John Gilroy
Bio
I'm a writer from London, now based in Leeds. Annecotes, trians of thought and poems are what I write.
Stories (13/0)
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 Gilroy23 days 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 Gilroy23 days 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 Gilroy28 days 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 month ago in Psyche
Lovers Rock
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 month 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 month 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 month ago in Poets
22nd of November
I picked Clara up from the train station last night. I'd had a shower before I left mine to get to the station for 10:54pm. Leaving it a little late I decided that it would be best to try and run part of the way, this became 3/4 of it. Walking in parts to parts to allow my legs time to rest. I'd been working out before my shower, pull-ups and chin-ups, so I was in the mood for the run (in sonme forms). I'd also been on a run before, the day before, though shin splints still kicked in towards the end of the run. I arrived a sweaty painful mess covered in raindrops head-to-toe, hair still soaking from the shower. Hat floppy in my hand from the rain. I waited for Clara's train to arrive. It made me miss London and long for an escape there was a train departing for Hull that I considered boarding. A last minute excursion to a town that was a source of my 18-19 year old self's depression. The home of my paternal side and my place of birth. As I watched people board the train another arrived from London in my state of habit formed ideas, I imagined this to be Clara's train. Memories from past pick-ups and farewells. As I stood waiting at the gates, watching people depart from the trian and cross the bridge/ gangway to the platform to the gates . Their was a couple that embraced in a farewell exchange, my attention flickered between them and the crowd as I kept my eyes open and peeled for that of a familiar face. A girl that looked similar to Clara in looks and apparel, wearing the same attire as what she was wearing when she left. She came closer to the gate and I realised for certain that it wasn't her. I had known for a while as she approached however. There wasn't enough bags you see. As well as the fact that the train had come up from London Kings Cross and the one that Clara was due to be onboard was to be heading south from Edinburgh, she had been to see her close friend that studies there. In retrospect writing and experience she is a also a fairly close friend of myslef as well. We've known each other since we were about 18/19, we had all met in our foundation year at UCA Epsom in Surry. One of if not my strongest first memory of Cici is by annoying her by speaking to Clara one break time in the spring time of 2019. I gave Clara my jacket from there. A Ben Sherman one 'mod-esc' thin jacket, a sort of late 20th century answer to that of a sports coat/ jacket or blazer. A foreshadowing of garments to come. My uncle had given it to me some years or time prior and I had worn it relentlessly in all weathers and seasons with all of my torso attire.
By John Gilroyabout a month ago in Wander
This Actually Happened
Sunday, 18 December 2022 This actually happened. I remember a school project, one where we had to write down an old memory, one of our earliest ones. Something light I guess. Thats what I chose anyway. I chose one of me falling off of my skateboard in the local park on my estate, it wasn’t deeper and I guess a childhood infatuation with extreme sports led me to romanticise the event in my mind. Helmets sketched into the illustration that illustrated the dream like situation. I guess I naively exaggerated the fall a little as a child does. Exaggerating the pain of the accident alluding to a concussion when a full face helmet might have been worn. You never really know the truth, but a white lie here and there when you’re ten or eleven years old can often go along way, although I was ‘Honest John’ and these things never quite sat right with me. We had to read the memories to each other in the class and as embarrassing memories have this affect on most people I cringe as I find myself reflecting on how I was saying “This actually happened, this actually happened”. Over and over again to my classmates, I mean honestly who actually gives a shit right? This was a train of thought as I mulled over a book of stoicism that rested on my partners parents living room coffee table, the unlit fireplace with burnt coal across from us and the lights of the Christmas tree to our left. My girlfriend spoke to me about a memory, a conversation that she had with a friend whilst visiting her in Edinburgh, Scotland. I wanted to listen to her. Just take it in. Earlier I had been reading that book on Stoicism. The prologue and the first two pages of the first chapter. I wanted to listen so bad, I’m being ‘Honest John’ here, so I started thinking about what the greeks would do to listen. What would they do to focus on what someone is saying to them. What would a stoic do, is this what stoicism is about and so forth. She asked me if I was annoyed. I said no, I’m just thinking about how this actually happened. My mind wandered on to Plato and Socrate's final lecture, that famous renaissance painting of the lecturer speaking to Plato and the rest of his almost disciple like followers and students, before he drinks the poison that his fate lead him to drink, the punishment that he was condemned to for whatever crime he had committed. Although the artist took some artistic liberties with the painting, putting himself into the painting. I still thought about how the main figure, the philosopher, genuinely drank a poisonous plant for a crime. I thought about how me and my mates smoke weed every now and again. I thought about how Mandela and so many other South Africans suffered in prisons for years listening to white noise. I thought about the holocaust and all of the other atrocities and then I thought back to that eleven year old me saying yeah this actually happened bragging about a skateboard fall to my mates. It put things into perspective, one that I have obviously realised time and time again before, but to put it so simply whilst hearing my partners anecdote about something that actually happened about a month ago, just made me feel that a lot has actually happened in this world and what does it matter. What do I have to show for it. Why do so many people suffer hardships in the past and why can I just get to sit here in a living room hearing stories from a country that once had to fight for its independence from the country who’s capital city I have just arrived in and am currently sat comfortably on the sofa of. Why did a genius have to suffer a painful death from poison from a potion of a plant that burns your insides for questioning the reign of authority when me and my friends act a fool smoking over plants for the fun of it, questioning the monarchy, capitalism, the government and all of the rest of it through our music and poetry and talks in a pub over poisonous pints that we wash away the side effects of with orange juice and a greasy spoon breakfast, why do I have it so lucky when so much in this world actually happened. Boar wars took place, lands were conquered and women raped. Then only yesterday I was watching James Cameron’s avatar, a million dollar film made to be as realistic as possible, I almost cried as I watched it. It was realistic. It made me question a lot of things and also begin to despise humanity. It made me hate industries and wince at the thought that I can’t handle the sight of CGI characters being given the same treatment that real human beings have been given in the past. Things that actually happened. Parts of my own families past that I don’t quite want to face at this time and I’m lucky enough to decide to turn a blind eye to it all because I live thousands of miles away from any of the places where these atrocities actually happened. I have spent my life in a city of culture where in theory we love one another. I have spent most of my life on the side of the city where other nations are celebrated the most, carnivals are held and houses are painted the colour of the rainbow. I live closer to Heathrow that I do to Notting Hill or maybe somewhere in between the two, but neither does that mater nor have a real impact because we are there on the in-between of things not happening to us nor around us. We are passengers on the bus, as others argue amongst themselves we watch from the sidelines and talk about it to loved ones later. We hear of things that have actually happened but are no longer seen. I’ve witnessed videos of Covid in China, heard stories from Libya and now as I write I’m warm next to a Christmas tree as a dog in front of me sleeps, no this isn’t a dream this is a reality. This actually happened. And all that I can show for it are some words on a page that may well be forgotten by you the reader as you wake up to your phone tomorrow with more stories on your news feed from the writers from today talking about tomorrow or the writers of tomorrow writing about those of the past, either way it all actually happened but no one seemed to care. We all seem to be that eleven year old screaming and shouting out in vein about the memories and images that conjure in the mind, we are all just sharing the stories of our time. Swearing to you all that this actually happened time after time. Just to have the truths locked away deep, deep down in the chambers of your mind.
By John Gilroyabout a month ago in Psyche
