Writers

Writers are either like reptiles or like mammals. Some nurture their works, returning to them nightly, keeping them warm. Others have their works gestate inside until one day they emerge fully formed, through a short burst of agony, screaming.

Me? I'm a sort of platypus. Funny looking and hate Australians.

Punishments and Rewards

We met in the café. He seemed to look out at me, as though he’d stayed at home. I felt very far away. He took a deep breath.

“Gina visited,” he told me. “She told me that she loves me.”

There are times when a sentence is so at variance with its setting that you doubt firstly that you heard it right, and, if so, that you are going mad. I looked at a bleak, defeated man, and heard the words that I knew he’d spent his entire adult life waiting for. Obviously there was some kind of catch.

“You remember Deborah?” he asked. I did. I met her about a year before. Strictly on-the-side material, a girl he’d barely wanted to introduce to me but who he’d kept on through dry times. “Got her pregnant,” he said, flatter than Kansas.

Grey eyes. He seemed to have built himself one particular facial expression and cemented it in place. A kind of pensive, downcast look, like that of someone who’s still waiting for a bus even though he’s missed the job interview. Not so bad that old ladies would stop him in the street, but the kind of guy to whom you’d say, “might never happen” and he could reply, “already has.”

So Deborah was pregnant. That was a minor disaster, although of course it wasn’t at all, and he knew it. In fact, he went on to say, he was quite happy about it. But then Gina had turned up, the cheetah among the pigeons. “She told me that she loves me.”

Another deep breath. He was moving air the way Sisyphus moves rocks, slowly, without enthusiasm. I was beginning to join in. I could see the problem. If you loved someone and you continued to love them, over years and years and you gave up, you moved on – although moving on implies somewhere to go – and then, when the die has been cast, when the window has shut, they come back, and tap on the glass…

“The worst thing,” he said, as though at a funeral, “is that I can’t even kill myself, because of the kid.”

There was a short pause while we digested that little statement.

Punishment and rewards. If only you were punished immediately for your transgressions, then nobody would ever do any. It’s the waiting around for your karma that does it, you never know which of your doings you’re being punished for.

Rosewater Ketamine

I was told a good story the other day. When ketamine was first becoming popular, in those dark days between the shit Es and the shit coke, it was easy to buy in India. I don’t know if it still is or not, but at that time you could easily buy it in any Indian chemist. Then you’d dissolve it in water (or it came ready dissolved) and send it back off to England. The most popular way was in bottles of rosewater. So this one canny Indian, he looks at all these English people buying rosewater, day after day, buying bottles of rosewater and sending them back to England. So he thinks, “This is very strange. I’ve never heard of a white man’s craze for rosewater, despite my many cousins in Southall and Birmingham. Perhaps they are not aware of it.” So he asks them, “have you heard about a craze for Indian rosewater?” and they think about it and they tell him no, never. So it seems simple. Lets import the rosewater ourselves. The market is there for us, at our mercy. All we have to do is strike.

And so it came about that ten years later, a lot of Indian shops carry a lot of tatty looking rosewater.

The banging

Banging went on about me. The TV was still on, mumbling in the background. The light overwhelmed the shoddy blinds and saturated the sweaty room. I woke up three times before I gave up trying to sleep, each time less and less sleepy and correspondingly more and more tired. The sweat had clung to me and made itself into almost complete suit, a suit stained with shame. I got up. Things couldn’t be this bad.

At first they improved, but gradually my eyes and head felt more and more pressured by their duties, and they began to complain bitterly. My belly called for food while sharply warning that nothing could be guaranteed secure tenancy. My skin crawled with its perspiration, which seemed to have developed an acidic property. I slumped in a chair and waited for things to change.

The TV continued its irritating mutter, like a man whose confidence is not up to the speech he wishes to make. Incapacitated by the light I was forced to leave it, temples pressing now, teeth calling for redeeming.

There is the banging. It comes from above and below me, in concert, around me, beside me. It follows me around as I swivel my head in blind malaise. It stops, mercifully, long enough to remind me of silence then is restored with even greater vigour.

I try to cry, but the effort defeats me. Instead I sink into myself, retracting as much as possible away from the sources of pain – the light, the noise, the shame. Each one prods me in its own manner, one after the other, like bullying cousins gathering for their daily fun. Emboldened by the success, they redouble their effort, seeking any uncharted angle from which to attack. My head vibrates with their symphony. My body hungers and contorts simultaneously. I consider vacating my body altogether, but they are too clever for me, deliberately containing their assault to within ordinary excesses. There will be no spiritual redemption from this, only an eventual withdrawal, once the enemy has plundered all that it desires.

Knowing this, I feel comforted, despite the savage rage that continues about me. This will come to an end, I think. This will finish, it shall not be the end of me. As if by magic a missive arrives from my guardian. ‘Water,’ it says, and no more. I grab the chance. Hauling my corpse from its coffin, I make my way to the kitchen where the light is worst of all. But now, with my chance in front of me, I am not derailed. I grab at the tap, half-blind, and crack my skull on it as I dive for the flushing water. More pain rings my head, yet the banging quietens, and more water dissolves it entirely. Through wretchedness I savour my windfall.

Cyclists

I'm sitting at the traffic lights in my car when a cyclist jumps the red lights, narrowly missing a pedestrian. So I see where he's going, then I follow him down a side street, knock him off the bike and run him over. And I'm the one that gets arrested!

Mobile Phone Accessory Corner

1) Blocking numbers. Someone bothering you? Set their number on block and they'll just go straight to answerphone. So simple I bet its been done already.

2) Mobile phones for your keys. And your remote control. Remember that terrible whistling keyring thing? Well that was shite, but nowadays you could attach a tiny mobile phone to your keyring and when you lose them ring it. Thats all. Thats a fucking great idea. Obviously I've copywritten it already but get in touch if you want to give me loads of money to make it.

Great Cocaine Excuses Of Our Time #1

"I need to have some to remind me why I shouldnt do it"

Archway Bridge, London

This spans the apparently artificially created valley of Archway Road, which was cut into Highgate Hill in the ice age, as locals needed a less slippery way of getting from East Finchley. The quick deflection of a passing glacier et voilá. The bridge itself is famed as a popular suicide spot, its notoriety greatly enhanced by its close proximity to a well established mental institute. Emblazened on the side is the number 1897, which many assume is the year it was built (which was actually 1821) but is in fact a throwback to the days when the Canon of Highgate would keep a count of the suicides for his popular Morbid Society. This slightly notorious practise was stopped when a five man fight over who would get to be the 1900th suicide spilled into Lauderdale House and upturned Lord Lauderdale's fine collection of watercolours. The 1898th to jump was actually the Canon himself, giving lie to the oft-stated opinion that the Morbid Society were just voyeurs with no empathy for the suicidal.

Gas

The gas man came around to fix the boiler this morning and told me a interesting tale. He said that OFWAT, the water watchdog, told the local water board to reduce their leakages by 50% in two years. Instead of fixing the leaks the water board reduced their average water pressure from 4 bar to 2 bar, saving 50% of water lost to leaks in a stroke. Is this not the brilliance that made Britain great (again)? The knock-on effect, however, is that combination heaters, ascot boilers and electric showers sited above about the third floor are all fucking up. How's that for joined-up thinking?

Diet Bill

A Lo-Cal drink for Lo-Cal people

Coetzee

I've been reading Coetzee, the writer who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature (or something). Not having read many works of literature I feel distinctly ill-equipped to write about them when I do read them, but Coetzee is a writer, rather like Kapuscinski - but for different reasons - that I would quite happily read endlessly. He is not flashy, like my first love Julie Burchill whose writing crackles with the crunch of a hundred wraps of amphetamine. He does not draw any particular attention to the writing, but he conjures something distinctly ineffable, a kind of music, out of the words, and it is not at all clear how he does this. (This would be the meaning of conjure, but I'll make the point twice anyway). His words seem to come out of a peacefulness, slightly reminiscent of the peace that the Hindus claim, somewhat against the odds, is our true self. He tells his stories economically. You could often almost forget about him, which is the true art of the writer, I guess, and diametrically opposed to the self-absorbed hacks that I have got so used to reading. Perhaps to Coetzee the reader is more important than the writer. It is a refreshing sensation to have someone's skill used for your benefit, instead of their self-aggrandisement; nothing is greater than the great being humble, and Coetzee is both great and humble.

Getting my head down/ doing my birds

Commentary commentary

watched Lokomotiv Moscow v Arsenal today but the novelty of an afternoon kick-off and being able to watch in the comfort of my armchair were soon wiped out when I realised I'd not be spared the grimmest commentary since Dan Maskell used to regularly force me to watch Wimbledon with the sound down. Peter Drury and particularly Jim Beglin' Belief spouted nonsense endlessly, criticising Arsenal players for moves that didnt come off (thrown into stark relief as I considered Beglin's skill-laden playing career) and at the nadir having a pop at K-Lo for being offside. "Oh he was offside from very early in the play" intoned Drudgery and Beglin fell over himself to agree just as the replay showed Kolo precisely onside.

Commentary is one area of English football that is resolutely stuck in the seventies. These guys have stuck to the template for what feels like hundreds of years. At worst football commentary is reminiscent of those magnetic poetry fridge stickers which you rearrange to make a new phrase, only this lot rearrange stock phrases with only a rough approximation of the game. If we've imported all these continental stars why cant we get some of those foreign commentators with their "GOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLL" and overeffusion, instead of this dour banality where a couple of dull nobodies get to criticise decent footballers for not playing perfectly all the time.

David Blaine

Went to see David Blaine the other day, while I was on my way somewhere else. The night before he'd been rudely awakened by a catapulted paint ball and I was thinking there is something quintessentially Londonian about the barrage of abuse and assaults that he's provoked. Perhaps in the future, when people are probably vaguely aware of the stunt in the way we're aware of the Crystal Palace Exhibition, a London historian will take great pleasure in noting in his opus that "the Blaine stunt seems to us now rather miraculous, but the Londoner of the day was rather more sceptical, and frequently turned out to berate him, occasionally attacking him with golf balls, air rifles and - one adventurous night - huge balloons filled with pink paint, so keeping alive a tradition of cockney irreverence which stretches far back into medieval times."

I would agree that its nice that Londoners maintain a healthy cynicism for the posing spiritualists of our day; it didnt actually occur to me to go and throw something at him, but I'm happy that other people have got around to it. Having said that there is something...different about seeing him sitting in a box hanging 40 feet above the ground. When I first saw it I did say to myself, "so, he is actually doing it then." He's a bizarre guy clearly, and he's doing something very original, but the publicity that he brings on himself kind of demeans it all, turning it from a serious (and possibly life changing/threatening) "quest" into a Sky Box Office "stunt". The American Indians used to fast for over a month as part of their "vision quest" to let the spirit of the world take over them. And Jesus, of course, fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, after which the devil himself appeared before him to offer him the kingdoms of the world. My guess is that it might be worth tuning in towards the end of Blaine's "tele-vision quest", because that would definitely make some good TV.

Notting Hill Carnival

Calling it a carnival is a fucking insult.

Big Chill, Eastnor Castle

A three-day music festival, widely derided as a "posh glastonbury" which is, however, notably popular amongst people for whom that sounds like a good idea. Set in beautiful surroundings, the overly eclectic line-up and exceedingly "tight demographic" of the punters led me to initially dub it The Big Nil; such cynicism couldnt, however, survive the overwhelming hospitality of a load of slightly trendy yuppies in a field. The blazing sun helped a great deal, and the absence of any of a festival's usual problems - crowding, mud, Bristol hoodlums selling shit hash - along with with a suprising lack of pressure to enjoy yourself combined to provide a pleasant enough time, as long as you werent expecting anything particularly good. The music, in particular, was shite.

Calling it a festival is rather like calling the nails in a coffin the dearly departed. This event has none of the openess of a real festival; Glastonbury has year on year battened down its hatches but it has never dreamed of the punter/performer separation that the Big Chill and its ilk achieves. At a festival worthy of the name, people bring themselves and make the festival themselves, instead of buying tickets, attending and passively being entertained. The tragic English licensing laws dont help, bringing a curtain down on proceedings just when they might be expected to get interesting, but the nub of the problem is in this consumer culture which manifests itself in an artificial and unnecessary gulf between performer and audience. In a real festival the crowd are the performers, even if only a few actually make in onto a stage. This openess and freedom this entails is completely absent at this event, which was veering as close to Glyndeborne as to Glastonbury. The only thing to do was to eat the Mexican mushrooms that everyone seems to be growing in their airing cupboards lately and wonder around the magnificent surroundings, as far away as possible from the tragic range of uninspired "artistes" they'd got in on the cheap.

It wasnt Glastonbury, but then nowadays, nor is Glastonbury.

previously

( 11:04:38 PM ) bill
"My work attempts to frame human experience within the voices of myth and history. The figures in the selected pieces - ranging from a visionary Orpheus to an imprisoned child-emperor to the son of Jack the Ripper - offer a distant mirror to our own lives. Even as they seem to fade away, these archetypes remain meaningful, placing our current, seemingly disjointed existences within the continuum of myth, and thus offering a great hope to our lives, loves, and losses: relevancy."
nice photos

if I could only write like that, my future as a bona fide ponce would be assured.

( 11:09:55 PM ) bill
My work attempts to frame human experience within the twin yellings of drunkeness and depression. The characters in the exhibited spasmodes - ranging from a delusionary oesphagus to an imprisoned child-within-a-man to the kind of fuckwit you trip over in shoreditch after another empty meaningless sojourn du nuit - offer a decidedly close mirror of my own life. Even as I seem to fade away, this nonsense remains palpable, placing my distinct lack of achievement in a contextual arrangement uncannily reminiscent of flock wallpaper within the continuuuum of drunken vomitting in the back of a cheap Indian restaurant

cor, its actually harder than it looks

Tennis

Watching Wimbledon yesterday I was left wondering why they dont just go the whole hog and give both guys bazooka launchers to serve with. This could not only shorten the "game" considerably but also have the added bonus of sparing us some of the most vacuous rich kids to ever burden the celebrity mantle.

New Front Opens in Downloading War

Music bootleggers came together today to announce the start of a new campaign to stop file-sharing software. Said one leading bootlegger of Illinois, "things were great when we were the only people who could afford to make copies of music, now every kid with a phone line and a bag of blank CDs is a frickin congressional library. Its frickin' ruining us." The organisation, Bootleggers Against Peer-to-Peer Software (BAPS) is also campaigning for a high tax on CD-Rs and copy protection on new CDs. The head of the campaign, John Baptiste, stated, "we'll be able to bypass the tax, obviously, so its a win-win for us and the federal government." He also reminded the government that bootlegging used to bring in tax revenues through sales of printer ink and also generated some US$15 million in carboot sale fees. "This is all nearly being wiped out by kids not paying anything to anybody," he stated.

BAPS have previously asked to join the RIAA in their campaign, but at present there has been no formal agreement between the two campaigns.

Taskforce

"as for the US, they all coke snorting /
gave birth to hip hop, but now its an orphan"
Chester P