P.S.

At the risk of being criticized for bad writing (hopefully Mephistopheles won’t be reading this anyway, so he won’t notice), I tentatively offer you this postscript to my earlier missive:

I am going away on holiday for a week. I’ll be skiing everyday and then indulging in the required après-ski activities every evening, so I won’t have the time or the inclination to go anywhere near a computer to send out messages to the world.

In the words of Gracie Fields: Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye!

And now, the end is near...

Good night, sweet Prince. My blog now has to end because I’ve been told that it’s bad writing, and it’s silly. And we can’t have that, can we?

So, faithful friends – it’s not au revoir, it’s adieu. It’s all Dory Previn’s fault ; her and her damned Lemon-Haired Ladies (I think she was talking about Mia Farrow at the time).

There's No Business

I saw an excellent film last night. It is called Glengarry Glen Ross and has the most fabulous cast – Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino , Kevin Spacey and others. The acting is the slickest I’ve seen in a long time, and the direction (James Foley) is as sharp as a shimmering blade. But what makes this film so exhilarating is that it’s an adapted stage play (written by David Mamet) and therefore we experience the intensity and power of the closed set and of course, the sheer concentration of the drama. Some people would complain about this – they would say that this makes it too claustrophobic for cinema – but in my view this doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because this film provides a glittering showcase both for dramatic structure and for the sheer quality of the writing. The three acts are as blatant as if the curtain had actually been lowered, and the way the characters move around is almost as if they were dissolving into the wings – exit stage left; enter stage right. Powerful stuff.

This was the beginning of my re-education into film. Because I’m basically a novelist at heart, I’ve tended to neglect film over the years in favour of the written word. This is strangely inappropriate when you think about it – after all, I do dissipate most of my time hanging around in a cinema. A short while ago someone came into my life who is not only an exponent of cinema, but is also an advocate of intrinsic dramatic structure. He was aghast – nay, shocked and dismayed - to discover the paucity of my knowledge on film, and has immediately sought to redress this by leading me through a dark and mysterious forest of cinemascopic detection.

So, armed with a stack of DVDs worthy of the Tower of Babel, and a big bag of crisps, we began. Glengarry Glen Ross was an electrifying introduction to what I’m expecting to be a long and yellow brick road of discovery.

On an entirely different point – I have to tell you that I was burgled the other evening. Yes, the thieves actually came into my apartment whilst I was sleeping, took all the whisky they could find, and when I woke up in the morning, all I was left with were the empty bottles! How outrageous is that? I find it bizarre that they didn’t steal anything of higher value. So, if you see someone staggering around looking drunk, it’s probably my burglar. Arrest that man!

WTF?

Phew! What a hectic day I had yesterday. A big fat meeting with the Arts Council in the morning, then a big fat professional meeting with a guy from the playhouse about the development of my play, then social meetings with writing friends and then a bit of shopping and a big fat swim. And then the crunch.

How does a single person spend St Valentine’s night when everyone around him is a breeder trying desperately to stave off divorce for another year? Simple – a friend and I decided to spend it watching TV. We thought this would be reactionary enough to make us feel smug, but all it did was make us feel rather ridiculous. And we accidentally drank so much whisky that we also ended up feeling unhealthy and depressed too.

So, fuck you Mister St Valentine - keep your love-hearts to yourself matey and stay out of my life. Everywhere around me I see misery. People get cut by flying glass and end up in A&E; other people have disastrous meetings with secret lovers; others sit crying into their fading tresses. What’s it all about, eh? The human condition is as unfulfilling as a prawn sandwich and the human heart as empty as La Grande Thérèse’s strongbox.

And it’s no good telling me to look on the bright side – only an optimist can do that.

Get On With It!

When I fell asleep last night, it was as if I had fallen backwards into bottomless drifts of yielding black soot. Apart from a few small disturbances during the night, I slept very well - floating throughout the dark subterranean caves of my dreams; slowly spinning in the eddies of my subconscious, picking at my neuroses and filing them away. As I tried to awaken this morning, it felt as if I were a kind of Sisyphus, repeatedly trying to push my ball of sleep to the surface, only for it to keep rolling back into the swirling darkness. Finally I broke through and sat up, awake.

Now the sun is shining and I have a zillion things to do, so I must begin. I have to make the final tweaks to our new website before it goes live; I have to sort out some administrative matters for the company, as well as for the Writers’ Studio; I have to do some contractual work too; and I have to write something! On top of this, my apartment is a filthy tip and I should also try to fit in some exercise today, so it’s all go.

But what am I doing instead? Sitting here writing this blog, that’s what. Get on with it, Pilgrim!

Before I go, I must tell you that I went to see a film last night and in case any of you is tempted to see it – don’t. It’s called The Princes’ Quest and it’s awful, terrible. I don’t like animation at the best of times, but this was some of the worst I’ve ever seen and the dialogue was the direst drivel ever written. The only thing it had going for it was the pretty colours, but if I wanted to sit for two hours just watching pretty colours, I’d buy a kaleidoscope!

Tootle pip, old loves!

Something In The Water?

Right, it’s almost the weekend and I’m looking back at the week’s events. It's been one hell of a week! That's right, it hasn’t been good – all my playwriting efforts have been temporarily stalled while I’ve been putting together a bid for funding to help the publishing venture that I and my colleagues have set up. It’s been trickier than I expected and has left me drained. Also, a can of worms has been opened by an incident at the Studio (incidentally, where can you actually buy a can of worms? I’ve looked in Tesco and Sainsbury’s without success). This strange little fracas has sucked time from me more effectively than my vacuum cleaner can suck up the dust. And then, on top of that, I’ve been hassled by some mad crazy woman - with apparently megalomaniacal tendencies - who has been trying to sell me something, but didn’t actually tell me this. She wrapped up her peculiar sales pitch in the guise of discussing a “creative collaboration project” and then she became offensive when I failed to fall for it. She clearly hasn't read "How To Make Friends And Influence People", hasn't that one.

So, I’m quite exhausted. Added to that, my Irish friend and I have been exercising with vigour – I’ve been swimming most days, as well as pumping up and down on this strange little exercise machine that I’ve bought in order to strengthen my legs in time for skiing. This increase in physical activity has been necessary however, not only to improve my undermined health, but also to provide necessary sleep that the absence of the normal drunken stupors would have kept me from (if you understand what I mean). Alcohol consumption has been kept to a minimum.

Tomorrow I’m going to a conference organized by Writing Industries which is being held at Loughborough University. It’s a day of talks & presentations given by a variety of people from across the various areas within the writing industry, together with an opportunity to 'network' with other people who are in the business too. It seems like fun but I’m also interested in looking at how the structure of the day works because I’m in the process of putting together something similar in collaboration with the Nottingham Creative Network which we plan to hold at the good old Broadway Media Centre. I shall be keen to see whether tomorrow’s event matches the kind of expectations we have for ours.

Oh dear, that was all a bit serious and grown up, wasn’t it? Well let me lighten the mood by telling you that tomorrow evening I’m going to dress up in fishnet stockings and a basque and head off to the Pitti Pat Club’s “Burlesque Evening”. All sorts of camp cabaret acts and murky androgynous characters will parade before the altar of decadence. Should be fun!

First Day of Lent

The new life is going well. The amount of whisky I’ve consumed since I was visited by The Old Man of Cappaghcreen on Saturday wouldn’t even fill a Parisian espresso coffee cup, and I’ve had none at all for two days. Moderate consumption of other alcoholic beverages (and none before six o’clock in the evening; new rule) has helped both clear my head and set me on the path towards sobriety and rationality. This restraint on my recent behaviour hasn’t arrived a moment too soon, I can tell you.

Yesterday I went for lunch with Dharmachari Jinaraja, my Buddhist monk. He’s a lovely, lovely man of such charm, wit and compassion that any encounter I have with him leaves me feeling both invigorated and yet strangely calm. He never judges; never offers admonishment for bad behaviour and his habitual advice is always ‘Be patient with yourself’ which – without suggesting that we should excuse any lapses in our conduct – means that we don’t need to beat ourselves up about them as long as we recognize that they’re making us unhappy, and as long as we intend to do something about them. And I do. Meditation is the key to all Buddhist development and it’s quite useless of me to protest that I don’t have time for it when I have previously always been able to find the time to queue at the bar for that next drink.

The number of quotations related to the subject of alcohol is a reflection of its importance in our society – why, I even have one on my Facebook page: "Always carry a small flagon of whisky in case of snakebite. Furthermore, always carry a small snake." (W C Fields) – but I read a quotation the other day which I think is attributed to Dylan Thomas and which is embarrassingly sobering: “An alcoholic is someone you don’t like, who drinks as much as you do.” That pulled me up a bit.

From an early age we are told that drink is a necessary part of civilised life. Hemingway said: “An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools” but isn't that just an apologia to justify our own weaknesses? A better solution would surely be to avoid the fools altogether? I know a man (and no, it’s not the monk this time) who is so wise, so interesting, so amusing, and so utterly good-natured that I could spend eternity in his company without ever needing to imbibe the demon drink again. The trouble is of course, I suspect that he needs alcohol himself in order to suffer me. It was ever thus.

There's None So Blind

January 6th is the real date for Epiphany, but I think I experienced it this very weekend instead. I’m delighted to inform you that my gradual descent into the abyss of impiety was successfully halted by a rather strange incident that took place only yesterday. I haven’t previously believed in fairies or goblins or anything that can’t be proven scientifically, but on Saturday I was visited by a creature from the mists of the netherworld; a chimera perhaps, but it seemed real enough to me.

For yes, I was visited by a leprechaun. Now I know you probably think I’d been taking too much of the old Liffey Water, but really - I was stone-cold sober when he appeared. Quite a charming little fellow really, and seemingly a fountain of wisdom - he talked to me about relative structuralism, Marxist ideology, as well as both the theoretical and applied sciences of linguistics. So convincing was he about the semantics of whether Phenomenology really was the forerunner of Existentialism or whether it was the forerunner of quantum mechanics instead, that I had no option to believe everything else he said to me.

I’m not usually credulous, but when I’m faced with such overwhelming evidence that not only do leprechauns exist, but that they’re not always the mischievous little miscreants we’re meant to believe they are, and that they can actually bring messages of hope and support, I’m afraid that I have to tell you that I suspend my disbelief.

And this little fella didn’t pull any punches. Oh no - in language both profane and obscene, he warned me of the dire consequences of my continued bad behaviour. He told me that I could no longer sustain my hedonism and that if I didn’t mend my ways and soon, I was facing certain decadence. Well, nobody welcomes a fall from grace like that, so I now have no choice but to heed his wise words. So, it’s out with the whisky and in with the early nights instead. As I write, I’m tucked into my bed with my curlers in, and my face-pack on. Tomorrow I shall begin a new exercise routine of such strict measures that it can’t be long before I’m re-born as an Adonis; a paragon of virtue. I have to believe the leprechaun’s wise words. I have no choice.

I’ll tell you something – scoff at this you might, but I find it easier to believe in the existence of this wise little man than it is to believe that my new fridge-freezer will actually arrive tomorrow, as promised. Watch this space.