High on a hill was a lonely goatherd!

Well, I've been a bit tardy in respect of the old blog just lately. This is the curse of the working classes, of course. I'm spending so much time either at work or on the road these days that I hardly have time to fart, let alone write about it. Oh well, it won't last forever and trust me, I'll be back to my indolent self - where all I do is pretend to be a real person - fairly soon.

I've been trying to pack for my holiday tonight. The good thing about taking your own skis is that the ski bag doesn't count towards your luggage allowance, so the trick is to cram as many other things into the ski bag as possible, thereby leaving more room in the suitcase. Sounds good, eh? Well it would be, if I weren't the kind of person who struggles to decide between the gold lamé catsuit or the full-leather gimp outfit, and so therefore takes both – my suitcase is already bulging at the seams and there's hardly room for the skis in the ski bag either. Hmm, why can I never be the type of person who 'travels light'?

Anyway, I should be worrying more about paying my bills before I leave for holiday, rather than whether I will have the de rigueur outfit for the slopes. I only have a couple of hours to go, and there's a pile of paper as big as the Round Tower at Copenhagen to deal with first, as well as the packing. I'll try to write something more meaningful (and hopefully more erudite) while I'm away. Trouble is, the après ski might get in the way!

Arrivederci, dear reader!

Reading at The Broadway

Okay, so I realized that for those of you who don't live in Nottingham, you won't know what the words appearing on the glass front of Broadway are (the words what I wrote, that is). So, far be it from me to self-publicize, I reproduce them here:


Reading At Broadway by Richard Pilgrim

This is The Broadway, where people come to read. Not in a bored way, in any way at all, but in an enthralled way, and people are called away, called here to open book and paper, and to read ♦ Like the massing herds of wildebeest that gather at the water, we are drawn into the swirling vortex of education, information, scintillation, mastication, relaxation, celebration, fascination – it's all here at The Broadway ♦ What kind of things can be read? What kind of things can be said about the printed words amidst these massing herds? ♦ Some are absorbed in the flapping languor of newspapers, surrounded by discarded sections, or making connections with their crossword corrections ♦ Others are urged to submerge themselves in a work of fiction or in the dirge of a tome of fact ♦ Or perhaps a wine-stained menu or even a programme movie guide, set aside for the time when reading will end and when eating or watching will commence; when there's an end to word sense ♦ Some read alone; some in groups – laughing at some cartoon that lampoons the world's news, or at what makes sense is to give offence by the hurling of shoes ♦ Some are reading in a vacuum of silence; some in the chaos of sound ♦ Some of you might even beat a retreat to the street - to read this.

Not exactly Shakespeare (although if you prick me, do I not still bleed?), but The Broadway seemed to like it....

Son et Lumière

We had a very agreeable evening yesterday. I'd arrived home, shocked by the surprise of having to work for a living (it is so terribly time consuming and I just don't understand how people do it all the time), and immediately met up with some friends so that we could embark upon Nottingham's Light Trail. This was part of the fabulous 'Festival of Light' that the City Council had organized and the whole thing was a magnificent spectacle of beauty, music and dance. The entire city was ablaze with creations of light – my friend Greek Adam had illuminated the caves of the Castle so that they breathed with colour and music (it was a right old son et lumière manifestation, I can tell you). There were drums and dancers all over the city; weird swirling colours were being projected onto buildings; women & men on stilts and wearing outrageous costumes were juggling with fire; the streets were packed with people as if at a religious festival in some exotic South American town. It was all so beautiful, and so I say 'well done' (at last) to the City Council.

For any normal person, this extraordinary exhibition of light would have been intoxication enough for one night – but of course, I'm not a normal person. So instead, a whole crowd of us repaired to the Shaw's where Johnny was hosting one of his famous Jazz Nights. The place was heaving so after one drink we moved on to the Broadway which had been decorated, for the occasion, with charming table lamps of outlandish golds and greens, all sporting decadent fringed shades – it transformed the long Mezz bar into something like the Orient Express. Later still, back at my apartment, Mr Smith from London called round (with, surprisingly, his own beer) and regaled me with his tales of excess and debauchery before we embarked on a second round of drinking and until, incoherent with alcohol, our arguing about world politics became nugatory.

I am paying for my exuberance now though – my head is as thick as a Witney blanket and my throat is like the interior of a fur glove. And it's Saturday. Now that I have to go out to work in the week, I need this day to get things done. Mr Smith has left for work (yes, he even has to work at the weekend - imagine that?) and so I have to get up off my ass and sort things out. I could use a different kind of 'light night' tonight, that's for sure. Tally ho!

I Don't Believe It!

I was listening to a travel report on the radio today, and the announcer (or whatever travel people are called – Terry Wogan's listeners call them 'Travel Totties' since they are invariably young & female) well, the announcer said: "To the north of Scotland, there are some serious driving difficulties". I'll say there were – to be 'to the north of Scotland' would mean you'd be in the middle of the Icelandic Sea (or possibly the North Sea, not sure). What she meant to say was: "In the north of Scotland, there are some serious driving conditions...." What is wrong with these people in the media? Why are they becoming incapable of recognizing correct syntax?

However, there is an expression that people in the media often use that irritates me even more. Whenever anyone reports on something that happened in the past, they invariably say "... back in.." (insert year of event in question). Now, I'm not such a curmudgeon that I would object to someone saying "Back in 1837..." for example, but I often catch reporters saying things like "Back in 2007" and my point is this: To use the phrase 'back in', one is suggesting a reference to an event from long, long ago. To refer in this way to an event that took place only two years ago is tantamount to tautology. So I say: Stop it, you lot! We know that 2007 is in the past, otherwise we wouldn't now be in 2009 – there is no need for further emphasis in this matter.

At this point, I should embark on a list of other things that irritate me, but I can't be bothered. Although in order to satisfy you, dear reader, I will highlight a few of these:

1. Vacuous faux-serious commentaries in documentaries concerning people's ordinary lives: "The burning question is whether Sharon's husband will like the lime-green kitchen she has installed while he was away in Iraq..."
2. Girls who stop you in the street to ask for a light, and who then have difficulty holding the lighter with their hideously elongated white-painted nails.
3. Irishmen who boil with rage if you should dare to emulate an Irish accent in their presence.
4. People who refuse to blow their nose and so continually sniff – where do they think the mucus is going to go?
5. Kettles that leak.
6. Fat people who have no spatial awareness and who block your way and then pretend not to hear you when you say "Excuse me, could I just squeeze through...?"
7. People who won't come to dinner when I've cooked it.
8. People who end a sentence with a preposition.
9. Empty gin bottles.

Enough. I'm becoming grumpy.

Nine Lives

All this snow we've been having recently has brought to mind a time when I nearly died in a snowstorm. I'd been out for lunch with my long-term travelling companion (my Great-Aunt Dolores – she who was run over by a lorry but survived, and who later took up playing the xylophone). We'd been lunching with the painter Salvador Dali and his charming (but mad) wife Gala at their picturesque villa in Barcelona. My Great-Aunt had decided that we should motor immediately to Perpignan in Southern France – apparently it was imperative that we visit the railway station there, because Dali had commented over lunch that he considered it to be the "centre of the universe" (or more accurately, "centre du monde").

So we set off in her decrepit old Citroën with nothing more than a smoked salmon sandwich and a bottle of Dali's vintage Dom Perignon champagne on the back seat. The journey should only have taken about two-and-a-half hours (it's about 200 km), and indeed it would have done had Dolores – with another of her Camel cigarettes clamped firmly between her teeth in its ivory holder - not insisted on taking a wrong turning and heading up towards the foothills of the Pyrenees. It was winter time and as we climbed higher, the snow clouds were slowly being lowered on unseen cords to meet us. Like burst down pillows, they soon began to spew their load all about us, and the normally easy mountain-pass road became impassable. Our tyres began to spin and scream in protest and despite her determination to press on regardless, even Dolores had to admit that we might not make it. The car was almost completely covered by a drift at this point. We were stranded.

"We've been in some scrapes boy," she said, as she popped the cork of the Dom Perignon and reminded me of the time we were kidnapped by Yasser Arafat, "but Mother Nature is a relentless old bitch and this time, I think she might have us beat. How do you feel about drinking your own piss? It could come to that when this bottle is finished." I was getting nervous . I'd always relied on my Great-Aunt to see me through any (and all) of our uncannily recurring adventures, but this time she seemed less than certain that we might survive.

Darkness draped its lonely curtain around us and we had to huddle together underneath her sable coat just to prevent ourselves from freezing. Normally I don't smoke, but Dolores encouraged me to spark up because she insisted that it was another way to keep warm. It didn't work, and the inside of the car began to feel clammy and unpleasant. Before long, Dolores became delirious and started rambling about how she wished she'd died that time she'd thrown herself over Niagara Falls in a barrel. I tried telling her some jokes in an attempt to lift her spirits, but she simply hit me over the head with the empty champagne bottle and told me to grow up. I passed out.

I wasn't even dreaming (I was unconscious) when I suddenly came to – being violently shaken by my Great-Aunt. "Lights, boy! There are lights!" she yelled. We were rescued, eventually, by an Arab Prince who was driving to Andorra in his yellow Rolls-Royce and had realized that he would get no further on that road. British engineering saved us when he had his chauffeur hitch a rope to our battered old car and tow us back down the mountain. "I thought we were goners there, boy," she mused. "I never thought I'd say this, but how do you fancy Bournemouth for our next outing? You could get a blue rinse. What do you say?" She could be droll, at times, could Dolores.

If only we'd done that (gone to Bournemouth, I mean). I'll tell you next time about the subsequent life-threatening adventure that she talked me into only the following month. The thing about my Great-Aunt was that she never seemed to have any consideration for my personal safety. I do miss her though.

I Love My New Life!

I love my new life! The thing about working for a living is that it forces you to make much more productive use of the time when you're not working. Instead of languishing in indolence like I used to do for most of the day, I now write lists of tasks and make good use of the limited free time I have to ensure that they get done. It also means that I drink less and eat more (I have to have fuel to keep me going) and that is also a good thing.

Mind you, I didn't make it in to work today – I rose from my bed at the usual time (5:45 a.m.) and prepared myself for the day, only to discover that all roads to Northampton were impassable. I felt a bit feeble about calling in to say that I wasn't able to make it on only my third day on the contract, but I was told that nobody else was bothering to make the journey either, so I cheerfully got re-dressed and made a plan to spend the rest of the day ticking things off my task list. All useful stuff. I never knew that working for a living could feel so good.

There's some talk in the media about whether the BBC is making more of this Carol Thatcher incident than they should – some say that Ms Thatcher deserved only a ticking off (or, as they used to say in my day, a "rap over the knuckles") but that the BBC is punishing her for crimes committed by her mother. Hmm, well I don't know about that, but it would seem strange if that were the case - considering that the Corporation didn't sack Jonathan Ross over his offences, when he's perceived by the public to be a Blairite (or was) and when Blair was perceived by the public to have done much more damage to the BBC (Hutton Report) than Thatcher ever did. The BBC is claiming that this isn't a political decision, stating that it is a moral/ethical one, but I wonder?

I don't really care either way – Carol Thatcher probably doesn't need to work anyway, so she no doubt feels that she ought to be able to say what her old-fashioned British eccentric head feels like saying. And as for the BBC – well, who would trust an organization in which nearly all its junior producers and commissioning editors are the daughters of lieutenant-colonels (or similar) and who all probably attended the same boarding school too? Jolly hockey-sticks to the lot of them, that's what I say.

It's a Hard-Knock Life

I've been to work today. Blimey – I don't know how people actually do this kind of thing every day. I've been working from home for so long now that I'd forgotten what it's like to turn up at a real office where real people lead real lives. It was all a bit of a shock I can tell you – and not a nice one at that. It's so time consuming for a start – how on earth do people fit anything else in to their lives at this rate? When do I find time to eat, to shit, to smoke, to drink alcohol or to write? There are only so many hours in a day and if I'm meant to spend it all travelling and working with normal people, what else can I fit in? I arrived home this evening at 6:45 and I had to lie down in a darkened room for an hour, just to recover from the trauma. I'm sure this working-for-a-living malarkey is going to kill me. Still, the money is useful I suppose. Presumably that's why people do it because I can't see any other point to it, I'm sure. Thank god I have a holiday coming up in three weeks, that's all I can say.

I listened to an extraordinary article on the radio this morning (fat chance of doing much more of that, by the way, now that I have to turn up at the office every day). Anyway, this article was about men who can use a sewing machine. They interviewed a married fireman from Brighton (must be the only married fireman in that town) who regularly runs up curtains, dresses and trousers for his wife & children. Then they interviewed a retired mechanical engineer (68) who proudly claimed to have made four wedding dresses, six ball gowns and three teenage prom dresses - all in the last year. What the fuck is going on? Mind you, having said that, I once made a pair of curtains (Patient: "Doctor, doctor, I think I'm a pair of curtains!" Doctor: "Oh, pull yourself together."). They were surprisingly easy to make – I even lined them. Unfortunately, they were so heavy when I'd finished that they pulled the curtain rail off the wall. Ah ha, but you see – I can do man things as well as woman things, and so I was able to re-fix said curtain rail and all was well. I wonder if retired mechanical engineer (68) can do that?

Anyway, I should go to bed soon. When one works for one's living, one has to get up three hours before one goes to bed - and it's gruelling I can tell you. So, nighty-night for now.

Let It Snow

That was one hell of a weekend! It's quite appropriate that I am returning to gainful employment tomorrow (I've taken on a new contract doing some Business Analysis work) because it will help me to settle down and stop me from behaving like such a hedonist. We had Jenni's birthday dinner on Friday evening which was predictably a boozy affair. We all went along to Shaw's afterwards where there was a band playing and so the whole place was crammed with people and a carnival atmosphere ensued. After that we went to Jenni's apartment for more drinks and some of us – and this is a sure sign that we had drunk too much before we even arrived there – some of us picked up some battered sausage & chips on the way. Blurgh.

On Saturday, a couple of friends dropped round to the flat early in the afternoon and so we began drinking rather sooner than we should have done. Then a couple of other people dropped by, and before long there were empty bottles strewn everywhere. We went out to eat – first at the Kean's Head, then eating again in the Cock & Hoop. Here we were joined by the Finns as well as a couple of guys from Dublin, and Marga the Australian-sounding Dutch girl. It seemed sensible for us all to retire to my apartment for even more drinks – Marga & her boyfriend were the first to leave, she dancing off into the night sporting my feather boa. Some of us were still partying at 6:00 a.m. – my poor neighbours. Two groaning sacks for the bottle bank later, a quick trip to the supermarket to replenish the stocks, and the fun started again on Sunday afternoon. Jenni hadn't been home for thirty-six hours by this point so with soon-to-be-famous young Stuart Hosker in tow, we went out to La Tasca to gorge ourselves on tapas and red wine. Oh, groan.

And today we have blizzards and my terrace has disappeared under a drift of snow (see picture above). I've been busy this morning catching up on paperwork, cleaning the flat, loading the washing machine etc. All quite mundane, but all quite necessary for the resumption of normal service. I must pop down to the Broadway though because there are some words I have written (a short piece of prose) being projected onto the building's glass frontage. My father has always asked me if he'd ever see my name in lights – and now he can.

So, back to work tomorrow – I hope the shock of this won't kill me. Mind you, I might not make it if these blizzards don't cease soon. Apparently the country has closed down south of Nottingham – it was ever thus in our country of such normally temperate climate. The Swiss & Norwegians must find this inability to deal with even a smattering of snow so amusing....