Anniversary

Cell Blog H

Jons in Jail

Groundblog Day

the story of a man who finds that everyday in the blog world is the same. Driven to cut his wrists, he dies. And gets buried. Hence the ground bit.

Circus Oz, Royal Festival Hall

This decent Australian circus troupe have taken over the somewhat incongruous surrounds of the royal festival hall for their summertime stint. Given tickets and overhearing that it was the Jerry Sadowitz of circus, I’d expected some kind of adult circus – perhaps with dominatrix and lewd gymnastics – but the gaggle of noisy kids soon put paid to that theory. What we got was a fairly traditional, even bare-bones circus in an inappropriate theatrical environment. This resulted in a lack of the atmosphere fostered by a big top and a somewhat limited view for those of us stuck high up in the balcony, which was not helped by their propensity for doing much of the act dimly lit for one reason or another.

Led by some rather plain-spoken Australians, who introduced things much as they might have told you which bus to get on, things cavorted on amiably but lacked any sense of menace – the sort of thing Papa Lazarus would bring, for instance. Also missing was any sort of story element to most of the set pieces. Certainly people are getting blasé in this day and age and having just spent a week watching gymnastics at the Olympics probably didn’t help but a bit of human interest would have gone a long way.

The opening scene, with the clown walking about on the ceiling was great and where the circus used its imagination it really excelled. After a first act which slightly dragged the second started with acrobats whose simple expedience of dressing up as cockatoos made the whole thing seem infinitely more worthwhile. The contortionist provided a bit of plot as we followed his attempt to get his doubled-jointed body through two tennis rackets.

Having said that, the human cannonball set was rather spoiled by a rather cack-handed political head-graft, references to the coalition of the willing and the razor wire of oppression a bit pointless. They got the second row up on stage for that one. A couple of them were wearing suits. “Is that the right get-up for the circus” cackled the ring-mistress, but it was the RFH.

Australians appear to slip into two categories, the boorish idiots and the PC loons (I know this isn’t true, but bear with me). These lot were definitely in the PC category, for which I suppose we should be grateful, although the dedication at the last to “diversity, friendship and human kindness” went some way over the top. Not a big top, of course.

Soul Chicken

When I was boy we used to call up the devil at séance type evenings. The theory was that, even though in all likelihood nothing at all would happen, there was a chance that something terrible would. We called it “Chicken for the Soul”

The Meaning of Life

I said to him, “do you think when we die we’ll get to see the meaning of life?”

He asked me, “What answer would satisfy you?”

Jon Gaunt

The phone-in jock has a difficult balancing act to achieve. He needs to accomplish the “provoke and stroke” manoeuvre, by which he irritates his listeners enough to phone in, but not so much that they switch off in disgust. Caesar the Geezer, back in the days of LBC, was a master at this, alternately sympathizing with put upon east enders, before berating them for casual racism or taking some vegan student to task before agreeing on animal testing. Jon "not at all" Gaunt, on the other hand, utterly fails at this complicated endeavour, settling instead for a flurry of right-of-centre opinions dressed up as common sense. Let us remember that common sense, for all its virtues, would have us believe that the world is flat.

None of this puts off Gaunty, as he is known by his loving audience of bitter cabbies. He adds in the irritating feature of claiming to be even handed, all the while sharply cutting off those who he doesn’t agree with and letting those he does ramble away like a whisky-soaked pub bore. Not content with that, Gaunt has dreamt up the brilliant gimmick of gratuitously interrupting people, exclaiming “if you’ll just let me finish!”. The man then complains bitterly if anyone tries to stop him when he’s in mid-flow which is, for a show ostensibly for the public to have their say, more often than you would hope.

Like many people enjoying success nowadays, Gaunt is a overly reconstructed leftie and at the start of the Afghan War he got on his old hero John Pilger to debate the rights and wrongs of the bombing campaign. Pilger, who sounded like he’d rather be in Afghanistan than talking to Gaunt, lasted about a minute before Gaunt, unable to stop himself even for such an illustrious guest, jumped in while Pilger was in mid-sentence and Pilger responded by hanging up. Gaunt’s face was a picture – and this is on the radio - and he spent the rest of the show asking his operator to “keep a line open for John” in case he’d been cut off and wondering if he’d phoned back yet.

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.