new taste of mine but all I can see is the difference between luxury and necessities. 40p noodles and 90p bread bought a few hours before it’s going out of date because fuck it, it’s on sale and I need all of the change that I can keep with me at the moment. Trying to shrug off the bloke as he hounds me for any going spare as I step out of the shop. The wind hits harder than the rain as it hails down like bullets on the Northern Front. This is our war I heard people say during the pandemic and I can’t see how much has changed since it first struck. I’m still scared to go out of my house incase I get hit with an item that costs the shrapnel in my pocket.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Psyche
- Top Story - December 2022
Lovers RockTop Story - December 2022
Relaxing music on a gloomy South London afternoon. The time between Christmas and new year, not counting the 12 days of each. Sat in a light room, curtains half open as my partner paints a clay box for her mother. I write on the laptop as this video plays in the background of it. I watch the letters appear as I tap the keys. Theres an off beat rhytm to it but it feels write. I'm just doing what I feel like doing. I am relaxing.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Beat
Being Vegetarian
Sometimes I ask myself why I am vegetarian. I question the effect that it has on my body. My mum is South African and when I think about the ideal diet I can’t help but think about how meat might help me. I think about the protein of steak and eggs. How when I was in what I believed and still sometimes believe to be the peak physical shape that I was in I feel that I am missing out on my mainly plant based diet. At university for a time when I was struggling with money I was turning to dairy products for calcium and energy. Though I swear off of eating eggs on their own or as part of a dish I was drawn to eating cheese with bread. There was something survival based about that. I think about the scene in 1917 when the two soldiers are on a farm and they use the milk left by a cow for energy. Their is an image in my mind of the cows maternal instinct to feed its calf and how the fables of the past often refer to children being raised by wolves. The idea of a child surving by sucking on the breast milk of another animal when their mother is not there. This is the idea when I don’t have access to the food in my mums shelves back at home. It’s an idea of survival to live off of the discounted cheddar that comes in packets that are mainly made for that of packed lunches. Bars that are only a little better packaged than that of the baby bells targeted for children. I pair it with bread that it on discount I often think about the time when I paired it with bagels that were being sold on discount for 90p. This saver meal kept me going for a few days. Enough energy to get me to work were I would eat vegan food on my shift or keep me going until I could use the last of my rice and pasta for an evening meal. There is a guilt that sits with me when I try to enjoy this food. Though sometimes I wonder how my body would look and feel has I stuck to the diet of meat and dairy that I used to have. I compare myself in my mind as I have a shower. I work out often as a form of habit to battle the depression that seems to seep in when I don’t. I don’t do it for the aesthetic side of things but one can’t help to be inclined to that thought process. I am not overtly strong but nor am I weak. My muscles are lean and my skin tight to them. There was a period of time when I grew self conscious of myself and worried that when I looked in the mirror I was weakening or a shell of the man that I used to be. That is my thought process. It’s still toxic. I grew up around boxers and working men. My mother was a fitness instructor. My uncle a boxer. I was a lifeguard for years, boxed and have always had an active lifestyle even in my leisure activities of boxing, basketball and extreme sports such as BMX and skateboarding. I was having these thoughts of self recession around the time of halloween and summer. In the summer I hadn’t eaten much and to work out it almost seemed like a self punishment. I would be burning more body fat that what I could afford to spend because from previous knowledge I didn’t have the funds to acquire the food needed to refill the body energy that had been produced for a work out. I didn’t want to be skinny ripped. I didn’t want to work out and rise to my feet again with a head rush feeling as though I was about to faint. I had done that enough times to know that it was bested to reserve my energy. Near the end of summer I was getting ready for a new job. I had to wear a smart white shirt and trousers. The only shirt that I could find was a tight, slim fitting one that I had got with my partner as a set form M&S. I don’t mind wearing women’s clothing. It was a nice fit. I came out to my garden where my friend and his friend was sat, they looked at me and said that I looked really good. In that time I felt it. As time went on Halloween came around and I was wearing the same shirt again. It was part of our costume for the night. Me and my friends had decided to go as the characters from reservoir dogs, so white shirts were a must. We were at house party sat on the counter tops of a kitchen when I was talking to someone and my house mate said that he needed muscles like mine. He said it to a girl. She looked over for a moment and then carried on talking. It was strange. I didn’t think that I had muscles anymore. I compared myself to other men in society. Anyone that I deemed bigger or more aesthetically pleasing than myself. Maybe it was because I hadn’t been eating properly that these insecurities had set in, either way they had. Though I probably had the most energy than what I can ever remember at the start of my vegetarian diet, I at the time also had the money to back it up with takeaways and food in abundance. Now I compare myself to others that have the needs and means to make themselves look like Greek gods. I forget about my situation and my own worth. It’s a vain analogy though one that is true. That same friend tells me how he wants to look like me. He wants to dress like me and have my hair. My face etc. I don’t see why a lot of the time. I often find myself boring. Fake. Unnatural. Often beating myself down. I don’t talk about it to people. I don’t see the reason to. On nights out my friends say that I’m the man though do not know how much I respect the people that tell me the same thing as what they might want to hear themselves. I do not say anything I observe quietly. Smiling at the awkwardness of the compliment. It’s as simple as that. This chapter holds more than just dietary requirements but also ethics, masculinity, self image and self respect. I often question everything that I put into my body. The masculinity of it all. The strength of my character and my mind. Weakness is something that I can not tolerate in myself so I try everything that I can to push it out. I try; writing, painting, talking, reading, fucking, smoking and working out. I try everything that I can to feel strong again yet still feel weak. I worry about money, religion, my mental peace and god knows what else that can fall under the sun.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Psyche
Boxing Day
Clara fiddling with her new projector the sketch was done after she had moved hence her ghostly prescence in the image. The chair is stable and present in the image. The chair is stable and present. In my mind it has stronger lines and features than what the human has. That's because I can physically see it in front of me as I draw. The image of Clara is only visible when I think about how she looks in my memory of that moment. The whole scene and atmosphere of a memory that I think about often.
By John Gilroyabout a year ago in Poets