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I’m depressed. I came back from a working holiday, an educational trip to Venice and Florence yesterday and today I’ve been going over old writings from the time I had to come back from Prague one summer when I had been hoping to stay and write. I had come back because my laptop had broken and that depressed me more than missing people and missing home. I had come back then to go on aspergic chat forums on the internet, working myself into tears.

On the trip I had almost a religious experience, seeing the inspiration of christianity for the first time in years and almost feeling that I could build up a relationship with Christ. One of the other guys on the trip, a house parent, is a christian, and a lovely guy - I couldn’t imagine meeting anyone nicer. And I got on with everyone on the trip, and really enjoyed being in their company. They liked me too. One of the reasons I might be crying now is that one women on the trip, with whom I had a deep conversation one night, told me how she found me very laidback and good with the students. She kissed my hand when I offered it, in my reserved way, when getting off the bus. On the trip I saw another side of myself I rarely get to express, getting on with people I see eye to eye with and have something in common with.

I am rewriting this now since I lost my first post when I enabled scripts in my browser, but when I was first writing it I had a reverie of losing it, of hitting doors and smashing up tables and the like at work. I lost it, and then, perhaps as I tried to work out what it was that was so upsetting me, and scrambled around for ideas,  the reverie developed and one of the big cheeses at work accused me of being inadequately spiritually developed. It started around the time I was writing about my spiritual experience there.

I had thought of an additional structure to Family Fortunes some time back, throwing in Lord of the Flies, that novel I was writing when my screen broke up on my laptop, into the mix. And I have been looking over that today. Well, it is too much, and that is no doubt part of my depression, since this is what happens to my novels every time. They grow unmanageable. And remembering how things were in Prague is also depressing. And how my life repeats itself. How I am always living in my stories, but that they are always inchoate on paper, just full and deep and atmospheric in my head. They prevent me living but never progress.

I made some notes today and tried to draw this narrator that I have borrowed from Lord of the flies. It is rich this way, but there are many thematic contradictions. Lord of the Flies is behind me, and I have forgotten its inception. I should leave it behind me.

I can’t afford for this novel to die on me.

I am not good at moving from one thing to another. Perhaps that is all it is. Or maybe it is nothing to do with my writing at all, but more to do with coming back to my life and seeing how little i have in common with people here, when I could have so much. And seeing too the lifestyle on the continent, watching people so alive in the many piazzos. While I was there I so wanted to move again. I get stale so quickly.

I’ve got a lot in any case to think about.

Got up late this morning. I had eaten Weetabix last night and it hadn’t agreed with me. I had slept very shallowly.

Rushing in the morning, I had a few reveries. Mainly, I went in to training and sat down in the usual circle, and the beardy guy was there who has featured in my reveries since the time some guy came in to sing religious songs. I was dismissive of hymns, or had in any case consistently been so in previous reveries, and he asked me to play the guitar instead, saying perhaps something about the song being there for the group to bond rather than with any religious intent. I played. Moving by Supergrass, a song I have been learning recently, and actually singing along. So I did that. In any case, he then went on to make a few comments, saying that such a song shows none of the musical complexity of a hymn. I told him the poverty of his argument was such that I would almost have been ashamed to tear it apart were it not for his way of trying to show me up. I went on to talk about how the church had repressed musical innovation, banning the modus lascivious, the major scale, for a long time.

I was tired all day. Enthusiasm in the morning gave way to complete exhaustion later, and coffee did nothing for me. Besides, it was so hot that I was stifling in my jeans and skater shoes.

M_____ is working and it was the night for Spanish, but I couldn’t face it. I wanted to get some writing done. I barely got a paragraph written, though, before I had to give up for tiredness. I read a little of Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up, which I am enjoying, before I had a brief lie down, a near nap, and came down to try to write up a little of my food diary so that I don’t miss out on the most important parts by the time I see the dietician.

I did give in a little today and asked for an appointment with the mad doctor at the college. Spoke to the college’s resident bluesman who has been ill recently, and he told me about the fact that he had seen the good doctor about his high blood pressure and the doc asked him about what he was like as a kid, and whether he was a hot or cold temperament, and did everything but take his blood pressure. Still, I figure I can’t lose anything from it.

Going to Venice/Florence on Friday, and I really need to be well rested for that. I have bought some Valerian tea.

Training day today with the students coming back tomorrow, and another incredibly inane session of, first, “counselling,” though in actuality a lecture on Transactional Analysis, which seems to be a theory ecompassing as many ill-defined and misused terms as possible (the term “grandiose,” it seems can actually be used to describe somebody who refuses to admit that they are wrong in a maths classroom). Then we went on to the usual bitch about management.

I sat there and designed my ideal guitar. This is a trick I use from time to time, but there was a slightly new development this time. Often I think of the pick-ups as being turned on and off by popping them on and off, that is, down and up again, but this time I went a little further, by setting them on a hydraulic platform which rises and lowers by the action of metal sliders which are a little thinner than the metal panels on telecasters, which slide backwards and forwards with the controls for the respective pick-up on them.

Later we went shopping to Mardy Hell so I could buy some shorts for the trip to Venice/Florence. On coming back I really wanted to get down to doing something and so I started reading, managing for once to read in the Lounge with Mum and M____ talking - the television wasn’t on, so this probably helped. I read a little of What a Carve Up, which I am really enjoying, though the narrative tricks are beginning to seem a little less clever and more irritating now, though that may have been the effect of not being able to follow so well when I was in the lounge. Anyway, an interesting idea while I was reading a passage about a particularly venal politician. I thought how I could pursue politics myself, trying to stand as an independent MP. I wondered about what ironical name I could have, that is, as a party that isn’t a party, but then thought of how I might not be good at it at all, and that I certainly wouldn’t enjoy it, and I thought then about a website which could organise campaigns for a variety of independent MPs with the rationale that independent MPs are a good in themselves. I followed that thought for a while and then got back to the book.

A strange day, though not a particularly bad one. I brought home a kitten yesterday and that’s livened up things a little. My family aren’t impressed, so I’ve promised to return him. He’s lovely though and I’m obviously reluctant.

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Servis Non Compris

Like a Nervous clumsy waiter with a tray of broken hearts
Trying too hard to help with a will more eager than strong
life is a tragicomedy in which we all must play our parts

“We must all be selfish” she writes, not selfish enough by half
But no, I was a fool, with ersatz good intentions; wrong
like a nervous clumsy waiter with a tray of broken hearts

Mastering a language I liken to vaudeville plate-spinning arts
slow and steady, while gathering spinning friends until the row’s too long
Life, this tragicomedy, in which we all must play our parts

Hoping the comedy will come before I move on again dully smarts
I only tried so hard, so nervous, to be good, to, Godless, belong
Life, for some, a tragedy in which we all must play our parts

Enough of that blind bastard and his nostalgic drunkard’s darts
Selfish this is to need you with my head, my soul, my tongue
like a nervous clumsy waiter with a tray of broken hearts

What to do but love her, her gift, when everything fits and departs
Nothing to admire: in this gym-prison hall of mirrors what is it to be strong?
Like a nervous clumsy waiter with a tray of broken hearts
Life is a tragicomedy in which we all must play our parts.

Almost everything is wrong in this attempt at poetry I made out in Prague before that first Christmas I had stayed out there, but it brings it back. Standing outside in the cold, wrapped up warm by the shelter for the wheely bins beside the panelak - the concrete block of flats we were living in - smoking one cigarette after the other, readying myself to break the news.

I had had one offer of a place to stay over Christmas that year after the other, and though I had kept my options open with the first, a flatmate, by not accepting at first, I didn’t turn make it clear I wouldn’t go going when I accepted the second offer. The first was to stay at her family outside on the other side of the country, and I felt it implied too much from our relationship - she had a serious crush on me. I didn’t want to hurt her. But of course, but not letting her know I would be going elsewhere, and letting an assumption build up that I would be spending Christmas with her, I hurt her much more. Especially as I finally plucked up courage after going round to a party one of her friends was throwing. She didn’t have a great deal in her life aside from television. Though she had friends they didn’t have much time for her, all being settled in relationships. I felt obliged, though I wanted, as always, to spend more time writing, doing something productive. A little bit of wine was drunk and her friend made it clear that she was interested in me. The way I did it wasn’t so good. I had left it so late that she was bound to lose face with family. I said friends were coming from England.

The poem alludes to my whole situation at the time, being in love with a girl who was in a long term relationship and indeed soon got married. But mostly it describes the feeling of those like me who are forever taken as being weird, as different, and who indeed are wired differently, that you try so so hard to do the right thing, only to hurt everybody the more and look as if you don’t give a damn.

Reading The Buddha of Suburbia yesterday in the bath, stressed, I was impressed and touched by the way the writer had set up a situation in which his protagonist had fallen into a situation of hurting everybody - his on off girlfriend and her new, unwanted, husband, his mum and dad, and everybody else in his life. That’s an emotion - and I feel it as a distinct emotion - I know far too well.

Yesterday, like in Prague, I tried to think about how I should say that I need to take time out to write, perhaps in the summer. Like in Prague, I thought about and thought about it, and then blurted it. I walked into the kitchen where dad was eating his meal having come back late from the house he is rennovating for me and my girlfriend. We talked briefly, but he had to get on to see friends with Mum.

It was a bombshell.

I was incredibly unsettled yesterday. I had got soaked on the narrowboat and had come back tired. I couldn’t much face the Spanish we haven’t been to for weeks - M_____ because she’s been working, and me because I hadn’t wanted to waste the time I had on my own while M_____ was working, to get on with some work of my own. I had had a couple of ideas on the narrowboat. Stupid ideas, but ideas all the same wanted to write down. Ideas that turned, in that hour, hour and a half or so unaccompanied on the back of the boat, into a plan for novel. A novel about a couple of guys, who I thought could be called Pat and Mat after the Czech cartoon characters I have heard more about than I have seen, who take on a project. This all came from a silly reverie involving a peddle-powered narrowboat, where several recumbent bikes, or rather seats with peddles, would power a flywheel which would then power the motor. The project would be to make the boat, the Monobrow, and set up a company renting it out to those wanting to get fitter, who cared about the environment, wanted to decrease their carbon footprint, and who would want to achieve something on a holiday on which they might see more of their own country. The project would take the two of them together, one of them might be a lowbrow, the other a highbrow, and their wives too, initially suspicious and standoffish, would come together. A silly novel. A silly series of thoughts, triggered, quite obviously, from this outline, from very arbitrary ideas and links. But a potentially simple comic novel. Not one, I would probably ever want to write. Other things would come first. But all the same I think I wanted to mark such an idea, out of a feeling for what Unforgiving Minutes had once been conceived of for, to write about my life, and mindscape.

I came back and had a bare few minutes to try and doodle something of the idea, but of course, I had to attend to M_____. Anyway, I felt my novel and my latest story, slipping away from me and became angry. I was tired. So tired. I had had a cigar at around six to wake me up for the Spanish class we had still not yet decided we were going to skip. We sat and talked, and M_____ had been down. She didn’t want much to do anything, neither the spanish class nor anything else. She had been down recently, she said. I felt a duty to her, but didn’t know what I could do when I was so down myself, angry that continually, having been keeping to my diet so well, one little slip with alcohol on Sunday night should knock me out so much.

On coming back, the both of us having decided we didn’t want to go to Spanish, she said we could go to the house and do some painting. I wasn’t in the mood to do that. I was so tired, I was feeling restricted creatively and claustrophobic somehow. I kind of agreed. We shoudl do some work at the house. I had already acknowledged that. I agreed, but then soon, the tiredness came over me again so badly. She came in and demanded if we would go to the house. I said I don’t know. I was irritable. I told her how tired I was. She was angry, saying if we’re not going to Spanish we would have to at least do something. She had agreed to not go to Spanish. She had said she didn’t want to herself, and now she was stomping about slamming doors and ostentatiously sighing, making demands and blaming me. I was pissed off. She said let’s at least drive there and take a look. I agreed and stopped sullenly on the computer. We went there, and I drove angrily on the way, saying nothing, taking my notebooks and my novel there because she had said she wanted to paint at least.

We looked over the place, but by this time I could think of nothing else but taking time off in the summer to write. The idea had come back into my head. I had never managed to shrug it off since the time I had ordered a new typewriter to work. I told M____ what was on my mind. She could see I wasn’t remotely interested in the house at this point. I looked pained. In truth, I was feeling trapped by this lovely house and all the work Dad was putting into it.

I blurted it. My parents went to their friends. And then I sat in the bath, soaking, M_____ coming in and saying I didn’t much want her there did I, before making herself scarce. I read a chapter, and then came out. I sat in the dining room for a while while she sat in the lounge. I wrote a little. She watched TV. We bid n Ebay on a handbag for her, and won it. I lectured her rather unfairly that it wasn’t much more expensive in the shops - it wasn’t, but she was so happy to have won it I should have dropped it. And then I said we could go upstairs. I got into our room and whinged about the TV being on, because I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on reading. (I whinge by pulling faces and making irritated noises like a toddler.) I then found my ear plugs, put them in and read a little. But I couldn’t concentrate, and I was still awake from the cigar I had smoked at six o’clock so, having already burst out of the room once to get my mobile phone, and again to get a battery for my MP3 player - having left it on overnight - not saying anything to my parents at all downstairs, I jumped out of bed again and announced that I was going for a walk because I couldn’t sleep. I walked until a quarter to one in the morning, and then sat downstairs listening to my MP3 still, I think - though maybe not, perhaps sitting in silence, thinking - and then, finally, went upstairs and climbed into bed.

You have to make sure you don’t lose that girl, said Mum today after they had sat me down and told me all of the consequences of what I was considering - giving up work to write. At the time I was thinking of _____ at work, who took six months off to write a novel once and never got it finished. He’s stuck now with kids, working all day, and with a student staying with him in his home! That would kill me, I swear it.

It must have been just before Christmas I wrote the poem above, and it was Christmas Day M_____ texted and things got moving. I am a temporamental bastard and she deals with me so well. Like nobody else could, perhaps.

If I had to choose between her and writing, I would choose writing every time. It forces itself out of me. But I dodn’t ever want it to come to that. I want us to support each other, as I know we can, but when I have no time for writing, all of my time for her is so grudging. And I can’t live like that.

The Barber

Years ago, when I was writing an essay against the war in Iraq during that interminable build-up, an essay I named Finite Injustice, I made reference to The Barber by Flannery O’Connor. In this story, which struck a chord with me, the protagonist is an educated an open-minded individual in what H. L. Mencken would term the Sahara of the Bozarts (http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/mason/…, that is, a deeply backward, traditional anti-intellectual community; he also appears as one of tiny minority prepared to vote for an anti-segregation candidate in a forthcoming election.

[<<<<< spoiler warning >>>>>>>]

The story - and I write this from memory, having not read the story for several years - begins at the barber’s, when he sits down for a haircut and begins to talk politics. Of course, everybody makes good to humour him, but finds his opinions truly laughable, absurd. They laugh, I think. They ridicule him but make out that they are being kind to his eccentricities, telling him that, why, educated as he is he sure must have some opinions they’d be interested to hear some other time. They invite him back to explain to him why everything they’ve ever believed, that is, in segregation, is wrong.

He has a think. How is he to convince them. What arguments should he put before them. Finally, having thought it all over he returns, needing his hair cut once again. Only, surrounded by these boors and racists, and confronted with what they take as common sense, he finally turns nasty, getting angry, and, I believe, hitting the barber.

[<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>]

I considered the story then very psychologically acute. I read the story then, as I would now, as very relevant to the part of the world I come from. Ah, the Black Country, many people will think. But no, I am thinking of Britain as a whole, and even London to a large degree, because the man who travelled with me from Brum to London that last time was as much a part of that great city as anyone.

I reflected on this on seeing something on You Tube today. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxqR5…. Alf at work is an educated guy, very knowledgeable when it comes to theology. He told me a little but about it before showing me the video. A BBC reporter really lost it while he as making a documentary on Scientology. The scientologists, being the arch manipulators that they are, followed him around and were filming him filming them, making a documentary on him. His take on this spat was that the PR man with the scientologists was much more intelligent than the BBC man. Maybe so.

I do believe the BBC has been dragged down, and dumbed down since the government decided that it was too independent and needed to be destroyed. Thatcher began the whole process, of course, and destroyed the credibility of our newspapers by allowing them to be sold abroad and monopolised by a bunch of power hungry ideologues. But then the David Kelly inquiry really gave a final coup de grace.

For me, far worse than the reporter losing his cool was the back peddling he did after the fact, talking about how he was a regimental sargeant major in a school production of Oh What a Lovely War.

But what I can see here is that given enough pressure anybody - anybody - can be made to look a fool. The Scientologists employed methods against John Sweeney that would not have been out of place in a Communist state. Anybody has their limits, and the idea that professionals should be above this is an absolute nonsense. Professionals are people, and people have limits, whether they are writers, journalists, television reporters, soldiers, fighter pilots, or, believe it or not, politicians and celebrities.

Unfortunately we live in a world where an ugly marriage of schadenfraude and voyeurism rules ok. It’s fine to do, as the Metro newspaper did today, and many many newspapers have done beforehand, and point out the fact that Julia Roberts once appeared in public with body hair which is deemed unconventional. It’s ok to scrutinise the public lives of politicians. It’s fine, and fun, to encourage the unrealistic dreams of uninspiring people who surely await a life of stacking shelves, and then shatter them in a way that will leave them reeling for years.

And as bad as all this, it is accepted that the major media conglomerates use their power to use the exact kind of pressure that the scientologists used here, to form a community as mulishly ignorant as that of O’Connor’s barber’s town, and with the same concomitent pressures.

Stick your head above the parapet and out come the Swift Boat veterans for truth. Out come the smear campaigns … You can only rope-a-dope for so long.

My country also has free speech, says John Sweeney in his Panarama documentary, chasing the Scientology PR man who’s said his piece and ran off, much as Bush has many a time, his flunkeys rushing reporters out of the room before having time to answer questions. I’m not so sure. But you can be sure that that ugly schadenfraude is not absent in Whitehall on seeing this whole episode playing out over the internet today.

The Stasi, the KGB, the SSB and the other secret police that held up communism were remarkably unintelligent. Jacques Derrida was once imprisoned in Prague on trumped up charges of possession of marijuana, having travelled to lecture at the Underground University. They were unreconstructed barbarians of the kind that populate O’Connor’s fiction. Unfortunately, like those in the New Labour movement and elsewhere, there is a new class of barbarians, who have learned sophistry at university and speak with a plausible articulacy, which they can task to whatever they deem necessary, no matter how flimsy the arguments in support of it - Scientology is one example.

Scientology, writes John Sweeney, has been described, in 1984, as “corrupt, sinister and dangerous.” If only it were the only thing in this world that could be so described. My fear is that there are people out there now who are far more intelligent - note, not wise, not cultured, not enlightened - who operate with the same agenda, and who, together, easily have the power the Stasi, the KGB and the SSB held in their respective countries, and that people more and more are manipulated in their thought in much the same way Scientologists manipulate others. I fear for the future.

Laugh at the video. Why not? But think!

One day, I am sure, we will need underground universities ourselves.

John Sweeney’s take on the episode here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ame…

An Article on Jan Patocka, a leading light of the Czech Underground Univeristy.

An article which mentions Derrida’s imprisonment in Prague.

http://www.universityofcalifornia.ed…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Pat…

Pearls before swine

Until today I hadn’t drank for perhaps a month. I’d got away from a lot of people who were fine, gregarious most of them, gregregious one or two, but who were such common sense people that they wouldn’t understand such a thing as not drinking in any sense other than that someone’s a killjoy. I’ve done well from not drinking, had more time for myself and my writing; for the things I’m driven to do and can’t live without. I’ve been happier.

A couple of weeks back the bubble was broken. I started getting invitations to join Facebook. From the guys I have nothing to say to face to face. This after I was told I should get a MySpace so people can keep in contact, by a woman, chelle, I saw after over a year of being back in England.

I clicked through and joined. Loaded up a few photos. Now I’m seen by all, and sometimes it’s felt like a free for all. Like I can’t escape. Messages can pile up over which I have no control. I’ve left a couple of messages. Little jokes. I felt a little freer to make jokes on the web, since in real life I often simply don’t react in time - being aspergic, I recently read, is like using PC software on a Mac through an emulator; everything is the same, but slower. A guy I met once or twice left a message about my introducing him to Jack Daniels. People, perhaps solicitous, trying to draw me out of my shell. It’s nice, but invidious.

The other day I joined a group or two. I had already joined a few Czech language groups, thinking I’d be taken for a killjoy again - spanish groups too. This time a few of these post-ironic groups I hate so much, dedications soap characters and the like. But one vaguely satirical group, upon which I posted a couple of long posts. It may have been the day I drove to work listening to Kerrang, and some DJ going on about his addiction to Bebo, and Facebook and these stupid groups. I turned over but felt like a fool. One of my characters takes inspiration from some old women she hears talking on a bus about Lent to get shot of such rubbish and I’m getting sucked in, trying to make an effort.

I felt a little hurt at work the other day. There’s one real Black Country salt of the earth type I’ve never been able to get any conversation going with, and I mentioned this when we were talking about it being a place where you have to prove yourself. We talked about a couple of characters, and Alf said he soon discovered this Arren wasn’t someone who took to people trying to impress. I wondered if I had done exactly that, and if the remark was aimed at me - I am borderline paranoid at times and know it. I had a reverie the other day about trying too hard, talking to a student who does exactly that, and impresses no one.

Years back I tried to fit in, tried, I suppose, to impress. It’s natural enough. I was Aspergic, lost, lovely, and ADD. I tried to be something I wasn’t. Didn’t talk about things I loved - that I’m a writer has for years been a dirty secret, similar to as if I had been gay, and I’m only now coming out.

I tried to fit in at the pub - something I’m so much better off without - and also by e-mail. The others at work tended to fire off forwards and mails taking the piss out of each other and I would respond with some hypomanic stream of consciousness they either didn’t understand or didn’t much care for.

At the time I tried hard to understand it. At work I wasn’t manic, got on with others like Pak Choi better than I had anyone before; though I was still gauche I had a laugh, we had a laugh. But then, between researching about the build up to the war in Iraq, I wrote these crazy e-mails like I was trying to impress.

—– completed 14th May, 2007 ———-

The conclusion I came to at the time was that e-mails were just too instant. E-mails and text messages were dangerous for me. Now, since I can see that my behaviour at the time was more likely to have been caused by attention deficit disorder rather than hypomania, I can see why. I have a thousand ideas and plans, and it is often better to be able to review them, think them over before putting them into action. E-mails don’t allow me to do this.

It was around a similar time to when I was puzzling all this over that Andrew Motion got into trouble with emails to a student of his at the famous creative writing course at the University of East Anglia* - a course I applied to those years ago, and visited with my father. I have never been a fan of his work, though it’s true I have never read much of it - indeed the whole idea of a poet laureate seems to me rather rediculous - but I don’t bring this up to embarrass him, rather, and much in the same way as I will discuss a difficulty a BBC reporter has found himself in today, to show that he is human, as we all are, and thus prone to faults and temptations we should struggle to understand. It was safe to say, he said, that these emails would not come to form a part of his collected correspondence. Perhaps not, but if any such work is to give a picture of an age and an artist within it, in the same way as Keats’ do, it should; there is an argument that doing otherwise would be like excising the more sexual passags from Anne Frank’s diary. Such emails and texts, thoughtlessly sent are a part of our lives. Lovers frequently send text messages to people they are writing about, rather than the people they are writing to. They send text messages while drunk, demonstrating their feelings in a way they would never do face to face, and often making a fool of themselves.

I made a fool of myself. I have done time and time again. But this time I worried I had done this. I am still very vulnerable. Because I have opened up this gulf between what I talk about and what I write about, I worry when others get to read what I have written. Several times now I have written something to people at work and become both borderline paranoid, and also abstractly angry if I did not get the right kind of response, or no response. Ok, so they loved the guide to swearing, which I wrote for new members of staff from Central and Eastern Europe when I worried that they would not understand the students at the most crucial times, a factual guide with a serious purpose but a light style, but otherwise I’ve pitched ideas they haven’t taken to. Perhaps I’ll post them sometime and hold myself to my spiel above.

It’s only recently I’ve started to tell people at all about what I’m writing - though I haven’t mentioned the blog yet. The new one I mean. This one is a case in point, since it remains essentially closed because I have no friends (ahhhh). I will likely as not transfer it to my blog if and when I open up a new domain under something like masterkidderminster.org. Then I will have to lock it with a password, one of a series required to unlock stories and the like which may be found in a crossword, perhaps.

There have been a couple of responses to my post. One of them accused me of ripping off a comedian I’ve never heard of. I didn’t take well to that Otherwise it was positive, but it made me realise how vulnerable I would be to criticism if and when I make it into print. For years I have had reveries of giving a rare interview with the guys and girls of the London Review of Books and telling them that I simply don’t read my own reviews; others have been reacting magnanimously to criticism. Of course I would react in the same way to anyone else - with paranoia and abstract anger no doubt - because I am human, because I am vulnerable, because writers don’t become writers because they are [] well-balanced.

I felt a need to be away from it all again. To not get drawn in. I’m happiest now at home with M_____. I find it difficult that she wants to get out with me. I’m writing today after drinking yesterday, and I slept so poorly. I went to work ill-rested and had a very stressful first hour or so, succumbing to a fag at around 11:00. Drinking doesn’t suit me. Socialising doesn’t often suit me. I put my foot down often and try as hard as I can to stay in, stay away from things that only make me more tense, more melancholy. I am a writer. I’m nothing else. The article above, in discussing writers, doesn’t make us out to be the heroic beasts some of us would like to think we are. Why should it? I don’t expect deference, and frankly, if Freud believes that writers are seeking power and approbation in many ways he couldn’t be more wrong; many of us seek nothing else than to be left alone and have none of the social contact which we are not made for, which is so damaging for us, and only that with which we can flourish - that might not make for an interesting life to others, but why should it? I have nothing but contempt for the argument of those who outed J. D. Salinger, saying that, being a writer, he is a public figure. His ideas are public and may be discussed. This can hurt enough. Chasing the man down to take photos of him and show him up to be a scared old man is not speaking truth to power. It is the opposite, especially in the context of contemporary journalistic trends: it is abusing power. Alas, it is one of the most prominant pastimes of our age.

*An outline here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain…

And an even-handed commentary here:

http://archive.salon.com/books/featu…

18/10/02

Spot the typo

hold on,

Billy, 49 minutes remaining?! You’re as slack a runt as I
am.

Gloria Hunerruntingford?! With that Botoxed bint
Jackie Collins. It was so much better when I was a
student - back in the day - before Bargain Hunt was
Prime Time. Oh the kids of today, don’t know they were
born, Gail. Bring on Newsround. Or bring back Lola
Ferrari - zap her with a couple of electrodes there’s
sure to be enough silicon in the bint to Frankenstein
her to a second life as a pentium pin-up. Have the
Newsround girl report on that and It’d set my weekend
right up.

thank’ee

ps. Does your gaffer get e-mails redirected to him if
I say Scunthorpe? happened to a guy in uni and we
plucked the system up sending him internet brochures.

— “Billy, Bathams” wrote: >
Its been that kind of day but with only 49 minutes
> remaining I don’t care
> Billy Bathams
> mopower - Sales
> Major Business Accounts
> billy.bathams@mopower.com
>
> T: 0121 541 2628
> F: 0870 161 6071
>
> —–Original Message—–
> From: gail Wetherspoon
> [mailto:gail.wetherspoon@btinternet.com
]
> Sent: 18 October 2002 14:11
> To: Billy, Bathams; chelle; wardo; mullerEd (work);
> gwar@orange.net; fatty (work); Drunken; bird;
> b______
> Subject: Re: have you every noticed
>
> oh yeah thats quite sad you spotted that
> —– Original Message —–
> From: “Billy, Bathams”
> To: “‘gail Wetherspoon’”
> ; “chelle”
>
>; “wardoo”
>

24/10/02

folk@large.net

bah humbug

well the xmas trees are up in Wilko now and I’m
waiting for the dreaded muzak to start. still, both me
managers were no bother - one had been collared by a
bunch of suits and the other away so I did bugger all:
Caroline on the CCTV said she turned the camera around
to see me and James fighting on the op pof laddrrs
with sticks from the rolls of xmas paper we were
supposed to be putting up. ten minutes she reckons. +
I was late, scraping ice from my windows with an ice
cream box lid to Hendrix, but someone altered me time
to 7:00. so all in all I reckon I’ve made up for the
GWAR shifts they had me working before.

Na, yes, me and Rhog are coming up to Notts. He’s
coming up Saturday and staying with his sister. I’ll
prob be up Friday depending when I finish. I’ll give
you a ring later. Is anyone going to Rock City or have
the tickets gone? + what’s going on with this Radio 1
season as Nick reckoned as there was some decent bands
+ Shadow playing?! Oh, and Rhog and the boys tried to
put money on John Leslie only William Hill weren’t
game. Strange that.

sorry for the group e-mail my connection’s still shite
so I can never get it to compose twice without
dropping.

laters

wardo

3/11/02

Don’t nee to be hearing this arse…

on TV saying how much of a state his cock was in after
the surgery: “I noticed that porn stars have really
large penises”, says this silly twat before getting
some enlargement-style effort that that left him with
not a Girth Brookes but a Gaping Gary. But that’s by
the by.

Waste your time here:

http://www.framleyexaminer.com/pages…

bored,

Have literally zero pence to my name so have to resort
to e-mailing before getting in to Sketh-U-Like for six
o’bloody clock - more fucking GWAR hours to deck the
place up for C_____tmas. Surrounded by fucking
twittering Xmas robin redbreasts and Santa;s with
saxophones I am going to turn into Alf GWARnet at this
rate: neaagh, Baa Humbug. And my bastard boss is being
a proper pedant - getting me to use a fucking tape
measure to put up posters not only on shop floor but
in the corridor to the canteen, as if the staff give a
toss while they’re legging it for a coffee. Due to
this fact I bought a Mr Man book for him - Mr Fussy -
and plan to annotate it sarcastically and gift him
with come Xmas, by which time I’ve probably ripped the
piss out of him a little too much getting autistically
drunk at the Xmas party, before I bugger off to Notts
(probably) for the New Year. And, cos he’s such an
arse, and gets me and James to redo every display we
do as if he has to turn the light on and off twelve
times before he leaves every room he enters, I’ve
taken to assuming the level of incompetence necessary
to be sacked from Wilko’s to be sub Cartwright-esque
(rang up my old chum Norris McWerter to check such a
thing is possible and he cited some blonder than
blonde albino bird in Abu Dhabi with three x
chromosomes) and hydroplaning just above it. Find this
quite satisfying.

see y’all at football, with a couple of Red Bulls in
hand no doubt being as I’m already fairly fucked after
Tramps last night.

11/11/02

Re: match day

just to confirm I’m playing. And a plea to rotate
players a lot more than usual as we’re going to have
to tonight: if we talk tactics before the game surely
that’s got to be up there. Last double we were all
fucked.

Can someone shout me ten or fifteen before the first
game as I may yet fall asleep.

Incidentally, Bird, chickenhead, chickpea, whatever,
may have vaguely blanked the sisters Grimm down town
out of sheer couldn’t-be-arsedness, and since the
Wilko crew had all been asking why I hadn’t gone the
other night; did the Lloyds vermin fuck your house
in a RANDOM fashion?

later

— Big Bird wrote: >
> There has been a serious breach of protocol. Miss
> Andrews, in the future,
> please refrain from using the word ‘Chick’ in any
> way shape or form unless
> it’s answer the question “what is a baby duck
> called?” Any repeat offences
> will be dealt with with extreme measures i.e. “you
> sound just like Shiela.”
> Please don’t make me use such language.
> —–Original Message—–
> From: Michelleandrews@sunnyside.worcs.cre.uk
> [mailto:Michelleandrews@sunnyside.worcs
.cre.uk]
> Sent: 11 November 2002 12:30
> To: drunken@hotmail.com; billy.bathams@mopower.com;
> big.bird@gtrmouldings.com;
> gail.wetherspoon@btinternet.com; gwar@orange.net;
> MARK.B______@RODDEX.CO.UK;
> Michelleandrews@sunnyside.worcs.cre.uk;
> mjm@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk;
> the_ward_ogara@yahoo.co.uk;
> clydetomlinson@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk
> Subject: RE: Match Day
>
>
> I will be there to support you but not in pub
> afterwardos as in London at
> stupid o’clock tomorrow morning. Gail - hope youre
> ok chick. Going to the
> gym after work (5ish) if you want to come, the rest
> of you I will see later.
>
> —–Original Message—–
> From: Drunken [mailto:drunken@hotmail.com]
>
> Sent: 11 November 2002 10:31 AM
> To: billy.bathams@mopower.com; big.bird@gtrmouldings.com;
> gail.wetherspoon@btinternet.com; gwar@orange.net;
> MARK.B______@TAPPEX.CO.UK;
> Michelleandrews@sunnyside.worcs.cre.uk;
> mjm@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk;
> the_ward_ogara@yahoo.co.uk;
> clydetomlinson@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk
> Subject: Match Day
>
>
> Well good morning everyone and welcome to a new
> week. Of course it is Monday
>
> again and that can mean only one thing, that we have
> a match tonight. Of
> course we actually have two matches tonight but I
> dont want to scare too
> many people. Can you all play? Will the support be
> there for us? Will Clyde
> toe punt everything that comes his way?
>
>
>
>
>

18/11/02

wilkoworld

to be as incompetant as I was today stacking shelves
probably entails death by a variety of painful methods
in many backwardo countries (though according to my
medium() in one of my past lives I escaped being hung
drawn and quartered as I was so well hung I would have
had to be fifthed). As my performance at Wilko is very
important to me you shall find me, should you need me,
on top of the aquaduct with a frayed bungee rope.

I do love seven o’clock starts!!!

Coffee!!!!!!!

— Drunken wrote: >
>
> Well for everyone that was not out last night, we
> had a discussion that
> spanned at least 2 hours. the argument was whether
> or not if you ordered The
> Times newspaper from the day you were born you would
> get a reprint or an
> original. Ben, Bird, Gwar, Gardiloo and myself said
> that it would be a reprint
> Billy stuck to his stupid belief that it was an
> original. Needless to say
> that when Ben got home he checked the article Billy
> had seen and found out
> that it was a reprint all I want to say is
>
> BILLY YOU COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG.
>
> But dont worry you will be wrong many times again in
> the future.
>
>
>
>

20/11/02

re: you lucky guys

your timing’s poor Southwick, you missed the GWAR’s new
barnet, which would have given you many hours of
amusement and material for a million e-mails, if that
was ever needed in GWAR’s case. IF you must know, the
boy began growing his hair into a class A mullet,
minus a wedge of a sparse patch, over which he back
combed his arse hair, slapping it down with copious
grease.

— “Southwick, Andy” wrote: >
> Some good news for you poor lonely northerners!….i
> may well be visiting
> your dull town this weekend for a beverage or two to
> brighten up the place!
> So all pls let me know what you are up to and when.
>
> Also….if anybody happens to know gwars intinery
> could you also let me know
> so as I can do my upmost best to avoid him…or if
> time permits, run him
> over!
>
> Thx
> Andy
>
>

29/11/02

only bopthered to read this mailing. Don’t rteally
care what it’s about but Bovril Lasagne has blow job
lips and wants it really badly. And I’m the man for
the job. Thank you.

ps. will even forgive her if I can feel her teeth, as
her fangs are cute in a rock chick kind of way.

pps. yes, she’s fourteen, fifteen, whatever, it’s
legal somewhere in the world isn’t it, and have you
not seen Ryanair.com?!

— Clyde Tomlinson
wrote: > The
skate chick herself is in Birmingham on the 20th
> of march. Who wants tickets ?
>

2/12/02

To: purecomedy@isitmyarse.net

Word on the street is Gwar is especially embarrassed
about his performance the other night as everyone else
he knows are notorious Cassanovas rarely seen without
a perfect 10 on their arm with a personality to match.
I’ll bet anyone who claims they haven’t had a piss
poor date has either not pulled often enough to fuck
up once in a while or is lying given as their last
experience with a bird was when they slagged off their
date behind her back she dragged them round the Wren’s
Nest, stripped them naked and had the whole estate
sign a petition on their ass to say she was the best
shag they ever had, on pain of death by being whipped
to a frenzy. ie. I’m with C_____ and B_____. I’d rather
listen to Jim Davidson talking about his fucking
Mother in Law for a lifetime than hear another fucking
piss poor joke get a laugh cos it’s aimed at GWAR. -
and Drunken, that’snot aimed at you cos you wrote the
last one. We all do it because it’s easy, and he had a
point that he doesn’t need to listen to playground
bullshit on his birthday. And he did. We slag him off
so he’s miserable, he’s miserable so we slag him off.
Easy. - oh, as is saying me, and B_____ or whoever the
hell else sticks up for him don’t have a sense of
humour, whoever wants to jump in with that. I do not
care because I am bored of it and I don’t want to hear
another token six monthly let’s lay off GWAR, so
Bollocks.

Can’t make football. Apparently not only have I known
for six months/years that I am to be dragged to some
dive of a restaurant tonight to —- the ——-
—— for my —’- ——– —- but I have signed a
contract stating I’m particularly happy about said
fact. —- —-.

— “Southwick, Andy” wrote: > No
>
>
> —–Original Message—–
> From: mark.b______@tappex.co.uk
> [mailto:mark.b______@tappex.co.uk]
> Sent: 02 December 2002 11:35
> To: ASouthwick@GBH.co.uk; drunken@hotmail.com;
> billy.bathams@mopower.com;
> big.bird@gtrmouldings.com;
> gail.wetherspoon@btinternet.com;
> Michelleandrews@sunnyside.worcs.cre.uk;
> mjm@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk;
> the_ward_ogara@yahoo.co.uk;
> clydetomlinson@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk
> Subject: Re-2: Morning.
>
>
> Lads i ain’t been funny but lay off gwar will you!
> None of you are the one
> who has to talk him out of his depression when
> you’ve all had your fun. Just
> f**kin leave it, don’t you have anything better to
> talk about.
>
> ——– Original Message ——–
> Subject: RE: Morning. (02-Dec-2002 11:24)
> From: ASouthwick@GBH.co.uk
> To: MARK.B______@tappex.co.uk
>
> > I love this…gwar has made a cock of himself
> again has he?!?!?
> >
> > —–Original Message—–
> > From: gwar@orange.net [mailto:gwar@orange.net]
> > Sent: 02 December 2002 11:22
> > To: Drunken; billy.bathams@mopower.com;
> big.bird@gtrmouldings.com;
> > ASouthwick@GBH.co.uk; gail.wetherspoon@btinternet.com;
> gwar@orange.net;
> > MARK.B______@TAPPEX.CO.UK;
> Michelleandrews@sunnyside.worcs.cre.uk;
> > mjm@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk;
> the_ward_ogara@yahoo.co.uk;
> > clydetomlinson@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk
> > Subject: Re: Morning.
> >
> >
> > F*CK U WANKER. INCIDENTLEY WE WILL ONLY WIN 2NITE
> COS IM BACK
> > ————Original Message————-
> >
> > Well good morning to all. As I have not received
> any E-mails this
> > morning I
> >
> > thought I would get the ball rolling.
> >
> > A 7.30 kick off tonight. Deep joy however as we
> are on a winning run
> > at the
> >
> > moment we may be alright. I of course will play
> amazingly and the rest
> > of
> > you will just fill in as best you can.
> >
> > On another note I have a date with Britney Spears
> tonight and I was
> > wondering whether to take the no. 42 bus or the
> no. 57 I am not sure which
>
> > one is more romantic. Gwar I am sure can tell me.
> Of course when we arrive
>
> > in style at our date I need something to talk
> about. Does anyone know if
> > the
> >
> > delightful miss Spears has a brother because I
> believe that talking
> > about
> > the girl and things she is interested in are now
> out of fashion and
> talking
> >
> > about someone else completely is the done thing.
> One last thing what
> > are
> > you
> >
> > all doing at 1000 tonight as I will be finishing
> the date only 1 hour
> > after
> >
> > it started because like Gwar I like to keep the
> girls guessing.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

8/12/02

Don’t know how you can be havinhg an argument. She
told me you’d left the country and were starting a new
life as an Inuit leaving all your worldly possessions
behind - ie just behind the door of your old flat. Of
course, it may have had something to do with my new
Fuck The Police tattoo across my forehead (no offence
to the Bird clan intended).

— Big Bird wrote: > Be
aware! Me and Rona are having an argument and it
> might be going on for
> some time. Some of you might be called upon, by her,
> to comfort her and tell
> her she’s great. This applies to some of you more
> than others. I just didn’t
> want anyone to be caught unawares.

16/12/02

The rumours are true

Having failed in my dastardly scheme to displace Mr
Mullered by poisoning him with dodgy curry, and then
deviously turning his gas tap on I finally supplanted
him by drafting in Tanya “made for TV” Harding’s hubby
(or whoever the fuck he was) to sneak in through the
damaged door tohis flat and do the dirty while our
valient back was drunkenly unconcscious in his bed. HA
HA HA HA HA HAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Ha.

My obsession with WDLBFC is too much. Help me. Dr
Radge B’Stard to the rescue!!!

— Big Bird wrote: >
Morning all. In the absence of Mr Hollyrood who’s
> playing tig or some other
> army cr*p in the cold somewhere, i’ll start the WDLB
> news letter for the
> week. Dom can’t play tonight and Matt is crying
> about a knee injury so our
> squad is quite depleted. Could Mr OGarnier, Mr Redbush
> or Mr B______ please play
> tonight. kick off is 7.30. We had a dissapointing
> result last week but we
> played well and were very unlucky as we did
> everything but score. Clyde don’t
> put superglue on the soles of your traineers as you
> did last week. Lets show
> Mr Hollyrood that we can win without him, Oh that’s
> right we won our first
> ever game without him. HA HA

8/01/03

yes I’m bored with the group mails too - too much crap
bunging up my mailbox. Was going to ask to be removed
but thought they might pull one of their boring
stunts. Glad they’re not predictable!

10/01/03

ditto the boy Bird. Coketown is boring and shit
(none of which can be said of any town with concrete
cows; once told my fenian cousin about that and he
came up with a grand plan to have them mounted by
whipping red bulls around the traffic islands to
aforesaid genius sculptures).I’m off to Notts to help
Nick in his plan to disturb any f#cker from plans of
revision.

Meanwhile, Columbo. Because yes, I am another sketh
with sketh hours.

oh, and happy new year Chelle as I ain’t seen you since,
being the elusive c#nt I am round these beskethful
parts.

— Big Bird wrote: >
Certainly but not in Coketown as it’s boring and
> Sh*t. I’m off to Milton
> Keynes, The Grid City, to get Hammered for my mates
> 22.
>
> —–Original Message—–
> From: Redbush, C_____ [mailto:C_____Redbush@eaton.com]
> Sent: 10 January 2003 09:59
> To: ‘Drunken’; Big.bird@gtrmouldings.com;
> clydetomlinson@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk;
> Michelleandrews@sunnyside.worcs.cre.uk;
> mark.b______@tappex.co.uk; the_ward_ogara@yahoo.co.uk;
> mjm@clarks-motorgroup.co.uk
> Subject: Tonight
>
>
> Are there any plans for tonight?
>
> Booze perhaps
>

16/01/03

Death_to_indie_pop_shite@large.net

To all y’all Bovril fans

For contravening the Wuppee Doo Act, 1987 -
legislation passed following The Shamen’s seminal (and
rather wank) use of mispelled song titles and
outlawing all shite uses of English thereafter - Ms
Lasagne and her pubescent acneified parmasantastic
oh-so-cute face has been put on THE LIST.

On like subject: B_____, B_____, B_____! If you get the
wonderful phrase Super, Smashing, Great - of Jim Bowen
circa 1992 - and a couplke of mint phrases of either
yer man from Blockbusters or dude from Going for Gold
- and close a deal and record this fine spectacle of
verbal audacity on a dictaphone, I shall buy yer a
pint. And a genuine signed rubber Bully. Perhaps.

[attached: gif of black and white Avril Lavigne on fire, overlaid on Rage Against the Machine’s debut cover art]

Saturday morning. I got up at eight, unable to sleep any more. I had a good night last night, finishing off Madame Bovary and starting a little of a book called The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker, this, admittedly goes against my injunction to myself to read one book at a time - an injuction, or maxim, that will be absolutely essential if I am to get through the book that landed on my doorstop the other day, the fifteen hundred page slab of a book, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson, the third book that is discussed by Percy Lubbock in his The Craft of Fiction - but I did only read the introduction, which I had begun to read in Mardy Hell, the shopping centre, the other day having bought the book in Fopp while waiting for M______ to finish trying on the bra and pants I have promised to buy her for months now. Anyway, that book tied connected with discussions I had been having with Alf at work, about Joseph Campbell and other researchers; dialogues which have possibly contributed to the rock chick’s intellectual development in Family Fortunes. Ok, so that is another slab of a book waiting for me, since he has lent me The Myth of the Goddess by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, something I should probably simply buy from e-bay and return o him. Anyway, a good day, even if it was one where I was racing from one thing to another full of ideas - something that has carried on to today. Partly, this may have been an intake of coffee that had upped considerably after a few weeks of abstinance, or it may also have been the fact that I had put out a few posts on Facebook - something I keep being invited to join - and that I was wondering how they would be taken. But it was a good night, which put me in a fairly good mood, despite still having the shits and an upset stomach, for when M_____ got back. In fact I even found time for a little reading of Spanish in the bath. I have done nothing for a long while and since M_____ has been working the last couple of evening classes, I didn’t go. I have paid in advance for the both of us, but I learn nothing there and I would have been bored, and then arsey to boot having got no writing done.

So I started this morning to read another of the novels I bought in Fopp. As always, I have adopted the plan I made, and even annotated with mindmaps, to read nothing but those novels discussed in Lubbock’s book. I need along the way to read novels which are easier to read, and though a detective novel currently languishes upstairs on the window sill beside our bed, I picked up Hanif Kueishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and managed to read the first few pages before M_____ finished talking to her Mum on the phone and came in.

And so, while she was in the shower, getting ready and going out, I started looking over a new blog I signed up to a couple of days ago called Yeswehavenobananas and posting a food diary for yesterday.

This led to an interesting development, because on coming to deploy the term DefCon as a description of M______’s level of concern over many matters domestic after her attending of a food hygiene course at work, I Googlewhacked my way to a development regarding Chris in Family Fortunes. [Just now indeed, I have thought of another adjunct to my ever-expanding blogdreams, but then you’ll likely as not never see anything of that.]

DefCon, it turns out, is a game which simulates nuclear war. Not only that it is an annual conference on Hacking entitled in part from the film War Games in which a young boy comes to save the world - a game I watched and enjoyed as a kid. Now, Chris’s intellectual development has already been plotted out, but since DefCon has an Office mode, under which not only can games take place over up to six hours or so rather than the standard 45-ish, it could give us an insight into Chris’s work life, which I had not planned out a great deal, despite the one scene in which he is in an unfamiliar office.

It could also facilitate a one-liner. Yesterday Lucie was talking about how one of her friends went nuts [over something]. I said I have a theory based on Harry Kissinger’s theory of nuclear strategy whereby it is rational to act irrationally so opponents think that you will actually countenance the launch of nuclear missiles, that women act in exactly the same way, quite arbitrarily going crazy on occasion without reason. This could form part of Chris’s chat with rock chick in the park when they get together.

I shall have to write to bro, asking him to give me some insights into the working of a modern office, especially where computing is concerned.

Not managed to convince M______ to gt one of the kittens Lucie is getting rid of at work, despite stickig an A4 picture of them on the fridge with the funky magnetised containers I got from our first trip to Ikea, and continually making doe eyes and upset noises and going on about them.

I’m tired again. I feel like I’m always writing that. Maybe it’s getting up too early to try and get every last drop out of the day, as I always do, trying to get things done before work, but not getting up early enough to really do anything constructive, just reading the newspapers or a little Czech, flicking through Wikipedia (it was the 5%ers today) or watching the DVDs I keep on getting sent up to twice a month as if I didn’t have enough to do. I set my alarm back a few minutes last night for this morning after a long bank holiday weekend of getting up late-ish, so perhaps it’s no wonder. In any event, of course the result it, as it always is, that I’m not able to keep up with my expectations of forever being busy, and especially mentally active, forever writing and reading, and never having any down time. I finished off one story. I don’t know yet whether I did so well, or whether, just wanting it out the way it was just some throwaway ending. I then tried to continue my old graffiti girl story, Collateral Damage. I had to give up. I read a couple of Raymond Carver stories just, but I’m too tired. I thought I ought to go for a walk with my MP3 player, but then I remembered I hadn’t written this blog for a good while.

I’ve been pretty good at sticking to a limited number of projects. I’ve been keeping Family Fortunes in my sights, and just these last couple of days trying to finish off a couple of shorts, since, if I am to finish such a novel, it will have to be nothing but a sequence of such shorts. I will have to study Carver to see what he leaves out. What he doesn’t write.

I have a further addition to make to my novel. I saw a sticker on a car “England is for life, not just for Football.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but felt into it throgh reveries of work, and having the sticker seen at work. I ordered one on a whim. It cost 99 pence, including postage. It came within days - which is more than an be said for the knock-off Pimsleur Russian I took a risk on, buying with Cheque through e-bay. It came with a BNP newsletter!

I thought through a few things with that. It settled something with Chris’s relationship with Hippie. Hippie gives him such a sticker when he makes a comment about liking it, short of something to say. Hippie has a box full of them. He kind of likes Hippie, who doesn’t go in for football and is forward, simple. He can talk about music with him. He cuts him a little slack, whereas all the others give him the cold shoulder. One day, somebody smashed his car window and takes his bumper sticker. He thinks at first people may still be harrassing him. Then he tells himself to stop being so paranoid, that it could have been some no-hoper football fan hooligan. He orders another, and when it comes, of course, it comes bundled in a BNP newsletter. He had taken the word ‘just’ in the slogan as meaning merely, whereas it actually means solely. Of course, this is the same as it means with the original sticker, which refers to dogs and Christmas, but it hadn’t clicked. This leads him to something of an apiphany. Not only to drop all notion of friendship with Eddie’s old lot, but also to delete the image of the burned out SUV from his phone and ditch the more direct action side of his politics. He sets to work on his mobile phone site instead, trying to campaign for a mobile packed with simple safety features that might deter men from attacking women.

I got a little planning done for FF and went through a few old notes. Still, I’m missing Spanish today because M_____’s working and there so much to do. I may have been a little cheered by an article I read in the computer room today about a British novelist who works in snatchs of hours here and there, but what I have takes more than that.

Saw a Brit film yesterday, This is England by Shaun Meadows. Deeply embarrassing in places, but I was pretty impressed on the whole.

Yesterday was a bit of a downer, though. I had been nervous the whole weekend about my writing and having no time for it, and then M_____ got up in the morning to say she was really lonely. I cried a little. I was nervous and felt bad, because I don’t, and can’t, spend as much time with her as she needs, and she will have fewer people around when we move into our new house and she won’t have my parents to speak to. I abandoned her for much of the day to write, and it still wasn’t enough.

In bed, I was writing frantic notes about a food blog I could do, writing about my struggles with food and the medical orthodoxy, not to mention the various alternative therapies and the philosohpies that tend to surround them. Another book that could/would be a success. There is much need for it.

As the Czechs would say, Ach jo! I don’t know what we would say anymore, I find often there’s so many things our language isn’t furnished for.

I went to London for the weekend. Took the train to Brum, and the National Express from Digbeth to Victoria. Had the exact kind of idiot sit next to me talking football and clubs that meant I couldn’t bring out the notebooks and open up at the page I had drawn the car window with the “England is for life not just for football” overlaid on the England flag - it is Chris’s, the sticker, which I saw for the first time the other day (and have just bought on E-bay, though I didn’t initially want it for myself since I didn’t even particularly want to claim the flag), and the window is broken, leaving him to wonder whether he is still being targeted or whether he has simply offended some thug. (Thinking about it now I’m really not sure I agree with the sticker at all either for the novel or my own motor but never mind.) I went to go to the Tricycle theatre where I saw Richard Norton Tailor’s reconstruction of the Butler inquiry a few years ago, to see his Called to Account. I also went to Greenwich and the Imperial War Museum, which is fantastic, and had a wonderful exhibition about Camouflage.

I talked to my bro about my novel. I was far more open than I have been in the past, and a good deal less antagonistic. I have infuriated him in the past.

Today M___ has been very understanding, because, apart from going out for a walk and a drink - a walk on which I wanted to post a cheque for a set of Pimsleur Russian CDs that may not arrive, since somebody somewhere is getting scammed by the deal, either the copyrighters or me - I have been on the computer all day utterly focused on writing out a list of chapters for the novel. I focused on it more than I often can when Misa’s about, which is obviously positive.

The intellectual structures of the novel are pretty intricate now. I am puzzling over many things, and it is really coming together. One thing I am working out is how many connections I want between the various characters. Tolstoy was brave in his novel in the sense that many people didn’t see the relevance of the Kitty and Levin passages that take up half of his great novel. Dickens of course, favoured there being more rather than less such links. I don’t want to go as far as he did, and indeed, if I do go ahead with the CCTV passages from Prague and Riga and Talin, and the simultaneous rapes, then there will be points where there are little more than thematic links. There is another sense in which I am struggling to find the right tone. Do I, for example, want a novel which is more Victorian, less objective than Tolstoy, but which provides a little reassurance, a little entertainment, a little of the narrative justice? There is a point where these two questions coincide, where the au pair who insinuated herself into the novel at an early stage (intimidating me by the work this would make for me even before she started to become a meditation on the nature of democracy, Western family life and decadence) is subjected to a break-in which provides a link between two characters in the sense that a pimp who is grooming Gem or a friend who is trying to shag her breaks in to the house to steal a wig for her with which she might disguise her alopecia; the burglar then wants something more and demands a blow job, something that makes her think of Snuggles, the whore house that was raided, closed down and found to contain lots of eastern european women, she sucks his cock until it is hard (and moist), and then smashes the lamp, which has always been without a cover, and jabs it into his cock, both electricuting and cutting him.

I have always been a strong believer in objectivity, but then perhaps I am yet too young a writer to be able to display it, and in any case, I too love the fabulousness of Dickens, and do find it more readable than Tolstoy and the like - and given that Tolstoy depressed me for a while, before my vigorous, logical, moral brand of atheism bounced back, it might be more appropriate for the kind of novel I intend to write.