Richard Pilgrim

Honky-Tonk Blues

2011-04-05T21:37:00.006+01:00

So, my advice to you is this: Always keep a stock of pen refills in your house in case of emergencies. And in order to try to maintain this stock, buy your refills on-line instead of venturing out to the shops. You see, I didn’t take this advice, and so a couple of Sundays ago I realized that I urgently needed a refill for my ballpoint pen. There was nothing for it but to take a trip to the refill retailers – a harmless enough exercise you may feel, but in doing so, I had to walk past a pub in which it just so happened that two of my friends were sitting. It seemed rude not to respond to their cheery waves and eager beckoning, so I entered the bar. Some time later, after three or four pints, I emerged to discover that the pen-refill shop had already closed and thus, I came home empty-handed.

The following week, using the next opportunity to get to the shop (I work Monday-Friday in the remote and inhospitable salt mines, with no access to shops at all), I set off again – confident that it was too early for my friends to be in the pub. In fact, I deliberately went in the opposite (circular) direction so as to avoid even having to look through the windows of the bar. I therefore successfully navigated myself to the pen-refill shop without incident, bought the required items, and emerged from the shop to make my way home. But just then, just as I was happily about to head back to my apartment, there, right across the mall opposite the shop doorway from which I had emerged, something caught my eye. It was the piano shop.

Oh, shop of wonders – more tempting even than some bar crammed with my dearest friends. The piano shop, where dreams and schemes of impossible skills are hatched and nurtured. The piano shop, where it isn’t simply pianos that are sold, but the promise of joy upon joys to come. I ventured inside where I was met with a bewildering array of different pianos, both electric and strung (I think that's the right expression). I confessed to the energetic and courteous young salesman that I knew nothing whatsoever about pianos, but he was so patient with me, explaining all the various merits and drawbacks about each type and model, and so very willing to demonstrate the different sounds that each model made with his elegant and nimble playing. I wanted them all!

Not only do I know nothing about pianos, but I can't play one either. I was never taught such a bourgeois effete skill as a child - growing up, as I did, in the backstreets of Naples - and as such have remained totally non-musical all my life. Inside that piano shop - having meant only to go out to buy some refills for my pen - I decided that this non-musical status of mine was about to change. The boy in the shop convinced me that it is never too late to learn to play an instrument - but then of course, he was trying to make a sale. Well, whatever his motives, I was soon hooked on the idea of becoming the next Librace or Barry Manilow and so, after much deliberation over the various models on display, I made my most foolish and extravagant purchase to date.

Foolish and extravagant? Phooey! I now have a fabulously stylish, beautifully-sounding, full-sized 88-key and 3-pedal electric piano sitting resplendent in my livign room. It plays and sounds exactly like the real thing, and with the added bonus that I can play it with earphones on - thereby sparing my neighbours the tortuous horror of listening to me endlessly practising my scales. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but I do know that's it's going to be one hell of a lot of fun finding out. I have appointed a fine young fellow as my teacher, and have already made a start. I have already learned to play a very well-known piece of classical composition, worthy indeed of a concert in the Royal Albert Hall: Frère Jacque.

You may laugh, but I have this to say: "Ooh, I am the music man, and I come from down your way!"

A New Life!

2011-03-31T23:12:00.010+01:00

Oh dear - if any of you are still out there, dear listeners, then I'm so sorry that I haven't written for so long. You've probably all deserted me anyway because you must have thought I had died, or that possibly I was in prison. Why wouldn't you?

Well strangely, you would not be too far from the truth there - I am working in a high security psychiatric hospital (the highest security) and my working day is spent incarcerated inside the prison-like conditions. It really is extraordinary - everywhere I move around the hospital I have to unlock and then re-lock a door or gate every few yards. Of course, I carry a great big bunch of keys hanging from my belt (as do all staff) which if nothing else, identifies me as staff, and not a patient. Because as I am sure you will understand, the only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad.

But it isn't the 'working-for-a-living' malarkey that has prevented me from updating you on here. Well actually I suppose it is, because working does take up so much of the day - but there have been many, many other distractions to keep me away from here. Too many, in fact, to tell you about them now - I just wanted to pop in to say hello and to say that if you can bear with me, I'll give you a full update in a day or so. And no, I haven't been away creating revolutions in middle-eastern and north African countries; I haven't been performing for Comic Relief; nor have I been caught up in the dreadful events in Japan; nor spending time finishing off the Olympic Stadium; nor attending the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference; nor anything like that.

No, some time ago I gave up smoking. Just like that. I didn't opt for any patches, or gum, or hypnotism, or counselling, or (god forbid) the drugs that my GP offered me - I just quit. And it's been so remarkably easy - not because quitting is an easy thing to do, but because it happened when my mind was in exactly the right place for the job. At any other time I couldn't have done it (which is why I didn't), but on that specific morning when I realized that my pack was empty, and that I really couldn't be bothered to go out to the shops to buy any more, my mindset was completely lined up to the act of quitting.

But why should giving up smoking have kept me busy, you ask? Well, as a reward for my efforts I have bought myself a piano. We all deserve a treat when we have done something special for ourselves, and my treat has been my piano. I have never played the piano in my life before of course, and I had thought that I never would. However, I am beginning to learn to play and it is that which is taking up all my free time at the moment. That and going to the gym (another bonus of being smoke-free). So watch this space, dear reader - very soon I shall be restored to the Adonis-like figure I once was, but this time there will be an added tool in my skillset. This time, I will be banging out my tunes like the most famous pianists of all time.

More on this, and other matters, next time.

Back to the Salt Mines

2011-03-03T11:26:00.003Z

After a lengthy sabbatical, I will soon be returning to the Salt Mines. Not the same salt mines where I was slaving away at last year, but a different set. Much as I hate the idea, it has become necessary in order to stave off an impending state of penury. It is unfortunate, but not an insurmountable horror and I am sure I will survive the ordeal. I don't mind working for a living - goodness knows, I am far from an idle person and you must know, gentle reader, that I am not a person who would ever shirk from my responsibilities and duties - but it's just the turning up every day that I find so distasteful. It lacks so much imagination - but the people I usually work for think that it's the standard thing to do. Don't get me wrong - I don't resent these people, and I will always turn up at the office with good cheer and steadfastness, but I do resent the assumption that turning up to the office every day is the normal way of things.

So, this is my last week of freedom, but there are still many chores to get through before the week is out. I had intended to spend my last few days in virtuous pursuits - I was planning to go to the gym every day, give myself a daily Italian lesson, clean the flat, work on my novel, and all manner of sensible things that I'm not going to have time for once I am chained to my toil by the evil Gangmaster at the salt mines. However, the week has so far passed in dissipation, catching up with people whom I won't see for ages once I have retired from polite society (which I must do, when work starts again). I was rather drunk last night and so this morning has been a very slow start. Therefore, this entry is very hurriedly written and so I apologise if it fails to entertain, educate or inform.

Tonight I have the AGM for the Nottingham Writers' Studio (of which I am Chairman), and so have all the paperwork for that to prepare. I hope that the event will pass without issue, but I always fear that there could be a revolt from the members about some of the changes I am proposing - we'll see. I don't want a 'Boardroom coup' of any type as it could be embarrassing. I put in a huge amount of (unpaid) work for the Studio, but who knows whether any of it is what the members really want? I am their servant, after all.

I see that I was wrong about Natalie Portman's performance in 'Black Swan'. I had said earlier that I thought that (in the film) she acted her way through the whole gamut of human emotions from A to B. Now she wins an Oscar for her performance. Oh dear - I did get it wrong, didn't I? Then again, perhaps I didn't, and perhaps I'm just the little boy who has spotted that the Emperor is wearing no clothes - after all, the hype around the film was so great that it might be presumed that the Hollywood Machine is no more immune from believing its own whipped up excitement than we are. How gullible we sometimes can be. For example, look at the latest scramble to paint that nice Mr Gadaffi of Libya as an evil tyrant. The journalists would have us believe that he has billions of dollars salted away somewhere - yet we all know that he is a poor, simple man who lives in a tent and probably washes his own underwear. I see that Britney Spears has revealed that he paid her $1 million to sing at his daughter's birthday party. Well, I bet he had to scrimp and save for days to afford that - any father would do the same, surely? Leave the man alone - he doesn't even have a job, apparently. I bet he'd join me in the salt mines, if he could.

And now, I'm going to sneeze, in the Hungarian tradition.

A Typical Sitcom Moment

2011-02-22T12:36:00.006Z

Some years ago I took a business trip to the island of Guernsey. It's a delightful location, quaint and balmy, with tiny high-hedged roads that twist and turn through the model-like villages and luscious countryside. I was with two colleagues and the purpose of our visit was to try to sell a big IT installation to one of the major businesses in St Peter Port. My role was to support and balance the other two members of our team: The first, a salesman who clearly might not be trusted to tell the truth about the merits of our software; the second, a technical expert who unfortunately could be relied on to tell perhaps too much of the truth. Also, as a senior manager with the company, I was expected to provide some gravitas to the proceedings.

As we gathered at Birmingham airport, I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to pack any underwear and so I bought a pack of rather snazzy and fashionable briefs in one of the concourse boutiques. Thinking no more about it, we flew to Guernsey and checked in to our hotel in preparation for the major demonstration the following day. A spot of sightseeing, a pleasant dinner, and some last minute checks on the efficacy of our software demonstration system, and we retired to our rooms for the night.

The following morning we checked out of our hotel and with our luggage and our technical equipment, took a taxi to the Headquarters of our prospective client. In a conference room we were extended all relevant facilities to present our demonstration in the appropriately professional manner. At the appointed time, members of the senior board of management filed in to take their places before us. Our salesman made his well-rehearsed pitch. On the overhead projector our technician effortlessly demonstrated the commercial, practical and strategic benefits of our software, and I led the Q&A session in a soothing, confident and reassuring way. The prospective client's management team were rather dour and reserved at first, but by the end of the two-and-a-half hour session, we felt that we had raised their level of enthusiasm to an extent that led us to feel fairly confident of securing an order. However, such was the size of the investment that we already knew that the decision would not be made that day. So, we ended the session feeling that we had made a suitably professional impression on these people, and that we stood a good chance of securing the deal later.

We thanked our audience for their attention, and they politely thanked us for making the trip and for presenting a convincing case for our application. As there were another five hours until our flight home, we had decided amongst ourselves that we would engage in some further sightseeing of the island once the meeting was over. Not wishing to do this in our business suits, we asked one of the senior managers if there was anywhere we could change into our casual clothes. She said that we could use the same conference room we were already in, and as the management team filed out she said: "You won't be disturbed".

Relieved that the intensity of the meeting was now over, we entered a mood of levity and quickly began to shed our smart business attire in readiness for an afternoon on the town. For some reason I suddenly decided that it was important to show my colleagues how good my recently purchased underwear looked and so, in a moment of madness, I jumped onto the conference table, naked except for my new briefs, and proceeded to imitate a catwalk model, gyrating and cavorting up and down in a provocative manner. At that moment the conference room door opened and in walked the aforesaid senior manager, asking if we would like her to call a taxi for us? She stood horrified at my antics as, like a rabbit caught in the headlights, I froze in mid-gyration with my hips thrust forward to reveal the clinging contours of my new stretch-lycra briefs. Sheepishly, I climbed down from the highly-polished table mumbling that yes, thank you, a taxi would be most appropriate. Still reeling with shock, she retired from the room in silence.

We didn't get the deal.

Welcome to the House of Fun

2011-02-19T13:05:00.003Z

Every time I write one of these blogs I always vow to write another one very soon. And then life and its chaos gets in the way and before I know it, whole weeks have passed. Things have been extremely difficult in the past couple of weeks - the burden of duties has been crushing to say the least. All the usual stuff has bubbled up onto my already crowded agenda. My weekly and daily schedules resemble a school timetable - but without the free periods. However, I did take a break last weekend to visit some friends in London. They live on a houseboat on the Thames - that great, brooding body of brown water; heaving and swelling as it nudges its way silently through the capital. The boat doesn't float for the whole time - it rises up with the tide for a few hours and then is lowered gently back, to settle once more in the oozing mud like a stranded whale. This is a fascinating process because when settled, the boat lists at a very slight angle, giving one the impression - strangely - of being at sea. For me, this was a wonderful opportunity to relax completely.

There have been other moments of pleasure too, peppered amongst the ever-growing list of mandatory chores. I am a member of a scriptwriting group at the Studio, and our modus is to take two new scripts each month and to critique them, offering comments and (perhaps) advice to the writers. We have been lucky so far because we've only had high quality scripts to work on - there was a fabulously creepy horror film written by award-winning film writer Graham Lester George; a lovely gentle comedy about life in a nudist colony by TV writer Michael Cook; theatre writer Nick Wood's powerful and moving dark drama about teenage self-harm and abuse; and Georgina Lock's outrageously quirky and hilarious new TV sitcom about Osama bin Laden and a group of his hapless cronies. It's been great fun to read the first drafts of these works and, because there's always something useful we can all say about possible improvements to the scripts, it's exciting to think that in some small way we are contributing in the genesis of some great productions to come.

Last night I attended the Studio's quarterly spoken word event where members and guests get a chance to perform their written work in front of an audience. I've performed my work here before on several occasions, but last night I had the pleasure of being a member of the audience. It was a super evening with some very interesting stuff being read. Top of the bill was guest artist Sophie Woolley, fresh from her success in Channel 4's 'Cast Offs'. She performed an astonishing monologue about betrayal and loneliness - all the more remarkable because Sophie is totally deaf which must make it so difficult getting the comic timing right, when she can't hear the audience's reaction. And the reaction was one of hilarity and pure joy. She is brilliant. Irvine Welsh (of 'Trainspotting' fame) described her satirical play 'When to Run' as "a stunning, electrifying show full of imagination and verve". A magical evening.

And now I have my lovely daughter (also called Sophie) and her boyfriend staying with me - so there's heaps more fun to come. Hopefully, dear Reader, it won't be too long before I can recount the details of this on here. I'm ending again with another promise (to myself as well as to you) that my next blog will follow shortly. If it doesn't, you can be assured that it's only because I have again become mired in the drudgery of daily tasks. Let's hope not.

Goodnight, Sweet Prince

2011-02-09T21:35:00.004Z

What strange times I'm living through. I've been trying to lead a more sedentary life recently and have only been out on the town for a handful of times in the last two weeks. I must confess that last Friday was probably the biggest hiccough in the plan, when I drank enough red wine to wash down a large cow with, and my poor head certainly woke up to the full horror of that on Saturday morning. But apart from that specific excursion, my outings have been somewhat moderate by earlier standards, at least. I've been going to bed early, swathing my face in lavender oil (to aid good sleep), and reading a book to aid my rest. Why then have I been repeatedly tormented by the most bizarre, disturbing and (yes) cruel dreams every night?

My Great Aunt Dolores used to say that our dreams were evidence that none of us really exists. She said that the old religious ideas that dreams were god's way of talking to us were a load of old codswallop. She was more akin to the Greeks' theory that dreams came from within the self, but she took the idea even further in some ways, although stopping short of Plato's claim that dreams were 'communications from the soul'. Dolores's theory was that when we become unconscious (i.e. when we sleep), we are at once tapped into the consciousness of the Universe and that our dreams are merely the collective babble that emanates from that consciousness. From this she deduced that as individuals, we don't exist. Her claim was that the cacophony of voices that our mangled, incomprehensible dreams reveal to us is merely evidence that we are all 'One'. Our conscious physical selves are too trapped in our own egos to tune into the real collective mind (she said), and only when we sleep do we release our egos and slide into the deluge of combined communication. Dolores claimed that none of us really thinks as an individual, but that we all think as a single entity. Hence, her assertion that none of us really exists in the way that our waking worlds would have us believe. Many people have suggested that my Great Aunt Dolores was bonkers, although I have to say that this wasn't usually because of her philosophical views.

However, I remember a time when the two of us were travelling through North America and we stayed for a while with a group of Navajo Indians (Native Americans to you; Red Indians to my somewhat anachronistic aunt). This particular tribe has a tradition where dreams are considered vital to the understanding of life and nature, and during our stay they bored the pants off Dolores each morning by recounting the previous night's dreams to one other at breakfast (breakfast - by the way - consisted of hash browns, waffles drooling with maple syrup, pork roll, eggs and coffee). Hogwash, she called it - and told them so. Self-indulgent hogwash. She so insulted them with her assertion that dreams were nothing more than the channelling of all human thought - and nothing to do with messages from the gods - that they threw us out of their community, but not before we had been forced to buy a whole range of turquoise (plastic) jewellery and some rather tacky wacky 'dream-catchers' which are constructed like spiders' webs to be hung above the bed at night to prevent evil dreams from entering our sleep. I still use mine, although I don't know why I bother, because I still have nightmares.

When I next write to you, dear reader, I'll tell you about the time that Dolores managed to insult a whole group of Chinese people by telling them that whereas the rest of the world was frightened by China's communism, there would eventually come a time when the world would only be concerned about China's capitalism. This was in the 1970s and Dolores's prediction seemed farcical to say the least. When I asked her how she could possibly have made such a preposterous prophecy, she replied that not only does none of us exist - neither does time. "I heard it in a dream, dear boy," she said. "We all have this information within us. It's just that most people - like you - choose not to let their waking egos listen."

This is why I think my Great Aunt was so fearless. Because she believed that she was part of some huge universal consciousness, she believed too that she was immortal. Unfortunately, as her excursion over Niagara Falls in a barrel some years later proved, she wasn't.

Life Is A Bed Of Roses

2011-01-31T13:39:00.003Z

Oh my, how I hate cleaning the shower. My shower's role in life is to clean ME, so why should I return the compliment? It should be able to clean itself, the lazy fucker. So, having got that off my chest, what else is there to tell you, dear reader? Well, all of life is a struggle (or so the Buddhists would have us believe) and it has been just thus in recent days. However, I am slowly getting my pathetic life into some sort of order - I completed both my VAT Return (very complicated this quarter) and my Tax Return this week. This involved wading laboriously through knee-deep paperwork and bending my head around a maelström of figures (most of which started out as incorrect), until I had a semblance of a realistic financial picture. The wonderful feeling of relief though, when it's all finished, is a joy to experience. As a child I used to suffer from excruciating migraines - the pain was so bad that I often just wanted to kill myself - but the relief when the pain had finally dissipated was so luxuriant that waking up from the horror of it would give me a renewed love of life. And that's how I feel this week.

It's been a bit of a social whirl again recently. I should point out that I am meant to be moderating my lifestyle at the moment, and so have been trying hard to impose some rules on myself. I've been having some early nights with little or no alcohol, and I have sometimes resisted the feral call of the social scene and remained within my apartment (during one celebrated sojourn I realized that I hadn't spoken to another human being in over 36 hours). But there are many demands on my time, and all too often I am just too weak to resist. I like seeing my friends though, so it is unreasonable to think that I can become a total recluse. On Friday I went to see the film 'The Black Swan' and subsequently created a furore on Facebook when I had the temerity to slam the film. I simply didn't enjoy it - I felt that it was cheap and clichéd, and I didn't think much to the acting either. Most people I know have declared me as wrong - and perhaps I am - but if I didn't enjoy it, I can't pretend that I did.

The remainder of this weekend was passed in a haze of drunken revelry - two separate parties and several other general eating and drinking events. If I had saved up all the money that I have misspent on alcohol over the years, I could afford several skiing holidays and would be living in a much more sumptuous apartment than this one, I can tell you. Of course, there are many other important things I could use the money on, but these two items are of particular concern to me at the moment. This is the first year in many when I don't have a skiing trip planned, and this has caused me to yearn for the thrill of the slopes. Unfortunately, few of my friends ski (and my normal skiing chums decided this year to make arrangements that didn't suit me), so I have nobody to go with - even if I could afford it. And this apartment is getting me down too. It has suddenly become far too small - especially as I am sorting out my possessions from my other house and continue to bring more and more items of detritus from there to here. I am knee-deep in boxes and spare furniture, whereas I should be heading for a more minimalist lifestyle. Oh hell and spite! I really should get myself sorted soon.

January has rushed itself to an early conclusion, with little achieved. But as I said above, I do have a renewed excitement for life and so I'm convinced that February will be better. February - usually the month in which I go skiing. Grrr. Now I've made myself unhappy again. Doh!

Whadda Mistekka To Make!

2011-01-23T14:41:00.003Z

What a great feeling it is, to be living in the power of 'now'. I was thinking the other day about the various mistakes I've made along the way (and there have been some, let me tell you), and wondering how different my life might have been had I not made those mistakes. It's easy to live with regret sometimes but then on more careful reflection, one realizes that none of it really matters because none of it (the speculative scenarios, that is) happened, and so therefore there is absolutely no point in worrying about it. What happened, happened.

The very best we can do with our lives is to enjoy what we are doing now, and not to worry about how we got here. We should resolve, of course, to try to make sure that whichever highway stretches out before us, is the correct one - but there are no guarantees that it will be, of course. Start here, start now - it can be done. The road ahead is clear - we have nothing to hit but the heights (as the song goes).

What started me thinking about this was an entry I read in my diary - written when I was just seventeen. I am preparing to clear out all the detritus from my old house in readiness for selling it, and I came across a box of my old diaries in the attic. Fascinating stuff - but it's all in the past. This particular entry read: "I think I've decided what I want to do as a career. I want to be a journalist." You don't need me to tell you, gentle reader, that it never happened. However, a couple of years after the diary entry, and while I was still at university, I went for an interview with the Editor of the Nottingham Evening Post when I was at home on holiday. I can recall this incident with alarming clarity. I was on my way to the train station to return to Oxford and thought I'd do the interview before catching the train. As such, I had a small suitcase with me and, in my youthful exuberance, didn't think that it would matter that I was dressed in my student attire.

The Editor called me in to his shambolic office. He was a fat man, sweating in the smoke-filled room, and the skin covering his face was a glistening and translucent pink, and somewhat stretched. His first question to me was why I had thought it necessary to bring a small suitcase into an interview, and why also did I think it was appropriate to turn up in a T-shirt and jeans? His curt response and beady, cynical stare did little to reassure me when I explained to him that I was on my way back to university and therefore couldn't be bothered to put on a suit that wouldn't be worn again for months. Oh, the innocence of youth! He then went on to tell me how awful it would be to start as a trainee journalist - the hours were long and unsociable; the work largely unrewarding ('Do you think you could whip up sufficient enthusiasm for something like the Arnold & Redhill Flower Show?'). Then came the stinger: The salary was £4 per week. WTF? I had been earning £8 per week working as an assistant in a pet shop during my holidays - he must have seen the look of sheer incredulity upon my arrogant, university-educated face. I didn't realize at the time that he too had once started out at the bottom, and had probably started on a wage much less than £4 per week himself.

Without showing any enthusiasm whatsoever, I thanked him for his time and left to catch my train. And here's where the sorry tale becomes muddled and fruitless. I sat on the train thinking about how on earth anyone could manage on only half of what I'd been earning - even if (as would have been the case) I were living with my parents? No, I decided, he was taking the piss. Far better to stay on at university, get my degree, and forge a career for myself that was much better paid. I wasn't naive enough though, not to recognize that my lack of servility and my lack of passion for his profession would hardly have impressed him anyway, so I assumed that the choice had already been made. Imagine my shock when, a few days later, he rang to offer me the job. How desperate must he have been to fill the role? I declined, and forgot all about it.

How short-sighted we are when we are young! All I could think about was how (if I'd wanted to) I could earn double what he was offering, just by selling rabbits, mice and guinea-pigs to the unsuspecting unwashed of Nottingham. It never entered my immature and stupid head that journalistic training on a provincial newspaper is the bedrock of the craft upon which so many of our household media names have based their careers. All I could think of was that at that time, it cost £2 in the pub to get drunk, so how on earth was I going to survive on the wages I was being offered? Now, of course, it's difficult to resist the temptation to imagine 'What if...?' but as I've already said - it's useless to look back. Yes, my life would have followed a totally different route from the one I eventually followed, but such a thing is impossible to think about because the route I did take has brought me exactly to this point, now. Anything else, and I wouldn't be writing this.

We only have now, and followed by what is to become. Nothing else. Plain and simple. No regrets.

Battle of the Sexes

2011-01-18T10:06:00.004Z

Researchers have apparently discovered the reasons behind why men die (on average) at an earlier age than women. Statistics have been gathered from thirty European countries and these have revealed some interesting trends. There have been lots of theories put forward previously - such as the assumption that men work much harder than women, and therefore wear themselves out earlier (this seems somewhat tenuous, to say the least); or that men are more reluctant to seek help for suspected illnesses than are women, thereby presenting themselves with additional health risks. Sir Donald Acheson - the former Chief Medical Officer in Britain - once declared that it was simply a question of "hormones". He says that it is men's "rash and venturesome natures" that renders them the real weaker sex. However, this latest research has dismissed all of that and has concluded that the reason why men die younger is attributed to two main causes: Booze and fags.

Apparently, men drink more and smoke more than their female counterparts. Hmm, alcohol and tobacco are undoubtedly big killers - that can't be denied - but the question is this: Why do men drink and smoke more than women? Is it because they work harder than women and therefore need more release from stress, or is it because of their "rash and venturesome natures" that causes them to ignore the risks? If so, then Donald Acheson was correct - as are some other pundits from the past. Perhaps women are just smarter than men, and it's therefore not a question of taking fewer risks, but more one of being better at risk management? It would be interesting to learn the proportion between the sexes of the biggest bonus earners in the banking system - for we are told that the bigger the risk, the bigger the bonus if the deal comes off.

Perhaps women are simply more responsible in their outlook, and thereby give more consideration to their actions? The fact that the bankers whose risks fail don't appear to face any consequences from that (other than a loss of the bonus) could indicate that men are more selfish, and less worried, about the damage that their bad actions can do to others (recklessness again)?

All this leads me to think that the guys who never take risks - for example those who prefer to under-perform in steady, mundane jobs - should presumably (statistically) live longer. And as a counterpoint to that, the guys who are the real risk-takers will (statistically) shorten their lives by a considerable amount. In the case of the greedy, bonus-hungry bankers, let's hope so.

I have to confess that I drink and smoke too much and that also, I am a man. This puts me in real danger of shortneing my life. My dear father neither drank nor smoked, nor took any other real risks, and he lived until he was ninety. Does this prove a point? I'd be interested to learn too, whether guys who change sex and so become women suddenly develop a more responsible attitude to alcohol and tobacco and also, become more attuned to their responsibilities when taking risks? In theory, according to Donald Acheson, they should (if it really is all about the "hormones" like he said).

I feel a research project coming on. I'm going to apply for some funding for this - it's crucial that we understand whether swapping sexes also means swapping our sense of self-preservation, our sense of responsibility, and our willingness to take risks. What's more important though, is that I need the money from the funding application to pay for my next bout of booze and fags. Bring it on!

And... Action!

2011-01-12T11:16:00.003Z

My 'Things To Do' list now stretches to fifty-three lines, and some of those lines are only categories (or headings) which could themselves be expanded into several more lines of objectives. Hmm, it's quite a daunting list really - and not just because of its length. So, the thing to do is to begin an assault on the challenges before me, and not to waiver in the face of adversity. Years ago, I adopted the maxim "Action Cures Fear" which, if you think about it, is the simplest approach to anything that anyone can ever make.

We all fear doing certain things - maybe it's jumping out of an aeroplane; holding a snake; telling a friend that her bum really does look big in that; or perhaps just returning a faulty item to the shop where the manager is so intimidating that we fail to remember the axiom that the 'customer is always right'. Well, although I'm not the first to claim it (for that honour goes, I think, to Franklin D Roosevelt), but I am a firm believer in the adage that: "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself". If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Because we fear it, we can prevaricate and procrastinate about taking all manner of actions - but all we are doing by stalling, is prolonging that fear. Of course, there may be a good reason for being fearful of something - jumping out of a plane, for instance, can be a frightening thing to do - but until we do it, the fear is all we have. Take the action, and the fear is instantly dismissed.

So, staring at my 'Things To Do' list, quaking in my boots at the multifarious and daunting tasks before me, helps nobody - least of all myself. All I have to do is take action, sort the list into an order of priority, and make a start at the top.

Item No. 1: Quit smoking. This is indeed frightening - but once done, the fear will have gone. All it requires is not to light another cigarette. If I do light another cigarette, then it will only be satisfying the craving that the previous cigarette created. This will in turn only create a craving that nothing but a further cigarette will fulfil. Break the cycle, and it's done.

Item No. 2: Complete my on-line tax return. Terrifying, to be sure - but I have all the information to hand, so all that is required is to make a start and hey presto, it's done! Fear gone.

Item No. 3: Design "New Life". Oh goodness, this is such a daunting task that my legs have turned to jelly just at the thought of it. What sort of New Life do I want? How do I achieve it? Perhaps the first thing to do is to make a list of all the things I need to do in order to bring about the New Life? Hang on a minute, haven't I already done that? Oh dear, ticking off one item on the list only creates a new fear that ticking off the next item will suppress. Another vicious circle. Or is it a case that simply tackling one item on the list will only bring about the creation of another, newer list of fear.

This is getting ridiculous. Perhaps I should just do nothing? Or maybe I should write a blog about it? Yes, writing a blog is fear-dispelling action of some sort, surely? Of course it is, so - let's make a start....

I'm feeling better already. Action cures fear, indeed.

My Round or Yours?

2011-01-09T12:04:00.004Z

Welcome back, dear reader! That is, if you even want to come back after such a long absence of reportage. I can't explain it - but you have probably guessed that the Christmas festivities had something to do with it. Well, that and illness too. I had rather a shock on Boxing Day when all of a sudden I had a nose bleed - the first ever in my life. This was followed by several others over the next few days leading me to conclude, naturally, that death was imminent. Add to that, an inexplicable backache that was so severe that I could hardly get out of bed on one occasion and well, reporting my daily detritus to you, dear reader, became a low priority I'm afraid. I am happy to inform you that both ailments have now largely diminished.

But my worries are small compared with those of others, it seems. This country and the entire world seem to be unhappy at the moment, with troubles aplenty. Floods, shootings, forest fires, plagues, corruption, murders and deceit - all are features of our daily exposure to the news. We could all have been forgiven for struggling to raise the enthusiasm to wish each other a 'Happy New Year' if it hadn't been for the copious amounts of champagne that was available on December 31st.

The mention of alcohol brings me to a new matter that I have been contemplating. I'm not usually one for New Year Resolutions - the passing of New Year is, after all, just an arbitrary date in the Christian calendar with no proven significance to any of us - but because this time of year brings with it a time for reflection, I have decided to impose a new maxim upon myself. That is, the next time someone offers to buy me a drink, I shall refuse. Now, you will already know by now that I am far from being a fan of Conservative Leader David Cameron, but it is he who has given me the idea for this new regime.

David Cameron recently announced that in his view, part of this country's binge-drinking problem is caused by our culture of buying rounds in the pub. Poor David, he still doesn't get it entirely (i.e. he doesn't really understand how the low-life of Britain is motivated), but he has hit upon something that has been troubling me for some time. The tradition of buying rounds in the bar does present one of two (or three) difficult issues to me: Either I end up drinking too much; spending too much; or both. Here is a typical scenario: I enter the bar to find three or four friends seated therein, all with near-empty glasses before them. The immediate choice is to offer to replenish these said glasses whilst ordering my own drink. This is the accepted course of action in so-called polite society. The fact that perhaps on this particular occasion I might have intended to pass only a single-drink sojourn in the bar is uneasily shelved.

I am not a miserly person - I would hope not anyway - but it is surely human nature to seek fairness and balance in such situations. So, the inevitable outcome is to sit it out until the next round is offered, and thereby to accept a drink. This is now drink number two, when I had intended to stay for only one. Unless the occasion has been so planned, it is unlikely that I will want drink number three and so shortly, I will take my leave. Balance of expenditure: negative. On another occasion I may be with a friend who has already bought me a first drink. Suddenly we are joined by another friend who insists on replenishing our glasses. Drink number two. Again, I might not wish to have a third drink, but decency forces me to stay for a third as I offer to repay the generosity of the latecomer. Balance of expenditure: roughly equal. Balance of drinking: unnecessarily excessive. In both scenarios, an unwelcome outcome.

The solution, of course, is never to accept a drink from anyone, and never to offer to buy one for anyone else either. Such self sufficiency would then result in a balance both of expenditure and of alcoholic intake. A perfect solution, no? I would be able to pace myself according to my desires and to the time (and funds) available. Nobody can argue that this does not make perfect sense, can they?

But they will. Such is the peer pressure of our long drinking tradition that my actions will probably appear mean-spirited and selfish. Furthermore, some people will undoubtedly be offended that their bonhomie and goodwill, when offering me a drink, have been snubbed. This is a very mis-placed sentiment, and one that I shall try to dismantle as I begin my crusade for more sensible drinking. I'm terribly serious about this and just hope that when I begin, nobody will accuse me of being a Tory. That would be worse than standing accused of being an alcoholic spendthrift. Ah-ha, those days are finally over.

Countdown!

2010-12-19T10:27:00.004Z

We've all had those dreams (some may call them nightmares) where we are trying to reach a deadline of some kind, but are being repeatedly thwarted by constant setbacks, prevarications, delays and frustrations. In my experience, I usually waken before the deadline is ever achieved, thereby leaving me with a sense of being unfulfilled and saddened. Such dreams are quite common, I know, and thankfully that's all they are - just dreams. However, I regret to inform you, dear reader, that the reality of my daily life has been trapped in exactly such a format for the past two weeks. I've had a massive deadline to meet (completing the sale of my late father's house), but as the unstoppable date hurtled towards me with the force of a runaway train, I was presented with obstacle after immovable obstacle. It was all horribly frustrating, and totally time-gobbling. Hence the absence of a recent posting on here - with apologies.

And now, another deadline fast approaches to cause us all continued and crushing stress. I'm talking about the debacle that is Christmas, of course. Even though I always claim to dislike Christmas, nevertheless I usually get carried along by the festivities and make a reasonable stab at complying with the demands of polite society. I normally prepare appropriate lists and draw up suitable plans to ensure that all the accepted milestones are met. I buy cards and write them, slipping in a newsy note to those whom I haven't seen for a while; I buy and wrap a series of gifts for a select list of close loved ones; and I stock up on alcohol and food in readiness for cheery guests. But this year, because of the horrid tasks that have befallen me in recent weeks, and despite there being only five days to go, I have done none of that.

Those of you who were reading this blog a year ago will remember that I posted (across several days) an account of a dismal Christmas I once spent in the company of my Great Aunt Dolores at the home of the Earl of Maugersbury. That year we had little more than a tin of spam and a bottle of cheap brandy with which to celebrate, and so I feel that if I survived that, I can survive this year's rather hasty last minute arrangements. For a start, I simply won't be sending any cards to anyone. If you think about it, nobody will probably notice until mid-January anyway, by which time I will have had the opportunity to drop them a New Year's message explaining why they were missed off the list. As for the gifts - well, some people apparently rush out on Christmas Eve and purchase everything then, and as I have a very limited number of people to buy for, that idea seems both feasible and achievable. I can pop into a supermarket in the week and get the required provisions, and I have a little foot-high Christmas tree in a box which I can whip out by way of decorations, and hey presto - I shall be ready!

The only fly in the ointment to this cunning plan is this: Because of it being (as we are told) the 'Festive Season', there are countless other distractions to create obstacles to next Saturday's runaway train. I'm talking about all the invitations to parties, dinners and drinks that come flying my way at this time of year. It already started about a week ago and I have been out on the town every evening since. The coming week offers no respite from this either - most days offer clashes of social functions too, such that I shall be an exhausted alcoholic at the end of it all. Add to that the various financial, domestic and business chores that face me this week, and it's going to be quite a ride.

And the tear-jerking tragedy to all of this is that, as ever, I shall be taking that ride alone. Oh yes, surrounded by dozens of lovely friends and acquaintances, true - but as I slam my front door at the end of each hectic and dazzling day, I shall still be quite, quite alone. That's probably the real nightmare in all of this.

It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside......

Oh, How We Suffer!

2010-12-06T14:41:00.005Z

So, we have survived the last week of cold weather and snow. Here in Nottingham, nestled as we are in the warm bosom of the cosseted Midlands, we rarely get extreme conditions - and so it proved to be this time. Other parts of the country suffered far worse disruption than we did, with much heavier falls of snow. I delight in this privilege; although I appear to be in the minority in this, if the comments on Facebook are anything to go by. It would seem that nearly everyone was hoping for a bigger dump of snow than we actually received, and most were expressing childlike joy when the first flakes appeared from the sky, followed by miserable disappointment when the first covering was deemed as insufficient, and when the second covering disappeared within a few wet hours. Don't get me wrong - I do find snow to be visually appealing, and of course it is most welcome when I've spent money on travelling to Europe for a skiing holiday - but when business has to be conducted, snow is an absolute pain in the neck.

However, there is another area of winter life from which even here in the Midlands we cannot escape; and one which for me is even more difficult to endure. I'm talking about the Festival of Christmas. I hate the whole thing and only ever used to acquiesce to its pervasive presence in the past because it meant that I would get a week off work (in the old days, when I used to work for a living, that is). Apart from that, as far as I am concerned, the entire event is an unwelcome and unnecessary inconvenience . That the whole laborious process begins in early November is an even bigger irritant - it's as if people have nothing better to do than to wish part of their year away. Messages appearing on Facebook immediately after Bonfire Night such as: "Only eight weeks to go until the big day!" or "Wooh! Heard Christmas Carols in the Broadmarsh today! Yey!" are pure anathema to me. Then we get the endless pressure to spend more than we ought to; the shops start filling up with mindless vulgar crowds from early December; invitations to more and more pointless festive functions start flooding in; and then worst of all - we are continually exhorted to 'cheer up', because it's "Christmas".

Cheer up? Why should the impending arrival of some futile commercial festival, totally lacking in taste and sensibility, induce us to 'cheer up'? December is always a busy time for me anyway, so the last thing I need is more pressure piling on - pressure to buy Christmas cards and presents; pressure to plan menus and shopping; pressure to clean my apartment in readiness for entertaining the many visitors who will descend upon me. There is nothing 'cheerful' about any of this - it all represents nothing more than a burden of disagreeable chores in my view. And for what? Christmas means nothing to me - even the Christians don't know what it's all about anymore. It's just an excuse to be over-indulgent, over-sentimental and over-excited.

However, there is a tiny twinkle of clemency for all of this - something that has slowly crept up on me, unspoken. My two lovely daughters will be spending the holiday with me this year. Arriving on Christmas Eve, they will stay with me here in the apartment and we shall be spending the 'Big Day' here together. This will be truly delightful - even though they might be disappointed by the total lack of Christmas decorations (I won't be putting them up), we will nevertheless ensconce ourselves within these four walls, eat, drink and play backgammon, or some similar diversion. We shall no doubt have champagne in the morning, and whisky with The Queen on Radio 4. I might even buy some crackers - the sort that go with cheese, that is, not the sort you pull open in order to make yourself look ridiculous in a flimsy paper hat, or delight in a plastic water-pistol (that doesn't work) and a cheap, tacky joke.

This year (2010) has been particularly unpleasant for me so far - and its final closing cloak of despair (December) couldn't really be any worse. All I have to do though, is to shut my eyes, hold on tight, and wait for the arrival of my girls. Ooh, I'm getting quite excited about it after all!

All together now: "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...."

Je m'accuse!

2010-11-30T10:53:00.005Z

Oh dear, gentle reader - I have been neglecting you again. I've just been rather busy recently, completing year-end accounts for two of the companies for which I am financially responsible. So, I've been knee-deep in paperwork, invoices and receipt, and wishing that I could afford a PA or similar - someone who would perform all these tedious tasks for me. I seem to spend most of my time on administrative matters, and there's hardly any time for being creative. There was a time when I would write something every day (I'm not talking about this blog here) because it was almost a need in me to do so - now I meet up with writer friends and they ask me if I'm writing anything at the moment, and I have to answer "No, nothing".

This simply won't do at all. I still have that need to write, and so to frustrate that need by continually becoming submerged in the burden of administrative matters (and other work), is inflicting an unhealthy amount of stress on any sense of well-being that I might otherwise achieve. It's simply not fair - and if I had a dummy in my mouth right now, I would spit it right out. The trouble is, in today's accusatory society where we are always trying to seek redress from some authority or other when things go wrong, in this situation there is nobody to blame but myself. I take on far too much responsibility - I always have - and the result from this is that I am constantly chasing my tail trying to satisfy all the various people and organisations to whom/which I have made some previous commitment.

It's not as if I receive any recognition or thanks for most of what I do. On the contrary. Usually, I can be minding my own business and just trying to get on with things, when all of a sudden I find myself caught up in accusations and recriminations about all manner of things, most of which I was previously not even aware. It's almost as if other people instinctively know that when something goes wrong for them, and they need to cast around for someone else at whom to throw the culpability, they see me as an easy touch. Everything - whether I am responsible for it or not - seems to stick to me.

Take this morning, for example. My landlord had arranged for some of the wooden flooring in my hallway to be replaced. There was a leak from next door's bathroom which had caused some of the flooring in my apartment to become warped. This sounds quite a simple exercise, I'm sure, and nothing (you would think) for me to worry my little head about. Until, that is, the builder had finished his job. The section of flooring that he had ripped up with such hunky, masculine energy was subsequently replaced by wood which clearly doesn't match the original. The result is a complete mess. Well, it's a neat enough job (the builder was very conscientious and very thorough), but the visual outcome is a stylistic disaster. My landlord, of course, blames me for this. He thinks I should have barred entry to the builder chappy, or at least prevented him from despoiling the former clean lines of the hall. The problem was that I had to leave the apartment while he was doing it - I had a committee meeting to attend (another of my many commitments that yesterday, I could have done without) - and by the time I had returned, the evil deed was complete. I could hardly ask him to rip it all up and start again; the poor lad was exhausted, and it wasn't his fault either - he was only working with the equipment with which he had been supplied.

No, this is clearly my fault again. Everything always is. As I write this, I can see from my window that it is snowing heavily outside. Hmm, this will no doubt cause all sorts of problems for the transport and communication infrastructure of this city, and everyone will start complaining and looking around for someone to blame. I wonder who's sorry head their beady eyes will settle upon this time? Yes, you've guessed it - little old me!

It's not fair!

Irritating People

2010-11-22T12:23:00.004Z

So in my last posting, gentle reader, I said that I would be getting angry with myself. I haven't done that yet - although sadly, I have been getting angry with other people. This is not good - it is neither beneficial to one's health, nor is it useful for attracting good karma. The trouble is, some people can simply be so irritating sometimes, and then it becomes difficult to avoid the red mist descending before one's eyes. I'm not entirely sure why I let other people's silly actions affect me but just occasionally, I do. Oh, I know what you're thinking - you think that a truly good person would overlook the foibles and iniquities of others; he would dismiss other people's shortcomings and failings with an optimistically indulgent approach. And you'd be quite correct in this, dear reader - which means, therefore, that I am not a truly good person. We must aim to correct this unfortunate position as soon as possible.

Right - here's the plan: First, go to sleep every night with a coat hanger in my mouth so that I always wake up with a smile on my face. Next, give up the booze so that I never get my otherwise razor-sharp judgement clouded again (awareness is everything). After that, have my ego surgically removed (can I get that on the NHS?) so that the fragile shell of my so-called dignity never gets cracked again. And finally, move to another city where none of these irritating, toxic people whom I encounter here will presumably be encountered! Hmm, I somehow wonder whether my approach to all of this is actually the right one? On reflection, my cunning, brilliant, amazing four-point plan does seem a tad shaky, to say the least.

So how else can I rectify this position? Well, a dear friend of mine gave me one of those lucky cat things the other day. She said it would 'change my life' (and presumably she means for the better), so perhaps I ought to forget the plan and just rely on my new paw-waving companion to save me? I actually feel a little better already, just thinking about it. In fact, I'm waving at you now, dear reader - can you feel the benign benevolence flowing your way? I hope so. Ooh, this is going to easy.

I wonder what my Great-Aunt Dolores (she who was run over by a lorry but survived, and who later took up playing the xylophone, only to die within two years by throwing herself over Niagara Falls in a barrel) would have made of this? Dolores's motto when faced with irritating people was: "Don't get mad, get murderous" (she once bit the ear off a woman who had stepped off the escalator in front of her and had failed to move out of the way quickly enough), so I doubt if she'd approve of my lucky cat at all. She once gave me a .25 Beretta Revolver as a Christmas present, so she would definitely have viewed my arm-waving lucky cat as rather "cissy".

However, I still think I'll give it a go. I might also stare at a rather beautiful painting of a cat - and I think I know where I can find one - and reflect on the peace and harmony therein.

Rise Up! Rise Up!

2010-11-15T12:34:00.003Z

Amidst a week of turmoil and despair, there comes some hope. Protestors against the increase in student tuition fees in England rose up last week and caused violence. This is (despite violence being something that one should always condemn) both a good thing, and a bad thing. It is a good thing because it illustrates that the British character is not quite as lily-livered as our French counterparts would have us believe, but it is also a bad thing because by rioting, the students have inadvertently exposed the manipulative nature of our evil government. You might argue that this too is a good thing, but my point is that when such violence erupts, it becomes all too easy to distract attention away from the real cause of the disquiet. I suspect that the attack on Conservative HQ was tolerated (perhaps even encouraged) by the authorities because it meant that any outrage was then directed at the mob, rather than at the government's disgraceful policies. So, it is my view that last week's incident was actually welcomed by the government (who deliberately under-policed the event) because the sure way to silence people who are saying something you don't like, is to put them in the wrong.

But enough of politics. What of other matters that have graced the previous week? I had a delightful visit from my daughter Sophie and her two lovely friends. The city of Nottingham displayed its magnificent charms to the visitors - charms that included a performance from one of our best bands (Long Dead Signal); an exhibition of contemporary art as part of the British Art Show at both the Gallery and at Nottingham Castle; a bizarre tribute to Rolf Harris who popped into the Davenport Shop of Originality to pose for photographs with a group of didgeridoo players; plus shopping, eating and drinking galore. We had a marvellous time - but as ever, it was all over too quickly and my visitors have now returned to their respective countries, leaving me to ponder my dismal future, alone again. I have been looking this morning at my 'list of things to do' and it is as long and as daunting as ever. Priority number one is to find some work because since taking a couple of months off to deal with my late father's estate, I have had no income at all, and unfortunately more than the usual amount of expenditure. As Mr Micawber was always so fond of telling us, this does not create a good balance for remaining solvent.

And what of affairs of the heart? Ha! That's a laugh - I think my days of romance are long over. This is a shame because I do try to take care of myself, and friends tell me that I'm still reasonably well-preserved; that I dress well; and that I'm a lively and interesting person with a caring heart. My friends tell me that I would make quite a good 'catch' for someone. Hmm, be that as it may, I still don't seem to be able to make a connection with the right people. I don't suppose there's anything wrong in being single - in fact, up until very recently I was always declaring that the single status is exactly what I prefer - but I do sometimes miss the easy comfort of always having someone around to share life's pleasures with. I guess I feel a little bit as if I'm being left behind. Most people I know are in relationships; even my ex-wife has moved on and is planning to set up home with her new partner. Also, up until only one year ago I still had two parents - and now I am orphaned. I do feel a certain sense of abandonment about my current life, and wonder what will become of me? Of course, all this leads me to conclude that more than ever before, it is now time for a change. Change is good - apparently, the universe has to move things out to allow the better and more wonderful things to appear. We are told not to resist change because change means that something even better is coming through. This is most encouraging - and most welcome too!

So, maybe I need to launch a riot on my own life? Smash a few of the windows that look into my comfort zone; tear down the trappings and hangings of my current defensive thought? Why yes, as I've already said in this posting - sometimes, violence can be good; sometimes it is necessary to bring about a change. Watch out, gentle reader - I am about to get angry with myself!

Inappropriate Clothing

2010-11-03T20:24:00.005Z

I actually don't like Hallowe'en, so why I agreed to get dressed up in the most ridiculously undignified costume on Sunday, I don't know. I had an idea that I should attend the party at the Davenport Shop of Originality dressed as a warlock. However, not wishing to spend good money on an appropriate costume (I'm terribly mean like that), I decided to improvise with items to hand. I have a magnificent authentic Chinese kimono which - adorned as it is in shimmering black satin, adorned with a resplendent red and gold dragon across the back - I reckoned would pass for a warlock's magic cloak. I painted my fingernails a malevolent dark purple (quite evil-looking), and the outfit seemed to be coming to shape.

The mistake, I think, was adding a green satin basque and a witch's hat encrusted with pink, glittery spiders. Somehow, these items seemed to steal some of the darkness from the image I was trying to create. The final result (because I couldn't resist going completely over the top by applying copious amounts of eyeliner, thereby totally spoiling the effect), was that I resembled something half-way between a character in La Cage aux Folles, and Dame Edna. Oh sigh, these things just never seem to go right for me. Nevertheless, the party was huge fun and as the alcohol flowed more generously as the afternoon wore on, I gradually began to divest myself of various items until - by the time the shop had closed and we had headed off to the pub - I was dressed in normal weekday clothes, but still had on the eye makeup. This must have puzzled the somewhat sober and perfectly correct barman who served me later, although he didn't bat an eyelid.

I've never been good at getting it right where the correct attire for the occasion is concerned. I remember a particular incident when I once attended a ball many years ago at some Embassy or other in Lisbon. It was when I was working as a cabin-boy on a Swedish container ship. Our regular route was from Stockholm to Cape Town, stopping first at Lisbon and then various ports on the West African coast along the way. For some strange reason, I wasn't allocated my own bunk on the ship, but had to share a cabin with the Lithuanian chef - he told me that it was because I was his 'favourite' and he was always very generous towards me, although I was so naive at the time that I didn't even realize that some of the 'rewards' he gave me were actually illegal sexual practices.

Anyway, there we were in Lisbon one night, and Vitali (for that was his name) said he had procured two tickets for a posh embassy ball to be held ashore. He had managed to bribe one of the officers on board to lend us a couple of dress naval uniforms, so off we set for what I was hoping would be a very grand night of elegance and luxury. I felt so handsome in my crisp white uniform with its glittering gold buttons; I felt sure that all the ladies would want to dance with me. I was very good-looking in those days (if a little boyish) and had naturally blonde hair. We drew up outside the red-carpeted entrance of a very grand colonial-style building and were soon ushered inside by liveried footmen who I noticed were strangely wearing fishnet stockings and high heels.

Imagine my shock however, when we entered the opulent ballroom and were confronted by a scene straight out of Dante's Inferno! There were men hanging from chains in the ceiling, others were shackled in cages or strapped to racks, some were being led around the room on dog-leads, and nearly everyone was barely clothed. What clothes most of them were wearing seemed to comprise of a few pieces of studded leather, or items of very restrictive rubber. I felt very conspicuous indeed, over-dressed as I was in my smart officer's uniform. As far as I could see, there were absolutely no ladies present, and certainly no-one was in a ball gown. What a strange ball this was. I felt rather disappointed.

Then Vitali (who had often told me always to prepare for the unexpected), suddenly ripped off his outfit with surprising ease, to reveal underneath a studded leather harness and a leather posing pouch. A man in a rubber cat-suit (crotchless, of course) then urged me to do the same, but how could I? I wasn't even wearing any normal underwear underneath my outfit, let alone anything adorned with spikes or shackles. I told him that unfortunately, however inappropriate my outfit might appear to be compared with the others, I would have to keep it on. The party was in full swing now, and drinks were pressed into my hand by Vitali, snatched from trays attached to the bare nipples of the semi-naked waiters. That looked terribly painful for them, to me.

As embarrassing as it was, I decided that I would wear my uniform for the remainder of the evening because, even though there were no ladies present, I thought it might be even more embarrassing to remove it and to stand there naked. However, Vitali had other ideas.....

I just never seem to get these things right. I might give up the whole fancy dress idea in future - I should have learned my lesson back then.

Watching The World Change

2010-10-29T09:34:00.004+01:00

Whilst listening to a programme on BBC Radio 4 the other day, I was struck by an observation that was so straightforward that it had actually passed me by. The programme was 'Saving Species' and the article was about the recent demise of some British birds. It was reported that many species of birds are in decline in this country, and the experts were putting forward various theories about why that should be. One suspect is the decline in insect life which means, of course, that there is less food for the birds to eat - hence fewer birds. There were several ecological speculations as to why insect life should be in decline, but meanwhile one scientist made the observation that you don't need expensive technical equipment to measure the volume of insect life (although of course, they do), you just need to take a drive across the country.

It's true - I hadn't noticed this myself until it was pointed out to me, but whereas twenty years ago a journey from say, Nottingham to Coventry would have resulted in the bonnet and the windscreen of my car becoming coated with the flattened corpses of dozens of insects, these days such wholesale slaughter is almost minimal. I spent this summer batting up and down the M1 motorway at high speeds, daily - but it failed to come to my attention that the death toll that such journeys had often caused in the past, had been greatly reduced. Thinking about it, I now see that to be the case.

It is very strange when we are suddenly made aware of environmental changes by things that we can witness ourselves and without needing to absorb the details of the scientists' technical data. I saw something similar a couple of years ago while I was on a skiing holiday in Argentière, France. There is a glacier in the valley, the extent of which can easily be seen with the naked eye. In the foyer of the hotel where I was staying, there was a photograph of a group of skiers taken in the 1930s. In the background of the photograph, behind the skiers' grinning faces squinting into the sun, the glacier is clearly visible. Glaciers - as you may know from your geography lessons - either grow in length, or they retreat. Comparing the scene in the photograph with the scene I had viewed earlier from the piste, it didn't take any scientist's data to tell me that the glacier had receded up the valley by at least a kilometre - in just seventy years! Quite chilling (or not, as the case may be).

So perhaps we should be wary of the mass of scientific data that we are presented with by the boffins. We often hear contradicting reports in the news - global warming is on the increase due to mankind's carelessness of consumption; global warming is not happening at all, but temperatures are just naturally fluctuating. The sun is getting hotter which strangely, will cause the earth to cool; the sun is actually cooling, which will cause the earth's gases to heat up the globe until it is out of control. It's all very contradictory and confusing - so maybe we should look with our own eyes if we want to know exactly what is happening? Well, of course there is a problem with this - sometimes, without the guidance of the experts, we run the risk of mis-interpreting the results we see. For example, if I had even noticed that the number of flies on my windscreen had reduced over the years, I might have concluded that this was as a result of the presence of more birds which were therefore eating up the normal insect supplies. This would have been wrong, of course.

I have been standing on my balcony this morning observing, the three dozen or so pigeons sitting benignly on the opposite rooftop. What does this tell me? That foodstuff for pigeons (often the detritus so carelessly cast down by the riff-raff of Nottingham) is on the increase, thereby allowing the pigeon population correspondingly to increase? Or is it simply that there are no young boys around with air-rifles anymore? Or maybe it is neither of these - perhaps it's just that one of Nottingham's many film-makers is shooting a re-make of Hitchcok's 'The Birds'?

Perhaps I should just start studying environmental issues instead, and become an expert myself? Stranger things have happened.

Join Me!

2010-10-27T13:27:00.004+01:00

I was out filming all day on Monday, which is why I didn't update my blog. It was a pleasant day, if a little tiring - there were the usual frustrations of having to wait around for hours just to achieve about five minutes of usable footage, but there are always nice people to chat to during the wait, so it was all fun. We were in what Terry Wogan used to call the 'Lost City of Leicester' - a charming city of leafy walks and pretty shopping lanes. The weather was perfect, and we were very adequately fed and watered too! So, a good day indeed.

Now I am in hiding - the mad social blur of my life has taken its toll of course, and I just need a few days of rest and recuperation. You'll be pleased to know, however, that I have been behaving myself quite well and that there are plenty of empty cells in the naughtiness spreadsheet. This is all about awareness - most of us behave badly because we are not aware of our actions. Take people who throw litter in the streets - they're not actually evil people, and they're probably not even that stupid - but they are totally unaware of what their (lazy) actions may bring about. If you could train these people to think about what will happen when they have randomly thrown down their detritus - that someone else may slip on it; that someone has to clean it up; that an animal or child might be endangered by it etc. - then they may think twice about their actions. It is like this with all types of behaviour. It is easy to be thoughtlessly rude to someone, and just as easy to say something embarrassingly stupid in front of other people, but if we simply give some thought towards the repercussions of our next act, it can have the effect of stopping us in our tracks. As with all things in life, planning is everything.

We often make errors of judgement when we are drunk. Okay, so not all of you, dear reader, will know what it is like to be drunk - so for the benefit of those who don't, I will explain: The manufacturers of alcoholic drinks put something strange into their products. I don't know what this particular ingredient is, but it has the effect (for me at least) of bringing about impaired judgement. Well, not so much impaired judgement perhaps, but definitely a lack of the ability to plan. So, when a few drinks have been taken, even though we might subconsciously know that it is inappropriate to make that mistaken sexual advance or to send that insulting text message, the mystery ingredient in the drink seems to stop us from looking beyond the act or from seeing its possible outcome. The awareness quotient becomes somehow diminished, and before we have had time to think about what we are about to do, we have done it. As I have said, planning is everything - so the trick is to begin the plan earlier than required. Instead of blithely expecting that we can plan our actions once we have drunk seventeen pints of lager, it is far better to set out by planning to drink fewer than seventeen pints of lager. It's that simple - and this way, the emergencies that usually ensue sometime later in the night, will not arise. I think that I have discovered a remarkable and unique strategy for life, and I can hardly believe that nobody has ever thought of this before.

I am going to begin a campaign of awareness for the general public. I think this might make me rather famous because I will soon be seen as a saviour of social behaviour. I see a TV show; I see national coverage; I even see a cult following. As a first step, I am going to get some badges made up:

"Drink less; err less. Plan more; fun galore!"

Kind of catchy, eh? I am a genius!

The Happiness Factor

2010-10-18T13:21:00.004+01:00

I wrote on Facebook this morning that today, Monday, is the 8th day of the week. It certainly feels like it. Last week was just so ridiculously hectic that I was barely able to cope. There were award ceremonies, launch parties, theatre trips, drinks, dinners out and dinners in - it was the most action-packed week in my diary. And it was all undertaken whilst in the grip of a debilitating illness too. My poor weak body has had no chance at all to recuperate, nor to fight off the onslaught of germs. Needless to say, there aren't too many empty cells in the naughtiness spreadsheet either. Oh dear, the shame of that!

I've also paid a few visits to the 'Davenport Shop of Originality' - a new addition to the retail scene, located in Nottingham's fashionable Flying Horse Mall. Housing an eclectic mix of design treasures, there's everything from jewellery to corsets to fabric to furniture. It's all local treasure too - just goes to show that when people think that Nottingham has nothing to offer, they are wrong because there are dozens of talented designers here, all bristling with innovation and style. The shop is attracting a lot of attention too - I'm sure I saw Vivienne Westwood browsing through the corsetry with professional interest, and on one visit I found myself rubbing shoulders with international design-guru Marcel Wanders who was showing a keen interest, it seemed, in the Davenport 'Table of Collaboration'. If he is thinking of collaborating with any of our own home-grown talent, then the shop will have done its job, and more. You should check it out if you're in the area.

In the meantime, Yours Truly is still failing spectacularly at trying to achieve anything worthwhile. I am meant to be finishing my novel, finishing my play about the 'Great Tullamore Balloon Fire Disaster of 1785' (in which the entire theatre has to razed to the ground for effect - it's a 'one night only' play in most cities), finishing my film script in time for the centennial anniversary of the Sarajevo shooting, and a whole host of other writing projects. Instead, I seemingly produce nothing at all. The only thing I do seem to be any good at these days, is upsetting people. I am forced to make more apologies than there are grains of sand on the beach which is, if you think about it, unsustainable behaviour. Whereas most people do forgive me for my misdemeanours, it is regrettable and reprehensible that I should make them in the first place. It doesn't take a psychologist to understand that bad behaviour stems from only one thing - unhappiness. Yes, gentle reader, this may come as a shock to you but I am deeply unhappy with myself. Few people would recognize this since I am usually fairly good at presenting a sunny disposition to the world - but Smokey Robinson had it about right, didn't he, when he sang his song?

So, let us instead make today, Monday, the FIRST day of the week, not the eighth. Let me become a 'happiness magnet' instead of the inwardly crippled monster that I often am. Yes, that's how to do it. I can't put right the iniquities of the past, but I can do something about the future. Before I can stop failing other people, I have to stop failing myself.

Here goes......

The Fight Between Good and Evil

2010-10-12T16:10:00.006+01:00

Well, the chart is being filled in accordingly each day. The naughtiness chart, that is. As I suggested in my last posting, I have designed a 'naughty' spreadsheet where I am able to record different categories of foolishness on my part, and so when I notice that I have done something wrong, I make an entry into the appropriate cell. The aim, of course, is to end up with more empty cells than full ones - thereby indicating that my overall behaviour is improving. The Buddhists have this notion that awareness is everything, and that although we can't always avoid behaving badly, to be mindful of our behaviour is everything. When we become mindful, we can then take action to modify what we do. It makes sense if you think about it - how often do we recognize bad conduct as being "mindless"?

I can report to you now, gentle reader, that after a very optimistic start, the spreadsheet has become to look depressingly overcrowded in recent days. I behaved so abominably poorly on Sunday that I had to tick more or less every box on the chart. I can't say that anything I did was identifiably evil, but the mindlessness that motivated my iniquitous deeds was disappointingly evident. This being a family show, I can't go into too much detail here about the sordid and distasteful acts that I became embroiled in, but it is sufficient to say that they involved alcohol, drugs, squalid sex and all-round inappropriate debauchery. There would actually be nothing wrong in such behaviour if it were contained only to the deeds themselves, but we all know that there is always an aftermath to be dealt with when such things happen. Yesterday (Monday) was completely written off as all I could do was lie on my sofa attempting to recover. Today hasn't been much better either, although I have at least engaged in some domestic matters such as changing the bed, cleaning the flat, baking some bread, putting on some washing and dealing with some urgent paperwork. But there has been nothing creative happening, nor any attempt to earn any money.

The disappointment about all of this is my seeming inability to take heed of my somewhat grubby actions. What is the use of the spreadsheet if I simply ignore its lessons? I take a crumb of comfort from the fact that all self-improvement measures will inevitably show peaks and troughs in the graph of progress. The trough that I see before me - this pit of depravity and despair - will hopefully serve as a reminder that an even higher peak can be attained in the coming few days. We'll see.

Before I start slashing my wrists about all of this - and before you start castigating me with disapproval - I will give you a couple of quotes to think about:

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." (Oscar Wilde)

"When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones." (George Bernard Shaw)

Perhaps there's hope for me yet.

Out Damned Spot!

2010-10-05T16:45:00.004+01:00

Am I to be forever in the quest of self-improvement? I was listening to an article on Woman's Hour (BBC Radio 4) which said that we should embrace the times when we are wrong, and so learn from them. Some woman has written a book about how we should deal with being wrong - that we first of all have to admit that sometimes we can be wrong but moreover, that being wrong shouldn't be seen as an indictment of our moral worth. We are told to remember that because we have swift-thinking minds, it is inevitable that we will sometimes make mistakes when we are reacting to the fast-changing world around us. We have to accept that mistakes will be our life-long companion, and that the more ready we are to accept those mistakes, the more likely we are to avoid making them in future.

This isn't rocket-science, of course. "Learn from your mistakes" is an oft-heard maxim throughout everyone's life. But how many of us do just that - heed this aphorism? I am as ready as the next man (often readier) to acknowledge the frequent lapses of judgement that befall me, but do I actually learn from that? Some guy on the programme suggested that we should write a diary of our errors, so that we might more easily identify where and how and why they are made, and then to use that as a framework for our future behaviour. Blimey, this would be one hell of a diary in my case! I'd have writer's cramp from this, sans doute. But nevertheless I might give it a try because as I said at the opening of this entry, dear reader, it would seem that I am doomed to be forever in search of self-improvement and never seem to be in a position of self-satisfaction.

Take this recent weekend, for example. Having had one hell of a few days running up to it, during which I was knee-deep in paperwork and other legal matters surrounding the execution of my late father's estate, I decided to relax on Saturday and to treat myself to some 'rest and recuperation'. All well and good, you might say, and probably well-deserved - but the problem is that it is now Tuesday and I haven't yet re-started! I have been spectacularly lazy since then, and have only performed the barest minimum of chores in order to preserve some semblance of a ship in working order. My father's affairs still languish; there's been no writing done at all; I haven't attended to any matters relating to my crushing personal finances; and apart from buying a (relatively useless) rice cooker and subsequently cooking (and then eating) some rice to test that it worked, I haven't eaten anything. I have only been able to sustain the engine of my body by taking in calorific value from other sources - the scatter of empty whisky bottles and empty wine bottles can testify to that.

So, this is clearly wrong - and as per the advice from the bloke on Woman's Hour, I aim to write this information in my diary. I don't want such information to get muddled with other items in the list - such as sending inappropriate text messages while under the influence of alcohol, or trying to get the wrong (and equally inappropriate) people into bed when it is clear that they would never indulge me in such things - but muddled it will no doubt become. So, as a born administrator, I think an Excel ® spreadsheet is called for. Along the top, the days of the week; down the side, categories of foolishness. And rather than simply putting a tick into a particular cell to identify when some oversight in behaviour or attitude has been encountered, I will put a brief description of the precise misdemeanour that I have committed. A weekly review of this chart will then hopefully induce such shame and humiliation in me, that the following week's chart ought to look thinner, with more white space.

Unless of course, as each particular ignominy then becomes eradicated from the pattern of my iniquitous life, I find more and newer disgraces with which to discredit my pitiful self. Oh dear - how far does one need to sink before one can begin to climb out of the mire? Pity me.

That's Entertainment!

2010-10-01T16:41:00.003+01:00

I saw the worst film I've seen for a long time last week. Written and directed by Frenchman Gaspar Noé, it's called 'Enter the Void'. I suppose the blurb about the film should have warned me, at least of something: "A post-mortem hallucination likely to induce seizures even in the non-epileptic". The film is shot almost entirely from the point of view of someone who has been shot dead (which doesn't sound too outlandish, on the face of it), and what attracted me to it was the phrase in the blurb about it "floating through the neon miasma of Tokyo like a woozy ghost." That's the bit that should have set an alarm bell ringing, I suppose.

Because, apart from the first hour of the film when the action is actually happening, that's about all we get - we are forcibly floated through a 'neon miasma' of hallucinogenic special effects, stomach-churning camera-rolling, repeated split-second flashbacks of horrific scenes, but little more. Sure, the film was pretty enough to look at, and possibly if I'd been watching it under the influence of some mind-bending narcotic I would have found it even prettier to watch, but there was scene after scene after scene where the director simply failed to move the story (such as it was) forward. I began to get fidgety after about an hour-and-a-half when I started to suspect that the scene I was watching was just another regurgitation of a scene I'd been watching a few moments before. Then another, and another, and yet another. True, each scene was shot slightly differently, and each may even have contained different characters, but the uneasy truth was dawning on me that basically, there was nothing new happening. This was either a display of lazy editing, or an act of gross self-indulgence on behalf of the director. I suspect it was both, but more strongly the latter. Gaspar Noé simply didn't seem to know when enough was enough. There were many, many points when he could easily have ended it, but no - he laboriously chugged on with more and more psychedelic images (some containing the most gratuitous and pointless sex I have ever seen), none of which did anything to develop the story. After one hour and fifty-five minutes, and when I gradually remembered that I had a life to be getting on with, I walked out. There was still another twenty minutes of this rubbish yet to run, but I urgently had some paint to watch dry. Not recommended.

On another evening this week, I went to watch a fairly reasonable stage performance of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing'. This was a mainly amateur production at Nottingham's Arts Theatre, and although some of it showed the cracks between the professional curtain and some of the performances were a bit flaky, the company made a rather good stab at presenting the light and bubbling froth that this play is mainly about. After the dire and spirit-draining experience of watching Noé's film, this light satire on the tribulations of false wooing and social bungling, was the just the tonic. I also saw Billy Ivory's 'Made in Dagenham' in the same week - something else which is billed as having the 'feel-good' factor. It has some cleverly and sensitively scripted moments true enough, but the 'touch' of the whole film is depressingly stereotypical of many British 'underdog' comedies which - despite Billy's often strong and witty script - the director turns into a cliché. Worth seeing though.

Killer Shrimps!

2010-09-20T17:33:00.004+01:00

I was reading today about a sailing event (that I wasn't attending anyway) which was cancelled because of the discovery of the presence of 'killer shrimps' in the water. I kid you not, dear reader (for would I lie to you?). No - the gammarid shrimp, Dikerogammarus villosus, common name ‘killer shrimp’, has been found at Grafham Water, an Anglian Water reservoir in Cambridgeshire. This is the first time the shrimp, which is classified as an invasive species, has been found in this country.

Before you start assuming that the sailing community is made up by a load of wusses who would be frightened off by the prospect of capsizing into a shoal of marauding shellfish, I will tell you that it is Anglian Water who imposed the cancellation of the sailing contest. Apparently, nobody is quite sure how these shrimps have managed to invade what is basically an inland water, so the precaution has been put in place to prevent further dispersal of this dangerous animal (although they don't look too harmful in the picture, do they?). One suggestion is that they can be carried into and out of the water by boat, and so the Authority has decided to ban any boats doing just that. The shrimp has already colonised parts of Western Europe, affecting a range of native species such as freshwater invertebrates, particularly native shrimps and even very young fish, altering the ecology of the habitats it invades. Insects such as damsel-flies and water boatmen, common sights on British lakes and rivers, could be at risk, with knock-on effects on the species which feed on them. Serious stuff indeed.

What I find so puzzling about such accounts though, is this: If such an aggressive species as this is so virulent and so invasive, how come it exists anywhere in small pockets only, and hasn't already taken over the world? Dikerogammarus villosus is a non-native shrimp that has spread from the Ponto-Caspian region of Eastern Europe, and is believed to have invaded Western Europe via the Danube. It has spread across most of Western Europe over the last 10 years, and tends to dominate the habitats it invades, sometimes causing the extinction of native species. I am therefore surprised that there is any other kind of aquatic wildlife left - surely, everything else should have been eaten by now? It's a strange world indeed. Prawn sandwich, anyone?

I have a full programme of events coming up this week. It's a good job that I'm temporarily excused from the salt mines, because otherwise there wouldn't be time to fit it all in. I have a meeting with Nottingham Contemporary about the arrangements for a writing event that we're holding there (by 'we' I mean the Nottingham Writers' Studio); a private pre-release screening of Billy Ivory's new film 'Made in Dagenham' (with Billy Ivory); a meeting of the ScreenLit Festival Committee at the Broadway; and then a launch party for 'First Story' as it begins its first foray into Nottingham. I can see that there will be little time for the usual festivities, which is a good job really because unrestrained, I can't be trusted to behave with any amount of decorum these days (or so it would seem). I've just had the most excessive weekend for a long time - well, for about a week in truth - and I could do with focusing a little more closely on the more serious sides of life.

Now, I notice that my terrace has become slightly flooded in the rain. I was thinking of going out there to un-block the drain but I suddenly noticed a prevalence of small pink heads bobbing about in the water. Hmm, better put on my steel-capped boots.....

Families, eh?

2010-09-15T11:27:00.005+01:00

If you are a regular reader of this rubbish, then you may be forgiven for believing that there was only one relative in my life to influence the development of my formative years - my Great Aunt Dolores. This is not the true picture, for actually I come from a large and diverse family. We are a disparate lot - and as such, we rarely have anything to do with each other. I have twelve first cousins, yet I would have trouble recognizing more than a handful of them if I were to pass any of them in the street. There are fat ones, thin ones; rich ones, and poor ones. Some are probably pleasant people, some are undoubtedly not the sort of people I would ever seek as friends. I have no uncles left alive, and only one aunt - and she is blind and hates me anyway. So really, living within a large family is certainly no guarantee to living within an extended family.

However, besides Dolores there was another family member who had an influence on me during my upbringing. My father's cousin - a strangely Quixotic character by the name of Géraint de Braose - was the first person to teach me to appreciate classical music. You might think that there is nothing unusual in this, but in my immediate family there was little appreciation of anything but popular music throughout my early years. Whereas I knew the lyrics of everything Doris Day, Frank Sinatra or Perry Como had recorded (for example), I didn't know my '1812 Overture' from my 'Unfinished Symphony'. Nobody in my immediate family did. And then one day, Géraint dropped by - he pulled up outside our tiny house in his massive and gleaming pre-war open-topped Jaguar saloon, and breezed into our sparsely-furnished living room carrying a record under his arm. Without a word to my parents, he removed the disc currently sitting on the turntable of our ancient gramophone (I remember it was a recording of "Hold Out Your Hand You Naughty Boy" by Alma Cogan), span it onto the cushion of a nearby chair with an almost disdainful casualness, and replaced it with his own.

What came blaring next from the tinny and highly inadequate little speaker had me immediately spellbound and captivated. The recording that he had decided to impose upon us on that spring Saturday morning, was the 'Háry János Suite' by Kodály. From the very opening, with its mischievous musical "sneeze" (a device from Hungarian folklore that, according to Géraint, indicates that everything to follow is not to be believed - I now suspect he may have got that the wrong way round), to the majestic and sweeping grandeur of the finale 'Entrance of the Emperor and His Court', I was totally mesmerized by the outrage and audacity of this previously unheard-of music. My father, presumably thinking it was all a load of rubbish, went off to the kitchen to peel some potatoes and my mother, presumably of a similar disposition, decided it was time to scrub the front doorstep. My siblings (all eight of them) scurried away into the woodwork like frightened mice, presumably to entertain themselves elsewhere. There was only me, awestruck, left alone in the room with my second-cousin. We sat in near silence while the record span its way to its conclusion, interrupted only by a brief explanation from Géraint to the meaning of each movement as it began.

"You like that?" he asked, when the record had stopped spinning. In response, I nodded enthusiastically. "Then there's more. Lots more. I will send you a parcel in the week - let me know how you get on with it, will you?"

The following week I duly received a package - the first time anything had ever arrived at our humble house addressed specifically to me - and I eagerly tore off the wrapping. Inside was a magpie's hoard of sparkling treasures: Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Wagner - all names of which at that time, I had never heard. The only trouble was that I had nothing on which to play such delights - the indulgence that my family had offered towards Géraint's intervention was not to be repeated towards me, nor to my pleas for a monopoly of the gramophone. In fact, my elder brother threatened to smash the whole collection if I so much as whispered a suggestion of Mozart's 'Violin Concerto No. 4' ever again. In the end, I had to "make myself useful" to an old Polish widower who lived down the road (the term "child abuse" hadn't been coined in those days), and as a reward he bought me a second-hand Dansette record player which I was able to keep at his house, and on which I was allowed to play anything I chose while he grunted and spat his way to a climax.

I was on my way!

Convalescence

2010-09-09T11:38:00.004+01:00

This posting will not reflect my true state of mind (which is one of appalling contrition and shame). No, I will only write about the positive aspects of my recent life, and I will avoid recounting to you the sorrowful outcomes of some of my more extreme and ignominious deeds. It all began when I motored down to Cornwall for a few days of relaxation - I had a lovely trip down, with none of the usual tiredness I normally experience on long journeys. Once I had crossed over the Tamar Bridge into the land of the Kernewek, the sun was just too inviting, so I put the top down on the car and drove the rest of the way with the "warm wind in my hair".

Cornwall was such a pleasure - no sooner had I arrived than I was ensconced in the rooftop garden of my friends' house with a glass of beer in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. The remainder of my stay was whiled away by meandering around the harbour shops, walking along deserted beaches, trekking through the Cornish countryside to take tea and scones in the woods, and lingering over relaxing dinners, eating good food in the company of good and restful friends. A most uplifting sojourn indeed.

When my visit was over, I drove back across the Tamar Bridge into Devon to attend the wedding at Salcombe of some old sailing friends of mine. This was by far the most stylish and lavish wedding that I have ever been too - look out for the photos in 'Hello' magazine, I'm sure. We all had such a lot of fun catching up with old faces - scattering ourselves across the elegant lawns of the hotel, discreetly surrounded by an army of formally-dressed servants handing out canapés, Pimms and champagne galore. Then to the wedding breakfast, served amidst the diaphanous drapes of the graceful dining room - one hundred and sixty guests sat down to a delicious five-course banquet and as much wine and champagne as we could drink. Thereby hangs my downfall of course - and once the dining and speeches were over, our genial and generous host opened up a free bar which, for a dilettante libertine such as myself, is a sure recipe for disaster. As I said, I will not dwell on the reprehensible results of such indulgence, but I think I can safely predict that I will not be invited to such an event again.

I drove home the following day - a long and tedious journey, only made bearable by the knowledge that my dear friend Richie Garton was waiting for me; waiting to start another round of debauched and decadent drinking. This was not a sensible thing for me to do of course, because I then proceeded to continue with a total lack of self-control (where behaviour in polite society is concerned, I mean); a self-indulgence which unfortunately lasted for the next two days. Oh, when will I ever learn?

Duties and chores await me - impatiently drumming their fingers on the table-top; sighing in resignation that yet again, they remain unattended. Despite the very best of intentions, I have failed once more. The only thing to do is to remain inside my apartment, alone. I can hardly cause myself any more embarrassment if I do that, and it may also give me the opportunity and motivation to attack the list of 'things to do' (which is now as long as the Turin Shroud). What's more, it might even give my poor, wrecked and ruined body a chance to recuperate from the sordid excesses of recent times.

So, it's 'goodbye' to polite society for a while, and 'hello' to sobriety, industry and diligence. My next posting will hopefully be a record of such productivity, and you will be amazed at the transformation in my circumstances.

Watch this space.

Ever Fattened

2010-09-01T22:49:00.002+01:00

Oh, even though all the stress is meant to have gone from my life, there's still too much to do! I've been very busy tying up loose ends and getting bills paid, and other stuff - people demand so much of my time that I might as well be back at work, really.

Anyway, you will be pleased to know that I am putting up "two fingers" to it all and am taking myself off to Cornwall for a few days. There I will be able to do absolutely nothing and can be pampered by my dear friends while the spinning, chaotic world of responsibility tumbles away behind me. My aim is to go fishing on the sea, eat ice cream and Cornish pasties, and drink lots of red wine (oh, by the way, I'm drinking Swiss vodka right now - I don't know if you've ever drunk Swiss vodka, but it's absolutely delicious - who knew that the Swiss could make vodka better than the Russians or the Finns?). So yes, some serious R&R is in order, and I don't care what happens back home.

The trouble is, I aim to be leaving home at about eight o'clock tomorrow morning and it's nearly midnight now and I haven't packed a thing. I'm also attending a very smart society wedding on Saturday (in Devon) so I should really be thinking about packing some smart attire. And planning my route too. Oh, bugger! It would seem that I can't get the badly-needed R&R right now. More stress.

I went over to cut my dad's lawns today (he died recently, and although that should have relieved some of the stress, I still have to tend to his garden - accidentally I have killed his tomatoes in the greenhouse, which I am sure he would be cross about). We've had such deliciously hot weather today that it brings to mind the phrase "Indian Summer" although of course, such a thing does not exist.

I'll update you from Cornwall. No doubt with a much-expanded waistline!

Toodle pip!

The Play's The Thing!

2010-08-29T09:41:00.005+01:00

Everyone likes a good play, don't they? Well, not exactly everyone perhaps - my Great Aunt Dolores for example (she who was run over by a lorry but survived, and who later took up playing the xylophone only to end up dying as she threw herself over Niagara Falls in a barrel), hated going to the theatre and thought it was a total waste of one's time. The only time she would step foot into a theatre was if she were performing in a play herself. The trouble with this was that on those occasions, everyone else considered it to be a waste of their time by attending - believe me, Dolores was no Sarah Bernhardt (I still remember with embarrassed shame the disastrous run she did at the Comédie-Française in Paris, playing the lead role in Racine's Phaedre). But apart from my dear Great Aunt and her occasional, unfortunate audiences, nearly everyone else like a good play.

You will recall that I helped to produce a spectacle de théâtre here in Nottingham, in June. We staged nine different, specially-commissioned plays over a three day festival. It was a big success at the time, and all the hard work we put into it was certainly worth it in the end. I was reminded of this yesterday evening when I had dinner with some friends, one of whom announced that she had been in the audience for one performance - undoubtedly the "jewel in the festival's crown" - the most excellent 'Thanks To His Sister' written by Cumbrian playwright Robin Acland. Everything about this performance was first-class: The script, the acting, but most importantly of all perhaps - the expert direction given to the actors by the brilliant and talented Mr Paul Sellwood. The marvellous thing about this play was that it was both intellectual and comic at the same time. The intellectual bit was quite subtly and mischievously done, in as much as it was able to massage the egos of those in the audience who enjoyed catching the familiar quotations from Worsdworth (for it was he who was the play's main subject); and the comic bit came about in the tongue-in-cheek nod at the obsessions of some less than humble intellectuals. An achievement for a writer indeed.

However, as in any stage production designed to make an impact on its audience, it was the timing that was all important in this. The cast worked tremendously hard at getting this right - the effervescent Liz Smith, the exuberant Leah Burrows and the inimitably eloquent and charismatic Rob Ferguson as the historical characters; and the sultry Sarah Lee and comic genius Tom Spencer as their modern counterparts all did an outstanding job. But in my view, timing is something that cannot be fully achieved with really tight, enthusiastic and controlled direction. And in this, the superbly talented Paul Sellwood (aka "Tall Paul") performed the most admirable and first-class magic.

It's a pity that most of you missed it really, for it will not be repeated ("Shame!" you should all cry at this point). This was theatre at its very best, and it was just such a shame that this was not the play we took to Edinburgh. If we had, then perhaps we wouldn't have lost the small fortune which, as a production company, we most surely did. Oh well, there's always next year.

Break a leg, darling!

Blood Pressure

2010-08-24T08:57:00.004+01:00

As I write this missive to you, gentle reader, I am drinking a cup of nice hot tea. It is important for you to know this, because the cup of tea is the first oasis for me in what has been a failure of a day so far. Last night I was horribly drunk and made an idiot of myself in front of some friends. I'm sure they are very disappointed in me, but this reminds me of a quote from Marilyn Monroe: "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

That could sum me up, I suppose. Not exactly "mad, bad and dangerous to know" , but still a disappointment to my friends and to myself. So, I now need to return to life's more simple pleasures - like a nice hot cup of tea. I'm not about to launch into "Raindrops on roses; whiskers on kittens" but I would, at this point, like to mention another simple pleasure I enjoyed yesterday: I bought a new clothes airer (or clothes-horse as they were called in my day). For years I have been struggling with the pathetic little thing that I inherited when I moved into this apartment - it never had enough space to contain a full load from the washing machine, and so I was always juggling damp items of clothing around in an effort to get them dry. This has been a source of much frustration for me, but for some reason it never quite dawned upon me that the solution would be to buy a bigger, new one - until my daughter, over from Paris for her grandfather's funeral, pointed this out to me. Watching me perform a sort of origami exercise with an assortment of smalls, T-shirts and pillow-cases, she was incredulous that I hadn't simply been down to the shops to get something more appropriate.

Yesterday I was listening to the final spin-cycle of the machine and was befallen with a sinking heart at the renewed prospect of unloading the miscellaneous arrangement of laundry - I knew that I had loaded the machine with far too much to fit onto the miniscule racking that was currently available to me. In a flash of madness I ran down the road to Argos and, for the princely sum of £19.99, was soon hurrying proudly home, carrying before me a package of exceptional delight! I quickly tore off the polythene wrapping and in a jiffy, had unfolded the rods and rails and erected them into a towering scaffold-like structure that stood resplendent in the centre of my kitchen. As the washing-machine clicked its way to a halt, I could hardly contain my excitement whilst waiting for the time-lock on the door to release the contents.

Duvet covers, pillow-cases, towels, denims, underwear and T-shirts all came tumbling out in a kaleidoscope of multifarious colours, and all were swiftly allocated a suitable space on the tower. I felt rather pleased with myself.

And then I realized how sad my life has somehow become. That I could take such pleasure in what is essentially a very mundane development in my existence, does not say too much about the quality of excitement that I normally enjoy. However, I have reflected since on this, and feel that the essential word in my previous sentence is 'quality'. Is any excitement that usually presents itself to me necessarily quality excitement? I don't think much of it can be - often it's nothing more than a session of riotous and debauched partying occasionally accompanied by, if I'm lucky, a bout of abandoned sex. This sort of thing is hardly inspirational, and lends nothing of any value to my health or my peace of mind.

No, I realized that I needed to focus more on pursuits that offer some kind of reward to my life. After safely arranging my airing laundry, I pumped up the tyres on my disused bike and went out for a ride. This was greatly encouraging to my spirit. Since then I have been to the gym, and for a swim, and it is these sorts of pastimes that bring true quality to one's life. And what's more, they also help to reduce one's blood pressure, which is always a sensible and rewarding thing to do. I took my own reading this morning and it was alarmingly high - so high in fact that the stress of this realisation caused me to spark up another fag. Not good.

Life's simple pleasures then - that's the way forward for me. A nice cup of tea whilst sitting beside a new clothes airer should be enough for any man's delight, in my opinion.

The Wanderer Returns

2010-08-20T14:29:00.004+01:00

Well, patient listener - if you're still there, and have not given up all hope of hearing from me again, I am back. It seems rather feeble to say that I have been too busy to write to you for all these weeks, but really - that's exactly how it was.

Since the beginning of July there were four main preoccupations to distract me from recording anything about my life on here: There was work, the Studio, my dad's condition, and finally Edinburgh. By far, it was work that consumed the bulk of my time throughout the month of July. Twelve hour days and a 140-mile round trip do tend to drain most of the day's energy and time.......... However, balancing work with the other three preoccupations became an almost impossible task - and one that only someone of a constitution as strong as my own could manage.

Nottingham Writers' Studio is a passion of mine and as the Chairman, is a responsibility that I take very seriously. During the period of turmoil, we undertook to recruit a new Development Director which involved all the usual labours of shortlisting the candidates for interview, arranging and conducting the interviews, making the final choice of appointee, and then defining the induction and handover programme. On top of that, I had other more routine issues to deal with, as well as preparing the year-end accounts for submission to Companies House (another of my duties). And I don't get paid for any of this, by the way!

Trying to fit all of this in whilst spending as much time as possible with my poor failing father was quite tricky. The treatment he was receiving in hospital was frankly deplorable (and I've been a big fan of the NHS in my time, believe me), so in the end my sister arranged to have him moved to her home supported by Macmillan, Marie Curie, District and Community nursing staff. This was far more comfortable and dignified for him - but he still continued to suffer far longer than the medics had predicted, eventually dying on Saturday 31st July. Goodnight Daddy - I shall miss you, but I'm so grateful for the years we had with you; years that were always a bonus.

And then there was Edinburgh. We had committed ourselves to taking a play to the Fringe, so there was no backing out of that. Luckily, the boys I had worked with on the Triliteral Festival were free to do most of the leg work, and I could thankfully take a back seat on executing the final arrangements. There was still some involvement for me however, and so whenever I had any available time I would dip in and make a contribution. When everything was in place, the Company hit the road (or more accurately, the rails), Edinburgh bound. It was quite an achievement to transport three actors, two production assistants, the Director, the Producer, a mountain of luggage and the complete set (including props) for the play - all on public transport. Quite an achievement indeed, and the boys need to be congratulated on that.

I flew up to Edinburgh after my father's funeral to join them. The Edinburgh Festival and its Fringe counterpart is an amazing experience. Apparently, as many people as already live there cram into the city for the event, and there are hundreds of shows to see each day. It was quite hard to choose what to watch during the hours when our own show wasn't being performed, or when we weren't out on the streets handing out flyers and attempting to drum up an audience for our cast. But I saw some terrific performances (none of the big names, of course - you can see those on TV at anytime), and had a very enjoyable time. The whole episode was chaotic, exhausting, expensive, but huge fun. The production company's finances are ruined forever - we lost a fortune. But, as they say ars gratia artis!

However, now I have entered a new phase. My contract in the salt mines of Northampton has finished so I no longer have to work every day; the Studio has calmed down immeasurably - with the accounts all done and the new Development Director making great strides into his new role; my father is no longer with us (although now comes the onerous task of sorting out his estate and disposing of his house and contents); and Edinburgh is already a fading memory.

Back to the real world! Unfortunately, I feel so battered by the last few weeks that I appear to have lost any spark of creativity - hence the tedious detail of this blog posting. Thank you again, gentle reader, for your patience - I promise to keep you up to date with all matters on a more regular basis from now on. And hopefully, in a matter much more entertaining than this.

Toodle pip old loves!

Normal Service will be resumed... I promise

2010-07-18T22:14:00.002+01:00

No time to blog, no time to write my diary even. My poor lovely old dad is still clinging on but it's only a matter of a very, very short time.... I've been spending every free moment at the hospital in the last two weeks, and now by his bedside at home where he's been despatched to eke out his last few days. He has nursing care, but there's nothing more to be done.

I am sorry, gentle reader - even if I had the time, I don't really have the heart for blogging right now. It's all too painful to watch. At least when Great Aunt Dolores went (over Niagara Falls in a barrel, if you recall) we had no time to ponder upon life's great cruelties. No time even for chilling the champagne - because, unlike with my dad, her departure called for the popping of a few corks if anyone's did.

So, normal service will be resumed soon. Quite, quite soon.

Until then......

Excuses, Excuses

2010-07-04T18:28:00.004+01:00

Oh, hell and spite - the world has gone mad, and me with it. I'm just ridiculously busy all the time and hence I keep neglecting you, dear reader. Not a wise thing to do, when one's aspirations are to be a writer, for surely - the gentle reader should be the first in line for attention. So, many many apologies!

Unfortunately, yours truly is just a dumb fool who habitually takes on too many commitments and as such, gets crushed and squeezed in between the creaking wheels of responsibility. Or maybe it's the partying that causes the problem? For of course, I still do plenty of that. This last week (or at least since I last wrote here) has been something of a blur really - not a blur of alcohol, to be honest, but more a smudged lithograph of what should have been a well-organized life. I appear to have more plates spinning in the air than one of those people who spin plates in variety shows (whatever they are called - "plate spinners", presumably - does anyone actually do that anymore? Unlikely). On top of that, my poor old dad has been rather ill again and so I've been spending time with him. I even went to watch the England-Germany game with him last Sunday - I thought it would cheer him up to have me waving my England flag and drinking lager out of a can. I saw it as more of a performance than anything else - and to be fair, I was probably more entertaining than the match (enough said).

So, today I have to be brief. My dad is now in hospital with two separate complaints, and not doing very well at all. I'm shuttling back and forth delivering essentials, and sitting beside his bed of course, trying to engage him in quizzes and crosswords. He's doing well on that score - his mind is obviously still working well, even if his body is letting him down. It's quite amazing the things he can remember. It's quite good of him to bother really, because I'm not sure that if I had his problems I would bother doing the same.

The season of killing is upon us, sadly. This sultry, sub-continental heat that we've been experiencing in recent weeks has brought clouds of irritating flies bustling into my apartment on a daily basis. I'm struggling to understand their motivation really, because they don't actually seem to hold any purpose to their visits. Either they fly in stilted squares around the middle of the room, near the ceiling, or they gather in their hordes on the walls and glass surfaces and just sit there in silence. What's the point? If my apartment were littered with rotting meats and fruits, then I could perhaps understand it. Presumably there'd be a good reason for their occupancy of my home if they were to spend their hours here feasting and gorging on the putrefied remains of my decaying waste. But just to fly around aimlessly, or even worse - to sit staring at a wall - seems rather pointless to me, and they certainly shouldn't need to occupy my home to do that. So, I kill them. I get my trusty electric zapper out, and I kill them in their thousands. After each session of slaughter, my floor looks like a dozen Garibaldi biscuits have exploded in mid-air - it's all quite disgusting. But the disappointing thing is that after each (fairly exhausting) session, I return to my desk to continue working only to discover that within minutes, the Chief Fly Controller has despatched dozens of reinforcements to take the places of their butchered comrades. Maybe I should move house.

There are lots of other reasons to move house too. I came here only for six months, just to get away from my former matrimonial home, and only until I'd sorted things out and could get my own place. Nearly four years later, and I'm still here. What a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then; what a lot of alcohol has passed through the kidneys; what a lot of cigarette smoke has wafted perniciously across the villi of my poor beleaguered lungs. Stray cats have come and gone; friends have remembered me, and friends have forgotten me. It all reminds me of a song from one of my all-time favourite albums (and one that I used to play to death as a youngster):

"People come and go and forget to close the door,
and they leave their stains and cigarette butts trampled on the floor.
And when they do, remember me, remember me.

Some of them are old, some of them are new,
some of them will turn up when you least expect them to.
And when they do, remember me, remember me."

It's time for me to move on now, I think. And so, before I take the broom to clear up the debris of the shattered Garibaldis, I post you this message, dear reader: Before Christmas, if I'm still alive (and there's no guarantee of that), then I hope to be writing to you from a different desk in a different home. And perhaps I'll be writing from a different viewpoint by then, too. Maybe by then, I'll have found my way home to Kansas. If I can't do that, then I'm lost.....

Listen To The Voice Of God

2010-06-23T08:32:00.004+01:00

Oh god, I have been neglecting you of late, dear reader. I'm surprised any of you are still reading, more so because there isn't all that much to say really. I thought I'd have loads of free time once the festival was finished, but since then it's just been a mad social whirl and I can't even remember where I've been for the past week. Parties, parties, BBQs, more parties, work, meetings, dinners, theatre, more parties, cinema, more meetings, more parties. Oh, when will it all end?

Well not yet, that's for sure. I have a full agenda for the rest of this week and then on Saturday I'm doing a reading of my latest story 'How To Eat A Mango On A Building Site While Still Wearing Your Hard Hat' at the Lowdham Book Fair. I haven't even rehearsed the performance yet, and probably won't get time to do so (except in my sleep) which is a bad thing because presentation is everything in such matters. I don't even have a hard hat.

Now, to more serious matters. I understand that the scientists at CERN have found a way to listen to the sound made by whatever it is that their Large Hadron Collider produces whenever it collides whatever it does collide with whatever else. You can see that I fully understand the science of all this, can't you? Anyway, by capturing the sound, they will apparently be able to discover the 'harmonious noises' that are made at the moment the universe is created and from this, they will be able to identify the Higgs Bosun - the so-called 'God Particle'. This worries me slightly. Firstly, I'm not given absolute confidence that these boffins know what they're doing if all they need to discover the secrets of the universe is a pair of headphones. Aren't they supposed to have the most expensive and intricate measuring equipment known to physics for this purpose? Do they really need to listen for it?

Secondly, what are they hoping to hear that will convince them so assuredly of the presence of Higgs Bosun? Are they expecting a little squeaky voice to say: "Help - I am the tiny spark of All Creation and I am trapped inside the bosun of Higgs. If you release me, I will tell you everything..."? Hmm, it doesn't sound very plausible to me. Or perhaps they are hoping to hear the voice of god? That would give them a shock, wouldn't it? Imagine that - all the scientists are huddled around a little old radio, all sipping cups of Horlicks and all waiting expectantly for the emitted sounds of the 'particle'.... as they sit in silence, breathing heavily, they wait... one boffin nervously smooths her skirt, another straightens his tie, and yet another pushes his glasses back up his sweat-lined nose.

Then suddenly, amidst the static and hiss, comes the crackling sound of a tinny and distant disembodied voice: "So, earthlings, you have discovered how to tap into my private phone line have you? And you are hoping to discover the secret of the universe eh? Well let me tell you this, you snivelling little oiks, just exactly how this great universe of mine was created is none of your goddamned business. Now push off, the lot of you!"

Tee hee.

Well, I don't really have time to think about any of this. More parties to attend - tomorrow is the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' spectacle in the Great Ballroom of Nottingham's City Hall. Okay, so it's not exactly misdummer night, but apparently Oberon & Titania will be there to sprinkle some magic dust amongst us. Who knows? We might even learn the secret of life itself....

It's All About Me!

2010-06-16T21:21:00.004+01:00

Okay, so you're fed up with me going on and on, blah blah blah, about the Triliteral Festival. So, all I'm going to say is that it all happened, it all went (nearly) to plan, and I'm amazed that we actually pulled it off. It was a great triumph and everyone enjoyed it. Yes, it was very very hard work - not just for the Triliteral Team, but for the actors, directors and producers too. We were all utterly exhausted after it - nine different plays in three days is one hell of an achievement - but it was all worthwhile. We all feel very proud of ourselves, I can tell you.

And so, now where do we go? Well, the first thing to do on Sunday evening was to have a huge after-show party in my apartment. The entire company, plus a couple of others, descended here for molte bevande. Several cases of wine and beer later, and everyone was everyone else's best friend. Some even became lovers - but I'm not telling you who paired off with whom. Well, not yet anyway. It was all great fun - although I think my neighbours may not have been quite as excited about the noise and revelry as we were (especially on a school night). Nobody in the building has spoken to me since.

So, back to the future. What does it hold for us, eh? Well, we have definitely decided to do the whole thing again next year (we must be bonkers, I know). We have put ourselves very firmly on the map of Creative Nottingham and we really can't stop now. But in the meantime, I have become involved in another festival with a totally different flavour. Nottingham's Broadway Cinema will be staging its 3rd Annual ScreenLit Festival in 2011 and I have been invited to sit on the festival committee. I'm really excited by this because ScreenLit is a really high-profile festival (yes, even higher in profile than Triliteral). This year's festival (April 2010) featured Armando Iannucci, Dave Spikey (of 'Phoenix Nights' fame), Peter Capaldi, Chris Morris ('Four Lions'), John Harvey - and much, much more! The committee is made up of some of Nottingham's most savvy and influential media people, so I'm really chuffed to be invited to join them. Methinks it's time for me to wave 'bye bye' to the salt mines and seek a career in the Arts. The fact that I should really be considering retirement at this point is irrelevant - and anyway, my pension is worthless (as is most people's) and I'm going to have to work until I'm 100, so I may as well make it worthwhile for the rest of it.

I notice that it's Royal Ascot this week. I went once - many years ago - but on the day I was there it poured with rain and all I saw of the Royal Procession was a white-gloved hand waving ceremoniously through a tiny window in the hood of what can only be described as an ancient, horse-drawn perambulator. I seem to remember winning loads of money though.

Anyway, a couple of Facebook jokes for you, in case you missed them:
1) "You give £2 a month to a hungry African, and what do they do? Buy a bloody trumpet!"
2) "The Americans will invade another country in the pursuit of oil, yet they complain like fuck when it's delivered right to their doorstep."

Toodle pip, old loves. I promise to be more regular from now on.....

Banged On The Run

2010-06-08T11:41:00.003+01:00

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that, with only three days to go to the Triliteral Stageplay Festival, I'm incredibly busy chasing my own tail. The nine casts are almost word perfect, the nine sets are in final stages of completion, the lighting rigs are built, and the wardrobe department is now bulging with nine sets of costumes. So yes, we're nearly ready, and ticket sales are going better than expected - so why the hell am I still having trouble sleeping???

Oh, I must calm down - I'm sure it will be all right on the night. I've always been a bit of a worrier really, a trait (or weakness) which used to infuriate my Great Aunt Dolores to the point of violence. We were once locked together in a toilet on the Orient Express with absolutely no chance of escape, and no chance of our screams being heard either, due to the heavy wooden panelling and the screeching & rattling of the wheels. Why would I worry in such a situation, you may ask? Well, apart from the routine anxiety of being in a confined space with Dolores when she was dangerously off her head on cocaine (that was why we were in the toilet in the first place), I was also concerned that we would miss our connection at Krakow. If we missed the connection at Krakow, then we wouldn't make the steamer departure from Istanbul the following day, and if we missed the steamer then we'd never get to Hopa in time to take the train to Tbilisi. And at Tbilisi, we were meant to be hooking up with the only man in Western Asia who could save us from jail (don't ask me to explain here, but Dolores and I were on the run from the Austrian police at this point - well, it would be more accurate to say that it was Dolores who was on the run, not me, but she never shied away from implicating me in her many criminal activities whenever she had the opportunity).

So, I think I was justified in worrying, to be honest. Dolores, however, showed no signs of concern as we hurtled past the rivers and lakes of Poland towards our destination. Despite being incarcerated in an (admittedly lavish) washroom with no means of escape, Dolores remained calm. She even rolled herself a joint (in those days, you could smoke on trains) and encouraged me to take a toke of it, insisting that it would "decrease my hysteria". I don't think it was hysteria I was in the grip of, but I was certainly concerned about the possibility of being handed over to the police - not least because the railway officials, when they presumably managed to release us, would find it somewhat surprising that a young man in a Magdalen College tie had somehow managed to get himself trapped inside a marijuana-reeking toilet in the first place.The fact that I was trapped with an eccentric looking elderly lady wearing nothing more than a fur coat and a feather-trimmed corset (my great aunt liked to dress for comfort when travelling) would no doubt have amused them further. No matter how many times I had found myself in the most unlikely of scrapes with dear Dolores, I was always fearful that there would always be one time when finally, she wouldn't be able to explain her way out of the situation.

In the end, it didn't come to that. With a physical strength that belied her eighty-plus years (it must have been the cocaine), she wrenched the solid brass toilet-roll holder from the wall and, bracing herself against my back for further leverage, proceeded to use it to smash her way through the wooden panel of the door. Once a suitable hole had been created, she delicately pushed her hand through it and opened the door from the outside. Stepping into the corridor, she threw the brass holder out of the window, dusted her hands, and led me back quietly to our seats.

"There you are, boy," she said. "The old girl saves your worthless bacon again, you snivelling wimp. Those Bundespolizei fellas from Wein will not catch us now. You did remember to pick up my bag of Charlie before you left the toilet, I presume?"

I had, of course. If nothing else, know my place.

The Final Countdown

2010-06-01T21:49:00.005+01:00

Things are really hotting up now, in respect of the Triliteral Festival. We have less than two weeks to go and there's still a raft of work to do. Rehearsals are going well and luckily the actors are all doing a splendid job and really enjoying their work. We've had quite a few of the writers along to see how the rehearsals are going, and in the main they're all very pleased with the results so far. Set-building, prop-gathering and costume-making is also coming along at a pace, but there's still quite a bit more to do on that front too. With nine different plays being performed over three days, in three different venues, with roughly fifteen different actors, four directors and a producer - it's all something of a strategic tightrope, let me tell you! I woke up screaming this morning. But hey, that is (as they say) show business.

Tickets are on sale and if you want to buy some, then click here. There are some terrific performances emerging, and all the writing is new, so you won't have seen any of these plays before. There'll be something for everyone, and all the details about the plays are available on Triliteral's website - just click on 'The Shows' and take your pick!

Yesterday I went to see my mate Adam play with his group at an open air concert in the centre of Nottingham. The concert was called 'City Pulse' and it was absolutely free (pity there was no sunshine). Captain Dangerous were, as expected, excellent - but they were followed by an equally talented and entertaining troupe of strolling minstrels, the awesome 'MANIÈRE DES BOHÉMIENS'. Apparently formed through a mutual love of sitting on sofas and improvising, Manière des Bohémiens play a mix of the French swing popularised by Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, energetic eastern European gypsy-folk, and a smattering of many things else. They were fabulous - not least because they are the only band I've seen in a long time to feature an accordionist! And what a spectacular performer he was - young Jonny Kerry (so young! picture abve) played like a veteran with real panache and quirkiness. I loved it. Watch out for them!

My Great Aunt Dolores (she who was run over by a lorry yet survived and later took up playing the xylophone, only to die even later by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel) once ran away with an accordionist. He was a Hungarian gypsy called Janós - poor as a church mouse but Dolores, for some reason best known only to her, had convinced herself that he was in fact a Count from an ancient noble family and that he owned a huge sprawling Transylvanian castle with vast lands (she never quite worked out that Transylvania is not actually in Hungary). She told everyone that he would very soon be re-claiming the fortunes out of which he had presumably been tricked by his wicked uncle Vlad, and then would be whisking her away for a fairy-tale wedding. Dolores and Janós lived together for a short while in Paris - she claimed that they shared a romantic little garret apartment while she took in washing to support him, but I know that in truth they lived in a suite at the Hôtel George V, paid for by her. Apparently (so she said) he would play the accordion to her while she danced naked in the dust, underneath the attic roof (for this, read: dancing on a massive Empire double-bed underneath a cascading crystal chandelier, whilst sipping vintage champagne). When he'd practically bled her dry, Janós ran off with a Spanish waiter and so Dolores skulked back to England and - to recoup her fortunes - married some obscure Irish banker who was trampled to death by an elephant two years later.

My life seems rather dull in comparison. If only....

The Tempeance Society and The Theatre

2010-05-25T21:58:00.004+01:00

Well, where to begin? You will notice that I've been a bit absent in recent days. It's been such a mad dramatic time this past week - all sorts of upheavals and turmoil (much more than usual). The 'positive thinking' that I eschewed so enthusiastically in my last posting didn't quite hold up, not entirely anyway. And yes - before you say anything - I know, I know, positive thinking should engender more positive thinking and if I have allowed any negative thoughts to cloud my demeanour, then it's my fault. Of course it is, it's always my fault, but sometimes things take a turn in such a way that it becomes difficult to defend oneself against the Black Dog.

True, there have been some fun times in the last week. My lovely daughters were both in the country at the same time and we had some jolly canters around the fleshpots of Nottingham I can tell you, and some warm and loving contact too. I'm not complaining about that, because that was the high point of the week, yes indeed. Of course, we ate too much and we drank too much (more of that later), but we also enjoyed some of the best summer sunshine that we've had this year and I was able to do plenty of cruising around with the hood down on the car. The visit of the daughters was all too short, unfortunately, and before too long I was left alone again as they soared off into the skies, ready for their next adventures.

And alone I am - and it's never been more painful than it is now. However, for once I have recognized what it is that is contributing to this fact. It's alcohol. Yes, alcohol (I have discovered) isolates me from a real understanding of life and this in turn causes me to be isolated from real life itself. On Sunday, I lost touch with all reality to a point where I failed to maintain good relations with anyone around me, and consequently caused myself some clear problems with a number of people. This was not good, oh no.

So, I have given it up. Yes, I have stopped drinking alcohol completely. I'm on Day Two at the moment, and it's very tough, I can tell you. Having a cup of tea while I was preparing dinner wasn't nearly as much fun as sipping on the usual large glass of Rioja, but at least the dinner was prepared correctly. And reading in bed last night with a glass of water instead of the usual three fingers of Bushmills wasn't so gorgeously relaxing, but at least I could focus on the words in the book. So, hurrah for temperance! I can't imagine what life without alcohol is going to be like (and to be honest, it frightens me), but I'm expecting (hoping) that it's going to be a life of improved Quality. And Quality of Life is what we all seek, n'est-ce pas?

And now, for some good news! Our Stageplay Festival is fast approaching! Rehearsals are going well and in just a little over two short weeks, the Festival will be upon us! More details can be had by clicking here, and if that excites you, then tickets for all of the shows can be purchased here. Come on, Nottingham has never seen anything like this before - so give it a go!

Ooh, I suddenly feel that the positive thinking is returning..... hurrah!

No Stopping!

2010-05-16T09:57:00.004+01:00

So in summary then, it's all about positive thinking. Everything that any of us has ever seen or done has always, always been about positive thinking - or at least it should have been. Gandhi said: "A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes." This is a tremendously simple maxim, and yet it is perhaps the one fundamental truth about us that we often ignore. This is an adage that has been passed down to us by all great thinkers throughout the ages, and yet still many of us simply don't get it. How many of us have heard the well-known axiom "Mind over matter", indeed how many of us have even uttered these words ourselves, yet we continue to allow what we presume to be external circumstances to bring us down?

Well, now it is time to take this simple truism and to put it into practice. Nothing that ever happens to us has come about without us having thought it. If you consider where you are right now, you will realize that you are standing in a spot that is situated at the very end of a long and winding road. To arrive at that spot you have made countless, countless decisions along the way - some quite grand, some quite small, and some infinitesimal - but you are only standing where you stand as a direct result of all those decisions. And what's more, you will only move from that spot by making yet another decision (and move you must, because the road is a freeway with big fat 'No Stopping' signs all along the side). Whatever you think now - however important or however trivial that thought may be - will change your life forever.

So, now that we understand this, doesn't it make sense to make the next thought a positive one? Of course it does. Only by thinking positive can we be sure to make the correct choice at the next turn in the road that lies ahead. It may be a cliché, but when Confucius said: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", he wasn't joking.

Forget about the enormity of the task; forget about the obstacles that appear to stand in your way - and remember that there is no outside force that can affect your life unless you give that force its own power with your thoughts. The greatest power is within you. "We are what we think. With our thoughts, we make our world." (Buddha)

So, out you all go - quick, get to it! There is no magic 'secret' to any of this. It's plain common sense. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, hang on to the affirmative, and don't (no, please don't) mess with Mr In-Between!

"Imagine what you want, and what you will get in return is unimaginable."
(Dolores McKliskey-Beauchamp 1907-2003)

Night Of Torment

2010-05-12T21:32:00.008+01:00

I think it's been quite interesting, this hung parliament business. I'm not going to go into all the politics of the situation - I've done all that (we've all done all that) in the last twenty-four hours, and there are many points of view to consider; some valid and some just plain hysterical. Even some have been just plain bigoted, of course.

But last night's antics (Tuesday 11th May), whilst being hugely fascinating, had me wondering about the poor old Queen. Just imagine, she had her evening ruined by all the comings and goings of those two selfish boys Brown & Cameron. Picture if you will, a typical Tuesday evening at Buck House - we don't know exactly what goes on there, but it could be something like this:

Scene One: Interior of Her Majesty's bedroom. Her Majesty, dressed in full leathers and a spiked dog collar, is just finishing tying Philip, naked and spread-eagled, to the bed. The doorbell rings.

HM: Who the blazes is that at this time of night?
Butler (outside the door): Your Majesty - I'm afraid Gordon Brown is downstairs. He says it's very urgent.
HM: (wearily) Oh, that old fool? What the fuck does he want? (sighs). Okay, tell him I'll be down in a bit.

HM quickly shimmies out of her leathers and dons a posh frock, hastily clipping on a diamond brooch worth more than the gross assets of Manchester United FC. She rushes out of the room, not forgetting to place a ball-gag in Philip's mouth first.

Scene Two: State room at Buck House. HM shakes Gordon Brown's hand.

GB: Your Majesty, it is with regret that I have come to tender my resignation as your Prime Minister. I know how disappointed you must be to -
HM: (interrupting) Yes, yes, whatever. Nice knowing you Gordy. Now, good night. And close the door on your way out please.

Scene Three: Interior of Buck House. HM races back up the stairs, enters the bedroom and breathless, throws off the frock and re-dons the leathers and dog-collar.

HM: (to a struggling Philip) Now, bitch. I've just had to deal with that old toadie Brown. This has put me in a mean, mean mood. And you, my little prince-dog, are going to suffer for that.

HM picks up evil-looking whip and approaches the bed. The doorbell rings again.

HM: WTF? Who the hell can it be this time?
Butler (outside the door): Your Majesty - I'm afraid David Cameron is downstairs. He says it's very urgent.
HM: (wearily) Oh, that stuck-up little fart? (sighs). Okay, tell him I'll be down in a bit.

HM quickly shimmies out of leathers again and dons a different posh frock, hastily hanging a pearl necklace worth more than the gross assets of Lord Sugar around her neck. She rushes out of the room, not forgetting to apply some vicious-looking clamps to Philip's nipples first.

Scene Four: State room at Buck House. HM shakes David Cameron's hand.

DC: Your Majesty, I have come to seek your permission to form a new government.
HM: Well you can't, so there! You're like a commuter train - you don't have enough seats. Ha ha!
DC: (somewhat ruffled) Well, apart from the fact that you've probably never even been on a commuter train Ma'am, I can tell you that I have that nice Mr Clegg's full support for this.
HM: What? Do you think you two can actually handle it? Really? Oh well, whatever. I always suspected that you two were a pair of bum-boys anyway. Get on with it then, but don't go thinking you can bring him along for the weekly audience with me. One face (that's yours) that resembles a slapped arse is enough, so I don't need two of them, thank you very much. Good night.

Scene Five: Interior of Buck House. HM races back up the stairs, enters the bedroom and breathless, throws off the frock and re-dons the leathers and dog-collar.

HM: (to an even more struggling Philip) Now, slut. I've just had to deal with that chinless wonder Cameron. This has put me in an even meaner mood. And for you, my little Greek slave-boi, that is some very bad news indeed....

********

I mean, it's just not fair, is it? Can't that poor woman have a night of simple fun when she wants it? Those selfish politicians are just plain thoughtless, that's what they are.

Robin Hood, Robin Hood...

2010-05-09T14:45:00.003+01:00

Well, I had an excellent time yesterday. The event I spoke of in my last posting, and which I attended yesterday afternoon, was exceptionally good. Lisa Holdsworth is both a gifted writer and a wonderful human being (not always an accepted combination in a writer, believe me). Lisa has written extensively for some of the most popular British television shows - her credits include Fat Friends, New Tricks, Emmerdale and Waterloo Road, but today's event was focussed on her contribution to the BBC series Robin Hood because Nottinghamshire is celebrating what it has called 'Robin Hood Month' to coincide with the release of Ridley Scott's latest blockbuster film about our own local legendary folk hero.

Yesterday's 'Audience With Lisa Holdsworth' was organized and presented by scriptwriter Stuart William Hosker and turned out to be a slick and professional event of great interest for all of us who attended. Stuart's consummate questioning tapped just the right vein of Lisa's experience, and her many anecdotes from the world of TV were both edifying and humorous. She's a lovely, warm and funny individual - self effacing, modest (and goodness, she shouldn't be - not with her achievements), generous with her advice, and totally totally professional. It was a delight to meet her and to listen to her talk about the fascinating script-to-screen process and the many-a-slip that features between cup and lip therein...

It must be great fun writing for television, but I'm not sure that I'd want to do it (even if I had the opportunity). Sure, the money is great - but it's a bit like writing for film where the writer usually becomes invisible. In film, all the publicity and interest is centred on the director and the leading actors; in TV it's really more about the cast and the characters than anything (even the director gets ignored in TV). And yes, I suppose it really shouldn't matter that the writer gets no recognition from the public, because a writer's only motivation should be that he/she wants to write, and nothing more than that. But it's also nice to be noticed, and if you're a novelist or a playwright, your name features much more strongly than in these other media, and you get the recognition that I suspect we all narcissistically crave. On the other hand of course, most jobbing writers would say this: Which is more important - massaging the ego, or paying the mortgage?

I can't really speak for Lisa in respect of her own motivation, but my guess would be that for her, writing is just a job - but it just so happens that it's a job she loves, and a job she does well. Good for her, I say.

And talking of jobs, I have to report to you that I'm still required at the salt mines each day, so I'd better make a start on the ironing before tomorrow's alarm clock comes calling all too soon. At the thought of that, all the motivation that I gained from yesterday's event has quite suddenly evaporated. Oh, sod the ironing - let's have another Bloody Mary!

Check This Out!

2010-05-04T19:45:00.006+01:00

This is just a quick update, but on Saturday I am going to this event:

IN CONVERSATION WITH ... LISA HOLDSWORTH

Arnold Library (Nottingham) Saturday 8 May, 2pm

Lisa Holdsworth (successful television writer for hit BBC shows such as Waterloo Road, New Tricks, Fat Friends and ITV's Emmerdale) offers an insight into television writing and how to take the process from script-to-screen. She will also be talking about her experiences in writing episodes for BBC's flagship programme Robin Hood. To celebrate Nottinghamshire's Robin Hood month, and the cinema release of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood film, Lisa will be discussing how the BBC's creative team adapted the local folklore legend for the screen, and the creative decisions that were made along the way. She will also discuss her own writing background, the television writing industry both present and future, before inviting questions from the audience.

This is a free event, and a great opportunity to gain insight into writing for television, in particular writing for prime time family-viewing shows.

For more information and to book yourself a place, call: 0115 920 2247

Why don't you come along too? See you there!

Enjoy Your Trip?

2010-05-03T21:15:00.010+01:00

Ooh la la, Monsieur. Yes, I have been for a jolly jape to Paris – always a good tonic when the spirits are low (as mine have been in recent weeks). It couldn't have been better timed too – for as well as the deadened mood that I had previously been enduring, last week was one hell of a crazy merry-go-round of events, that's for sure. As part of Broadway's ScreenLit festival, there were all sorts of screenings, talks, panels and readings to attend, and that's before you start on the various parties and drinks receptions that inevitably clamour for one's attention as well. So, all week I seemed to be dashing from pillar to post meeting some fascinating people from film, theatre and television (one of whom was the fabulous Dave Spikey of 'Phoenix Nights' fame – an absolute gem of a bloke). But it was all quite exhausting.

On the night before I left for my trip, it was the grand closing party where (and I've said this before, I know) the glitterati surged into the Broadway like the massing herds of wildebeest gathering at the watering hole. Unfortunately, I was scheduled to get up at 4:00 a.m. the following morning to get to the airport, so I couldn't stay too late, but it was a great party nonetheless. Imagine my surprise then, when after a few hours of snatched sleep I ventured out into the deserted street at 5:00 a.m. to get my bus for the airport, only to discover a straggle of late revellers just making their way home from the aforesaid Broadway bash! That must have been one hell of a paarteh!

And so to Paris. Never before have I felt in such need of a total break from the fleshpots of Hockley, not least because my recent 'matters of the heart' had somehow drained my emotions of all joie de vivre. As my plane took off, I felt the oppressive load of the previous few weeks simply dissolve from my shoulders and so I (metaphorically) kicked off my shoes, sprawled back into my (metaphoric) seat of insouciance, and relaxed. What a lovely time I had too – cosseted and cared for by my daughter Sophie and her boyfriend, I felt like someone in convalescence. We visited a fascinating exhibition on 'Crime & Punishment' which included a real guillotine – I'd never seen one close up before – and the original of David's painting 'The Death of Marat' (copies of which hung on almost every student's bedroom wall – including mine - in the 1970s), and some intriguing instruments of torture that quite frankly would be more at home in a fetish club in Birmingham (not that I've ever visited one, of course).

We had a delightful lunch with Sophie's charming in-laws; played pétanque in the park whilst drinking copious amounts of the obligatory pastis; watched the French equivalent of the FA Cup Final on TV (Paris St Germain won, appropriately enough). We flâned our way through the Marais district to observe the men kissing in the streets (so that's why they call it 'Gay Paree'); and we ate fried duck in the May Day gala on the banks of the River Seine. There was no sightseeing, no tourism, no photographs (well, I did have one of me taken in front of Serge Gainsborough's house), just a lovely, lovely, relaxing time.

"I want to take a stroll
down the Champs-Élysées,
Do some window shopping
in the Rue de la Paix.
That's for me:
Bonjour, Paris!"

And so, back to the salt mines tomorrow....

Who Said That?

2010-04-29T08:42:00.003+01:00

I was taken back to my childhood the other day, whilst listening to the radio. There was a record playing with the line: "Hey baby, let your hair hang down..." and this brought back a memory of me being totally bewildered by this apparent contradiction. Being too young at the time to be familiar with the common parlance of beatnik romance, I couldn't understand how a baby could let its hair down when it was apparent to anyone that babies have insufficient hair on their heads for any such abandoned activity. I remember being tremendously puzzled by many other such matters like this – I was a naive and withdrawn child you see, with very few social skills at all. Growing up in poverty in the backstreets of Naples, I simply didn't get exposed to the normal fashionable vernacular of modern 'cool' culture, such as it was.

Another phrase that used to confound me was: "Enjoy yourself – it's later than you think". How, I used to wonder, could it ever be later than I thought it was? To me, time was something indisputable, something rational, and something that could easily be discerned simply by looking at the clock. Surely, time could never be something arbitrary or something that could ever be mistaken? But now of course, now that I am old and decrepit, I am only too aware of what such an adage can mean. These days it nearly always is much, much 'later than I think'. I am constantly running against the clock anyway, but my predicament is normally worse than that – I have procrastinated and hesitated for most of my life in the absurd belief that I still have plenty of time to achieve what I want in life.

But then, whilst my feet are still running but going nowhere, and while the rush of life flashes past me on the moving screens by my side, I glance at the watch and realize to my horror that it really is, almost too late. So it usually is later than we think, and we should therefore never, ever be complacent about anything and we should always, always seize every opportunity we can and make the most of what we are offered. I can also remember being puzzled as a child by something my grandmother often used to say to me: "If at first you don't succeed, then try, try, and try again." I could never understand why there had to be three occurrences of the word 'try' in that maxim. Surely, I would think, it would be enough to say: "If at first you don't succeed, then try again." Little did I heed the true meaning of my grandmother's warning – that success often doesn't materialize on the second attempt either. As I said, I was very naive as a child.

Mind you, I don't think it was restricted to my childhood, this confusion of mine. As a teenager, I was frequently frustrated by the line: "I can see clearly now the rain has gone, I can see all obstacles in my way..." You see, in my limited imagination I reasoned that if there are 'obstacles in the way', how could it be claimed that anyone can 'see clearly'? Obviously I had no sense of irony in those days. Or perhaps I was just plain stupid?

Anyway, seeing clearly now, I can also see all the obstacles in my way of getting to Paris tomorrow. Before I can leave I have a list of things to do that is as long as the Channel Tunnel itself (even though I'm flying). So, I'd better get off this blog and get on with my chores. It is, after all, later than I think.....

It's All Over

2010-04-22T22:03:00.007+01:00

Okay, okay – so I was wrong, and the world isn't about to end after all. Sorry about that. I don't often get these things wrong, but everyone is entitled to a few mistakes once in a while. I'm pleased that the flying ban is over anyway, because I'm booked to fly to Paris next weekend and I thought I'd have to cancel my trip. Now it looks like I'll be able to go after all. So hurrah for that!

I could do with a little break – after the "matters of the heart" that I spoke of a short while ago, I feel all washed up and rinsed out, so a short sojourn in Gay Paree is just what the doctor ordered. "Affairs of the heart?" you ask. Who would have thought that an old man like me could get into such a fluster about such a trivial thing as romance? But into a fluster I got, good and proper I can tell you. But now, I've sorted out my poor stupid head and heart, and the anguish has all been erased (I'm sure you'll all be pleased to learn that). The problem with "matters of the heart" is that they don't respond at all to rational thought, do they? It doesn't matter how often we tell ourselves that in fact, we're better off without such-and-such person in our lives and that in fact, jealousy is such a pitiable emotion that no reasonably well-adjusted person should allow it to compromise his self-esteem, yet still we suffer. And my goodness, I've suffered in recent days.

This morning however, I gave myself a good talking to. I have deleted a certain person's number from my mobile phone (because the alcohol-sensitive keypad hasn't yet been invented - you know what I mean), and I have decided to look on the bright side. I have been examining the qualities of said "certain person", and weighing them against the negative points (and believe me, there are many). What it boils down to is that yes, I am very definitely better off on my own. Abso-flipping-lutely! There's no doubt about it. But I have to admit - it ain't 'alf lonely, Mum!

And now, let us turn to something more cheerful. I was thinking the other day how strange it is that if we cook pizza at home, it's likely that we'll share a twelve-incher with our partner (that's if we have a partner that is – oh, don't get me started on that again), but if we go out to eat in a pizza restaurant, we get given a whole twelve-incher all to ourselves! Now why is that? Are we more greedy when we go out to eat, or is it just that restaurants can't be bothered to cut a pizza in half? I was wondering how it is in restaurants in Italy. Well, not so much wondering really, because I know the answer – I was in Italy earlier this year on my skiing holiday and I ordered a pizza one day for my lunch. Out it came, all twelve inches of it, and down it went (along with a refreshing glass of beer). Accordingly, I approached the slopes in a much more leaden fashion that afternoon, that's for sure.

Another thing that puzzles me is this: Why has my electric fly-killer broken, just as the fly season is upon us? Has it done this in protest at being left unused for several months? It seems rather a coincidence to me. You may remember that for a long time I refused to kill the flies that seasonally invade my apartment, but then I had an epiphany after my trip to Venice last summer, and decided that killing flies is a necessary evil. So then I bought myself this electric fly-killing gizmo-thingy which I reasoned was at least a humane way of disposing of these pests. But now that it's broken (grrr), and now that I've become so accustomed to the killing, I simply beat them to death with a newspaper. Hurrah!

Goodbye Cruel World

2010-04-19T21:55:00.003+01:00

There's nothing to report today. Well, there is this: The world, as we know it, is about to end. Actually, that's a bit of an unnecessary claim – it's not just the world as we know it, it's the world in total. It's all about the LHC in Switzerland – the machine. It's the machine that is causing these earthquakes and volcanoes ,you see. And the volcano in Iceland is bringing about more chaos than you can imagine. We shall very soon run out of food (this country has been unable to sustain itself for years), and then there will be rioting in the streets. Rioting in the hills, and on the beaches.

After that, we will all go completely stir crazy because we will suddenly realize that we're absolutely trapped on an island (and it will be crazier than 'Lost', believe me) and that's the point when we all start to eat each other. Meanwhile, the poor Kenyan farmers – unable to export their beans to the UK – will start burning their land, thereby causing a total breakdown of African political relationships and the entire continent will explode into civil war.

And then, at about this time, the financial markets will totally collapse because nobody will be able to fly into London to do their special deals, and there'll be no money for us to withdraw from the cashpoints. Even if there were food to buy, we couldn't afford it. Next, the European nations will remember that we are - after all, - an island, and from this will spring their age-old hatred of us and they will inexplicably declare war on Britain, en masse. Stormtroopers will storm (as is their wont) through the Chunnel, and the Queen will be imprisoned and replaced by Carla Bruni, coincidentally reconciled with her errant husband Nicolas, soon to be declared Emperor of Europe. But it won't last of course. The Chinese government – still able to fly – will send over its generals to crush the New Empire and turn the citizens of Europe into vassals of the Mongol tyranny.

Then Iran, jealous of the Chinese dominance, and fearful of the crushing of Islam, will launch a nuclear attack on everyone else in the world and so, we all (some of us still shackled in our new slavery) are doomed.

This isn't fiction, this is fact. You read it here first.

Doing Something Dreadful, or Away With The Fairies?

2010-04-13T20:57:00.004+01:00

Life's a funny thing – I've recently been trying to think really, really positive things about my life because anyone who has read 'The Secret' will tell you that thinking negatively only brings negative things into your life. Hmm, well, I don't think that this old Universe fella has been listening to me at all because I have had one hell of a load of shit in recent days. Amongst other tortuous events, this also concerns matters of the heart (strangely enough). Now, I know what you're going to say – how does an old codger like me end up with luuurve problems at my age? You might well ask – it's ridiculously undignified I know, but sometimes even we wrinklies get the odd flutter of emotion that causes us to abandon all caution, and so we continue to hope that something that shouldn't really be on offer to us, might still be.

I had an extraordinary time the other night. I took this drug mephedrone – the one that's in all the news because it's about to get banned because it kills everybody who takes it. Sometimes known as 'Meow Meow' or some such ridiculous name, I only took it because it wouldn't be breaking the law to do so, and therefore I can. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Well, let me tell you that I can now see what all the fuss is about – it's very pleasant. Very pleasant indeed. I had the impression that it was something like what I would call a 'light' drug – a bit like 'mild' cigarettes were meant to be when the whole tar & nicotine issue raised its ugly head in the 1970s.

You won't need me to inform you that it has been in the news recently following the awful death of two teenage boys in Lincolnshire who had taken it. The media hounds are of course out in force, baying for blood, and the Government is responding in its usual knee-jerk reactionary way – more so because there is election fever about, I suspect. Anyway, I decided to give it a go because I felt sure that there must be many, many thousands of happy customers who – unlike the tragic boys – had lived to tell the tale.

At first, I felt nothing except a slight burning sensation in my nose. Then, as I lay back on the sofa and put my feet up on the coffee table, relaxing into a comfortable recumbent position, it occurred to me how much I loved my strange little friend Tom. “You OK?” he asked. “I am absolutely fine,” I replied, smiling widely. “I really love you.” “It’s working then,” he replied sardonically. A few minutes later, we were both sitting round in a euphoric haze, smiling benignly but with an incomprehensible, overwhelming desire to dance. It was nearly impossible to keep still. However, even under this sort of debauched influence, I can still retain a shred of dignity from somewhere, and so I resisted the urge to dance, thankfully (because, in the words of Robbie Williams, "I dance like me dad").

I suppose that I ought to tell you that it was a horrible experience, and that you must never do it yourself, but I can't do that. I am not advocating that you should take drug use lightly. There are many devastating implications of illicit drug use – I have had friends whose lives have been completely ruined by such excesses. And as for myself, I wouldn't want you to think that I can only have a good night because I’ve taken something to make me feel as though I am enjoying myself. It would be better to think that 'm having a good night because I'm genuinely enjoying myself.

That notwithstanding, I had a lovely time - but it is inevitable that this 'drug' (for it is not yet known as such) will be banned soon. The sad fact is though, that it is only a matter of time before another 'legal' substance pops up on the market, and the same problems will be created all over again. And despite that it is still legal, and I could therefore take it again (for the time being), I won't do it. I had an amazingly pleasant experience and hey, there was a bonus - I didn't die! But the thing is, I cannot deny that I was still out of control while I was under the influence, and being out of control can never, ever, be a good thing.

Now, to get back to my miserable life.....

Bye Bye Baby

2010-04-07T20:06:00.003+01:00

Oh dear, I feel just like those old people do (you know, 'parents') when they experience that 'empty nest' syndrome. You see, now that the selection process is over for the Triliteral Stageplay Festival 2010, there's very little for me to do for a while. I've now had to hand over to my lovely boys and their young, talented friends who will be dealing with all of the artistic side of things - that is the auditions, casting and rehearsals. In one way this is most appropriate because I'm working full-time down at the salt mines these days, and so can't get involved in much during the day anyway, but I do feel somewhat 'out of the loop' and it's left me feeling slightly bereft. I've had to wave bye-bye to anything truly hands-on for the time being, and it's like seeing my lovely babies leave for University or something, and I'm left here all alone while they go off and have fun.

Of course, in true fashion, my naughty boys haven't even kept me up-to-date with what's going on. They're too busy even to remember about me, and who can blame them? When you're having fun doing something that you love, who wants to remember about the old man sitting alone in the homestead, wondering in silence what on earth is going on? I suspect that the only time they will think of me is when they want their washing done, and then they'll just parcel it all up and send it home without even a cheery note. By the way, I am speaking metaphorically here – I don't really do their washing.

Oh well, I suppose I shouldn't begrudge them their bit of fun – but I can't help imagining the worst; speculating on what might have happened at today's auditions (whether they have found the stars of our shows, or whether it's all been a procession of wannabe Dorothys). Actually, you'd think that the plural of 'Dorothy' would be 'Dorothies', but that doesn't seem right either.

As for me, I return to the sailing season tomorrow. I'm not sure that I'm in the mood for it really – it's still quite cold out there, and the idea of getting togged up in lycra and neoprene and blasting round the racecourse in this weather isn't exactly appealing. Actually, if the wind is anything like it is tonight, there won't be much 'blasting' around anyway – we'll probably just sit in the doldrums, battling the current, freezing our balls off. Never mind – at least it will provide me with some exercise and fresh air, two things I don't get much of, cooped up in the dark and dismal conditions down at the salt mines. And at least if there's little wind we won't capsize (not that we usually do; we normally win). Notwithstanding that, I'd still rather be skiing – I had an email from the Ski Club of Great Britain today (the weekly newsletter) in which it said that there's still plenty of snow in the Alps. Hmm, perhaps I could take off – after all, they won't miss me back at Triliteral HQ, will they?

And now, to football. I just watched the opening minutes of the Manchester United v Bayern Munich game and I was dismayed to see a banner hanging from the stands declaring: "Rooney – The White Pelé". What the fuck is all that about? Couldn't they just have said "The British Pelé" or "The Manchester Pelé"? It's disgraceful, that's what it is. And who was this Pelé fellah anyway? Was he any good?

In Bed With Roy

2010-04-05T11:07:00.004+01:00

Well, my three days of freedom are nearing completion and I have to tell you, gentle reader, that the champagne corks did not pop, as I had hoped. Instead, I have been industrious and diligent in my approach to my chores (never-ending), and have refrained from indulging in the usual Bank Holiday mayhem that has so often ensnared me in the past – the usual effect in other years has been that the extended weekend becomes telescoped into something seemingly much shorter, simply by looking through the bottom of a whisky bottle.

So there isn't an awful lot to report to you really, and I suppose it's somewhat selfish of me to expect you to spend some of your own valuable time reading about something which is, in effect, a non-event. The most delicious pleasure I have enjoyed this weekend is the sheer joy of getting out of my bed at around 7:00 a.m. (nearly two hours later than I habitually arise during the working week), making a cup of scalding hot tea and taking it back to bed to sit, propped on my pillows, reading a book. At the moment I'm wading through yet another biography of Churchill, this time it's Roy Jenkins's reasonably compact 2001 offering. I say 'reasonably compact' because I have before tackled Randolph Churchill & Martin Gilbert's ridiculously over-detailed ten-volume effort and so Roy's contribution, which is only a single volume and comes in at a mere 912 pages, is almost pamplet-like in its comparison. Nevertheless, the biography could still have benefited from some far stricter editing than it appears to have received in its preparation. Despite the book containing some quite sparkling and lively prose, there are some passages where Roy Jenkins rambles through some fairly pointless anecdotes and frequently engages in 'whispered asides' that seem to have less to do with pushing the narrative along, and more to do with exhibiting Roy's own flamboyant knowledge of the political nuances of the twentieth century.

That notwithstanding, I'm enormously enjoying the book – not least because I can rattle through a chapter each morning, ensconced in my lovely duck-down duvet, nestled into my plump and scrunchy pillows, sipping on my deliciously hot tea. This has to be a far, far greater pleasure than the normal holiday horror of waking up too late, head thumping and wth a mouth feeling disappointingly like a scraped hedgehog. So, even though my Easter break has been largely uneventful (and I'm not including here the encounter with the estranged Mrs Pilgrim who for some reason off-loaded onto me dozens of vegetarian burritos and fajitas, and endless trays of somewhat tasteless soya yoghurts), I feel that I have enjoyed a fulfilling break from the Salt Mines.

Those of you who know me will probably be scoffing at this right now. You will probably be thinking that my peaceful sojourn was not enjoyed through choice, but was somehow enforced upon me – and in a way, you'd be right. I did have plans for weekend - plans that had promised to provide more excitement than I have in reality enjoyed (and which also caused me to decline an invitation to go to Cornwall to celebrate a friend's birthday – something that I would have dearly loved to have done), but those plans collapsed at the eleventh hour. However, I have a new view of life these days: Not to let the negative feelings of disappointment keep me away from my desires. No, I now resolve to turn any disappointment into a positive belief and I know that soon, very very soon, my time will come.

In the meantime, I suppose that time spent in bed with Roy Jenkins will have to suffice.

Happy Easter, dearest reader.

Relief From The Salt Mines

2010-04-02T22:12:00.005+01:00

Although it's Good Friday today (and therefore a Bank Holiday), I've still been working. The Triliteral Stageplay Festival is now complete as far as Phase One is concerned, with all of our judges having returned their scores for the shortlisted scripts, and so we held a meeting this afternoon to finalise the selection and to sort out the various directing and casting requirements that the selected plays have thrown up. It wasn't as simple or as straightforward as we'd assumed, but between our diligent Producer (Richie Garton) and our knowledgeable, if flamboyant, Artistic Director (Daniel Hallam), it was all sorted to satisfaction.

It was quite a strange process really – we had decided to use a system where the judges were asked to score each script according to a set of established criteria, and only the top nine plays would then go forward to production in the festival itself. There were some surprises – some scripts did better than we had expected; others not so well. We had already made a commitment that the top-scoring script would be taken and produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August, so it was reassuring that on this level at least, the judges returned a verdict that exactly matched our expectations. The highest scoring play turned out to be the one we liked the best too, so we're delighted to have been given the endorsement to take it up North in the summer. Wooh! Full details will be appearing on the Triliteral website in due course.

And so now I have three days before me where I am not required to turn up at the Salt Mines (nor be beaten by the evil gang-master), and my plan is to spend those three days on myself. Easier said than done, of course, because there are always chores to be carried out, even when I (seem) to have some free time to myself. All this reminds me of the time when I was kidnapped in Colombia by the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and was forced into hard labour for the production of cocaine. I was meant to be on holiday, travelling with my history tutor from university, and it was meant to be a sightseeing trip only. We had mistakenly believed that we were travelling in what was (now euphemistically) known as a 'safe haven'. It turned out to be anything but that – our kidnappers had already plotted our insouciant wanderings and had apparently targeted us as potentially rich pickings in their ferocious drugs war.

Their aim (as I understand it) was to use us as a bargaining commodity – they needed money to conduct their battle against the other established drugs-cartel chappies (whoever they were). I was somewhat puzzled by this state of affairs – I'd always assumed that dealing in cocaine would have brought in sufficient cash for these bandits not to need to augment their coffers with the few shillings that kidnapping a worthless Briton like me could bring in, but what do I know about such matters?

I think it was the jungle marches that proved to be the hardest. God knows why these banditos felt the need to walk everywhere – I'm sure they had adequate resources to take a taxi if they'd needed to. But walk they did - endless miles of trekking though sweating, face-slapping foliage; interminable slogging across ravines; wading through swirling black rivers teeming with piranhas; and hacking through snake-infested undergrowth (have you ever seen what happens to a man's flesh after he's been bitten by the notorious fer-de-lance?). For some reason, these guys just loved to keep walking. It probably wouldn't have been quite so bad if Herbert del Orez (my history tutor) hadn't been in a wheelchair – our captors refused to let anyone push him along except myself. Before that sojourn in the jungle, I had weighed twenty stone if I had weighed an ounce, but not by the time we'd finished – who needs a diet when, with a bit of carelessness, you can get kidnapped by FARC?

Anyway, that's all in the past so let's not dwell on such matters. Instead, let's look to the future – how to spend the next three days of freedom, eh? Oh, did I hear a champagne cork popping? Bring it on!

Higher Since Bucket

2010-03-28T21:16:00.004+01:00

I was listening to a (somewhat commercial) programme on BBC Radio 2 the other day, and they (whoever they are) were talking about a 'Bucket List' which is apparently a list of things any of us might wish to accomplish before we 'kick the bucket'. Hmm, this is not something I've ever considered – well, not as a tangible list that is. Yes, like most people I have a number of items on a 'wish list' that is, of course, ever-changing and somewhat fluid – depending largely upon the mood I am in at the moment. So, maybe it's time to set it out in a more formal manner and invite myself to reflect upon this list and evaluate just how feasible any of it is.

The thing about making such a list is to try to identify the achievements that we really feel will shape our lives; or those that without which our lives will be incomplete. But doing this will surely expose ourselves to the scrutiny of others to our failings, won't it? Isn't the compilation of such a list tantamount to admitting what failures we all are? That there are things on our lists which we have not yet achieved is almost a declaration that we have, in fact, achieved very little. If the schemes in our inventory are too grandiloquent then we risk being seen as too ambitious or of holding ourselves in too much esteem; if they are too mundane then we could be accused of being too feeble, pathetic even.

Well, for what it is worth, here is my somewhat pitiable list:

• Learn Italian (properly, I mean – not like my half-hearted mastering of French, Spanish & Norwegian)
• Fall in love (reciprocally, I mean – after all, I've fallen in love unrequitedly more times than you could shake a stick at)
• Become a natural blonde (I can't tell you how much I spend at the hairdresser's)
• Have at least one novel published (I have something to say, but nobody wants to listen)
• Become a Muslim (what holds me back from this is my love of alcohol and my distrust of god – two aspects of my character which are somewhat incongruous with the principles of Islam, I fear)
• Launch myself over Niagara Falls in a barrel (did I learn nothing from my Great Aunt Dolores?)
• Stop arguing with people just because I think I'm right (which I rarely am)
• Ban all road freight (Eddie Stobart – I don't care if you lose your livelihood; it's not my problem)
• Save the planet (and no, I don't want to be Gordon Brown)
• Remove Sophie Dahl from the TV (oh sure, she's a pretty young thing, but who would give a fuck about her vacuous cooking efforts if it weren't for her Grand Pappy Roald?)
• Marry the lovely Professor Brian Cox (oops, that one is impossible I guess)
• Become more serious (is this list actually helping?)
• Give up alcohol and become more spiritual (oh dear – see 'Become a muslim' above)
• Stop writing lists (and just get on with it)

Have I said too much?

Do Not Rid Me Of This Fuddlesome Feast!

2010-03-22T20:43:00.004Z

Well, I had probably the best dinner I've had in many years on Saturday evening. It was (our Producer) Richie's birthday and I had offered to cook for him one of my legendary paellas. Not so, Daniel - the intrepid Director of Triliteral (other stage-play festivals are available) - said that a simple paella was not an adequate treat for our dear boy Richie. Notwithstanding that my paellas are anything but simple, and are usually a tour de force – containing chicken, pork, seven different kinds of fish and seafood, saffron (the most expensive food commodity in the world), and many, many other exotic and tempting ingredients – I agreed with Daniel that to celebrate Richie's birthday, we needed something more; something much more special.

Imagine my amazement when Daniel presented us with twelve courses – yes twelve – each accompanied by a different wine, and each cooked to an absolute perfection. We had a soup course, a pâté course, there was sorbet, three different types of salmon (one marinated in beetroot juice), coq au vin, filet mignon, a pork medallion – the list goes on (and those that I have listed are in the wrong order anyway). The amount of work which had gone into the design and preparation of this diverse and fascinating menu is just overwhelming. We (the guests, that is) didn't care about that – we just sat back and enjoyed ourselves while Daniel did all the hard work – never flagging, he continued to pamper us with perfect dish after perfect dish of delights! To paraphrase one of the twentieth century's greatest statesmen: Never, in the field of gourmet confit, were so many courses, stowed by so few. A gastronomic triumph indeed.

But talking of things Triliteral, events with the festival are moving apace very nicely. The shortlisted scripts are with the judging panel as I write, and their deliberations will be revealed to us on March 31st. It's so exciting because we have no idea which plays will be selected, and as such we have no idea what kind of a cast we will require for the nine forthcoming productions. Even so, the call has gone out for the casting stage (see the website for details if you fancy your chances as an actor – click here), and everything is in place for the realisation of our master plan. The judges are: Nicola Monaghan, prizewinning Nottingham novelist and winner of the Betty Trask Award and the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award; James K Walker, literary editor of the iconic arts magazine Left Lion; Ray Gosling, veteran BBC broadcaster and an old friend of the Triliteral team; and up-and-coming dramaturg Gareth Morgan who is currently doing some splendid work for the Nottingham Playhouse. A glittering panel indeed. We are all intrigued to see the final selection that they produce from their deliberations, and we're very excited.

In fact, so excited that I feel another celebratory dinner coming on.... Chef! Get back to the kitchen!

A little bird told me....

2010-03-18T22:06:00.005Z

I love hearing random snippets of other people's conversations and then trying to see whether some kind of story might emerge from them. I heard an absolute corker today. Listen to this:

"He never talks about his family, or anything personal. I mean, he never mentions a wife, or a girlfriend, or even things lower down the list that he could mention..."

What on earth was that all about? What do we learn about the subject of the conversation, and what does it tell us about the speaker? What do you suppose the speaker meant by "things lower down the list"? Is there some kind of prejudice being revealed here, or was the speaker simply referring to objects such as domestic pets, or dishwashers, or maybe just doing the ironing? Who knows? Later, whilst walking down a corridor, I heard an astonishing claim being made by someone talking with great authority to a colleague. I only heard a small part of this conversation which consisted of this:

"Well, you shouldn't have a banana every day anyway, but if you do... well, the best thing would be to have those really small ones..."

Make what you will of that one. I think I might have written before on here about the most astonishing snippet I once heard on a train. On that occasion, I was seriously tempted to stop, interrupt, and ask for an explanation of this particularly startling statement:

"Well of course as you know, I love history – but from 1603 to 1807 I know absolutely nothing at all."

I have long since tried to reconcile these two dates and work out what period in history they represent. Okay, so 1603 marked the end of the Tudor period when Elizabeth I died, but what happened in 1807 to mark the end of any identifiable period? I've Googled the year 1807, and the following results were thrown up:

1. Gunpowder-ship explodes in Leiden, Netherlands, 150 die
2. Napoleon convenes great Sanhedrin in Paris
3. London's Pall Mall is first street lit by gaslight
4. British squadron under Admiral Duckworth forces passage of Dardanelle
5. 1st performance of Ludwig von Beethoven's 4th Symphony in B
6. 1st railway passenger service began in England
7. British Parliament abolishes slave trade
8. Townsend Speakman first sells fruit-flavored carbonated drinks in Philadelphia
9. British board USS Chesapeake, a provocation leading to War of 1812
10. Lightning hits gunpowder warehouse in Luxembourg; 230 die
11. British troops lands at Ensenada, Argentina
12. France, Russia and Prussia sign Peace of Tilsit
13. Congress passes Embargo Act, to force peace between Britain and France

Perhaps point 7 (above) is something worthy of note, and it's interesting to see that there were two gunpowder explosions in the same year (points 1 & 10), but do these really stand out as a bookend of history, for which Good Queen Bess's death stands as the other? I don't think so. And why are the intervening years such a black hole for this young enthusiast of history on the train? What is so obscure about these years that they failed to hold the speaker's interest?

That's the beauty of eavesdropping – we hear such mouth-watering jewels of trivia that we can only be inspired about the complex tapestry of human thought and expression that leads, inevitably, to the foundations of fiction. Hurrah for a writer's life!

Who Was That Man?

2010-03-14T21:56:00.005Z

My Great-Aunt Dolores claimed to have had a child once. She couldn't remember what she did with it though – she pretended to have lost it in the Blitz when she thought it may have fallen out of the pram as she was running for cover during an air-raid. I am immediately suspicious of this theory, however – there is more than one element to the story that doesn't quite add up. For a start, I've often heard Dolores state that she spent the entire war years abroad - sometimes claiming that she was working in occupied France for la Résistance; at other times boasting that she was in Casablanca for the whole duration, apparently drinking in some American bar run by a lugubrious ex-pat called 'Rick'. Either way, she seems to have avoided the London Blitz.

Another reason her story somewhat stinks is that in all the years I knew her, I never witnessed Dolores 'run for cover' in any situation. She always asserted that anyone who couldn't face danger with a stoic stance and gritted teeth was nothing more than a 'pathetic sissy'. I always remember the time we were caught in the crossfire of a gun-battle somewhere in the Sudan – whilst I was trying to hide my head in a discarded biscuit tin, Dolores stood on the roof of a battered old Peugeot, took out her revolver, and with her famous ivory cigarette-holder clamped firmly between her teeth, shot back. So the image of her running panic-stricken through the blacked-out streets of London, frantically pushing a pram towards the air-raid shelter, seems difficult to conjure.

But I digress. Wherever she did (or did not) lose the child, I have little doubt that it existed. Or rather, he existed – for she did once let slip that the baby was a boy. Her motivation for having the child was as bizarre as was her excuse for losing him. She claimed that she had no interest whatsoever in breeding (that was something you did to pigs, she said), but she was apparently interested in the physical act of childbirth. This is a strange impetus for pregnancy at the best of times, but Dolores professed not to believe other women when they described the deplorable pain that giving birth entailed. "I thought it was all poppycock," she said. "My view was that these moaning, whimpering women were just pathetic sissies with no balls. I can tell you now, boy – I couldn't have been more wrong. Ejecting that little bastard was the toughest, most unpleasant thing I've ever done in my entire life. Well, that is if you discount the time I had lunch with Barbara Cartland and had to perform the Heimlich Manoeuvre on her when she choked on a fishbone."

Despite my gentle probing however, she never revealed much more. She was resolutely tight-lipped on the subject of the identity of the baby's father. "Let's just say boy, that if the child had been legitimate – which it clearly was not - then it would have carried a very impressive title indeed, and I wouldn't have needed to have taken to robbing banks."

So who is this long-lost second-cousin of mine? Is he still alive? Did he marry? Did he make any sort of name for himself? Perhaps he's a famous actor, politician, or business mogul? Perhaps he was 'Xylophone Man' who used to sit on the pavement outside the Council House in Nottingham, bashing out one of only three tunes in his repertoire (badly) on his child's toy xylophone? Who knows? Dolores took this secret with her to the grave (actually, she didn't have a grave – we burned her, and only restraint on our part prevented us from carrying out the act while she was still alive, but you know what I mean).

So, if there is anyone out there reading this who was born to mysterious parentage in 1941, please get in touch. And please, please, change your will as soon as possible (in my favour, of course).

Ooh, am I about to become rich?

We Shall Fight Them On The Beaches!

2010-03-11T21:42:00.005Z

I'm reading a biography of Winston Churchill at the moment. It's the third biography of this very famous man that I've read – one of the other two was Martin Gilbert's ridiculously over-detailed massive multi-volumed tome (of which the first two in the series were written by Churchill's son, Randolph) which took me an entire winter to read some years ago. It's quite extraordinary to re-visit this man's life – and to re-discover what a pompous, self-bloated ego-maniac he was. People's view of him is often that he was a genius. We all remember the famous quotes attributed to him, and see them as a display of his consummate wit and ability to spring forth with a clever riposte to anything and any situation. There's the one where Lady Nancy Astor is reputed to have said: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea!" to which his response is claimed to have been: "Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.”

And then there's his famous rebuke to the Socialist MP Bessie Braddock who is quoted as saying to him at a party: “Mr. Churchill, you are drunk.” His reply has often been re-used by many an errant husband or similar miscreant who has been reprimanded for taking too much liquor: “And Bessie, you are ugly. You are very ugly. But I’ll be sober in the morning.” Add to these amusing anecdotes his undoubtedly inspiring orations that include such memorable phrases as: "We shall fight them on the beaches.." or "Never in the field of human conflict...." etc. and we see a man of razor-sharp insight and clarity. All good stuff. But such soundbites aside, it's his naked ambition and ruthless self-promotion that sets him apart from other luminaries in our political history.

I'm beginning to understand that at the genesis of his political career, WSC would write to anybody in power about any issue that he presumed to have an opinion on – and his assumption was (with his unshakeable confidence) that his political seniors would undoubtedly listen to him. In the main, it worked – even though most people disliked his boorish and arrogant approach, they seemed transfixed by his irresistible bombardment of correspondence on all matters ranging from free trade to the abolition of the House of Lords (strangely, he was unsuccessful in the latter campaign, bequeathing that particular quest to New Labour, some 85 years later).

This leads me to conclude that our dear Winston was no real genius – as anyone who lived through the Second World War might otherwise assert – but that he was simply consistent, dogged, and had an overflowing sense of his own importance. The odd thing about this revelation is that I actually recognize something of myself in our erstwhile hero – which brings me to the question: Why am I, Richard Pilgrim, not as famous or as successful as Mr C? After all, I have the same stubborn conviction that other people must be interested in what I have to say (hence this blog - pray indulge me, dear reader), and really that's all that Winston had at the time (no, not the blog – I mean the stubborn conviction etc...), so the parallel should be that I ought at least to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer by now, if not the Prime Minister.

My trouble, I suppose, is that I'm possibly not that much of a bully.

A State of Febrile Excitement

2010-03-08T09:42:00.004Z

Gosh, what a week and a half that was! It was such a trauma to my normal languid routine, to return to the rigours of gainful employment, that I fell into a state of immediate nervous exhaustion. Unfortunately, I was unable to abandon my responsibilities as I would have liked – which would have been simply to take to my bed and hide from the world – because I had other pressing duties to deal with. There were reports to write, accounts to prepare, books to review, meetings to attend, paperwork to catch up on, places to go, people to meet, fish to fry, and sausages to stuff – an entirely crowded tableau and cornucopia of urgent obligation.

A simple remedy to all of this would have been to have had a relaxing and languorous weekend with some effortless R&R to restore the ebbing energies. But it was not to be so. Friday evening brought a visit from the stray cat, and thereby bringing all the normal chaos and disarray that such visits from him ensue. Very little sleep is ever secured when the cat is here – he demands such attention and victuals that I seem to be forever attending to his needs. This interruption was especially unwelcome in view of the fact that I was scheduled to attend a big writing conference on Saturday, some miles away. I managed to get there on time, but felt bleary-eyed and slightly dazed when I did. The conference was still good though, and I had a private meeting with a literary agent who was able to give me some great advice about what to do with my latest novel. I prefer not to interpret her very astute comments as: "This needs re-writing", but more optimistically to take what she said as positive encouragement.

Regrettably, the day at the conference – whilst enjoyable and informative - completely drained me of all energy, and I therefore failed to make it to the birthday bash of super-group Captain Dangerous's lead singer Adam Clarkson, later that evening. This was a disappointment to me, but I just couldn't summon up the vigour to get my body or mind to move. I ended up sleeping for a full twelve hours (although of course, this was with a few interruptions as I intermittently woke up, screaming, with the usual night terrors).

Sunday was spent rushing through shopping and chores, a luncheon engagement, visiting a friend in hospital, and delivering presents for the aforesaid Adam's birthday (somewhat late). I now have a spreadsheet to detail the 1001 upcoming tasks for today, and trying to sort through the priorities is turning into what Daniel has just called a 'logistical nightmare'. There'll be no time to eat, I expect, but fear not gentle and sensitive reader – I have built into the timetable an adequate time to shower and to conduct other such ablutions. It would help greatly if I didn't have to return to the orifice tomorrow, but sadly the almighty dollar calls.

So, nothing of much interest or excitement to report to you – but I will try to improve matters before the end of the week. I daren't even use my blood pressure monitor today – the results might bring on the day terrors too!

Oh, and finally - my daughter Sophie now has her own little weekly show on French TV. She's quite stunning and I'm turning into a very proud dad. Check it out by clicking here.

Somewhere, Over The Hurdle

2010-03-01T21:24:00.002Z

Well, I've survived my first day back into the forays of commercial living. If it hadn't been for the goddamn awful drive there and back, it would have been a rather gentle re-introduction to the normal rigours of gainful employment. I wasn't given a great deal to do – in fact, I'm not even sure that my clients actually know what it is they want me to do – so I didn't feel too taxed by the day. That notwithstanding, I'd have sooner been at home waving my legs in the air instead.

Yesterday, my last one of freedom, we had a marathon meeting at my flat about the Triliteral Festival. The competition closed at twelve noon and I met with the rest of the executive committee to begin the long task of shortlisting the submissions. Well we had made some preparations already, of course, because as the scripts had been arriving during the previous weeks we had been reading them in advance and making notes in readiness for our mutual deliberations. My apartment was now knee-deep in paper as we jointly considered the merits of each submission, and the air was thick with argument and disagreement (all in the friendliest possible manner, of course). Despite the fact that it should have been my ultimate day of leisure, I was also charged with the duty of cooking a full roast dinner for my colleagues amidst this snowdrift of paperwork. Not an easy task.

Well, we enjoyed a passable repast at least (although no alcohol to accompany the feast, lest our judgement should become impaired) and we eventually emerged from the deluge of hopeful scripts with a shortlist that we felt were worthy enough to be forwarded to our panel of independent judges. So, now the waiting begins – the judges will have to return the scored script sheets and then we'll have to begin the task of auditioning, casting, rehearsals and finally, production of the Festival itself in June. Then there's the Edinburgh Fringe to come, so we've still a long way to go as far as the amount of hard work is concerned. Why do we punish ourselves thus?

I don't know – there's my own play to finish (not the one about the Great Barrack Street Tullamore Balloon Fire Disaster of 1785, but another one), AND my novel to finish (not the one about the rent boys, but another one), AND the finances for the studio to complete, AND a mountain of my own paperwork to wade through too. And now – working for a living as well! No wonder I'm reaching for the bottle of scotch. Can you blame me?

Damn You, Edith!

2010-02-26T10:39:00.002Z

How often do we hear those words: "I have absolutely no regrets about what I have done"? I wonder whether in most cases this is actually true. Of course we are supposed to say that, aren't we, because 'having regrets' is negative thinking, and negative thinking now brings negative results in the future. So we feel obliged to banish all thoughts of regret from our minds and only to focus on the positive elements of our past. Easier said than done. There is a lot of common sense in this maxim though – I mean, every single action we have taken in our past has brought us right to the position we are at now. That is to say that I wouldn't be sitting here now, at this very place and at this very moment - writing my blog – without having arrived here by virtue of every single individual tiny action (or decision) taken by me in the past. Therefore, if I now regret some of those actions and decisions, it is logical to assume that I am in some way dissatisfied with where I am at this moment. And we are told (are we not?) that to be dissatisfied with where we are right now, is an unhappy state of affairs.

There is, of course, another view to be taken about this – that this focus on the power of now is nothing more than a load of old bollocks. Surely, it's acceptable to have some regrets because it is only from these that we learn lessons about our behaviour, and lessons about ourselves in general. Our lives are – and, I suppose should be – something like those books we used to read as children which had alternative story lines. At the bottom of Page One we are faced with a choice: Do we a) take the path into the deep, dark and mysterious woods (go to Page Three); or do we b) hitch a ride from the friendly farmer going in the opposite direction on his hay wagon (go to Page Five)? Looking back, we can chart our progress through the story-book, but what we cannot do is to read the book again and make alternative choices. We can only speculate about the journey (or journeys) that we might otherwise have taken.

I suppose the argument from the positive thinkers is that such speculation can only bring us misery and doubt. Who knows what might have happened if we had chosen to fight the ogre in the woods, instead of opting – as we did perhaps - to follow the yellow brick road? The trick must be to ignore those decisions where we believe that we took the wrong fork in the trail through the forest, and to take pleasure only from those decisions which we can see were the right ones. Unfortunately, I think it's more usual for us to forget about the right choices that we have made, and to think only about what we now think were the wrong ones. Inevitably, this must conclude that we are somehow dissatisfied with the status quo. My concern about this state of affairs is that by feeling unhappy about my current situation, I am only giving myself the power (and permission) to continue to be so. That has to be wrong, doesn't it?

So, maybe it shouldn't be a case of having 'no regrets', but more a case of recognizing the poor choices we might have made along the way, and examining our motivations for doing so. Then, the positive outcome from such an examination must be that we don't make those poor choices again. Isn't that what they call 'growing up'? Hmm, the (somewhat) depressing realization from this is that am I not a bit too old to be still growing up?

Well, you might think that – but I prefer to carry on growing, thank you very much. Oh yes, I'll take it on the chin – I do have regrets, and sometimes it can seem that the right answers in my particular life don't even come up for air, but I also have a resolve to be more vigilant in the future. I am right here, right now – and whether I was brought here by the friendly farmer or thrown here by the rage of the ogre, I can't change that. What I can change is where I go from here. I still have my ten fine toes to wiggle in the sand, and lots of idle fingers that snap to my command, so to hell with my regrets – let me learn from them – and look out world, here I come!

Richard Pilgrim is currently appearing in "Examining One's Navel Is Wrong" at a cinema near you.

Verging on Despair

2010-02-24T10:02:00.003Z

Oh dear, life is spiralling out of control again. I was beginning to head into financial penury, so had to go looking for some paid work, and so the mammoths of commerce have determined that I return to gainful employment. This is a great pity, and certainly a tragedy to me, but unfortunately my (very) expensive lifestyle dictates such strictures from time to time. I have so many things to do, and now that I have to re-start turning up at the orifice every day, I have very little time in which to do it. I'm reading the eulogy at a funeral on Thursday (and I haven't even written it yet), and I also have my financial report for the Studio's AGM to write, as well as reading dozens more scripts for the Triliteral Festival (shortlisting begins on Sunday), and that's on top of an absolute snowdrift of paperwork to wade through... it's all quite ridiculous. I've long argued that working for a living is a poor use of one's time, and I don't swerve from that view now.

So, my recent sojourn of leisure is about to end and this means that I have to make the best use of the (short) time available to me before I have to begin ironing shirts and filling the car with petrol etc. How best to use that time? Well, I could try polishing up my latest novel 'Twice Into The River' because I have a meeting with a literary agent about it next week, but I don't feel quite in the mood for that today. Alternatively, I could start to tackle any of the numerous chores – some of which are detailed above – that befall me à ce moment de l'heure, but somehow that too seems rather onerous and sensible. I think what is needed right now is a bit of debauchery. Pure, insouciant, decadent, self-indulgent debauchery. This, I think, would be a fitting end to my recent period of – well, to be honest - pure, insouciant, decadent, self-indulgent debauchery. Hmm, there's something about my priorities here that I find vaguely unnerving.

The long and the short of it is that I have to go back to work in order to survive. This, clearly, is a disaster. But talking of disasters, did I ever tell you about the time (years ago) when I bought a pair of jeans that were too small for me? I went into a shop to buy a new pair, and the woman assistant insisted that denim should fit like a "second skin". She selected a pair for me that were really too small, but she was somehow convinced that they were appropriate. I struggled into them, and although I could do up the top button, I couldn't pull up the zip. This, the woman assistant saw as a good sign. "If you can get the top button done up, then the zip will follow," she said, full of confidence. I began protesting that it was impossible, when she suddenly reached in and dragged me out of the changing cubicle. She then began struggling with the zip herself, but her talon-like nails were hampering her efforts. Exasperated, she then demanded that I lie on the floor which I did, whereupon she then knelt, straddled across my body, and began tugging and heaving at the said zip. "Better not let my husband see me doing this," she grunted through clenched teeth. Finally, after a Herculean effort, the zip was up. Triumphant, she dusted her hands and stood up. "Get up then, and let's have a look," she said. Finding that I couldn't even bend my legs enough to get into a sitting position, I remained where I was. So, the woman called for another assistant and between them they took my shoulders and heaved me into a standing position – I was upright to be sure, but I was as rigid as a cardboard cut-out of myself.

"What do you think?" she asked, smiling widely. What I thought didn't really matter – there was no way I was going to get out of the jeans anyway, so I had to keep them on. I paid, she put my old jeans into a bag, and I shuffled out of the store in a somewhat stiff-legged manner. I can't remember how I managed to get into bed that night, but I rather suspect that I wore those jeans continually for several weeks thereafter.

My old friend Horace asked me to remind you of this: "Choose a subject equal to your abilities; and then think carefully what your shoulders may refuse, and what they are capable of bearing". If you bear nothing else in mind in your busy lives today, bear this, gentle reader.

Egg On My Face and Leg Waving

2010-02-19T11:38:00.002Z

It's been quite a week since I returned from Italy. Lots of meetings, parties, lunches, drinks etc. Certainly there's been little time for getting anything productive done – although I suppose that everything I do is productive in one way or another. Everything has a purpose. However, I'm not so sure that the dreadful faux pas I committed last night will have served much purpose. I was attending the launch party of my good friend Maria Allen's new novel (see here) and was chatting away to someone about my less than favourable view of a particular publishing house when I realized that I was standing next to the Managing Director of said publishers, and he'd heard every word! He didn't look too pleased, so I made a swift exit and wandered over to another friend of mine – a novelist too – who was talking to some chap I didn't know. I began regaling him with the story of my faux pas, but not really in a very apologetic manner, when my friend introduced me to his companion – it turned out that he was a director of the same publishing company! Oops – how to ruin one's chances of publication in just five short minutes! Oh dear, you can't take me anywhere really, can you?

The other evening I went to see Tom Ford's new film 'A Single Man'. I sat through it thinking: 'This is awful' although in retrospect, I suppose there are some good qualities to it. It was very well-acted (particularly Colin Firth who did a tremendous job at conveying bereavement in a very sympathetic way), and it seemed reasonably well directed too (it is Tom Ford's first foray into film, so I suppose he should be congratulated). It was also absolutely gorgeous to look at – a very creditable portrayal of 1960s California; deliciously sumptuous and very authentic. But the reason why I had been sitting there thinking that it was quite awful, was nothing to do with the film really – it was because I finally woke up to just what a bad writer Isherwood was. I'd read most of his stuff years ago and I'd enjoyed it at the time, but that was probably because I was young, impressionable and the seduction of the glamour and the clandestine sexuality in his writing was hard to resist. Now I'm all grown up, I see it as nothing more than self-indulgent and maudlin sentimentality. However, I would still recommend the film because it's so lovely to look at. Go see it.

The Triliteral Festival is coming along nicely, although it is still taking up quite a bit of time on the administration front. We are getting very excited because we now have only eight days to go before the submissions close, and already we've had lots of very interesting scripts. Hopefully we'll receive even more in the final week, and we're really looking forward to that. We still haven't finalised all of the venues yet, and we also have a bit of a problem with rehearsal space, but these are just challenges that we're happy to meet. Our biggest challenge is, of course, funding – so the begging letters will be going out next week! Watch out, all of you with money. Anyway, there'll be more news on all of this in forthcoming weeks, so keep reading.

Now, what shall I do with the rest of the day? I have to say that I'm strongly tempted to do nothing but wave my legs in the air, but unfortunately the length of the 'to do' list precludes such an indolent activity. I am now faced with the usual dilemma: Which of the many tasks on the list should be tackled first? Oh, hold on.... my legs seem to have begun an involuntary shake... and yes, they're raising themselves into the air... and... and I just can't stop them. Doh!

Holiday Snaps

2010-02-15T10:17:00.007Z

Well, I'm back from the Alps, and I'm sorry for not giving you the regular updates as I had promised to do. Unfortunately the hotel I was staying in, although very well-appointed in most of its facilities, didn't have an internet point for some reason. This meant that in order to get a connection I had to trudge half a mile up the hill, in the snow, and wait in line for access to what was seemingly the only connection in the village. Believe me, when you've been out on the slopes all day and your legs are aching and rattling like a supermarket trolley, and when you've finally removed your ski boots and flopped heavily onto the comfortable sofas of the hotel for a few après-ski drinks, the LAST thing you want to do is trudge up the hill in the snow. All you really want to do at that point is to sink into a hot bath with a glass of whisky balanced carefully on the edge.

So I have neglected you, gentle reader. But it was all in a good cause – the skiing was fabulous, although not all that challenging. Cervinia (Italy) is not actually a very challenging resort – there are only three black runs and the reds are really only what the French would call blue (the grading of the pistes is always only appropriate for each particular resort), so we weren't exactly pushed very hard. We did do some tough runs though – we went so high at one point that we were able to look into Switzerland, and the temperature up there was sometimes as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. The sunshine was glorious though, but at those altitudes (circa 11,000 feet) it's easy to get burned. My nose is rather red as a result.

However, being challenged is not always welcome (particularly at my time of life) and the fact that most of what we did was fairly easy, meant at least that I could spend time improving my technique and improving my speed. This I did, and I skied better and faster than I've ever done before. I "crossed the Rubicon" in terms of style, and managed to acquire that deliciously elegant swagger that you witness in those infuriating people hurtling down the slopes who were clearly born to the practice. The problem about coming down the more challenging pistes is that the opportunity to practise style is not there – it's more about getting down the mountain in the best way one can; elegantly or not. But fear not, gentle reader – I only had one fall all week, and it wasn't that spectacular either, so no broken bones or even bruises for yours truly. I've been very pleased with my efforts this week and if I had the money (or the time), I'd go back quickly so that I could improve even more.

I tried hard with my Italian too. I find that the Italians are more polite than the French, and will encourage you to keep going and will reply to you in Italian, rather than lapsing into English at the slightest detection of a less than perfect accent. So, I was able to make my purchases, book restaurant tables, ask for directions etc, and managed to understand the responses too. But then, sitting on chair-lifts going up to the next run, you often find yourself accompanied by a pair of native speakers babbling away to each other without seemingly drawing breath or even listening to each other, and then all understanding becomes lost – so there's still a way to go for me yet.

And now, back to work. I'm a bit tired to be honest – yesterday was a long day because we had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to get to the airport, then we were delayed by a blizzard and then had to wait even further while they de-iced the wings of the plane before take-off. Therefore, my approach to work today is one of a gentle attack, rather than an exuberant explosion of energy – so you'll have to forgive me. The TV is tempting me to switch it on too – coverage of the winter Olympics beckons. On the other hand, why would I want to watch someone else coming down a mountain with a lot more speed and grace than I could ever manage?

Oh well, maybe I could dream.....

Update From Italia

2010-02-10T17:53:00.003Z

Well, here I am in Italy - and the skiing is fantastic. However, it is such a bloody nuisance trying to find an internet connection that I will not be posting again while I am here. So, gentle reader, you will just have to wait until I get back for an update on all the fabulous things I have been doing this week.

A presto (as they say here in la bella Italia)!

Ciao xx

Buone Vacanze!

2010-02-05T11:21:00.004Z

I'm quite excited about my forthcoming ski trip. I go to the Italian resort of Cervinia on Sunday, and it can't come soon enough. The wonderful thing about skiing is that all the normal daily stresses, preoccupations, worries and fears simply disappear when you get to the slopes. The head is immediately emptied of all the everyday scattered detritus that usually fills it to the rafters, and you are released from all anxiety; liberated from the shackles of domestic living by the wide-open spaces and the awe-inspiring (and frankly humbling) views. Skiing is immensely physical and the only thing that matters is keeping the body strong – the mind then looks after itself. I've been training like a lunatic in the gym in recent weeks, in an attempt to strengthen my thighs and knees, so now I am ready for anything. This year, I aim to go faster than ever before. I have my own skis and boots – the boots help a great deal because rented ones are usually ill-fitting and always hurt. A couple of years ago I spent about two hours in a fabulous little shop in Tignes having my boots re-moulded so that they fitted my feet exactly. Being comfortable is just as important as being safe.

Right then, I must get on with my 'to do' list because I have millions of things to clear up before I go away. This is all about de-cluttering my mind in advance, so that when I do hit the slopes, the mountain vista has its job already half done. The Pecha Kucha thing the other night went okay – I made a suitable fool of myself, of course – and within the confines of the elegant and ornate oak-panelled dining room of Nottingham's City Hall (known locally as the Council House – see picture left), there were some really good presentations. Most of the people took themselves a tad too seriously perhaps, whereas I just camped the whole thing up and made people laugh. I learned this trick years ago – as a youngster, growing up in the backstreets of Naples, I was terrified of being laughed at; it was real paranoia, and I was unbelievably shy and nervous and always worried that people were laughing at me behind my back. So one day, I decided to make bloody well sure that people laughed at me – thereby removing any doubt and so consequently removing the paranoia – and I've been acting the goat ever since.

At the Pecha Kucha event, my lovely friend James Parker did a presentation that included some magic (not such a random idea, by the way – he is a magician). He was talking about the collaboration between magic, creativity, politics and ethics and his speech was both lively and interesting, but the climax was a sort of visual analogy towards what we all desire, which is 'Peace', and he produced a pure white dove as if from nowhere. The audience were amazed and enthralled by this, but it created a practical problem – what to do with the dove after the event? We were all planning to retire to a local cocktail lounge for extended drinking (such a rare event of course), and the dove could hardly accompany us. So James asked if he could leave it in my apartment. It's still here, and I've been chatting away to it because I feel it might be lonely. I've been trying to trick it into telling me how the aforesaid magic trick is achieved, but I think that it too must be a member of the Magic Circle and it has remained tight-lipped throughout my gentle interrogation. Doves are presumably very discreet birds, which I suppose is why magicians use them, and do not use parrots. Parrots are right gossips, so they are, and would blab all the trade secrets for the price of a sunflower seed, I'm sure.

Well, dear reader, there will now be a short hiatus in my ramblings to you. I won't have the time or inclination to blog while I'm away (only a week), and internet access is limited in the Alps anyway. Instead, you can log in here to find the occasional update – I won't be rambling away with the usual nonsense, but I will be sending you occasional messages and titbits of news from the resort. If by any chance I go silent and you don't see any postings from me, it will mean that I am lost in the snow so you must then despatch a large St Bernard dog, complete with obligatory cask of brandy around its neck. Thank you, gentle reader.

Arrivederci! Torno presto; faccio subito!

Save Us From The Bigots!

2010-02-03T13:49:00.006Z

That was rather a strange thing, I thought – the Pope getting involved in British politics? Seems a bit of a goat-dance if you ask me, and not entirely appropriate in my opinion. I assumed that he was pontificating (excuse the pun) on some totally irrelevant issue and that none of us need to listen. However, when I looked a bit closer at the content of what he said, I began to get somewhat uncomfortable. He was questioning the legitimacy of our equality laws, and suggesting that they are mis-placed in modern society. WTF?

Basically, what the old fathead was saying is that British equality laws (which surely should be the same as those in Italy, or anywhere in Europe?) are opposed to the teachings of the Gospel. What he means, of course, is that the Gospel doesn't say that it's okay to have gays and lesbians in the top church-type jobs; that's what he means. Although he dresses up his argument as some kind of pseudo-philosophical debate, when you peel away the fancy words, all you get is good old-fashioned plain bigotry.

He said that staying true to the Gospel “in no way restricts the freedom of others” but rather “serves their freedom by offering them the truth”. What truth would that be then? Would it be the "truth" that says that all gays and lesbians have somehow chosen to pursue a path of sinful debauchery, and that they should repent from their ways or go to hell? So, our "freedom" is protected not by laws, but by the Gospel, as long as we accept it as the "truth"? What a load of old rubbish. The law is there to protect us from exactly this kind of hypocritical restriction that the church would like to impose upon us. Pah!

Old Benedict XVI then goes on to say: "But I think there is a misunderstanding, because sometimes in government legislation, equality seems to be that we are all absolutely equal, which we are not. We are equal in dignity, beyond that each one of us is unique.” Well that much is true, but it still doesn't mean that legislation shouldn't be in place to prevent discrimination, does it? There's no "misunderstanding" here, as far as I can see.

Peter Tatchell, the homosexual rights activist, said: “He seems to be defending discrimination by religious institutions and demanding that they should be above the law. Pope Benedict is likely to make highly partisan political criticisms during his forthcoming visit to the UK. Most British people will not welcome a meddlesome pontiff who opposes our equality laws.” Absolutely right, Peter me old lad.

Anyway, enough of my soapbox antics – I'm sure it's all as dull as ditchwater anyway, and I have to get on with rehearsing my presentation for tonight's Pecha Kucha event. At this event, I am hoping to recount the episode when my great-aunt Dolores knocked out a skinhead in a London pub. She was a bit of a bigot herself, was Dolores, and not especially tolerant of what she called "queers" as it happened, but she also hated bullies (which was a bit rich really, considering how she bullied me for years). This skinhead was trying to pick a fight with some diminutive little fairy who had apparently been "eyeing up his arse" (squeezed, as it was, into the skinhead's skin-tight bleached jeans). Dolores was having none of it – smaller herself than even the young fairy, she marched up to the brute and climbed onto a nearby table. "Pick on someone your own size," she told him, before flooring him with an exocet-style left hook.

Unfortunately, she hadn't spotted his three burly friends sitting nearby so all in all, we were rather lucky to get out of there alive. Oh, I do so miss her!

Pecha Kucha

2010-02-01T11:30:00.004Z

For some mad crazy reason, I've agreed to take part in another Pecha Kucha event this week. If you don't know what this is, it's an event where a whole bunch of people get up and talk about themselves in front of an audience, with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation. We all get a slot of exactly six minutes and forty seconds to tell the world all about our inner selves. We have to present twenty slides, and talk about each slide for twenty seconds. Six minutes and forty seconds precisely.

I did one a couple of years ago in front of a packed audience. Then, I talked about the key points in my life which had shaped my character and which had collectively delivered the 'Richard Pilgrim' that they saw before them. The rule of Pecha Kucha is not to take oneself too seriously – in fact, you are actually encouraged to include a dash of self-mockery in the presentation. I have no difficulty in doing that – I've always made a fool of myself in general anyway, so finding topics that allowed me to poke fun at myself is fairly easy. It seemed to go okay last time.

This time, the topic is one of the future, not the past. It's about New Year's Resolutions (despite taking place in February), and about how we are going to set about improving our lives in the coming year. Hmm, I don't really bother with NY Resolutions as a rule – there doesn't seem to be much point in choosing a specific spot on the flip-over of the Gregorian calendar to make a list of areas of improvement for ourselves. We should be doing that all the time – we should be seeking continual advancement of our wretched lives, and therefore, to think about such matters on what is really just an arbitrary date, seems somewhat simplistic.

That notwithstanding, I've needed to prepare some thoughts for this forthcoming presentation on what exactly I am hoping to achieve this year. I can't very well stand up and talk about not making any plans for the future – well, not for six minutes and forty seconds anyway. Really, these events are just decadent ego trips, that's all. I mean, isn't it a bit self-indulgent to imagine that other people are even remotely interested in what our plans for the year are? I don't suppose that anyone present will care – let alone remember later – whether our various schemes will ever be realized. No, if we were honest, we'd admit that it's all just a glorious excuse to talk about ourselves for a while, and to get a captive audience to listen. I'm hugely looking forward to it.

The event takes place in the grand and opulent ballroom of Nottingham's City Hall and there is going to be a massive gathering of the city's chattering classes – like the massing herds of wildebeest assembling at the watering-hole, we'll congregate around the champagne and smoked salmon before taking to the stage, one by one, to deliver our hedonistic stories. I've prepared twenty slides that feature images of my future - both sublime and (truly) ridiculous; both sacred and profane. I absolutely adore performing in public, almost as much as I adore talking about myself, so it's a "win-win" jamboree as far as I'm concerned.

And if people laugh at me, I'll have achieved my aim. It's all about the humiliation, really.

Action Cures Fear

2010-01-28T10:37:00.004Z

You know that feeling you get sometimes, the feeling when you have so many tasks in front of you, and only a limited amount of time in which to get them done? It's a strange feeling really because, whereas it ought to provoke one into immediate and urgent action so that items can quickly begin to be ticked off the list, it can often induce the onset of lethargy – just the opposite of what is required.

I feel like that today. I am faced with an enormous list of 'things to do', and I know I should begin to assail it with a pressing vigour, but I seem instead to be gripped by a distinct lack of motivation or dynamism. In fact, it's worse than that – I feel absolutely paralyzed with inactivity. It's as if the terrible vastness of the tasks ahead is so overwhelming that it has struck me dumb and turned me to stone. A pillar of salt. In trying to decide which task to face first, it is impossible to decide to do any of them. I'm like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an overburdened schedule. I am frozen in terror.

This is different from mere procrastination. At least with procrastination one can actually pretend to be busy by doing other (non-urgent) jobs in order to put off for longer the getting of the urgent ones done. No, this is quite different – I am in the grip of total inactivity. I am sitting here, just staring into space, and feeling more and more guilty and depressed. Every time I look at the list, I realize that something else needs to be added – yet another job that I have neither the energy nor the inclination to begin.

My great aunt Dolores (the one who was once run over by a lorry yet survived, and who later took up playing the xylophone only to die later by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel) had a favourite saying connected with this: "Action cures fear". It's a deceptively simple expression and so very, very true. When we are frightened by the thought of doing something, the only real cure is to get on and do it. As soon as we take action, the fear is immediately despatched. You see the (perhaps irrational) fear of doing something is often greater than the (nearly always tangible) action of doing it – so the simple solution is just to get on with it. There are no exceptions to the rule too – the maxim works every time. If say, you are frightened of putting your hand into a tank of venomous snakes, then by putting your hand into the tank, you instantly remove the fear. You might, however, be dead – but you will no longer be frightened. It works every time.

So, now that we have that little matter settled, I'm going to pick up my 'To Do' list and just do whichever job appears at the top, no matter how daunting it seems. Now let's see.... oh, it says: "Write Blog".

How strange. How very strange indeed.

Tea With bin Laden

2010-01-24T19:28:00.004Z

Well, I've been doing a bit more soul-searching this week. Oh, I suppose that sounds terribly self-indulgent (and of course, it is), but I'm sure it's not something that is unique to me only. The plethora of self-help books that weigh down the laudable shelves of Waterstone's is almost an embarrassment to our society, which indicates that many of us engage in lengthy bouts of navel-gazing whenever we can. My problem is that I make high demands of myself, and so therefore I often end up being disappointed with my own efforts. Maybe I should just become someone who never does anything at all, and then I wouldn't get the wolves of guilt snapping at my heels whenever I fail to deliver.

Probably my worst trait is never being able to say 'No', either to other people or to myself. This means that my little timetable (I've mentioned this before) gets so crowded with multifarious tasks and obligations that I am left with little room for manoeuvre whenever things veer off track. I then find myself slipping down a steep slope of shale, feet scudding as if they were clutching at marbles, and before I know it I am clinging hopelessly to a feeble sapling of hope that is just.... about to snap!

That's how I feel right now, anyway. And so that's why I've undertaken yet another bout of introspection in my never-ending search for some peace. Peace? Is that what anyone of us really wants? Of course it is – who would ever want anything else? Well, it seems (from today's news) that Osama bin Laden doesn't. How could anyone applaud death and destruction in the name of progress (apart from George Bush and Tony Blair, that is)? I'd like to sit down for a cup of tea with that man (Osama, that is) and find out what really makes him tick. Oh yes, I do understand that the Israelis are being intractable in their occupation of Palestine, but mirroring that with a similar intractability doesn't seem like a sensible answer to me. It must be far better to sit down with a nice cup of tea (mint, if you insist) and see if there couldn't be a more friendly solution.

And now I hear that haggis is back on the menu for the Americans. Apparently, haggis hasn't been allowed to darken the doors of the USA for almost twenty years (the dreaded BSE, of course), but now we hear that the ban has been lifted. Hurrah! say the haggis exporters of Scotland. Yeuch! say the poor residents of America. Well, I would say yeuch! because I've never seen the point of haggis – my parents always used to bring one back for us from their annual holiday in Scotland and we invariably fed it to the dog... Haggis is revolting stuff – dry, stodgy and tasteless (well no, not exactly tasteless, because it tastes like shit) and as difficult to swallow as a house brick. By the time you read this, gentle reader, it will be Burns' Night and you will no doubt be cajoled at your various dinner parties and celebrations to engage in the wolfing down of this diabolical foodstuff. My message to you is therefore this: Do not succumb to such popularist indulgence when your palate could end up being as offended as Osma bin Laden presumably is by the existence of love. You have been warned.

Now, back to my timetable.... where was I?

The Buzz Of Life

2010-01-20T16:51:00.005Z

Notwithstanding the dreadful hangover I had this morning, and the fact that I discovered that I was coughing blood (where did that come from?), I've had a useful and productive day. However, the problem about having a productive day, is that it inspires in me the desire for a reward. No harm in that, you might think – but the difficulty comes in deciding exactly what that reward should be. I am tempted, of course, to go to the pub – well, to the Broadway at least – but this would be to invite again the danger of getting drunk. This is what happened to me last night, apparently. We'd had a long and tiring meeting about this stage-writing festival that I'm helping to organize (http://www.triliteral.co.uk/ – come on people, if you want to see your play on the stage, get writing!), and so when we were finished, I thought there would be no harm in indulging in a bit of the old sauce, early-doors style. What harm could just one drink do?

How wrong I was. One drink led to another and before I could say "I'm going home!" I had somehow lost the ability to think rationally, and so when the stray cat came scratching at my door later, I let him in. Doh!

I don't know which dustbins or back-alleys he's been rooting around in recently because I haven't seen him for a few weeks, but he seemed exceptionally dehydrated. Luckily, I'd recently purchased an additional supply of milk because his thirst seemed unquenchable. I was a little concerned that he might forget (as he sometimes does) how to use the litter tray, but thankfully he was on his best behaviour last night and I need not have worried. However, what does worry me slightly is the rather too comfortable way in which he settled himself down, and his exuberant purring left me feeling strangely uneasy. I felt sure that he was plotting something, and am beginning to wonder if he's planning to return soon, this time for an extended stay perhaps? Hmm, maybe I should move.

Stray cat or no, I think I should move anyway. I've been here too long really – I only came for six months and now I've been here for more than three years. What a waste of money! I pay a huge amount in rent and for the same amount in mortgage repayments (with interest rates as low as they are), I could be buying a palace of my own. The reason for this apparent stupidity is simply that I am inherently lazy about such matters. I'm just so comfortable here, and so close to all the amenities and watering-holes that I enjoy making use off – moving anywhere else seems inconceivable. So, perhaps I should offer to buy my current abode? My landlord lives in America and apparently this apartment is, what his mother described with such a charming lack of tact, his 'pension'. This might suggest that he would be unwilling to sell because presumably, he'd then have to look for another little investment, and he probably can't be arsed. That's the trouble with such people – they're inherently lazy about such matters.

Oh, that's me too isn't it? Lazy. Right, although I feel quite pleased with my productivity today, I think I can only really congratulate myself when I've done something concrete about moving out. The day when I do that will be a genuinely productive day. Well, at least I've made a decision about it, and I now quite feel like purring myself. However, no saucer of milk for me – I'm off down the pub!

Tootle pip, dear reader.

Here's Hoping!

2010-01-17T11:59:00.005Z

Today's advice (in my 'feel good' calendar) is to "Think good thoughts; speak good words; and take good actions." This all sounds reasonable enough, and sensible advice, of course. The outcome (according to the calendar) is that these three steps will "bring more to me than I can ever imagine". Ooh, this is exciting stuff. If I stick to the rules, then presumably I'll get everything I want. A lottery win, perhaps? The perfect lover? My latest novel accepted by the best publisher in the land? I can't wait for these luxuriant riches to come rolling in, and I can only presume that this will begin to happen today.

Oh, hold on a minute - there's a slight snag with this. Let me look at the advice again. Think good thoughts; speak good words; and take good actions. Right, let's deal with the first one. I suppose the first task is to identify what good thoughts actually are. I somehow suspect that harbouring evil thoughts about the dreadful people whom one encounters in shopping malls is not a good start. But you know the sort of people I mean – the types who stop suddenly just as they step off the top of the escalator. Those who stand in narrow doorways having a chat with each other, or who walk very slowly - five abreast – right in front of you when you're in a real hurry. Then there's the fat woman who plonks herself in front of the very display you want to scrutinise, obscuring your view, and who refuses to make up her mind about whether she should select an item, or move on. And don't get me started on the foul-mouthed youths and youth-ettes who distribute their shabby litter with such indiscriminate carelessness all over the place.

Oops, I seem to have fallen at the first hurdle. These don't seem very much like "good" thoughts at all. Okay, so forget about the shoppers – let's start thinking about fields of kittens instead. Well, I doubt if that will work – thinking about fields of kittens is nice, but it's not necessarily good. No, I need to think about more honourable things such as forgiveness and compassion; love and harmony.

So what about speaking good words? This could be rather difficult really, because my plan for today is not to speak to anyone. No, no, don't misunderstand me – I'm not going to ignore people in the streets or anything like that. No, I was rather hoping to have a day all to myself so that I can attend to the many chores I have on the 'to do' list. These chores are crouched in the long, dark grasses, just waiting to pounce and tear my procrastination to shreds. So, I was not expecting to encounter anyone today, ensconced behind closed doors as I am, and therefore I do not expect to be speaking any words to anyone – neither good nor bad. But perhaps I am speaking to you, gentle reader, in this blog? If this is so, then let me just say to you now: I love you all! There, that should do it.

Now, what was the third piece of advice? Oh yes, take good actions. Hmm, well, there aren't any flies to kill (the recent snow seems to have killed those buggers off), so I'm fairly safe on that score. But am I correct in thinking that lighting another cigarette, or pouring another glass of Rioja, are bad actions? Oh dear – maybe I should get on with mopping the floor, and then take a visit to the gym. Those must be good actions, surely? Right then, that's what I shall do, just as soon as I've finished writing this. I'll also switch off my lights to save the environment, and make an on-line donation to the Haiti Rescue Fund. I might even wrap up some presents to send to my daughters. And do some meditation – why not?

Ooh, this is all good, and I think it's going to work. I shall be spending that lottery win very soon, and before you know it, I'll be taking my perfect lover along to the book-signing sessions for my latest novel. How simple this all is. But wait – don't I first have to buy a lottery ticket; become a perfect lover myself; and actually write that latest novel? There seems to be a flaw in this cunning plan.

Hmm, maybe tomorrow's calendar advice will tell me how I'm supposed to do all that. Damn it! Is nothing as straightforward as it seems....?

What's Wrong With a Bit of Fun?

2010-01-12T09:28:00.004Z

Right – now I expect that I'm going to make myself a laughing stock within the filmic community, but I don't care. Last night I went to see the film 'Nine' without having read anything about it (I didn't even read the poster). I went because my friend had suggested it, and I'm usually up for anything she suggests because I have very catholic tastes where such things are concerned. So, before I settled down in the comfortable, cosy seats and the penumbral darkness of the Paul Smith screenroom at Nottingham's Broadway Cinema, I had no expectations in respect of what the film was about, or what effect it would have on me.

The very last thing I was expecting to be watching was a musical, but I loved every minute of it! In terms of the frequency of the musical numbers that eagerly push themselves into the straight acting scenes, the film is made in the old tradition – but it is also surreal, introspective, dream-like, sad, funny and totally, totally bonkers. It was absolutely, unashamedly High Camp – the costumes, sets and montage are all lavish to the extreme, and the photography is glorious! Who cares about the somewhat cheesy acting (it does seem ridiculous to have the mainly English-speaking cast speaking their lines in English but using Italian and French accents), and who cares that some of the lyrics to the songs are at times a bit tacky and banal? Only a film snob (and there are plenty of those) would deny that 'Nine' does its job in excellent fashion – its job is to poke fun at itself; to lift the spirits of the audience; to smother us in luxurious, dripping colour and to marinate us in an oily, creamy drenching of rich and luxurious music.

The film has a surprisingly extravagant fairy dusting of star actors. Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Crúz, Dame Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, the delightfully elfin Marion Cotillard, and the fabulously exotic Sophia Loren. Producer and Director Rob Marshall managed to persuade all of them to send themselves up in the most audacious and high-camp style and in my view, this is part of the film's charm. 'Nine' is a story about a middle-aged Italian film director suffering a mid-life crisis (of his own making) that is threatening to suffocate his artisitic creativity. The character is so closely based on Fellini that they may as well have named him Federico; and the film is more than just tipping its hat at Fellini's own style – a chaotic mixture of fantasy and baroque. But the film is more than just that – it pokes fun at itself too, and at the Italian filmgoers' fascination with bestowing a mythical status on the industry's luminaries. The critics apparently hated it, and I can quite understand why. As a fairly straightforward adaptation of a Broadway musical, this film will make critics nervous because they don't like the 'theatre' parodying the great medium of celluloid, and also they don't like films that don't take themselves too seriously. And god forbid - 'straight' actors actually singing? Outrageous and totally unacceptable! Why the critics seem to have ignored the fairly obvious sub-text and the underlying angst of the film is a mystery (perhaps it is too much pastiche? I don't know).

Well anyway, it cheered me up when I needed it, and sometimes that is exactly what entertainment is meant to do, isn't it? So, if you want cheering up too – go and see it. But don't go with your Barry Norman or Jonathan Ross hats on, because that won't work.

Did You Hear About The Snow?

2010-01-09T09:28:00.003Z

It is extraordinary just how fascinated everyone in the media seems to be with the severe weather we are currently experiencing. Article after article on the BBC (which is our local broadcasting station in this country) is being presented to us, all focusing on a different aspect of the unusual conditions. Obviously, the heart of the reporting is on the crippled transport system – we are nothing if not a nation permanently on the move – but I am also impressed with the diversity of other angles from which our intrepid journalists approach the rising drama.

We have items about winter weather payments being made to pensioners – not deemed adequate enough to prevent them from freezing in their beds; we have tragic reports of people falling through the ice in country parks and dying (why do people do that?); there are accounts from businesses small and large about how trade is being affected by the snow; jolly tales of children tobogganing down local hills; pleas from the leaders of teaching unions that the public shouldn't see the closure of schools as just an excuse for their members to take a day off work (?); and now – even how to prevent children from getting 'cabin fever' due to an extended stay away from school! The huge number of different ways in which we can examine our current arctic plight is truly remarkable, yet truly self-indulgent.

I think that the news people should ignore the whole thing and leave us in peace. Instead, they could show us pictures of fields of kittens, or of Delia Smith cooking a summer pudding, or reports on the iniquities of the baboon trade, or even images of foreign wars. These would help us to take our minds off the weather. I suspect that we're going to grind to a halt very soon anyway, so it is imminent that the situation will no longer be news. I'm just wondering how many more times I will hear the phrase: "Gritters have been working round the clock". In my view, gritters should be working round the streets, not the blooming clock. It all sounds a bit like fiddling while Rome burns, if you ask me.

What I want to know is this: If the transport system closes down completely, how in hell am I going to get away for my skiing holiday? I haven't seen anything on the news about that!

My next missive is going to be about some of this country's writings that have changed the course of history. In the meantime, for anyone considering banning an Islamic march through the town of Wootton Bassett, I give you these words of Rudyard Kipling:

And still when Mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.
And Thames, that knows the mood of kings,
And crowds and priests and suchlike things,
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings
Their warning down from Runnymede!

Tootle pip, old loves!

Time Lies Wanking On The Floor...

2010-01-05T12:03:00.003Z

One thing that you young people don't appreciate about we old people, is how much 'time' shrinks as the years go by. Time, as you will know, is relative (or doesn't actually exist at all – in fact, if everyone in the world voted to remove all clocks and all calendars so that nobody was conscious of the ticking over into a new day, new month, new year or new decade then time would, in effect, stand still), but nowhere is that relativity more evident than in old age. It's all quite logical. For someone who is twenty, one calendar year represents 5% of his entire experience and consciousness; for someone who is sixty-five (for example), that same calendar year represents only 1.5% of his total awareness. Therefore, it seems much shorter.

I know for a fact that there isn't enough time available to me. There is just so much to do these days, and try as I might to keep on top of things, I always seem to be running around chasing my tail and yet never seem to be catching it. Today (despite not being able to locate my 'list of things to do' for some reason) I know that there is too much to fit into the oh, so short hours of wakefulness. In theory, I don't even have enough time to write this blog, but I feel that I have neglected you for too long, dear reader, and so write it I must. I suppose the consolation for this ever-rising terror of panic is that almost everything I need to do is enjoyable. Of course, there are black spots of duties, and chores I face with a certain amount of ennui (such as applying for jobs, or cleaning the kitchen, or queuing at the Post Office) but in the main, the tasks I wish to see completed fill me with pleasure and delight.

The burden of responsibility - if it can so be called - is slightly tipped out of balance with assignments I need to finish in respect of the Triliteral Festival (see link on left, or click here), but this is such delicious fun that I hardly care. It means that I perhaps give undue preference to these jobs than I ought to, given that there are other pressing matters in hand. Yesterday was particularly typical – there is a Leaning Tower of Pisa's worth of ironing to be done, waiting in my airing cupboard, but who would choose to do that in preference to being interviewed live on BBC Radio? One of my colleagues on Triliteral (Daniel Hallam) and I were invited to talk about the festival live on air yesterday, and it was huge fun. I've never done radio before – although I have done TV – and it was a fascinating experience. I hate the sound of my voice (ha! I can hear many of my friends scoffing at that particular claim!), but there is nothing I seem able to do to change it, so I just had to focus on what I wanted to say about the festival. The producer gave us a CD of the interview so I had an opportunity afterwards to listen to myself – and although, as in all such cases, there were lots of holes in the content of what I said, the interview seemed to convey enough of the right information. So, I am now a radio star.

Anyway, enough of this. I need to make a quick decision: Do I give up all other pleasures in life (the ones that get in the way of productivity – drink, sex, procrastination, going to the gym etc.) and devote myself entirely to work? Or do I try to juggle my balls as I've always done? There's no easy way of deciding this. I know one thing – that the ever-shrinking telescopic madness of time is battling against me. The fight is exhausting, and the irony is that the older one gets (and therefore that the battle becomes more fierce), the harder that fight becomes. But oh, it's all such fun!

A Definition of Madness

2010-01-01T09:23:00.003Z

You know that popular definition of insanity? The one where it says that "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over again, but still expecting different results each time? Well, I am insane then.

Take, for example, my propensity for whisky. Every time I get the bottle out of the cupboard, I tell myself that I will be having "just the one", and that I'll be satisfied with that. Do I really, honestly expect then, that this time my resolve will hold? Am I really, honestly surprised when the resolve that I supposedly harboured in my mind suddenly flies right out of the cracked window as if it were a fluttering whisper of grey ember from the fire? When I reach for another whisky?

And smoking – each night as I wake at the uncurling hour of 3:30 a.m. and find myself coughing as if I were a pair of sagging, leather bellows, I vow never to have another cigarette as long as my wretched life continues. Then, after a few more dark hours of self-hate, I wake up and leave my bed and immediately after breakfast, I reach for that pack of Marlboro Lights and spark up once more.

But it isn't just the debauchery that repeats itself. It's also the lethargy. Is it really feasible to believe that if I get up each day and do nothing, that something – anything – will change? Yet (foolishly) this is what I believe – that each new day will somehow miraculously transform my life into a glittering trinket-box of wonder without ever needing to do anything about it myself. This is, of course, madness.

I mean, every time I let that wretched stray cat into my apartment I always (again, foolishly) imagine that he'll behave himself; that he'll use the litter tray instead of the curtains; that only one saucer of milk will be enough; that he'll curl up in the swirls of my caring arms and purr contentedly, dreaming of the exorbitant luxuries of a feline world. But instead, he disappoints me – nay, deafens me with his relentless and illogical miaowing; breaks me with his ever-demanding cries for more milk; soils me when he soils my environment. When will my shrivelled, feeble brain ever learn from its mistakes?

So, now it is January 1st. Is this a time for resolutions? No, of course not! Should I make a corset-bound pledge to cease repeating the errors of my pathetic habits? No, it isn't possible! We are not only in a New Year, we are in a New Decade (although the purists will tell you that this doesn't happen until 01/01/11) and as such, we are meant to stocktake the leaking, rotting barrels of our previous resolutions and plan for changes that will convert our sad bladders of life's hopes into something touchable and real. Ha! There's absolutely no chance of that happening.

For how many times have I vowed never to spend another evening shepherding in the rosy fingers of a new year, and yet (because of the habitual delinquency and drunkenness) I still find myself dismally heralding the genesis of the ticking clock, which is only a madman's invention anyway? This, I did again last night.

Happy New Year.

The Mad World In Which We Live

2009-12-30T17:51:00.004Z

I never cease to be astonished by the stupidity of the population at large. I saw a report on Boxing Day morning of people queuing outside Selfridge's in Oxford Street, fervently awaiting the opening of the store so that they could sprint in to snap up some post-Christmas bargain or other. They resembled a rabble of lunatics, hell-bent on being the first to grab that must-have Gucci handbag or that to-die-for Hermes scarf. In the ensuing melée, several people were injured as glass cabinets were smashed and clothes rails were hurled about the store like javelins.

What is the point? It's not as if it's the 'End Of The World' or anything like that. Is it so important to acquire yet another addition to one's wardrobe or one's collection of chic accessories, that a sleepless night on the pavements of London is required? These people presumably already have sufficient possessions to fill a Louis Vuitton trunk, so why risk life and limb just to get your hands on more? The look of grim determination on their faces would not be misplaced if these people were fighting against the rigours of the Blitz for example, or struggling to find precious water in the squalor of the African mud-lands – but no, it's the revolting desire to attain yet another Moschino dress that drives on these fixated and desperate people.

I witnessed a little of this myself this afternoon in Nottingham's Top Shop store. Not quite at the same level of chic and extravagance as the Selfridge's sale perhaps, but the self-seeking disregard by the unguessable masses for other shoppers was nevertheless just as plain to see. Rummaging through the rails and racks of clothes, people were dislodging items from their hangers and simply allowing them to drop to the floor, to be trampled on and scuffed by the surging crowds. What happened to good manners and decorum? What heights of selfishness must these marauders have reached to so casually disregard the interests of anyone else? What do they think happens to these garments, strewn with such slapdash abandon? Nobody thinks of the weary shop assistants who must presumably have to restore order from this chaos; nobody cares that these same items must presumably be purchased later by another unsuspecting shopper. I suppose that's it – nobody cares. Nobody cares at all.

Later, of course, the tumbling crowds will have transferred their ravaging excesses from the shops of our arcades to the fleshpots of the city streets. Uncouth youths will be furtively pissing behind parking payment machines; girls with over-straightened peroxide hair and wearing the regulatory halter-neck top and white stilettos (with no coat, of course) will stand smoking as they queue for entrance to some ghastly sticky-floored bar. Later, as the globular vomit rolls luxuriantly down the frosted pavements, these two apparently mismatched tribes of young people will pair off together and lurch triumphantly into the Food Factory to abuse the hapless servants and to replenish the lost contents of their stomachs, before tottering and stumbling into a taxi (if they're lucky) or tottering and stumbling into the gutter (if we are).

Oh, how I love city life!

Oh, Christmas - What Fun!

2009-12-25T15:55:00.002Z

And so, for the final part of this tragic tale of a cheerless Christmas…..

The atmosphere in the breakfast room was getting ugly. It was also getting dark outside and although we had lighting, it was bitterly cold inside. Hendrik had been despatched to the woodshed and was busy preparing a fire in the cavernous drawing-room fireplace. Norwegians are good at that sort of thing, apparently. Dolores was barking orders at us all and had forbidden Tinkerbelle from opening any more packets of food. She was to sit quietly on a chair (well, two chairs) in the corner, and say nothing. Balls was ordered to go upstairs and to drag mattresses from the beds and to bring them downstairs for airing in front of the fire. I was charged with getting the Aga lighted. Luckily it was oil-fired and there seemed to be a residual supply in the tank, so it was soon warming up nicely.

Meanwhile, my great-aunt was opening tins and packets of food, and singing carols to herself in a voice that would scare away rats. Concetta, the Italian girl, was instructed to collect some bedding from upstairs and to bring that down for airing too. “I’ve been in worse messes than this, dear boy!’ she yelled over her shoulder. “I once spent Christmas in a mountain hut in the Hindukush after I’d escaped from a Nuristani tribal chief. He was planning to marry me, you see, but I was having none of it. Three days alone in that hut, with just a sack of potatoes, a leather bucket, a goat and four candles. I killed the goat, of course.”

She had announced that we would all sleep together in the drawing room. The collective warmth of our bodies would be good for us, she declared, and also nobody would be tempted to sneak away to the kitchen to steal what meagre food there might be left. The preparations for the ‘dorm’ were going well, but not so with the food. By the time Dolores had emptied the contents of almost everything into a huge cooking pot, there still didn’t seem enough to go round. A search of the outhouses produced a shout of joy from Hendrik when he discovered a large string of old onions hanging on a wall. Many were covered in mould, and several were shrivelled into something resembling a dog’s bollocks, but there were enough remaining that could be rescued into providing a bit more substance to the yuletide stew in the pot. Concetta was given the job of peeling and chopping them because she had already been weeping with despair for two hours, so Dolores figured that the onions would make no difference.

A little while later, after our hourly ration of a spoonful of brandy each, Balls made his most substantial contribution to the whole affair when he discovered - locked in a cupboard whose doors he had cajoled Tinkerbelle into wrenching open - several guns, complete with ammunition. “This is more like it,” he said, strolling back into the kitchen. Grabbing a flashlight, he beckoned to me and Hendrik to follow him out into the fields. I soon discovered that there are some compensations for being an upper-class twit after all, when Balls managed to shoot five rabbits and some random fowl within half an hour. With Concetta watching (now becoming hysterical) we soon had them skinned, plucked and gutted, and into the pot they went.

Okay, so perhaps it isn’t such traditional Christmas fare – a rabbit & fowl stew containing spam, prune syrup and genuine Chinese chilli sauce – but it sure as hell warmed our bellies. Even Tinkerbelle seemed satisfied and actually complained of feeling “a bit stuffed”. It wasn’t long after that when we heard the doorbell ring. By the time we opened the door there was nobody there of course, but on the doorstep there was a case of champagne with a note saying: “With His Lordship’s Compliments”. The absolute bastard. By midnight, we had guzzled the lot and the game of charades that we played in front of the roaring fire was somewhat haphazard, confused, and unsurprisingly, totally incomprehensible to Concetta.

As I lay down on my still fusty mattress next to Dolores on hers, she whispered to me. “Boy, we’ve got to get out of here. Tomorrow, we shall hitchhike to the nearest taxi rank and go home. This is absolute shit. That rotten cad Maugersbury has let us down badly, and I won’t have any more of it. Stuck here with that chinless wonder Balls and Fatso, the human jelly-mound, is not my idea of fun, I can tell you. We’re splitting, as you young people would say.”

At this, Tinkerbelle rose up from her mattress like the raising of the Titanic (she had obviously heard what was said – my great-aunt was never one for much discretion). “Hey lady,” the American drawled, “have you ever thought of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel? You should try it sometime.”

“With you as the barrel, I presume,” Dolores murmured dryly.

The next day was Christmas Day and we ‘split’ the hospitality of the good Earl for good. We were given a lift by a milk lorry and before long, were on our way to the bright lights of the City. Happy Christmas.

The Misery Goes On

2009-12-22T09:00:00.005Z

The list of things to do before Christmas hurries her flapping wings through the door, grows ever longer. Never mind – I promised you that I would continue this moribund tale of Christmas Past, so continue I shall....

"Hey Fatso," my aunt said, as the American woman popped the last of the chocolate into her great chasm of a mouth, "haven't you ever heard of sharing?" We all stared miserably at the empty wrappers on the floor. The American woman, whose name – ironically enough - was apparently Tinkerbelle, dusted off her dinner-plate sized hands and sniffed. "There wasn't time," she replied. "You may think you walk on water, lady, but five loaves and two fishes those few bits weren't. Needs must, you know."

Exasperated, Dolores then tried to arrange a collection of cash so that someone could be despatched to the village shop before it closed. It turned out that the foreign-office chappie was 'temporarily embarrassed' and had nothing on him, the Norwegian boy tipped just £2.47 from his pockets, the Italian girl had nothing on her, and Tinkerbelle only had US dollars. Dolores turned to me and so, with a sigh, I reluctantly handed over the fifty pounds I had in my wallet. "You boy," she pointed at the young Norwegian, "take that simpering little doll with you and get yourselves down to the village shop. Buy everything you think is appropriate, but make sure you don't forget the brandy. And oh," she gestured at this point towards Tinkerbelle, "you might get a tub of lard for this one if there's any money left over."

Some time later, we all sat around the breakfast room table under a stark and unfriendly fluorescent light, staring gloomily at the miserable array of cheerless food before us. It lay there, tipped despairingly from the Norwegian's sack after he had returned from the shop.

"It's all tinned stuff," complained Balls, turning over a can of minced steak (with onions and gravy). "Didn't they have any fresh food?" Tinkerbelle held up a small can between her immense fingers. "What in hell's name made you buy this? Concentrated Prune Syrup from Cyprus? This is crap!"

"I got one of everything," the boy (whose name was Hendrik) protested. "They didn't have very much left." Dolores looked at him with disgust. "What is this?" she demanded, holding a small can of spam at arm's length. "Spam? I don't think I've ever come across anything more lacking in taste since I met that dreadful Mrs Baron in London with her three ghastly children - Darren, Karen and Sharon."

"Look at this one," Tinkerbelle laughed. "It says it contains genuine chilli sauce, made from a traditional Chinese recipe. Since when did chilli come from China?" At this, Balls lifted his head. "No, it's true," he said, "they eat a lot of it in the east. You know, Bangkok or somewhere."

"So?" she snorted. "They eat a lot of hamburgers in Hamburg, but that don't make them German." She threw the offending can of chilli sauce at his head. Luckily it missed him and whistled passed his cowering face, crashing into a jardiniere in the corner, smashing it.

"Was any of this really sensible, Hendrik?" Dolores asked. "Most of it does appear to be a waste of money you know. I really cannot imagine any of us here - not even Fatso - bothering to add just one egg to this pack of ready-to-bake chocolate dropcakes. We don't even have any eggs. You could at least have bought more alcohol. I mean, this isn't going to last us very long." She held up a half bottle of brandy which looked suspiciously as if it should be given to the cook. "This Christmas pudding doesn't even contain alcohol, according to the packet at least. What we need here is a pudding like the ones my old school pal Barbara Craddock used to make. Boy, you knew you'd had a Christmas pudding then. The best you've ever tasted, and with so much brandy, rum and whisky inside that I'd have to hide the keys to the Bentley after just one portion. Where is old Barbara when you need her, eh?"

Nobody cared to say anything else. It looked like it was going to be a somewhat low-spirited party for us all. Meanwhile, Tinkerbelle was busy ripping open a packet of cocktail-sized pork pies. There should have been one for each of us - the packet contained six pies - but she slid them into her open gullet as one, and so they disappeared.

To be continued.....

And No Such Festive Cheer

2009-12-18T10:28:00.003Z

Oh dear me, gentle reader, I have been neglecting you since my last posting. It's been quite a week, I can tell you – there's a lot going on. In the bric-a-brac store that I laughingly call my haphazard and chaotic life, the various shelves, nooks and crannies are crammed - nay, stuffed – with both the delights and the detritus of the gorgeous bazaar. But now, to continue the story...

Sitting in the damp and gloom of the lodge's depressingly dismal drawing room, we very soon realized that we were in a pickle. We had all arrived by taxi, and it seemed that the house was miles from any noticeable civilization, so we were trapped. The huge American woman was the first to complain. She had rumbled her way into the kitchen and was slamming a succession of cupboard doors angrily. "Why isn't there any goddamn food in this hell-hole?" she bellowed. "A girl could starve to death here in a matter of minutes. What does that bastard think he's doing?"

Indeed, what did his Lordship expect that we were going to do? And where was he? With no telephone (and this was in an age before mobiles), we were isolated; completely bereft of any means of communication. We felt like we were sitting ducks, but without the feathers. My aunt decided to take charge of the situation (now there's a surprise). It was obvious that someone needed to – the American woman was by now simply screaming at the top of her voice and stamping her huge feet in anger; the chinless wonder Balls had sunk into a melancholy silence; and the Norwegian youth and his bird-like girlfriend were clinging to each other sitting on a decrepit Louis Quatorze chaise-longue, she sobbing.

As Dolores stood by the massive marble fireplace, which resembled the entrance to a great black sinister cave, she clapped her hands to call order. However, before she could speak, Enstone (his Lordship's "man") appeared in the doorway, as if from nowhere. He coughed politely, stopping my aunt in her tracks. "I have a message from his Lordship," he announced, but said nothing more. Dolores eyed him with malice. "Then out with it, man!" she barked. Hesitantly, he told us that the Earl had apparently decided, at the last minute, to spend the holiday at his villa on the Côte d'Azur, and had flown out that morning. According to Enstone, we were still welcome to stay, and we were to 'make ourselves at home' and enjoy the break.

"Make ourselves at home?" Dolores mocked. "Make ourselves at home? Just what kind of a home is this with no food, no drink, no bedding, no heating, no nothing? Are you absolutely barking mad, man?" Her accusations were echoed by the American woman, now wobbling with rage. The others simply stared at him in disbelief. I said nothing.

"There is a shop in the village," Enstone replied, "but you'll have to be quick as it closes at four. There are logs in the wood store, for the fire. You should find some bedding in one of the cupboards on the landing, or there are... there are the dust sheets from here. I'm sorry, there is nothing more I can do." And he was gone. Even the normally indefatigable Dolores was somewhat disconcerted at this. She tried to splutter a response, she even demanded that Enstone return to the room to account for himself, but he failed to appear and it seemed that we had been well and truly abandoned by old Maugersbury (or "Morgie", as my aunt referred to him). Nobody knew what to say; there didn't seem anything suitable to say.

In silence, the American woman picked up a glass paperweight from the bureau and hurled it into the fireplace whereupon it smashed into a host of glittering shards. Pointing to the rest of us, she shouted: "I'm going to eat one of you, if I don't get some food immediately. That fucking treacherous bastard will pay for this when I see him!" At this, the Norwegian youth quietly opened his backpack and pulled out a rather crumpled half-eaten loaf of bread, a square of flattened cheese, and a medium-sized chocolate bar. "You are welcome to these," he murmured.

The poor boy - he nearly got killed in the rush.

To be continued.....

Not So Merry Christmas

2009-12-15T10:03:00.007Z

Well, it's Christmas again. You probably don't need me to tell you that – you've no doubt noticed the odd trapping of the festive season that has crept into our high streets and onto the media, tipping us the wink that Santa is on his way. It's not a good time for me – for whilst I enjoy the fun of the actual day itself (that's December 25th for those of you who aren't sure), it's the 'build up' to it all that I find so difficult to tolerate.

I remember a particularly dismal Christmas I once spent in the company of my Great Aunt Dolores (the one who was run over by a lorry but survived, and who later took up playing the xylophone before accidentally killing herself by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel). She'd promised me a sumptuous and opulent festive holiday when she'd invited me to stay with her friend (and erstwhile lover, so she claimed) the Earl of Maugersbury. "A country house Christmas, boy," she'd said. "You can't beat it. Servants on hand to do all the messy stuff, nothing to do but eat and drink, and then go out to bag a few birds on Boxing Day. A real English Christmas."

Hmm, if only that was how it had turned out (although despite her expected protestations, I was privately determined not to join the shoot, nor the Boxing Day hunt for that matter). Sadly, the reality of that Christmas was very different indeed. Sumptuous and opulent it was most definitely not.

It all started when Lord Maugersbury telephoned my aunt two days before the event to announce that the west wing of Broadwell Hall (the ancestral pile) had been destroyed by fire the previous evening. "Not to worry", he had apparently soothed. "We'll all retreat to the lodge and have our Christmas there. It's a tiny little place though, only eight bedrooms, so I've had to tell Lola and her gang that they'll have to stay away. Hope you don't mind, old love?"

When we arrived at the lodge on the morning of Christmas Eve, it was obvious that the place hadn't been used for years. There were dust sheets over everything, there was nothing to eat in the pantry, the cellar was empty, and the heating obviously hadn't worked in decades. Dolores and I were the first to arrive, to be greeted by Maugersbury's "man" Enstone. He informed us that his Lordship had been called away but would be back later, and that we were to make ourselves at home. The place was freezing cold, dripping with damp, and smelt like the inside of a grave. Next to arrive was some Foreign Office chum of the Earl's who introduced himself as the Hon. Algernon "Cricket" Balls. He seemed a bit phoney to me, and talked such rubbish that Dolores nicknamed him "Loada Balls" within five minutes. We were then joined by a loud-mouthed twenty-stone American woman in a fur coat, followed by a handsome blonde Norwegian youth accompanied by a sparrow-like Italian girl who seemed incapable either of speech or hearing, and who simply stared at us from under a thick fringe of frizzled black hair.

Nobody removed their coats, and for a while we all sat around in chairs (without removing the dust sheets) and waited for our host to arrive – no doubt loaded up (as we were hoping) with hampers crammed with Christmas delights, cases of wine, cartloads of logs for the fires, and a retinue of faithful retainers in tow to attend to our every whim. As we sat shivering in the grey light of that dismal day, we soon realized that we were in for a horrible shock. Enstone was nowhere to be found, and when I checked the telephone, it was dead. It was lunchtime by this point, and we were all cold, hungry and thirsty. There wasn't even so much as a glass of cheap sherry or a box of dates to be had. What on earth was to be done?

To be continued.....

Under Pressure

2009-12-10T11:55:00.002Z

I did something rather silly the other day. I bought a blood pressure monitor. It says in the instructions that these contraptions are a good idea because by monitoring our blood pressure at home, we get a more accurate reading. Apparently we become artificially stressed when we are in hospital or at the doctor's surgery and this of course distorts the readings.

So, now I keep getting the little machine out of its box, and testing myself to see what's what. Before I started this, I had absolutely no idea what a 'good' or 'bad' reading was – and I didn't really care either because I always feel healthy, despite the huge amounts of abuse I give my body, and so I didn't think there was any cause for alarm. Well, I was wrong. The instructions tell me that an ideal pressure reading should be at, or below, 120/80. The first number is apparently one's systolic blood pressure, which is the highest pressure when the heart beats and pushes the blood round the body. The second number is one's diastolic blood pressure, which is the lowest pressure when the heart relaxes between beats. Fascinating stuff, eh? Well, the whole thing makes me feel a little queasy, I have to say.

Anyway, this little contraption I have gives a reading as you'd expect, but it also gives you the average of all the readings it has taken since I started. I'm a bit disappointed to discover that my average is 139/85 with the highest reading being 141/88 and the lowest 116/75. Now, what do you think is the reason for such variance? The instructions tell you to take readings at roughly the same time of day, in roughly the same frame of mind, and in roughly the same position (seated). I follow these rules, settling myself on the sofa in what I assume is a relaxed state, and yet the readings reveal that on some days I am more agitated than on others. Why is this? Could it be that on some days I more stressed? If so, then the amount of things I have to do all the time should mean that my blood pressure is at a constant high!

Well, little machine – I am going to trick you. The next reading I do will be when I am lying in a darkened room having just meditated, with incense sticks and scented candles burning around me, and with Albinoni or whale music playing on the stereo. Ha! See then if you can find a reading of 141/88 – if you can, I'll take a hammer to your smug little screen and smash it. Oh dear, I don't think I've thought this through somehow......

Personal Assistant Required

2009-12-08T09:16:00.002Z

It's odd how my life seems to control me, instead of the other way round. This is not good, of course. My timetable has been shot to pieces in recent days, and it's not because of any profligate behaviour on my part, I assure you. In fact, I've been very well-behaved of late, honest I have. No, my problem is responsibilities. I'm a very responsible person, I'll have you know. When I agree to do something, I do it. The trouble is, I always seem to agree to do too much. I think it's because I'm such a wonderful human being, so I'm always in demand (and I hope you're not going to disagree with that, or I'll punch your lights out).

They say (whoever they are) that if you need something doing, ask a busy person. Well, cor blimey mate – I know I'm busy, but this is ridiculous! You can stop asking me now. Please, stop. Yes, yes – I know what you'll say: That it's all my fault because I can always say 'no' if I want to, but I've already told you that I'm a nice person – and nice people always try to help where they can. However, I have my own projects to attend to (I've already told you about the exciting writing festival that I'm helping to organize for next summer) and therefore, those people in my list of 'drains' (see previous blog) need to remember that. For instance, I'm meant to be learning Italian, but despite there being a daily slot in my timetable for doing that, I never get the chance. And don't even ask me how bad I feel about not getting to the gym every day – although what's the point of attaining the perfect body when I don't even have the time to show it to anyone (even if there were anyone who was remotely interested in seeing it)?

So, now is the time to take stock (again – groan, groan) and prioritize. And what of Christmas? Well, I hate the whole thing anyway and sincerely wish that as an institution, it could be abolished. I'm meant – like everyone else – to start sending out ridiculously inappropriate cheery greetings to the people I know. Given my current commitments, this is an impossible task. However, I have actually made a Christmas cake – don't ask me why I did this because I simply don't know. I don't normally begin to think about the yuletide festival until it's almost too late, so how I managed to plan far enough ahead to bake a cake eight weeks before the event is a mystery. What's more, I've been feeding said cake with brandy on a weekly basis; which is something I think one is meant to do. This week's dosage, however, struggled to seep into the fabric of the cake (despite an adequate number of holes being pierced into the surface). I think the poor thing has had too much. God knows what state it will be in when it wakes up on Christmas morning – it should definitely not attempt to start the car, that's for sure.

Anyway, while I'm rambling on here, there are chores a-plenty waiting to be done. Nobody is going to help me get these things done, so I must make a start. My timetable says: "Look for a job." Well, sod that for a game of soldiers – there just isn't time.

Tipping The Balance

2009-12-04T18:07:00.004Z

Ha! This is funny – my (slightly eccentric) sister gave me a lifestyle tip yesterday during one of her sumptuous luncheon parties held in her elegant country home. She is receiving some lifestyle coaching second-hand, through a friend who is attending a class and who is passing on the gems week-by-week. The tip I received is to draw up a chart of all of my friends and to categorize them thus:

1. Drains – those friends who only steal your time, resources and energy; the self-obsessed;
2. Radiators – those friends who spread their energy and warmth and so are uplifting to one's life;
3. Enemies – those who pretend to be friends but who would actually destroy you if they could;
4. Inspirationalists – those friends whom you might aspire to be like (people of inspiration).

So, I have drawn up an Excel spreadsheet and down the left-hand side column I have typed in the names of everyone I know. Well, not quite everyone because that would take me a month of Sundays to complete, but the names of the people I see regularly, at least. The next four columns are headed up with the above four categories and against each name I have put an 'x' in the relevant column. It's quite interesting to see how the balance has worked out. Unfortunately, my sister hasn't yet learned (second-hand, of course) what conclusions can be drawn from the final statistics, nor what action one should take from the completed table, but mine doesn't (so far) show such happy results. There seem to be more 'drains' than there are 'radiators'.

And why is this? Well, maybe that's the point of drawing up the chart – it tells us more about ourselves than it does about our friends. From the figures, it would be safe to assume that I have allowed myself to become surrounded by too many of the kind of people who take me for granted, who abuse my friendship and my hospitality (and generosity too), and who are not prepared to give me very much in return. Whether they do this consciously or not is irrelevant; it's more relevant that I allow this to happen.

So what should I do? Cut those in the wrong columns out of my life completely? Or should I just be more aware of their motives and deal with it? Whose responsibility is this anyway? The estranged Mrs Pilgrim recently called me a 'loon-magnet' and perhaps she was right. Is there something of the victim about me? Well, if so, now is the time to put that right. I'm not going to focus on those two columns that seep negativity into my battered life – instead, I shall focus on the other two groups. And to those people who fall into those categories, I say: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Welcome To The Cabaret!

2009-12-02T10:48:00.003Z

The last time I had anything to do with theatre (well, apart from the time when Great Aunt Dolores had her disastrous run as Phaedre in Paris's Comédie-Française), was when I was a member of a travelling theatre company in my student days. We took an old van, some mouldy costumes and a few tatty flats to Austria, where we managed to baffle the locals in a string of remote alpine villages with our somewhat tortuous interpretations of Ibsen, Brecht, Rattigan and even some Pinter. I was a dreadful actor, and probably an even worse stage manager, but it was a fun trip and we all became firm friends and thought we were all heading for stardom.

So, it is with some delight that I am helping to organize a festival of new stage writing here in Nottingham. Basically this is a writing festival, but it will culminate in the performance (by professional and semi-professional actors) of the winning scripts. We intent to invite the submission of scripts, mainly from new or emerging playwrights, and we shall have some independent judges who will select the winners whose plays will then be performed over three days in various venues around Hockley in Nottingham. This will take place in the summer of 2010.

I'm working in conjunction with the already established Halden Theatre Company (click here for details) whose productions are both professional and effective. This will be a quality festival and will hopefully produce some new talented writers for us to talk about. I'm so excited by the whole idea and even though it's going to be a lot of hard work, it will be hugely enjoyable. One of the best things about it will be the opportunity to network with so many creative people in the city. It means spending time with both new and established writers, as well as liaising with the venue managers and working with the actors too. On top of all that, there's the added satisfaction of knowing that we'll be pushing out some superior and innovative new writing to the public. Everybody wins!

At the moment, we're having a heated debate about what to call the festival. We want to find a name for it that's seductive, slightly zany, evocative, and also representative of the message we're trying to send out. We're throwing ideas around like mad, but haven't settled on anything yet. When we do, and we're ready to broadcast the details, you'll be the first to know, gentle reader. In the meantime, we're having fun. Again, everyone wins. Wooh!

My Family Without The Animal (please)

2009-11-30T09:38:00.004Z

I have an awful lot of projects on the go at the moment – so many in fact, that I wouldn't have time to work, even if I had a job. The little squares on my two-week timetable are almost filled up. This lends my life a somewhat regulated slant – I'm not entirely happy about this in some ways because it means that everything is prescribed, and there isn't much room for surprises. In other ways though, it's a great boon to my plans because without it, I might become so unstructured that I wouldn't achieve anything at all and everything would fall apart.

However, there are some surprises that aren't really welcome anyway. Take last night for instance – the square on my timetable showed 'Ironing', so I heaved the ironing board into place, and the iron, and was just about to fetch a load of clothes from the airing cupboard when there was a tap on my apartment door. I live in a fortress with (supposedly) no unauthorized access from the street, so a knock on the door is always a surprise. Thinking that it must be someone from one of the other apartments – someone calling to borrow a cup of sugar perhaps – I opened the door. It wasn't a neighbour at all - no, it was that damned stray cat which had somehow slipped through someone's legs and gained a surreptitious entry to the street door.

The wretched creature was demanding a saucer of milk (several in fact) and of course, some attention. So, I had to put away the ironing board and spend several hours throwing balls of wool for it to chase. A fruitless pastime, if ever there was one. I thought I had rid myself of this pest some time ago, but just when I am relaxing in the assumption that I am finally cat-free, it turns up again. I read Gerald Durrell's 'My Family And Other Animals' many many years ago, but one of the memorable scenes in that book is when Gerry's mother receives a letter from some disliked relative announcing an impending visit. At this point, the family was living in the sprawling Daffodil-Yellow Villa and so the poor beleaguered mother's only solution was to move to the smaller Snow-White Villa, thereby fending off the unwelcome visit by declaring that there was simply no room for additional guests. A cunning plan, if somewhat inconvenient.

I feel a bit like doing something similar. I don't want to move from this apartment, but if that is the only way that I am going to be able to shake off this wretched stray cat, then I may have no choice. Or maybe I should just leave the country, with no forwarding address? Hmm, that's an idea....

Battling On

2009-11-26T09:50:00.006Z

I am relentless in my pursuit of goodness. Every day I resolve to be good, yet every day I always - in some small way - fail. Each morning, as I leap from my bed, I make a promise to myself to do only good things today; to spread only love and happiness around me; to banish all negative thoughts; to smoke less; drink less, exercise more.

What happens? I forget all about it, that's what. Having first convinced myself that only good things will come to me if I'm good myself, I waiver and buckle at the slightest setback and this subsequently causes me to start behaving badly. Sometimes I only do a small thing that's bad – maybe two or three cigarettes over my daily quota, or perhaps an extra three fingers of whisky, late into the night. Other times, I conduct myself with such alarming depravity and malice aforethought, that this causes my heart to sink when I realize that once again, I have lost the principles by which I should live. Why am I so weak?

I can remember a single occasion when I was about four years old and my mother was chiding me for doing something naughty. "You have turned from a nice little boy, into a bad little boy," she told me. A casual, throwaway comment for an harassed young mother to make, perhaps, but it cut me to the quick. I remember retreating behind the sofa to contemplate this new revelation. What shocked me at the time about that particular remark was that it was complete news to me that a person could change from being good to being bad. I distinctly recall being dismayed that I was no longer 'good' because I had – until then – assumed that my 'goodness' was unassailable. I had, somewhat naively perhaps, been under the misapprehension that the world was divided into two types: The bad, and the good. My brother was undoubtedly bad and I, on the other hand, was undoubtedly good.

This news that I had somehow strayed across the Rubicon was devastating. What perplexed me most about this was that I made the assumption that once the crossing had been made, there was no going back. I was now a bad person, and therefore doomed to a life of evil; a life of weakness, iniquity and shame. Ever since then, I've been struggling to smash the curse. Yet failing.

Is this is what is meant by "Life's rich battle"? If so, I need a stronger army. Perhaps that's what the Salvation Army was created for? Oh, to be a Pilgrim!

Accidental Animator

2009-11-23T19:20:00.007Z

Hello, gentle reader. I've been 'through the mill' (as they say) in recent times. Since the excesses of the previous weekend/week, I decided to have a few quiet days and to give myself some time to re-group the senses. So, I've been spending some time with my poor old lonely father, and doing plenty of housework too. I've also been catching up on paperwork, and trying to cut down on the drinking. I also went to see an art installation created by a friend of mine called 'Accidental Animator'. It was such a cool concept that maybe the new Nottingham Contemporary gallery should commission Anne-Marie to repeat this exercise in its lofty halls there. It might improve matters, in my opinion.

The idea this time was to create a collage of a scene using recycled material (largely, discarded flyers from the many and various venues around Nottingham), and getting the visitors (i.e. the audience) to participate in its creation by ripping or cutting their own shapes and sticking them on to the canvas. Anne-Marie had sketched out in pencil a Nottingham montage featuring such iconic landmarks as the Sneinton Windmill, the Council House, Vicky Centre flats, the Right Lion (as opposed to the Left), and even the Loft Bar building itself. All that was required then, was to cut and paste the detail – the 'colouring-in' bit. Great for occupational therapy!

The really nice thing is that the piece was actually built by people who perhaps wouldn't normally interact with art form at all; people who live in Nottingham too.

But there's a clever twist to this. The finished collage is not the main player in this installation. No, the picture itself is just the 'cause' to the real 'effect' and is not even required after the event. In fact, the picture could be jettisoned almost as a by-product (bit cruel though). For while people were helping to create this trompe l'oeil before our very eyes, our clever Accidental Animator was filming the progress and creating stills of the developing scene. These stills will then be used as an animated film showing the build up of the picture, projected onto the walls of the Loft Bar. It will be a bit like a massive flip-book created not by just one artist, but by many. A real, live, living flip-book, if you like.

On a dreary, weather-pounded winter's afternoon, this colourful and cheeky window of art-in-the-making is just what you need to cheer you up. So, my rehabilitation is going well. Watch this space. You might see a new 'me' emerging.

Sing As We Go!

2009-11-20T12:08:00.002Z

I just wonder what the world is coming to. Corruption, corruption, corruption everywhere. I now see that (according to the headlines) 'Sleaze chief David Curry quits over £30,000 love-nest expenses swindle'. It is alleged that this man, a Tory MP, has quit as chairman of the Parliamentary Standards & Privileges Committee over claims that his taxpayer-funded home had been used as a love nest for his mistress. He reportedly claimed almost £30,000 for a second home that his wife had banned him from visiting. It is said he had used the house, in his Yorkshire constituency, to meet a local headmistress who was his lover.

This man was meant to be the guardian of standards; a watchdog to protect us from the abuse of power by those people whom we have elected to govern us. What a bloody cheek these people have. It's nothing short of rampant hypocrisy, that's what it is (well, that's if David Curry's duplicity turns out to be proven). I've not experienced such hypocrisy since I witnessed my Great Aunt Dolores selling the 'Socialist Worker' at the gates of a power station during the 1984-5 miners' strike. I wasn't at all happy about driving her to the picket line in her Bentley. We had to park around the corner while she changed from her mink coat and cashmere dress into a boiler-suit and donkey-jacket (which she'd ordered her maid to deliberately 'distress'). When I complained about this seemingly duplicitous charade, she told me not to be so stupid.

"You're just a lily-livered liberal, boy," she said, "whereas I am a real red-bloodied socialist. Don't forget, I fought with Hemingway in the Spanish Civil War." At this, I reminded her that Hemingway didn't actually fight in the Spanish Civil War, he just reported it. "That's what you think," she retorted. "You weren't there. He was the most courageous of men. We were lovers, you know – until that bitch Martha Gellhorn came along and usurped me. She didn't want him; she was just jealous of me".

My Great Aunt often talked nonsense of this kind. Her memory of events, and her political credentials, were always blushed red with a more than flamboyant imagination. But back to the picket line and the Socialist Worker. I was humiliated with embarrassment when she forced me to dress in what was her idea of the outfit of a fish-wife: A hideously tatty paisley-patterned frock, headscarf, and wrinkled stockings. I don't think anyone was convinced by this, but the guys on the picket line were far too busy shouting 'Scab' to notice.

When Dolores had finally sold all of the copies of the newspaper, she led the boys in a chorus of the 'Red Flag' and passed around a bucket for the donation of coins. "For the little kiddies' Christmas presents," she yelled, flashing her gorgeous white teeth.

Back in the Bentley, she wriggled out of her boiler-suit and donkey jacket and flung them out of the dark-tinted window. I didn't get an opportunity to change out of my outfit because I was driving, so when we pulled up outside 'Euphoria', possibly the smartest restaurant in the area adjacent to the power station, I was still dressed as Gracie Fields – and not in her smarter years, either. By this time, Dolores had finished counting the contents of the bucket.

"Hmm, not bad. A hundred and forty-two pounds and seventy-three pence," she announced, pleased with herself. "Should buy us a decent lunch in here." I was staggered and aghast by this. I pointed out to her that this was money that she had collected from poor starving, striking miners. Half of it was meant to be handed over to the publishers of the 'Socialist Worker', and the rest should have been earmarked for the little kiddies. To squander it on a lunch of lobster Thermidor and rump of Dovedale beef with braised asparagus, was both immoral and illegal.

"Rubbish," she snorted. "It's called re-distribution of wealth, if you didn't know. Now come along – no time for you to change. You'll do, dressed as you are."

Sighing, I followed her into the restaurant. Sing as we go, and let the world go by....

Nottingham Contemporary Can Lift Spirits (Just)

2009-11-18T21:45:00.006Z

I went to Nottingham's newest art gallery today. Nottingham Contemporary opened at the weekend but, despite it being only around the corner from where I live, I've been too busy to pop down there for a visit. It's a good job that I wasn't quivering with anticipation about it, because I'd have been sadly disappointed if so. Two years behind schedule, and £3 million over budget, the end result hardly seems worth the wait. The building itself is uninspiring and bland – from the bottom of Middle Hill it resembles a corrugated-iron grain house, and is far outclassed by the elegant deconsecrated church next door that is now a cocktail bar (have a look at the picture - the strangely glowing building on the left is the new gallery).

Internally, one wonders what all the time and money was spent on. This great vast box contains only four rooms for the actual art which is, after all, its raison-d'être. The gift shop almost gets more space than the pictures. The stairs that lead two floors down to the café-bar (and away from the art), resemble the entrance to Hitler's bunker – stark, bare concrete walls looking almost as if they're already stained with damp. Yes, yes, I'm sure that polished concrete is very fashionable these days, but it does nothing for me. The café-bar itself, with its uniformed waitresses moving genteely amongst the tables with pots of tea, is far too posh. I was hoping for something more bohemian; something with an artistic, intimate feel. This is no 'Au Lapin Agile', I can tell you.

Maybe it's early days only, and perhaps the building will develop an identity as time goes by. I hope so, because it has been much heralded as the new artistic hub of Nottingham. It has certainly pulled off a coup with one of its opening exhibitions – a collection of David Hockney's early works including the iconic 'A Bigger Splash'. I always find it fascinating when I see the original version of an image that has played a part in the artistic representation of a generation. It makes me quite shiver.

Even though I was less than impressed by Nottingham Contemporary today, my visit nevertheless lifted my spirits. Today I have been unusually disheartened by a series of personal problems that even my normal effervescence couldn't solve. My timetable had collapsed amidst the chaos of debauchery and entertainment, my self respect was at an all-time low and - to quote a line from the theme from TV's 'Friends' - my love-life was D.O.A. So wandering amongst Hockney's collage-paintings and sketches of nude boys lifted my somewhat dull spirits and put a new spring in my step. In fact, it gave me the energy to write this blog. So there, you've all benefited.

Another Lost Weekend

2009-11-16T16:24:00.007Z

The new timetable was a great idea. It was really beginning to work and was shaping my days into something constructive so that I was actually achieving results. A most productive week was drawing to a close, and targets were being met. I was feeling pleased with myself. I'd held the meeting with the film producer who is anxious to get my film about the non-transvestite made, I'd done my shopping and made my arrangements for all other domestic chores to be ticked off – tick, tick, tick. All good.

And then, on Friday afternoon, a chance encounter with someone I'd only met twice before, caused a sudden and dramatic nuclear fusion that the time since then has been spent in an ever-spiralling whirlwind of drinking and debauchery, such that I have now lost the plot completely and the timetable lies in tattered shreds on the stained floor of despair. Oh dear. Not good.

Mind you, I have engaged in some worthwhile pursuits too. I went to the cinema on Friday evening to see the much lauded 'Bright Star', Jane Campion's latest film offering about the love affair between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. It had been described by critics as 'exquisite', and in some ways, it was. Well, the photography was exquisite, but little else. The script was diabolical and unbelievable; the acting not much better. A big disappointment.

On Saturday I went to a fabulous private art viewing and bought a beautiful piece of artwork. I just wish I could remember what it is called – I'll have to ring the artist and ask him, and also how he did it (it's some kind of digitized print). If the artist ever makes it big, it might be worth a fortune in the future, and then I won't need a pension!

Sunday night (after a relaxing and healthy walk around the University Lake) saw us at the Malt Cross for a musical extravaganza – a tribute to the great Tom Waits. There was some fabulous singing and playing from people like Mink (slightly reduced in numbers, but Ian Oxlade's voice seems to have matured into something even more extraordinary and totally spell-binding). Also reduced in numbers was the group Shakes, who are a regular turn at Shaw's Restaurant – keyboard player David surprised us all with his completely authentic rendition of a couple of Waits numbers. Terrific stuff – although the show was nearly stolen by Ali Hazeldene's unbelievably charismatic singing; more mesmerising even than Odysseus's Sirens. See picture below.

Unfortunately, all of these excellent pursuits were accompanied by the consumption of very large quantities of alcohol. In fact, more alcohol in one weekend than any sane person should consume. Which is why we are not sane, perhaps. And who is "we", you might ask? The chance encounter I had on Friday afternoon with someone I hardly knew, turned into a full-on bonding for the next three days. We've hardly been out of each other's company for all of that time, which is quite a strange thing. We even watched a film on TV last night – we'd both seen it before and both remembered enjoying it. What a shock – it was rubbish. Bad script, bad acting, terribly mis-cast all round – what a shambles. The film? It was 'Little Voice'. To be avoided at all costs.

Hopefully, better news tomorrow.