Media Moguls

Yesterday we held the first board meeting of our new company Za Zen Publishing Limited. It's all very exciting, although there's a massive amount of work to be done in the coming months. Before the meeting we'd been to the bank to open the account and our new Business Manager looked rather crestfallen when we predicted our annual turnover – I think he was expecting to be looking after an operation the size of something like Random House or Harper Collins. Poor man. Never mind - who knows, we might surprise him once we get started.

Things are looking up on the writing front. I've had a story accepted by Staple Magazine which is a highly respected literary publication. I'm not sure what people will make of the story – it's about a cock-mad female poet – but I like it, and I even included some examples of the woman's poetry which was quite difficult because I don't write poetry. Having said that, this coming Saturday sees the official unveiling of the sculpture that features (in cast iron) my poem about Beeston's industries. The Mayor of Broxtowe will be there, and once we've all been photographed for posterity, there'll be tea and sandwiches for the guests. How terribly civilized. I am becoming a pillar of the community!

This puts me in mind of Henrik Ibsen (one of my most favourite playwrights, ever). His play The Pillars of the Community is brilliant – a savage attack on the complacent superiority and hypocrisy of the bourgeois; a sort of Fear and Loathing in the Fjords. This reminds me further of my own search for honesty within myself and how I must resist becoming a pillar of the community if it means living under falsehood. We don't need bogus pillars to cure society's ills; all we need is love. Dharmarchari Nagaraja said as much this morning on Terry Wogan's show – he said that without love, we'll all end up on our hands and knees vomiting into the gutter on a Friday night. A bit extreme perhaps, but I know what he means.

So hear this: Za Zen Publishing is there to help others, and to add to the creative profile of the nation - not to make new Rupert Murdochs of us all. Although the money might be nice…. hmmm.