A Cup of Kindness

It's New Year's Eve tomorrow. I hate New Year more than I hate Christmas. It's just a number, after all – there is no real evidence to say that January 1st actually exists except in the minds of Western people. Why should any more significance be attached to some random date in the darkness of winter, than it should to any other day of the year? Okay, so for the purposes of administration it is reasonably useful to begin somewhere – and I suppose that January 1st is as useful a place to start as any – but why attach such high emotions (and expectations) to what is essentially nothing more than a bureaucratic necessity?

'Happy New Year' and all that crap – why? Why do ardent young men spring proposals upon their simpering girlfriends at this particular time? Why do we make resolutions to change our wretched lives on New Year's Day when we could make those decisions at any other time of the year? Why do we find it necessary to throw parties, wear fancy-dress, crack open the champagne, or awkwardly cross-link our hands with our neighbours and sing 'Auld Lang Syne' (when we don't even know the words)? What's it all about?

I can't remember a single New Year's Eve that didn't end in disappointment. I usually find myself wanting to go home, or go to bed, at about 10:30 p.m., yet I know that I can't because I am duty bound – as a member of Western society – to stay the course until that final and fateful countdown: Ten...Nine...Eight...Seven... etc. Yawn, yawn, I say. And the fireworks – don't get me started... I hate the fireworks.

So, tomorrow evening I am planning to have a cup of cocoa and take a good book to bed by 11:00 p.m. That's what I'm planning – but I suspect that it won't happen. I suspect that I'll get dragged into some hideously unrealistic and artificially forced celebration of the coming of 2009 and will probably find myself snogging some random individual (when neither of us would give each other the time of day throughout the rest of the year) just as Big Ben chimes his usual mournful harbinger of new promise. It was ever thus....

This Is Paris Calling

Well, it's already Day Four in Paris and this is the first chance I've had to record any details about the trip. We had a totally trouble-free journey over here by Eurostar and arrived amidst the pre-holiday hub-bub of the Gare du Nord. Within minutes, Imogen (daughter number one) came by in a taxi on her way from Gare du Lyon where her train from Geneva had arrived a short time earlier. She picked us up with our huge pile of luggage. We had four ordinary suitcases, two steamer trunks, three portmanteaux, two hatboxes and a valise – the poor taxi driver was horrified. Indeed, this amount of luggage was to cause ourselves some consternation too, when we discovered that Sophie (daughter number two) had taken a delightful yet bijou apartment in Montmartre which was on the fourth floor and with no lift!

However, successfully installed at last, we relaxed with some Christmas Eve drinks. On Christmas morning we ventured up to the Sacré Coeur to do some shopping, partake of a vin chaud and take in the sights. I was given a lift up there on Sophie's scooter – an essential mode of transport when wishing to dodge the crowds and the high volumes of traffic. With total disregard to one-way streets and pedestrian-only areas, Sophie weaved her way up the cobbled hills and there we met up with Imogen and her mother on the steps of the famous church. The weather was gloriously sunny, if cold.

On Boxing Day, Sophie was back at work in the newsroom of the TV station where she is a journalist, so we travelled out to les banlieus to visit her. Her colleagues are all very charming and cosmopolitan and we even bumped into Clovis, Sophie's boyfriend, looking startled in his studio make-up because he'd just come off-air. We then went to a Lebanese restaurant for lunch where we drank Lebanese wine – delicious, and I can't wait to tell Johnny in Shaw's about it when I return to Broad Street. Later, Clovis came back to the apartment where we ate dinner, drank more wine and played darts. Later still, Sophie showed us an article she'd written about President Ahmadinejad's alternative Christmas Message to the British which was shown on Channel Four in the UK. It was a pity I missed it – but then I also missed the Queen's Speech too, so that doesn't matter.

The holidays are soon over and before long, it will be back to work for us all (ha!). Until the next time....

Very Clever

Hmm. You know I'm always going on about fields of kittens and such – well, today is turning into a field of landmines. I'm so busy trying to get ready for Paris tomorrow (for yes, dear reader, I am spending the Juletide festivities in the French capital) so I could really do without all the messy crap that seems to be coming my way today. There's murder in my heart today, so there is. I keep trying to remember the good things in life, and reminding myself that I'm so lucky (and I am, usually), but events seem to want to thwart my merry-tune whistling mode and send me burning to the curled edges of the map. I can't be bothered to explain, but there are at least five people in this city that I would cheerfully stab right now – and I don't even know one of them.

Right. Deep breaths. Bend ze knees, a-a-a-and, breath out. Very good. Oh no, that has just reminded me that there are six people I could stab. Well, seven if you count the person who has allowed their friend to park their car in my private parking space in the car park (which I pay for). It's so damned disappointing – I'm busy enough trying to do the normal things that people have to do at Christmas (especially if you're going away), without having to spend time calling the clamping company to get them to come over and immobilize some random delinquent driver. It's so discourteous to do this, just because someone doesn't want to pay on-street parking charges while they do their Christmas shopping. What am I supposed to do? I will now have to park on the streets myself, until they move - or park in one of my neighbours' spots and risk being clamped myself. Actually, I've a good mind to take a baseball bat to the offending car's windscreen. That's if I had a baseball bat, which I don't (hint, hint Santa).

I don't know what Santa is going to bring for me this Christmas - for years I've been asking for a pair of maracas and yet I have never received them. Quite what I would do with a pair of maracas I'm not sure, but they always sound so much fun when other people use them. There's no such thing as a 'Boxing Day Sale' in France, otherwise I might venture out on Friday and see if le boutique de la musique has a pair going cheap.

Well, thinking about maracas has cheered me up. Hurrah! The kittens are saved from being slaughtered after all. The next report will be from Gay Paree – hmm.

Dinosaurs R Us!

I read a startling report this morning. It states that researchers have found that women who drink even moderate amounts of alcohol develop a reduced ability to rate attractiveness in male faces, even when they have sobered up. What this means is that women are affected by the 'beer-goggle' syndrome for longer than are men. Extraordinary.

This rather distorts my theory about the so-called promiscuity amongst gay males. People have long since regurgitated the assertion that gay men behave like sexually-crazed rampant rabbits, compared with their heterosexual counterparts. It is thereby often claimed that homosexual men are somehow looser in their morality.

I've always asserted that this is codswallop. The simple fact is that all men - gay or straight - have the same biological instincts; a behavioural trait that is inherent in us all since primeval times. It's a man's job to scatter his seed as far and as wide as possible in order to propagate the species. As a foil to this, it is a woman's intrinsic job to protect the species; to be selective; to choose only those males who will strengthen the species. Therefore, when a man meets a woman, his instinct is to fuck. Unfortunately, because of woman's inbuilt selection defences, he often meets resistance. Ipso facto, when a gay man meets another gay man, there is often no such resistance – both have the same primitive urges after all – and so some kind of union ensues. It's not any more promiscuous or immoral for gay men to behave like this – it's just a question of mathematics and opportunity.

But now, this new reports says that women who drink (god forbid, what is the world coming to?) are less able to detect male facial symmetry, a marker of attractiveness and good genes, and therefore become less selective in their choice of a partner. Results have shown that the more alcohol a woman had drunk during the six months before a symmetry test was performed, the lower her performance in the test. The scientist who conducted these tests, Dr Kirsten Oinonen of Lakehead University in Canada, said: "My study suggests that women who drink alcohol are less able to perceive facial symmetry when sober. When sober, these women are worse at judging facial symmetry, and therefore may find less attractive men more attractive."

So, although a woman's instincts for natural selection can be temporarily waived whilst under the influence of alcohol, it would appear that her beer goggles stay in place for longer than they do on that minger she pulled in Revolution last night. As for him, his goggles disappear by morning and before she can say "Will you call me?", he's zipped up and gone – mission accomplished.

This is of some concern. If we believe the politicians – that the rise in female drunkenness is endemic – then, due to the subsequent fall in natural selection, our species is doomed. Ah-ha! So, we don't need the environment to fail; we don't need a nuclear holocaust; we don't even need Bird Flu. No, to ensure the demise of homo sapiens, all we really need is a few more crates of Vodka Redbull. Right, I'm off to call my stockbroker – shares in Smirnoff? Buy, buy!

I Wanna Go Home

God, what a night it was last night. Well, what a day in fact. I was rushing all over the place trying to get things done, but achieving very little. I did do one positive thing which was to have a meeting with Jennie Syson from the Hinterland project. She wants me to write something that is going to be projected onto the glass frontage of The Broadway during a month-long art installation on the theme of writing. This will be good for me because it will spur me into writing something new, and will push my name out on another project. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

Then it was on to my mate Jim Shorthose's book launch. Loads of people were there and everyone was in an expansive mood. I got chatting to a remarkable young talented musician who later played me his recently recorded album. He's called Adam Clarkson and his band is Captain Dangerous – the music was fabulous; extremely in vogue but also very original. Adam has one of the best singing voices I've heard in a long time. You should look out for them because I think they're going to be big. Or bigger. I took a photograph of him sitting in my apartment so that I can sell it on eBay when he's famous.

After Jim's book launch, some of us went on to the launch party of the Nottingham Writers' Studio. As you know, I'm on the studio's Board and the party was to celebrate our move to newer and bigger premises. It was good to see some of Nottingham's best known writers there, and even better to note that most of them were drunk. Unfortunately, throughout the whole evening – the last part of which was spent at the Broadway, before the aforesaid musician and I retired to my apartment – I managed to consume more than my own body weight in alcohol, which doesn't make rushing for a train to Birmingham this afternoon very easy. I need a break from all of this, so I do. When's Christmas?

Calm Before The Storm

I had a completely strange weekend. It seems that I wasn't destined to stand still for a moment and even though I have plenty of projects to finish, I couldn't attend to any one of them. On Friday evening I was shooting the scenes for this film I'm to appear in. I play a rather unpleasant character who has to face up to some rather unpleasant news - in complete contrast to my real life, of course, where I am a rather pleasant chap who only ever gets pleasant surprises.

The filming was followed by drinks, inevitably, with the rest of the cast and crew. Broadway was awash with luvvies, and with the odd Italian visitor thrown in for good measure. Luckily I didn't get (very) drunk because the following morning I had to head off to put up some Christmas decorations in my old house. I despise Christmas with a vengeance (and one day remind me to tell you about the time I spent Christmas trapped inside a tent on a mountainside with only a shaman from the feared Yanomami Tribe as company), so putting up the decorations was a double chore. Then it was back into town for drinks with aforesaid random Italian and my old friends the Finns. Even this was a restrained affair, despite the presence of the Finns who can usually drink for England. Or possibly Finland.

I was supposed to go sailing on Sunday morning but when we reached the sailing club, the river was over the banks, Ganges-style, and there was no wind, so all racing was abandoned. Thinking that I would get home in time to do something constructive with my time (such as finishing the three plays, two articles, one novel and several short film scripts that I have on the go), I was surprised to be invited to have just "one drink" in The Lord Roberts (such a cosy pub, with a roaring imitation-log fire). One drink, at half past two on a Sunday afternoon – where was the harm in that?

By midnight, I realized that something had gone wrong. In the intervening hours we had moved to the Broadway, then to my apartment where miraculously I managed to cook dinner for me and one of the Finns, then returned to the Broadway for the film company's 'wrap' party (the film is now 'in the can', as we say in the glittering world of movie-making. I hope you realize I'm being ironic here). Anyway, the party rolled on in a Sodom & Gomorrah kind of way and before I knew it, I was home (without any idea how I came to be here) with my stray cat scratching and biting for attention.

Back to work, methinks....

The Answer, My Friend...

At 6:00 a.m. today the wind was blowing at 23 mph from a South Easterly direction. At 9:00 a.m. it had dropped to 10 mph and switched to a Westerly direction. By 12:00 noon it's predicted to have fallen to 3 mph and blowing from the South. By 3:00 p.m. the forecast says it will be further reduced in strength, but now it will be from the East. By nine o'clock this evening it will have turned again and be coming from the North (brrr!). What on earth is going on? It seems we're in some kind of vortex, albeit a weak one. The only consistent factor to this aberration is that whichever direction the dear wind is coming from, and in whatever strength, it will bring rain all day. How terrible. Who wants to head out into the world in this weather? This puts into jeopardy Gordon Brown's hopes of us spending our way out of the current financial difficulties. I wouldn't want to go shopping in this.

This leads me to reflect on how we sometimes waste time involving ourselves in some meaningless exercise without recognizing it. Have you ever found yourself watching a television programme, only to snap suddenly out of a kind of trance to realize that what you're watching is a load of old rubbish? I have. Something similar happened to me this morning when I was listening to the Brian Matthews programme on BBC Radio 2. In this programme he plays a lot of very obscure recordings from the 1960s – mainly stuff that is justifiably forgettable (and thereby not even pandering to nostalgia which of course, ain't what it used to be). Eating my breakfast, I suddenly woke up to the fact that I was listening to a song by the Brook Brothers (1961) with the somewhat ridiculous title of "Ain't Gonna Wash For A Week". The lyrics were as meaningless as the title and sufficiently snapped me out of my listening lethargy to have me reaching for the 'off' switch. Hmm, I must discover a more consequential way of spending my time.

My guess is that you now feel exactly the same as you read this blog....

Catch you later.

Nottingham!

I'm involved in the most amazing project going on in Nottingham. It's called 'The Building' and it will be a showcase for all that is quality in the creative scene in this city. It is the brainchild of Sarah Davenport whose vision and innovation should be an inspiration to anyone who wants to see Nottingham move up from 4th position in the table of the UK's most creative cities (already an achievement). The city is putting together a bid to be nominated as 'World Design Capital' in 2012 – the current holder is Turin, Italy, and the following baton-holder will be Seoul. And then we're next. Last night we went to an event hosted by the City Council at which we were asked, as ambassadors of Nottingham, to contribute in any way we can towards making the city's WDC bid successful. It was a glittering affair with some of Nottingham's leading design talent present. We were given inspiring talks from two of the city's most ardent protagonists of the WDC bid - Simon Green (Director of Sustainable Development) and Councillor Malcolm Wood who, amongst his many interests and duties, serves on the Eurocities Cultural Committee. The place was buzzing with excitement (sorry for the cliché) and everyone wanted to get involved. Sarah's plans for 'The Building' will be an integral part of Nottingham's message to the world of design – it will help to put us on the map.

The theme for the bid should be 'Communication'. Design can be the babel fish in the multi-lingual galaxy of creativity; a tool through which innovation and inspiration can speak to everyone in the community. Artists, writers, film-makers and musicians all need design to help attract attention and through the power of collaboration, so comes the power of communication. So, whatever genre we work in, we can all support this bid and we can all help Nottingham to become internationally famous. We already have green tights and Brian Clough (not in the same icon, of course) but there is so much more recognition to be achieved. Let's do it, shall we?

And talking of film-makers (and again, Nottingham already has Shane Meadows & Samantha Morton – two of the finest talents in the film industry), I am soon to appear in a feature film currently being shot in this very city by writer and director Tim Cunningham. Tim hopes to take the film to Cannes next year and who knows what international recognition that will bring? Yay! You heard it here first.

Oh!

It is generally accepted within the literary world that good writing should contain as few exclamation marks as possible. I do use the exclamation mark sometimes, but I'm uncomfortable with it because I read somewhere that using one to create emphasis is a bit like laughing at your own joke. There's a famous account of someone sending a telegram that contained a single question mark. I can't remember who sent it – it was somebody like Cole Porter who wanted to find out from his agent how ticket sales for his latest show were going. Whoever it was, he sent a telegram saying: "?" and the agent (immediately understanding what the question was) replied: "!" Rather neat, don't you think?

It's somewhat strange when an exclamation mark is used in real names. The English town of Westward Ho! is, I think, the only place name in the UK that officially contains one. Apparently, there is a town in Quebec called Saint-Louis-du-Ha!-Ha! which sounds like a really fun place to live, I reckon. As Nottingham is now bidding to become World Design Capital in 2012, perhaps we should rename the place Nottingham! so that the world might prick up its ears and listen. There are shows and films that have an exclamation mark in their title – Oh! Calcutta! is one example, as is Oliver! and Airplane! There used to be a television series in the 1970s called The Persuaders! which was very much in the genre of the typically stylish crime comedies that were around at that time, but I'm not sure why the exclamation mark was deemed necessary. It didn't last for long, but it gathered a small cult status amongst its followers, not least because the two detective protagonists were played by Tony Curtis and Roger Moore – both very big names in the early 1970s.

I used to love The Persuaders! because (like The Champions, which I wrote about a few weeks ago) it was glamorous and cosmopolitan and displayed a playboy world that I could only dream about as I looked up from the gutter to the stars. Curtis played a rough-edged American called Danny Wilde, and Moore played a British aristocrat named Lord Brett Sinclair. It amused me at the time that the producers of the show should have regarded this particular name as classy. Whereas 'Sinclair' (derived from St Clair) has a certain aristocratic ring to it (I have a friend called Adam Sinclair – he's pictured here – and I've always considered that his name lends him a certain noblesse oblige), 'Brett' on the other hand sounds rather thuggish to me. It's a bit like naming a character Lord Wayne de Montefiore or some such aberration.

Anyway, to get back to the subject, exclamation marks in writing should be used sparingly, if at all. So from now on, you will rarely see me using one, that's for certain!!!!!

Toodle pip, old loves.

Restaurant at the End of The World

I've never been too clever with fish. I'm talking about eating them here, not looking after them (my care for Mr Fishy and his friends was second to none). But eating them has always presented me with problems – I'm just not skilful enough to deal with the filleting and I nearly always end up with a mouth of bones – something that usually makes me gag with disgust. I was holidaying in Granada once and my friends and I had been wandering the streets looking for a suitable restaurant in which to eat, but for some reason most were either full or closed.

Eventually, we stumbled across what looked like someone's back yard that contained a few rough wooden tables and chairs. "This isn't a restaurant," I said, pointing to a line of grey washing that was strung across one corner of the yard. "Of course it is," my Spanish companion argued, so we sat down. Presently, a waiter emerged from the back door and approached us with a face like that of a traffic warden who has just discovered that none of the cars in his road has overstayed its ticket time. "Si?" he enquired. We asked for the menu. "We don't have a menu," he replied. We asked if we could order some food and he said yes, we could. In that case, we urged, can we see the menu?

"We don't have a menu," he repeated. Well, we asked, what could we order? "Fish," he said flatly. Fish? What kind of fish? "Fish," he said again, and asked if we would like to order some. "Is there anything else?" I asked. He replied that no, there was nothing else. Reluctantly, we ordered the fish.

About five minutes later, he reappeared carrying two three-foot wide platters, each piled high with every kind of fish you can list. A rather sulky girl followed him out with some plates and cutlery, and then an old woman with a moustache hobbled across the yard and slammed down two baskets of bread. They all disappeared back inside and closed the door. Dismayed, I looked at the dozens and dozens of differently-sized fish – some fried, some boiled; some battered, some not. Most still retained their heads and tails and it was immediately apparent that nearly all would have hung on to their bones too.

We all dived in, and very soon the table was strewn with fish remains as my travelling companions deftly recovered enough flesh from the carcasses to satisfy their hungers. Meanwhile, I was struggling with some kind of evil-looking snapper, trying to scrape off sufficient meat to make up a single forkful whilst avoiding choking myself to death on the bones. I can honestly say, it was the single worse meal I've ever eaten and I've never craved so much for a bag of chips, before or since.

It's All Mickey Mouse's Fault!

According to a report in today's newspaper, a Catholic monk has warned that society is in danger of losing its soul because of growing consumerism and the decline of religion. Well, I suppose he would say that, wouldn't he? He suggests that many people have become obsessed with work, sex and eating in an attempt to ignore their underlying unhappiness, and criticises corporations and industries that have benefited from promoting false notions of fulfilment, citing Disney as a typical example. Whereas it is likely that society is in danger of losing its soul (has probably already lost it), I hardly think it's right to blame little Mickey Mouse for any of this.

Fr Jamison, who lives a cloistered and privileged life as the head of the Worth Abbey states that: "Where once morality and meaning were available as part of our free cultural inheritance, now corporations [such as Disney] sell them to us as products." Hmm, this is an interesting viewpoint. I wonder, is it any worse that we can now choose to buy our spirituality, rather than having it forced upon us by a domineering and oppressive church? In the past, people like Fr Jamison, who advocated simplicity and humility in the lives of the common man, did so as a means of controlling the population. We were promised that the poverty and deprivation we had to suffer in today's world, would be more than repaid with untold riches in the next. How is that any less cynical than the promise of happiness now, which is what corporations like Disney appear to have on offer?

I do have some sympathy with his message however – he's right that the rise of celebrity culture does instil a certain dissatisfaction amongst some people. He says that: "Envy tells us to stop facing the challenges of the present life and to live in some future fantasy. Such envy drives a large part of our consumer culture. People need to learn to control their thoughts, and practice more self-discipline and self-control in their life."

I particularly like his assertion that there are "eight thoughts" which need to be controlled to help people to discover their happiness. Six of them - anger, pride, gluttony, lust, greed, and spiritual apathy (or sloth) - strangely already appear in the list of deadly sins (and who gave us those, I wonder?), but to these he adds sadness and vanity. He could be right, of course, but his message is slightly off the mark in my opinion. There shouldn't be anything wrong in any of us aiming for self-improvement – it is, after all, what has driven all creativity throughout the ages – and it isn't good enough that we should be told to put up with our lot and not strive for a better life. The problem is that people like Fr Jamison confuse spirituality with religious dogma, and I'll have no truck with that. He's guilty of envy himself because he's annoyed that Disney has more influence in today's society than the failing church.

Now, how about a nice pair of puppy-Dalmatian skin gloves? What's good enough for Cruella de Ville.....