Baseball, Damned Lies and Statistics

Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Do you feel that you missed a trick somewhere? Did you start off well and then fail to fulfil your initial promise? Do you feel you have talent but the current ways of measuring things don't seem let people recognise your true value. Of course, you may have a terrible case of "Pop Idol Syndrome" convinced that you can sing like an angel when you can hardly deliver pizza, but maybe there's something about you that the people who claim to be in the know have missed, maybe you really could still be a star.

In a way Moneyball is a good example of the very thing that it's trying to demonstrate. It's a book about baseball, it has a picture of a baseball on the cover, so naturally it should be of no interest whatsoever to anybody who doesn't know what being "on base" is or what on earth a "pop flyer" should be. If you don't know anything about baseball this book should be dismissed out of hand, shouldn't it? Well it turns out that this book is about baseball, but also about hidden value, value for people who have no idea about baseball, and maybe never want to have. It's such a persuasive argument for the study of mathematics that it made me go out and buy (and actually read) an idiot's introduction to statistics.

The basic story is of a good looking guy named Billy Bean. Not only does he look good, he plays baseball like a god. He should be a superstar. All the scouts whose job it is to shuffle onto the benches at unattended high school games and look at baseball players think he's going to be a superstar. They're offering him the big bucks and fighting over him because they're certain he's on the way to the top. It doesn't quite turn out like that. Billy finds out the hard way (what would be an easy way?) that the god-like performances he managed on the school playing fields hid a bad flaw. He couldn't fail. Not that he didn't fail, but he did he had no way of dealing with his failures other than pure rage. All the way through his baseball career he shows flashes of brilliance, the promise that everyone saw in him when he was a boy, but it never really turns into runaway success. Finally, after many painful years, he has to admit to himself he can't play baseball as he, and everyone else around him thought he could. He gives up - the thing in films about sporting heroes that nobody is ever supposed to do. He stops his own career rather than slug it out to the very end - perhaps the first indication that Billy Bean doesn't think like many other also-rans. If he can't play in a baseball team, he thinks, maybe he can manage one. All he has for inspiration are some dog-eared self-published pamphlets on baseball statistics written by a nobody from Kansas called Bill James.

This is the central story of the book - a man who's lived the emotional dream of baseball and watched it turn into a nightmare seeks solace and salvation in logic, numbers and reason. Necessity makes him the father of invention. He gets a job as a manager but his team has no money, at best they can pay about a quarter of what the top teams are paying in salaries for their players. Using statistics rather than the baseball scouts usual "gut instinct" as a guide he hires people who can't run, can't catch, can't diet. With a laptop, access to an enormous store of data about baseball and a spreadsheet, he can give the enormous collection of numbers gathered in baseball "The Power of Language". Nerds who've never been near a baseball field can understand which of all the bewildering statistics actually make a difference ("on base percentage" is the real killer apparently, "walks" is another one although I still don't know what either of these actually mean). The numbers suggest a set of players for Billy Bean to put on his shopping list: the once promising but passed over, the fat, the lame and the downright strange that have a statistically good chance of delivering the goods, even though no one else would touch them. And it works! Year on year the Oakland A's win more games until they get themselves into the play-offs (which I think is a bit like the late rounds of a cup-final and definitely a good thing). There you have it. Maybe it is a sports movie after all. Initial promise, disaster, long hard slog, redemption, it's like the basic plot of a Rocky Movie, but with more regression testing.

When somebody comes up with a way of getting great sports results on the cheap, you'd think other people who manage teams in the sport would be interested in how they did it, wouldn't you? Isn't there a bit of money associated with professional sports these days? Don't you tend to get more of it when you win? When somebody as readable and enthusiastic as Michael Lewis lays out how this magic money-making machine works in a mass market paper back, you'd think that managers would be hammering on their 1-click buttons to buy it on Amazon wouldn't you? They weren't. The difference between the dream of baseball that they live and breath and the weird, number-crunching reality was too much to take. Managers of baseball teams queued up to claim that they hadn't read it. The inner-circle of baseball club staff and the coterie of journalists and sports presenters that surround them manage to convince themselves that the best-selling book contains nothing worth knowing and that the whole thing is just an ego-trip puff piece for Billy Bean. After all, nobody likes a smart arse. But at the same time, few can afford to ignore who's actually right. 2003, the year that the Oakland A's make it to the playoffs is the year that Billy Bean their manager gets a record-breaking transfer offer to the Boston Red Sox guaranteeing him $12.5 million over three years - the most that had ever been offered to a manager at that time.

Lewis is very gentle about pointing out what the lessons from Moneyball are for the world outside of baseball. Like all the best teachers he lets you have the "eureka" moments all by yourself. But the message that Bill James, a baseball nerd who should have been a great American novelist, passed onto Billy Bean obviously does apply all over the place: "If you challenge the conventional wisdom, you will find ways of doing things much better than they are currently done...don't be an ape. Think for yourself along rational lines. Hypothesize, test against the evidence, never accept that a question has been answered as well as it will ever be." And other people did figure it out "The Oakland front office had calls from a cross section of American business and sporting life: teams from the NHL, NFL and NBA; Wall Street firms; Fortune 500 companies; Hollywood studios; college and high school baseball programs. Even some guy with a chain of hot dog stands...don't ask."

Adrift in the Land of Odd

Lost in Translation (Directed by Sofia Coppola)

Cambridge Arts Cinema

Sunday January 19th

We're in a luxury hotel in Tokyo. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is here with her fashion photographer boyfriend. All the way from California. Like anybody who's on a business trip, he's too busy to give her any time or attention. She is left jetlagged, on her own, in a huge and bewildering city where she can't get any sleep. Bob Harris (Billy Murray) used to be a big film star but that was twenty years ago. Maybe around the time that Charlotte was born. Two million dollars for a couple of days work on a whiskey commercial is enough to persuade him to make the same trip half-way round the world. Between photo shoots he has a lot of time on his hands and he can't sleep either.

This being a Hollywood movie, they of course fall in love. But they do it - very - slowly. This film never tells us the story. It takes its time, gives itself the room and then shows us just what is going on. Assured use of time and space mingles with the jet-lagged atmosphere to make it dreamy. Really dreamy. Laid over the unrelenting foreign-ness of Tokyo and the internationally generic hospitality of the hotel, it seems possible that these two people never actually met. In the manner of Mulholland drive or the Sixth Sense maybe this was all some sort of dream or supernatural slip in reality. You're almost waiting for the twist. But all the while it's creating this unworldly feeling the film keeps one foot on the floor. Bob's wife sends him reports and questions about shelving, and carpet samples from a child-filled home which is obviously mired in reality. We feel with these uncomfortable lurching shifts between the impersonal dreaminess of the hotel and the nappy-filled reality of his home life. The deliciousness of the luxury hotel dream increases.

And there are some gorgeous touches. A moment in the fuzzy early morning when Charlotte rests her head on Bob's shoulder. A head on the shoulder is probably the most obvious advance she's ever had to make. But Bob's response is merely to re-knit his fingers and re-rest them on his knee. But then there's the touch of Charlotte's ankle when they've both finally made it onto, but not yet into the same bed.

So it's a jolt when dialogue is occasionally adolescent. "I went to the temple, but I didn't feel anything" is perhaps the kind of dialogue that made Charlotte decide she wasn't going to be a writer. But in the end, the lack of wisdom in the words makes it all the more remarkable that there is so much in the pictures.

Something for Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

The European Theatre Group

ADC Theatre

January 14th 2004

It always feels like a privilege to see a European Theatre Group production. It's a pretty good recipe - a cast of Cambridge University's brightest young things; a play by old beardy; and a good long run in Europe to knock all the corners off, smooth out all the wrinkles and make the cast feel like conquering heroes.

Even so, this production showed itself to be better than the sum of all those parts. It wasn't simply the smooth patina of a long run that made this a joy to watch. Almost all the playing showed signs of thoughtful casting and even more thoughtful rehearsal. Ben Kerridge as Leonato is a born character actor. How could someone do so much with so little beard? Alex Lamont also powered through the play as Margaret making something interesting out of almost nothing (is she really captain of the Newnham belly dancing team?). Max Bennett gave a Billy Idol-ish performance as Don Jon. Then after a quick change he managed to point up the comedy of the tricky "clown" scenes, playing Dogberry in a way that allowed you to laugh, even if you hadn't read the footnotes in the Arden edition. If you think this isn't hard you should see Michael Keaton try to do it in the film.

This isn't one of those fancy deluxe Shakespeare plays where all the lovers have to do is a bit of sighing and snogging. There aren't going to be some faeries and rude mechanicals along in a minute to relieve the tedium. This is just your basic romantic comedy and the principals have to provide all the frills themselves. Most of the responsibility for making the play worth watching falls on the shoulders of the young lovers, Benedick (Adam Shindler) and Beatrice (Susanna Hislop). Shindler was more than up to the task, delivering a laddish performance somewhere equidistant between Martin Clunes, Hugh Grant and Darren Gough. Some of best moments of the evening were when he was alone on stage, tirelessly helping his lines off the page (at one stage literally flirting with audience participation) and always making the maximum sense of Benedick as a full-rounded character who spells Benedick with a capital BLOKE.

It was only when Beatrice and Benedick were on stage together that some of the expected fireworks failed to occur. The spine of the play is this spiky relationship. Sadly this was the one thing that was slightly limp. Maybe this was a directorial problem of not getting the volume levels right. Benedick needed to be turned down a couple of notches from "eleven" to give Beatrice a chance to shine. Or maybe it was that Susanna Hislop wasn't really comfortable in a role that needs something more than the straightforward romantic lead.

And then there's the broken rail in the path of true love's smooth running. Claudio's denunciation of Hero (the girl he is suppose to be marrying, but who he thinks he saw snogging a ginger-haired bloke the night before) was played too straight to allow it to fit with the rest of the play. If Claudio does hate Hero at this point, and her father really does want her dead, the play teeters over into melodrama and the plot jack-knifes. This is after all a comedy. There's going to be a wedding scene along any minute and we're going to have to like these people again and feel happy that they're getting married. Surely the only way to play this scene is as one of terrific uncertainty and tension. Claudio and Leonato are denouncing Hero against their better judgement, they are saying things that they can still hardly believe. If we believe that they believe what they're saying, there's no clear way back to the happy ending.

Ah well everything turned out all right in the end. The baddy ran away (probably to sit on a motorbike and snarl) and all the expected marriages occurred in the right places. I left the theatre knowing that I'll be back next year expecting yet another glorious European Theatre Group production.

16th January 2004

Happy Salad - The Footlights Spring Review

ADC Theatre, Cambridge, 10th March 2001

Gush, gush, gush. This is the first time I've seen the footlights in action, so maybe after a while I'll get used them. It's just so ballsy to decide you're going to put on a whole evening's worth of entertainment which consists entirely of sketches. Not a comic song, not a tired, catch-phrase-laden stocking filler (so beloved of the big TV sketch shows) in sight. Nothing but nearly two hours of sketches. And how cock-sure do you have to be to be certain that a good percentage of them are funny? Without even trying them out on an audience?Very cock-sure indeed.

Then again, when you're faced with the task of living up to the footlights terrible, indelible reputation for not being as good as it used to be, you probably have the choices of coming out all guns blazing or simply running away. Even if there was such a point in the dim and distant past where Emma Thompson shared the ADC stage with John Cleese, Peter Cook and Groucho Marx or whoever, (and, erm, there wasn't) the current wearers of this comic albatross have far from disgraced themselves. My only complaint is that, even after forking out an extra quid for the programme I have no way of matching the names to the faces that I want to praise. So I'll just have to talk about the sketches. The supermarket assassination sketch and the James Bond Feng Shui sketch were simply fantastic - I wanted to have written them. The sketches parodying American psychobabble, although perhaps more obvious were very well done (the idea of the word "cohesh" as a verb had me still cackling when everybody else was on to the next-but-one gag). And the slow-burn "Attack of the 200 ft Princess Margaret" was a simple idea beautifully executed. Finally - the only name in the programme which I could tie to a face, Tim Key, gave the most assured and staggeringly funny performance of all with his series of "Mike Blow" sketches. "Here is my comic universe" he seemed to be saying, "and I can unfold it at my own pace, without any worry about not going for the laughs straight away, 'cos when I want you to laugh, you'll wet yourselves. "

These two hours turned me from a sceptic of the "They can't be as funny as they used to be" school into a dedicated follower - I'll be seeing everything they do from now on.

Way to Go

Sometime soon...

"Buy me a fuck-death."
"What?"
"You asked me if there was anything you could do."
"Yes?"
"Well, that's what you can do, you can buy me a fuck-death."
"A what? I was thinking maybe chocolates."
"Listen, if it's the money you're worried about. Don't worry about the money. These shysters in white coats haven't found it all yet. I've got enough stashed away. I mean, will you arrange it?"
"Arrange what?"
"Look at me. Are you my friend?"
"Yes."
"My best friend?"
"Well, I always liked to think so, but."
"And am I dying?"
"Well, the doctor said..."
"I know what the doctor said. Look. I am dying, could be six months, could be two years, but I am dying, and I won't get any better, I'll just get worse. The fun stops here. What's more all the way I have to pay these cocksuckers, fill me full o'drugs, pretend they're helping. Fuck that, I want it to be all over when the broad with the big bazookas sings. Other than that I don't care by the way. Old, young, fat, white, black, yellow, red-head, blonde, brunette, just so long as she's got big bazookas and she's going to put me out of my misery. Oh and preferably before next Tuesday. They have stew here on Tuesdays I don't ever want to have to eat that again."
"But, who do I? I mean. Isn't this illegal?"
"What's the matter with you? Don't you listen to the news? Don't you read the papers? You been back to the mother ship for the last two years or something? They should brief you better when you land. You didn't hear anything maybe about these new euthanasia laws?"
"Well, yes, I heard about that, but..."
"Well what do you think I'm talking about."
"But isn't it only doctors that are allowed to..."
"No. That's what they thought - they thought they'd have the market sewn up - another monopoly. Suckers! They all think they're so clever. They missed a trick. Ow! Ow! See, even laughing hurts! What's the point carrying on, you can't even laugh? Where was I? Oh yeah. What the law says, anybody can do it. All you have to do is name them on the form. Course they started complaining straight away but it was too late, the insurance companies had already spotted it."
"Spotted what?"
"The enormous business opportunity."
"What is this? Are you sedated? Is this the pain killers?"
"No I don't take them - they won't let you sign the forms if you take them, listen. How many people you think there are out there, aren't going to be able to afford their hospital bills in old age?"
"I dunno, lots I guess."
"You're darn tootin'. How many of those you think would pay for the peace of mind, soon as they get too old to keep up with the herd they'll get put out of their misery?"
"Bud, you shouldn't be talking like this. It's morbid. In your state o'health. It's not good for you."
"And how many d'ya think would like to go smiling. Know what I mean? In the saddle?"
"Really? You mean you can hire a hooker to..."
"Yeah, but she's a specialist. I mean lord alone knows where she keeps that Saturday night special. And if that don't light your candle, snuff your wick whatever, there's lots of other ways you can choose, taken out unexpected by a sniper while you're walking down the street, mown down in a bar fight, badly-measured bungee jump you name it. You pay them, you sign the forms, they take care of you."
"But Bud, that's horrible. It's inhumane! It's humiliating."
"Oh yeah? And paying these mommy-boners my last nickel isn't?"
"But, but, but..."
"So I name Barbara, Lou-Anne, Crystal, Clarice, Agnes I don't care what she's called, long as she's got the bazookas and they're loaded."

Unbreakable

In a week when one third of British hospitals have been found not to meet even the most basic standards of hygiene and an investigation into the deaths of patients of the serial-killer GP Harold Shipman concluded that nearly three hundred of patients may have died in suspicious circumstances, the prospect of never getting ill certainly seems an attractive one. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) awakes to find that he's the only survivor of a train crash. Headlines proclaiming his sole-survivor status bring him to the attention of Elijah (Samuel L. Jackson) who has suffered all his life from a brittle bone disease resulting in numerous horrendous fractures - the other kids at school used to call him Mr Glass. He passed the long hours he was forced to spend ying in hospital beds reading comic books. Too many stories about men in tight costumes defeating evil has left him convinced that such "superheroes" do exist and he confronts David Dunn with the possibility that he just might be one.

The central gag of this film is that it shows how these extraordinary events are experienced by a very ordinary dysfunctional family - we see Dunn in the first few frames of the film slipping off his wedding ring as a cute woman sits down next to him on the doomed train, his estrangement from his wife is superbly evoked in the awkwardness of their body language as they embrace at the hospital. This dysfunction climaxes in his son's attempt to shoot him in order to prove that he's a super hero - "I'll just shoot him once." For this weird scene alone the film's probably worth seeing, especially if you ever had any doubts about the wisdom of strict gun control.

Such a pity then that the rest of it is either hackneyed or just plain incoherent. Samuel L. Jackson struggles gamely to explain what the hell comic books have to do with anything and why we should regard them as "art" (something to do with the baddies having bigger heads), but even he doesn't manage to deliver lines claiming a kinship between Captain America and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs with much conviction. And how much of a twist is it (I won't give away the details) to have the crippled black guy turn out to be the baddie? Wouldn't it have confounded expectations even more if he'd turned out to be the good guy?

I think what Samuel L. Jackson (or rather Elijah) is trying to say is that comic books are one of the modern-day repositories of myth (Hollywood movies of course being another). "Unbreakable" cleverly shows how the heroes of these myths might actually come to walk among us. And indeed we may well see, the next time some poor soul is the sole survivor of a disaster that the idea of a natural, "unbreakable" superhero has itself re-entered into the popular mythology that headline writers, comic book artists and film-makers both nourish and feed upon.

Cambridge Cafés

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" – T.S. Eliot.
I’m about to move out of Cambridge. The thing I’m going to miss the most is the cafés. I’ve looked around Brighton a bit, and I’m still hopeful but I haven’t yet found anything quite like the best cafés in Cambridge. So here I bid a fond farewell.

Le Gros Frank
Just on the end of Station road and still the best place anywhere near the station. Used to be my favourite, without doubt it had the best croissant. About a year, maybe 18 months ago they installed a new counter which drastically shrunk the number of tables upstairs. I think this might be more convenient for the lunch trade, but it kind of killed the atmosphere in there for me and I haven’t been back much since.

Coeur de France
Seems to have been taken over by a Chinese Restaurant, but curiously still sort of remains a French café during the day. Good straight French coffee, not so hot on the espresso. Decent croissant. An interesting crowd of lecturers from the nearby APU first thing in a morning (when I was normally there) and other assorted Cambridge professionals.

Clowns
Grungy. Whacky pictures of clowns on the walls (surprise, surprise). Quite often filled with teenagers. The grunginess seems to attract the nutters. Powerful coffee. All of the food seems a bit unappetising. I’ve only ever had the courage to order a toastie.

Starbucks/Borders
I know you’re not supposed to, but I quite like this. At the times when I’m likely to be there (Saturday, Sunday afternoons) it’s packed, but it tends to be a good mix of couples with babies, students and a smattering of Cambridge eccentrics. The sandwiches are inedible. The muffins are OK. I don’t like their espresso but their tall coffee of the day – which is the best coffee I can find on the menu - is strong enough to stop you blinking for a week. All the other Starbucks in Cambridge feel like the anteroom to a public toilet.

Café Nero
Moderately horrid, it tends to be staffed by idiots who don’t clean up properly and can’t make a hot espresso. Food is furiously expensive and crap. Clientele is over-made up forty-something ladies who lunch.

CB1
It must be a short walk of a few hundred yards from CB1 to the reality checkpoint on Parker’s Piece, still most of the people slumped on its armchairs and sofas, or hunched over a game of chess or playing go never seem to have made it anywhere near reality. CB1 is probably the reason I came to Cambridge in the first place. How were you going to keep me down on the farm (actually, down in Farnborough) once I realised there were such things as combined second-hand bookshops and cafés? When I first frequented it, it didn't even have an espresso machine.

Second hand books, decent espresso and the weirdest, whacked-out, laid-back ambience in the whole of Cambridge. Especially on a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes the “character” to human ratio gets a bit high but, most of the time there are some other normal types dotted amongst the go players and the myopic bag ladies.

CB2
Great for surreptitious afternoon meetings. Waiter/waitress service, which is as it always should be. Stonking espresso and it goes on all night – even past when the pubs close.

Savino’s
Saving the best for last. This is the Platonic form of a café: just the business. In the mornings when I habitually went there, there was always a constant flow of Cambridge types, sultry sexy female undergraduates, tweed jacketed lecturers with their coterie of PhD students, shop girls from Robert Sale, unfeasibly fashionably dressed Italians who run the shops on King Street. The best espresso in town without a doubt. Served in proper thick, Illy espresso cups. Awesome. The food's good as well. Many a time I've burnt myself on the chocolate croissant, despite stern warnings that they'd just come out of the oven.

I love it most when it's really busy and you can perch on the barstools down the side wall and watch the rest of the café in the mirror.f

And it's open late. Alert, alert, Costa, Nero, Starbucks! This is what a café should be like! You dummies! Gaw! I wish I was there now. The short walk across Christ's pieces to Savino's on a spring morning is just heaven.

Friendly service from people who didn’t need to watch Raging Bull, they were just born like that (apparently the people from Savino’s and the Sopranos are from the same town back in the “old country”).

Tramp l'Oeil

"We're safe still for a few months aren't we?" His hands were grasping at my shoulder, his body odour was reaching for my stomach. "I mean just now, February that's spring fashions, yeah spring fashions, but we're safe yet for a few months. Safe for a few months yet. It's the warm weather the first warm sunny Saturday, that's when it'll start." He released his grip on me and gave a little giggle. I moved my arm again. I breathed a little easier, but still through my mouth. "Course it'll be something different, and there's no way of knowing."

His head was hanging low, he seemed to be staring at a patch of pavement a few feet to his right, unconvincingly practicing the aversion of his gaze. "Year before the year before last it was the sweaters, starting off light-coloured at the shoulders and getting darker and darker. I could deal with it then, I mean y'know, I was still… Year before last it was those little pink and turquoise cardies and then last year…" His grip on my shoulder tightened again, I could feel the bones meeting. "Last year it was the teasing tight T's. Arghh! Ooooh!" and off he went, once more around the park his mouth open wide in a perma-scream his arms cart-wheeling, showering cuddling couples, dog-walkers, bright beds full of daffodils and himself in what was left in his can of special brew.

I could have run away. He wouldn't have noticed. It would have been easy but then he was back and I hadn't moved. "Trouble is they'll all wear them won't they? Not just the slender, petite ones who they're meant to enhance but the big girls who don't need it the, full-size girls, the voluptuous girls." He was yelling at the sky now, he was scaring the birds. "It'll be like Jaws 3D all over again, everyone'll be ducking in their seats and wetting themselves. They ought to be careful!" he yelled at a passing accountant, "they'll have somebody's eye out!" The accountant hurried on.

And now he was back again, whispering in my ear, grinding my shoulder slapping me around the face with his booze breath "But that's not the worse though is it? Want to know the worst? The worst isn't the colour enhancements, nor the optical illusions. No. The worst my friend is the messages, the secret - what am I saying?, 'secret'? - the public messages, the screaming innuendoes. Course there's the unsubtle stuff like 'PORN STAR' and 'I WILL IF YOU WILL…' but then, then there's the others, the real mind fucks. 'IT'S ALWAYS THE QUIET ONES' - what are you supposed to make of that?" "Forget about it," I snarled, "it's not meant for you, not anymore." "I know, I know," he sobbed. "So why do they do it? Why don't they shoot straight at their targets instead of using a blunderbuss? Why do they have to kill all the fish in the lake with their pert little grenades?" "Ok that's enough," I said, pushing him over backwards into a poinsettia, "I'm leaving." "We'll have the last laugh anyway," he shouted after me, not sounding convinced as he dusted himself for berries, "I mean how are they going to explain it to their children? 'Mummy - why does daddy have a face like a baboon's arse?' - 'Well my little one, that's because just before you were born there was a wide-boy mockney chef on the television and so men with faces like baboon's bottoms were very popular - for a while.' It's not going to work is it? Ha, ha, ha?"

His laughter echoed around the park, which was drying out under a warm spring sun. All over the land girls were unzipping their breathable rainwear.

Eight Legs Good

As soon as I saw the red-headed French zoologist and the octopus, I knew the day wasn't wasted. Long and bitter experience has made me realise that I'm not by nature an adventurous traveller. Given all night, a huge vibrating, sexy metropolis, a pocket full of local currency and a wallet full of widely accepted credit cards - given even on one occasion a leather-clad lady feeling my bum and offering to buy me drinks, I still somehow fail to have the fantastic-authentic time that everybody else has.

So it wasn't too much of a surprise to find myself in Paris on a beautiful late-spring day trying to pull my fantastic-authentic travel experience out of yet another tail-spin. I don't think I was being too ambitious. All I wanted was to see a few art galleries. But the first one I went to was having all its exhibits carefully emptied into a pantechnicon (I suppose I could have just stood there on the pavement and watched, but it wasn't quite the same). And the second one. Well (pause for breath and sigh of embarrassment), I could find the exit and the people at the exit gave me excellent directions to the entrance. So excellent in fact that when I found that I'd walked all around the block without finding it and was back at the exit I just didn't have the heart to go ask again. Instead set off as purposefully as I could in a random direction, trying my best to ignore their quizzical stares. All the time, because it really was a beautiful late spring day, it was getting warmer and warmer and I was getting sweatier and sweatier and the likelihood of my tourist tailspin ending up in admission of defeat in an air-conditioned café got stronger and stronger. So when the random direction that I'd purposefully taken off in turned out to be leading to the entrance of a fully-stocked museum that actually seemed to be open, even though it wasn't an art gallery, even though it was a science museum which the marketing men had been tinkering with, so it was now called something like "Decouvertment Alors!", even though most of the exhibition space seemed to be occupied by a gift shop selling cut-out dinosaurs, I paid my fifty francs and shuffled in.

I only saw the thing with the octopus, so I don't know what she'd been enthralling them with before I arrived (I suspect a terrapin was involved and things had died). There wasn't much seating room as the lecture theatre was packed with children. Although space mysteriously did appear when a man looking as if he'd been doused in three buckets of his own sweat stood panting in the aisle. Even though I couldn't understand what she was saying it was gloriously, blissfully easy to comprehend what was happening. Here's an octopus. A very sorry-looking, very lack-lustre octopus lying like a dirty, student-flat dishcloth, slumped, amorphous in one corner of the tank. And here's a crab - that we're going to put in this screw-top jar. Whoa! The octopus has seen it! He's awake, he's a healthy - well at least an interestingly-coloured orange little octopus. He's got tentacles everywhere, he's ducking and bobbing in obvious anticipation. And here's a piece of Perspex with a fifty-pence-sized whole in it which we'll slide down the middle of the tank. And we'll put the octopus on one side and the crab on the other.

Not being an expert on octopus - or indeed any other - body language, I can't be certain, but I think the octopus did everything in it's power to avoid having to go through that hole. Certainly if the gorgeous-but-firm auburn-haired zoologist hadn't secured the lid on the tank I suspect he'd have just got out and walked round. Still he managed to get a tentacle under and over the partition, and was only a suckers-breadth away - I thought - from giving that poor crab - undefended as it was by any Anglophone notions of animal rights - the experience of being eaten alive while being sucked through a fifty-pence sized hole (yes I know you'd pay good money for that in other parts of Paris). In the end there was nothing for it, there was an obvious gathering together of resolve and tentacles followed by eek, eek!, slurp, unscrew, munch, crab shell and riotous applause from eighty French toddlers and a rapturous Englishman. Sadly the zoologist was busy that evening, she doubtless had other crustaceans to dispatch and cephalopods to contort. Either that or she made it a rule never to go out with men who looked as though they were about to deliquesce in their own sweat.

The Scent of Fear

To:

The Manager
The Orchard Blossom Health Club
The Ancient Orchard Industrial Estate
Royal Berks.

Dear Sir,
I wish to complain. The facts are as follows.

As a birthday gift, my wife arranged for me an aromatherapy session with one of your "professionally trained and qualified" masseuses and now I await trial for double murder. If you can't believe that these two facts are in any way connected, think how I feel.

Some days before I was supposed to go for the massage I received a phone call from your "Health Suite Therapies Manager" Kevin, telling me that my massage with my masseuse Pam had been postponed for a week. Shortly before I was about to go for this postponed appointment I received another phone call from Kevin, telling me that my massage with Pam had been postponed again. Kevin informed me that my session spent unwinding in a relaxing atmosphere rich with unguents and essential oils would be in a further week's time with another lady called Siobhan. A week later, I was just setting off to see Siobhan when I got a call from Pam. She wanted to know why I'd changed to Siobhan. I told her it didn't have anything to do with me, and that she should take it up with Kevin. She complained to me that she'd already spent the money that she'd expected from our aromatherapy session together on a pair of shoes and she'd be short of money next week if she didn't get it. She was most insistent that I re-schedule an appointment with her. When I refused, pointing out that I had hardly any reason to do so, since I was just on my way to see Siobhan and she, Pam, had hardly been reliable, having already postponed our appointment twice, Pam got very abusive, saying she couldn't help it, that the dog had had puppies and it had been a caesarean and I ought to watch it, talking back to her like that, you never know what might happen and that bitch Siobhan ought to watch it as well. While I was trying to point out that it was hardly my place as a customer to sort out rivalries between duelling aromatherapists, the line went dead. As I put the phone down, it rang again.

From this point onward, events happened at a rather sickening pace. The furious man screaming threats and obscenities at me down the phone was a man called Barry. He was Pam's live-in boyfriend and he explained to me that Pam was deeply insulted by my suggestion that she was unreliable, and that that wasn't his experience, that she'd had his tea on the table every night regular as clockwork, even when the dog had been having puppies. When I refused to apologise he said he was going to come 'round and make me, and the line went dead. The phone rang again. It was a man called Dean, saying his girlfriend Siobhan had just got a call from Pam saying that I'd cancelled my session with Siobhan. He said Siobhan was in tears because she'd been counting on that money to pay towards her hen party in Ibiza and because Pam had told her what I'd said about her, and I should apologise. When I tried to explain that I hadn't cancelled my appointment with Siobhan and hadn't said anything to Pam about Siobhan for which I needed to apologise, Dean said if I wasn't going to apologise like a gentleman, then he'd come 'round and make me, and the line went dead. The doorbell rang.

The police didn't believe my story. They refused to believe that Barry and Dean had strangled each other to death with their bare hands on my lawn. They laughed with scorn when I claimed that the feud had aroma-therapeutic roots. Everyone thinks that this was part of some kinky sex plan gone wrong. Perhaps because Barry and Dean, although both large, muscular, macho-looking men were so very fragrant.

In the light of these circumstances, might I suggest a refund of the fee for the massage and perhaps some contribution towards the costs of my defence?


Yours faithfully,


The Ginger Mumbly.

Paint It African Ebony No. 3

Paint It African Ebony No. 3 Even with all my years experience as a test pilot I knew I couldn't land this bird with one wing blown off and a fire blazing through the other. I unhooked Jenkins from his parachute - he wouldn't be needing it any more poor chap, clambered into it myself, made my best guess about which way was up and leapt clear of my spinning, ill-fated kite. Mmmm.


I snapped awake at five-thirty. I knew they'd come at dawn. I watched the first rays of sunlight creep across the cabin floor and listened for footsteps. Although getting out of this one required absolute concentration - I couldn't help the occasional glance at the girl keeping me company. Maybe she was even more beautiful when she slept, but maybe I wouldn't have let myself get in this mess if it hadn't been for those big brown eyes and the way... Oh forget it.

It was three a.m. and still no sign of the Dutchman. I flipped another coffin nail out of my softpack of Luckies, collared up and tucked in tight against the north wind to get it lit. Jesus it was cold. These were mean streets at the height of summer, but in the dead of winter? It was lucky I was a mean guy. Oh dear. It's no good. I am not James Bond, nor was meant to be - I'm not even John Noakes.

It's alright making stuff up - but in the end you have to write about what you know, and this is all I've been thinking about for the last three months. First estate agents, then estate agents and solicitors, then other people's solicitors and people at the building society called Kevin. Then surveyors, and after the surveyors the tradesmen and their oh so sad refrains "Ah, well, that's a special order. Not before Christmas I'm afraid. Yes, I have come to fit it but I can't lift it." But also, in and amongst, this peculiar feeling that I somehow have erased from my mind the important rite of passage where I solemnly undertook to become an adherent of a new religion. At what point did I say I'd make a pilgrimage every day without fail to DIY super store? There to spend at least fifteen pounds. I'll bet the ceremony involved a ritual hitting of my thumb with a hammer - it should've done and it would explain the bruises.

People say, you don't buy a house, it buys you, and you know exactly who's bought who, not when you awake at three in the morning because you've had a nightmare about not being able to get the right length of curtain rails. Not even when you find yourself incapable of any topic of conversation other than the much disputed question of whether the living room should be "Primrose" or "Cheeky Cheddar". No, you know just who owns who when you find yourself unwinding in front of a soft porn film on Channel 5 somewhere around midnight and instead of getting quite excited about the fact that the blonde with the painful face lift has just taken her knickers off and willing the camera to tilt down in that direction, you are admiring the kitchen in the background and willing the camera to tilt down to see whether the floor tiles are cork or terracotta. All the time thinking - "I wonder what that work surface is. Is it real granite? Or is it just a melamine veneer. On a porn set, they'd probably just have melamine veneer, wouldn't they?"

Fear of a Flat-Packed Planet

I resisted. I wailed, I screamed, I gnashed my teeth (damn those dental bills) but in the end, it was knowledge that was the dangerous thing. There are some things that, once you understand them, have inescapable consequences - like the negative head problem. Once you know what a negative head problem is and you understand that you've got one; once you understand that your landlord can hardly stop laughing and counting his money long enough to tell you that he won't fix it. Well then there really is no escape. For those of you that care, a negative head problem is... Oh forget it. Nobody cares. Nobody cares and it doesn't matter. It would matter to you if you had to limbo dance to get a hot shower, but all you really need to know is that it was this particular pea that broke the camels back.

Add to that the painful knowledge of how much you're paying in rent and, well, once you've understood that, it's only a matter of time before - boomph! Something breaks, the script writes itself for about sixty pages and if your life were a Hollywood movie you'd find yourself in a montage of estate agents and lawyers and walking round two-bedroomed flats that you couldn't get a bed in and DIY stores and you up a ladder with busy strings in the background signifying industry and DIY stores and you at a pasting table and DIY stores upon DIY stores spinning endlessly in a special effect and then fade. And the scene would resolve to find you where you find me now - being beaten senseless by a heavily-tattooed Essex bushman wielding a flat-packed mirrored bathroom cabinet (in fact the last flat-packed bathroom cabinet in the shop - h60cm x d30cm x w60cm, the "Blurpi").

That is correct, I am suffering interior-decoration rage at the hands of a man who clearly loves his mother and Arsenal (reading forearms from left to right) and somehow it just feels right. It fits. Isn't there after all a definite "Tea break's over - back on your heads", sulphurous whiff about the warehouse, the large intestine of the Scandinavian dream-home beast? Even through the heavenly parade of dream kitchen after dream lounge after dream bedroom after dream S&M dungeon (maybe I dreamt that one) hadn't there been nagging doubts? Beside the obligatory nagging kids and the doocot of other halves cooing "Look dear! Look dear!".

For a start why do all their products have such sinister names? Isn't brand and image supposed to be everything? So how can they get away with it? What deal have they done with what mephistophelean daemon that allows them to select all their product names from a vocabulary of vomiting sounds?
"Ah yes, good morning, I'm interested in ordering a Gurpi wardrobe and a Jukka sofa."
"I'm afraid we're out of stock of the Gurpi sir, perhaps you'd like to look at the Brurghhhh instead."
"All right then"
"And would you like some Nevveragain cushions or perhaps an Idontremembereatingthat sofa cover to go with that sir?"
And there was the fact that anything you did actually take a shine to had a little label on it saying "Out of Stock." Out of stock eh? Then why are you showing it to me - you beech-veneered cock-teasers?
Or even worse than "Out of Stock" - "See Assistance" which means you go find a girl who looks it up on the computer and tells you that there's just one left in the warehouse - so it might have gone by the time you get there.

And then, in those reflective moments when you are hopping about blinded by throbbing pain, rubbing the backs of ankles recently clipped by a trolley carrying a family of four who are racing blindly towards the last Throup bunk bed and desk playroom combination in the store. In those few seconds before you lost consciousness, didn't you start to wonder if you really did want to be the only thing in your house that didn't conform to Swedish furniture regulations?

But the worst thing about purgatory is that you think that you're in hell. My sweet, my innocent. You have so much to learn. Relinquishing a bathroom cabinet and several millilitres of blood to your inky opponent is just the start. You have not yet begun to plead, entreat, scream, threaten and cajole for - deliverance (between 9am and 5pm, no specific time can be guaranteed).

11th November 2001

In the Event...

The Retreat
Little Fuddleford
Royal Berks




My dearest darling wife [1]



Just a little note to tell you how I've been
keeping. I assume from your silence that you've been terribly busy
[2] so I won't bore you with the gory details. Suffice to say that
I'm much recovered [3].  I may even manage to sit at this desk for a
quarter of an hour without having to rush to the bathroom [4]. Now
that the delirium has finally subsided I've had an awful lot of spare time
with nothing much to do except lie here and think. And all I can
think of is my dear darling goose [5]. I think that we'd both agree
that we've had troubles, especially in the Bucks and Herts region [6] but I
do hope you can agree with me gosling dear that if we try really hard, and
if we really love each other, we can overcome everything.

I'm
sure you'll be interested to know that I've begun another novel. I
know I'm always foolishly confident at this stage, but really this time,
I'm absolutely positive that this one will make a big splash [7]. In
fact, I have almost the same good feeling about this as I did about the
very first one [8]. I'm
certain you'd want me to tell you that I've heard from Mahoney about the
building work. Although, I'm sorry to say that it isn't good
news. There are, it seems, further "problems" with the
plantation house and he writes asking for a further £400. This
really is impossible, but what can one do at such a distance [9]? I
am resolved just as soon as I am well to journey out there and manage
affairs myself. Ah but then again, if I were well I should want
nothing but to be with you my little gosling. And to ride out to
Wexburgh in the Bentley and take tea at the oysterage and watch little
Bertie and Henny play in the waves. Yes, if I could just do that, I
should be happy [10].But
for now darling, I know I shouldn't waste any more of your time, I know that
you must, as I say, be very busy. Kiss the children for me and be
certain that I remain,

Your ever loving husband,

Bertie.

1. 
This letter is not dated, but
it is fairly certain that it was received before 15th February, the day
Murcheson received letters from Lady Murcheson's solicitors informing him
of her intention to file for divorce.


2. 

Lady Murcheson's neglect of her husband can be perhaps explained by her
affair with Lady Petunia Caulkes-Fergusson which that summer was at the
height of its passion.  They later parted after an argument centring
on a pair of galoshes.


3. 
Murcheson's assessment of his health was a tad optimistic.  He had an
undiagnosed case of amoebic dysentery and only two months to live.


4. 
This was also optimistic - see his letter to J. Covey and Son, dry
cleaners, 16th February.



5. 
"Goose", and (used later here) "Gosling" were
Murcheson's pet names for his wife.  She was known to loathe both
appellations.


6. 
Murcheson's
euphemism for sexual relations (as in Beds., Bucks. and Herts.). This
irritated his wife immensely, who in all correspondence with her wide
array of lovers referred to intimacy as "fucking".



7.  
This is the novel "Giddy Aunts", the chapters of which are
extant and published for the first time here as appendix A.


8.
Murcheson's first novel, "Who Should we Ask to Dinner?" sold
well initially.  However, it became confused with an illegal
translation of a French novel, "Aprés le Dejeuner qui?",
regarded by some as quite risqué. Unfortunately
large numbers of "Who Should we Ask to Dinner?" were mistakenly
impounded and ultimately incinerated by illiterate officers of the obscene
publications squad.

9. 

It is perhaps a blessing that Murcheson was never to see the malarial
swamp in Vankroogensland into which he had poured most of his fortune.

10. 
He never was.  He never did.  He never was.




7th March 2001

Dun Whodunnitin'

"I suppose you're wondering why I asked you all here tonight."And indeed they were.The bath-chair-ridden countess who isn't quite what she seems gave her beautiful nurse a quizzical look (surely too educated for such a menial post - and what about the jewellery recorded as previously belonging to the Tsarina?).

The nurse was busy exchanging longing glances with Tom Raby-Knott, the ex-tennis professional who never seemed to remember which leg he limped with.

Beecham the butler wafted between the assembled guests distributing sherry and summoning all of his reserves of reserve to stop himself gazing in fatherly pride at his illegitimate daughter, the film startlet Janet la Pearl.Unaware that such a close relation was in the room (her mother had always told her that her father was either dead, or in Torquay - or both) she fretted endlessly at her feather boa and clung nervously to the enormous forearm of her fiancé - Enrique de la Saragossa.

If so, how could one explain his intimate knowledge of the eleventh method of dismissal at cricket, or indeed, his occasional lapse into a Wolverhampton accent. "You were of course, all acquainted with the deceased."

It would have taken perhaps a team of ten dedicated observers to document the effect of this phrase on the party gathered in the library.Tom Raby-Knott looked first out at the sun setting on the lake, then back to Beecham, who imperceptibly shook his head.

He was certain no-one had dragged the lake and he had weighted down each body himself.Enrique de la Saragossa looked enquiringly at the countess, surely nobody had found the Bolsheviks in the foundations of the new conservatory.

Janet la Pearl stared at Beecham, for the first time noticing that his nose and eyebrows were remarkably similar to her own."To the ordinary man, the passer-by, the man who does not have time on his hands, it may seem that Dipchurch Parva is indeed a quiet and unremarkable English country village.One would not realise at first glance, that a murder, or should I say had taken place."

The old man paused to pull a handkerchief from his breast pocket.

He was, Raby-Knott observed grudgingly, as he sauntered as inconspicuously as possible over to the fireplace, immaculately dressed.

The blood would make such a mess of that linen suit.

"But I, Kekulé Bíro, the greatest Lithuanian detective the world has ever seen, had that time.Time to observe, time to think.Time to reconstruct the terrible crimes that for years have..."

The huge brass handles of the library doors rattled, the doors lurching first forward and back before yawning open. "Papa!" said a cross voice, "there you are!We've been looking all over for you.What did I tell you I would do if this happened again?" "But Chantelle, this is different, this time I really think I've got something." "Oh yes!

"But cherie - they burned that man at the stake" "It was an paper-filled effigy of a seventeenth century catholic traitor.

"But cherie that man was a butcher.

Did I not notice the specks of blood on his shoes - the shreds of flesh under his nails?" "Yes, that's exactly what he was - a butcher!What did the tests from the laboratory conclude?Pork, beef and lamb every last bit of it."

The petite, but determined young woman who had just burst into the room nodded to the larger of the white coated men who had accompanied her.

In an obviously practiced manouevre they fell on the protesting detective, loosening his trousers and plunging the needle of a hypodermic deep into his thigh. "Please, listen my love - this time I'm cer...tain."

é Bíro collapsed to the ground. "Ladies and gentlemen," said the painfully embarrassed Chantelle Bíro, turning to face her bewildered audience, "I can't apologise enough for the appalling behaviour of my father.He was, many years ago a successful and famous detective - famous in some parts of Lithuania anyway.Now I am afraid, he is just a sad and deluded old man.How he could possibly accuse such decent and respectable people, I'll probably never know." There was a long pause. "That's quite all right madam," said Beecham pocketing the phial of strychnine which had, only a moment earlier hovered above Monsieur Bíro's sherry. "Don't mention it my dear lady," chorused Raby-Knott gently putting down the poker. "We very rarely get such excitement in Dipchurch Parva," said Enrique de la Saragossa (neé Eric Smethwick), sliding his stiletto back up his shirt sleeve. "Perhaps we should thank you" said Janet la Pearl laughing the tinkling laugh that had made her the darling of a million matinees and dropping her tiny two-shot pearl-handled pistol back into her handbag.

Old people can be such a trial," said the countess, chuckling to herself a little and beneath her blankets putting back the safety catch on her automatic weapon.

Crusoe Control

Dear Jules,

You are a genius. I mean where did you ever get the idea of putting them on an island outside of any legal jurisdiction? Did you suspect this was going to happen? Did you? Well, I bring good news - nobody's going to lay a glove on us! We get to keep all the money (except of course, the "prize" for the retard). Sure, there'll be a couple of petitions in the Hague for a while yet, international law, high seas, etc. But "shifty" Eric assures me they haven't a leg to piss down and be assured he knows his stuff, I mean he got you off that traffic thing didn't he? And the thing with the dwarf.

Oh and that game show dominatrix has finally shut up - so her legal pit-bulls must agree with Eric. Biatch!!! We paid her didn't we? So they ate her body guards, what does she expect? 'specially if they turn up wearing T-shirts saying "beefcake" (you couldn't make it up could you). OK so she spent three days up a coconut tree with a bunch of born-again cannibals with media studies degrees looking up her little black number and trying to bite her toes off through her Manolo Blahniks. We air-lifted her off didn't we? And she did lose three stone - that's what she's been wanting to do for ages if what she says in OK magazine is anything to go by. You tell me we won't see a "Coconut tree diet book," in the shops for Christmas (check with Eric are we entitled to a cut?).


Just one word of caution - that "winning" drone. I don't think he's happy with his £4000 and his second single hasn't charted. The ad jobs have dried up after that one for "Man-Eater Perfume" (you couldn't, could you, you seriously couldn't make it up). But seriously, the night shift at Argos is looming, he's got about twenty seconds before he goes back to being a nobody - even he's not too stupid to spot that and I think he may be just a tad bitter. That last TV interview - they turned up the applause loud so nobody could hear it. Still, I imagine you saw what I saw. I take it 20 years lurking in the darkest and loudest clubs in London hasn't left you without the power of lip reading. What was it? Something about a gun? Time to pack up and be off my lad - the Maldives for six months, chill out, wait for the next big thing. See you on that beach! Love and kisses, Clarissa.

One Habit of the Rich and Penniless

It wasn't there. I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised. I mean you've got to wonder what does spur them on, these super-rich empire-building types. Once you've got enough money to buy a house, a car, a trophy wife and that really expensive lettuce that they only sell in 100 gram sachets in Waitrose do you really need any more money? But then again, I expect super-rich empire-building types have schedules and are focussed on their goals and rarely find themselves staring at the self-help books in some bewilderment wondering where the coffee shop went. You could probably put that down as a habit of the rich and successful - they don't absent-mindedly wander on to the wrong floor of the bookshop. And even if they did, they certainly wouldn't start absent-mindedly browsing through the self-help books. That's not on their schedule! But "Not absent-mindedly wandering onto the wrong floor of the bookshop," isn't the sort of definite useful advice you get in "Seven Habits of the Obscenely Rich" or whatever it was called. No. The sort of habits that the obscenely rich indulge in are things like "touching their inner otter" or "congruenting their minima." I don't know either, but it goes through the spell checker, so it must be English right?


And I've got off on the wrong floor again, because this isn't what I mean to talk about at all. This is not what I meant to say at all (get thee behind me Prufrock). We can do self-help books some other time, for this is simply another example of the many and varied ways you can make enormous amounts of money by talking and writing rubbish with sufficient aplomb, panache and bare-faced cheek. Yes, I'm still hopeful. I thought mine could be called "Talk the Bollocks and Get Paid Anyway."

What an encyclopaedia of human misery stared out at me from this set of titles. Is there any significance that they lay between the children's section and the magic and astrology sections - I'm sure the Feng Shui books would say there is. Dozens of diet books. Dozens of how to get more girls, how to keep your man, how to have better sex books. Books on how to start conversations and make friends - do you think on the first page of such a book in big letters it says, "Right, first things first, if you're ever to have a chance at making friends with anybody, nobody should ever see you reading this book ever, ever, ever. We know this has never happened, but were you to have visitors and they spotted this on your bookshelves they would probably get up and leave immediately. They would also probably call the cops because only psychotic weirdoes read this kind of book (nothing personal). We suggest you hide it under your porn mags."

Ah here we are at last. What I really wanted to talk about. The one thing that's free, fun, hurts nobody and costs nothing (unless you count the dry-cleaning). What? What do you mean there's no time? What do you mean the self-help books took up all the space?

Someone to Watch Over Me

"Ah now. Yes."

"Why are you following me?"
"Well, I'm ah, I'm, ah."
"Come on. Out with it!"
"I'm a mugger. Yes, that's it. I'm a desperate man, and you'd better give me all your money or it'll be the worse for you."
"A mugger? Really?"
"Yes, that's right."
"I have to give you all my money or else what? What are you threatening me with? Do you have a weapon or anything?"
"Well." He patted down his pockets obviously hoping as if by some miracle to find a flick knife or a Berretta somewhere on his person, finally admitting, "No." "Perhaps you're trained in some eastern art of unarmed combat." I think you're allowed to be sarcastic to someone who's mugging you, it's just that you don't normally get the chance.
"Yes that's right! These hands are lethal weapons."
"That's a lie isn't it."
"Yes."
"I think you should probably go, don't you?"
"Yes." Of course he was back the next day, scratching himself to death behind a ridiculous bushy black beard (like me, he's red-headed). I don't want to give the impression that I'm any sort of shrewd and ruthless interrogator, but in the circumstances you hardly needed to be.

Strange thing is, I had no trouble believing him. Straight away - if I was going to have one I thought, he would probably be like this, ineffectual, dishevelled. Still, it was a bit weird, sitting in this coffee shop talking to a complete stranger in a false beard who seemed to know everything about me, and to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the most embarrassing episodes of my childhood. There's still a lot I don't know about him. For instance, why is he here? Why does he insist on talking with this terrible cod-Irish accent? And why is he always so touchy when I mention the fairy thing?

Well I suppose that's obvious. And to be fair, there isn't anything very 'fairy' about him - not what you'd expect - no wings, no wand, no tutu (the Christmas tree gags don't go down at all well). There's always a slight grimace when I call him by his official title. There is I suppose plenty of godfatherly advice (sadly not of the horse's-head-in-the-bed variety), most of which is terrible.

Helicopters

I don't know much about helicopters, but I do know about their relation to the ablative case.

My university Latin tutor was teaching a class of first years about the ablative case one beautiful spring morning when he was interrupted by the sight and sound of a helicopter flying by, quite close to his office window.

Erm, that's it, that's the story.

Quite dry, my Latin tutor's humour.

It probably should have had "Desiccant - Do Not Eat" written on it.

He went on to explain to us the difficulties of translating "Harrier Jump Jet" into the language of Cicero and Virgil.

Again nary a titter.

Yes, you could keep trainers in storage for millennia with my Latin tutor's wit. They're supposed to be difficult to control - helicopters you fool, not Latin tutorials (although, I don't know, sometimes when a wee Mary lost her Tippex things could get nasty - the pain of being caught by a razor-sharp skirt-pleat in mid flounce is not to be scoffed at).

Yes, it's a coordination thing (stick with me).

Flying a helicopter (ah! there we are!) is supposed to by like trying to rub your head and pat your belly at the same time.

So if, like me you have trouble walking and thinking at the same time, it's totally impossible. And helicopters have stopped my girlfriend from leaving me (so far).

Whenever I was flying abroad, I used to get uptight about missing my plane (normally starting to fret about twelve hours before it left - a real damper on weekend breaks) and would only really be calmed down when struck heavily with a souvenir Eiffel Tower/commemorative beer glass/ceramic clog.

But now I just think this thought, "It isn't the last helicopter out of Vietnam!" and then I relax.

And then I remember that I've read a book by a bloke who missed the last helicopter out of Vietnam and still made it back to tell the tale, and relax further.

But then I remember that he was an exception and that most of the people left behind ended up in infamous "re-education" camps.

And at this point I would probably start to get worried again, except by now I've forgotten what it is that I was supposed to be worrying about.

And since there really isn't any danger of me ending up in a Viet-Cong re-education camp, I finally calm down - course by this time I really have missed my plane. Of course they're an important part of musical theatre (helicopters, not re-education camps - are you still awake?), at least the addition of a full-sized helicopter to the staging of Miss Saigon is thought to have added greatly to the spectacle and put many more bewildered tourist bums on seats.

West-End theatre producers not being noted for their desire to depart from a winning formula, we should probably look forward to "Deltic the Musical" and "Big Fuck-Off Truck - the dance of the M62." My English teacher used to talk about helicopters as an example of the kind of ridiculous subject that we might be asked to write about in our old-fashioned English language exams.

"Write for two hours about helicopters," he used to fume.

"What kind of question is that?

When are you ever going to need to do that in real life?"

Dewey-eyed, De-mystified

I was preoccupied I suppose, that's how I managed it. I don't know what it was that was making me feel so down. Was it the shortening of the days? Was it some mild form of flu? Was it the certain knowledge that the railway infrastructure of the British Isles could only be saved from a slow and sorry end by a programme of massive re-investment and a protracted campaign of executive assassinations? Possibly. Possibly it was merely that I'd been caught out by the rain and I could smell the unmistakeable odour of damp dog rising up from my Latin American-inspired girlfriend-purchased knitwear (the pattern on this one seems to be something like "dumper trucks of the Incas"). Anyway I was wondering around aimlessly, daydreaming of trains running on time, telescopic sights, fake identities, escape over the rooftops. In fact I was uniquely doing that thing that retail assistants can never believe you're doing - "just browsing". When I found myself holding a large, leather-bound tome open in my hands at the following page: Accruals. The fascinating subject of accruals (the attachment of rates of value change to specific accounting periods) can best be summed up in the following equation: a = 2t/et-ky is something else and

Yup, that should have got rid of them. Fools, if only they knew that the eternal truths of the universe are hidden inside the accountancy textbooks of public libraries, but then of course they wouldn't be fools would they? And how would we, the initiated survive without fools? Gentlemen (and token lady). Welcome to the eternal truths of the universe. But first a customary safety check. If, by some freak accident you have read this far and you are by profession a teacher, social-worker, probation office or other random do-gooder, stop reading this now! Once you've read this you'll never be able to work again, so stop it (if you think it matters).

Right, finally we're ready. Relax. It is all as you secretly suspected. Everything your parents, teachers, social workers, probation officers, elders and "betters" ever told you is false. You won't go blind, hair won't grow on the palms of your hands. The wind won't change and it won't stay like that. Hard work is certainly not (sorry, we're trying not to laugh) its own reward. There is such a thing as a free lunch - were it not for out periodic retreats to the fat farm and the regular attentions of our personal trainers we would certainly die from all the free lunches we eat. If you work hard, obey the rules and do what your teachers tell you, you will probably end up as a retail sales assistant on three farts-fifty a week. Only two kinds of people become rich and famous - those who have genuine talent and those who are capable of standing up in courtrooms, on balconies before crowds, before the world's media, before inquests and telling gob-smacking, fortune-making, career-saving whoppers. The genuinely talented need not concern us here, they are rare and, quite frankly, they give us the creeps. We'll show you how to diddle them out of their hard-earned cash later. But first we need to give you a firm grounding in basic mendacity... And so it continued. But of course I'm not going to tell you how. In fact none of this really happened. I just made it up. That's right, oh yes! (hmmm, probably need to practice this a bit more).

The Performant Trouser

The Performant Trouser A micromesh and a wicking layer. And the micromesh lets in air but keeps out the water and lets out the moisture but keeps in the air. Yes, they really are a performant trouser. I don't know why nobody thought of this before. I mean we've had fleeces and jackets and hats and gloves and UV-profile wrap-around shades and diverse diver's watches that stay in bad taste down to one hundred metres. But no trousers. And now these! Feel that! What? Course it's not Nylon (ooh! that is a sour face), THIS IS WumphleTex (TM)! Look I left the label on so I could explain it to people. I mean sometimes out there in the car park it gets really chilly. And last week at the office the central heating was off all morning.

No, no, Weizenbier if they've got it, and if not how about some of that stuff in the funny shaped bottles that's been rolled on the thighs of Belgian nuns*. Don't they do the special glass? It does, yeah, tastes much better in the special glass. Damn, these aren't hand-cooked. What do you mean no Gruyere and chive?

What do I do? I sell turds on plates. Actually, poison-free turds on plates is the big growth market these days. Course we still sell lots of poisoned turds to our legacy customers, they seem to have got used to them, don't want to change. But the youth market's definitely poison-free and of course you can charge people a premium for not poisoning them. And the business has got a great future, I mean next year we're probably going to alert the public to the fact that we're selling them turds, try and sell them turd-free turds on plates, possibly without plates. After that? Who gives a fuck? I'll have retired. Yes, I suppose you're right, it is a strange way for a grown man to make a living and I mean when you think about it, why on earth do people want to buy turds, plated or un-plated, poisoned or un-poisoned? 'Cept of course we spend all those million telling them to.

What are you driving now? (a look of chilled distaste - as if I'd just farted) Really? Still? Well I wah wah wah WAH WAH WAH WAH (sorry I lose purchase on the conversation when it turns to cars). Well they do have a point don't they I mean petrol is bloody expensive. I mean I don't even drive very far, actually it would probably take me less time to walk than it does to drive, bloody traffic why can't they do something? and it still costs me a heap. No I couldn't, I'm not much of a fan of the outdoors and what if it rained, it'd spoil my clothes.

What's the matter? What are you doing? No, please, put that down!

Beauty and the Beast with Two Backs

Whoopee! We're so excited about this month's edition of Hysteros magazine and we hope you will be too. We've assembled an exciting team of staff regulars and fabulous guest writers.

Vicky Backrub, fashion editor, asks "Why is it that all those clothes that we advised you to buy last month now seem so embarassing and yucky? Especially the really expensive ones?"

Then there'll be some pictures of stick women wearing bin-liners and toast or something. We'll be telling you the big news that we're getting from our spies in Milan - black is the new, black! and baby caca is the new burnt umber. Oh yeah and gardening is the new rock and roll and sex is the new gardening.

Then there'll be a serious article about the horror and trauma of anorexia. When so many studies now indicate that media focus on a waif-like physique, unattainable by 95% of women, has a dangerous and possibly fatal effect on young girls, why do the glossy fashion magazines continue to perptuate this dangerous myth? Hysteros breaks the mould by daring to show pictures of a hideously fat girl - size 10!

And next - what Hysteros is justly famous for - one hundred glossy pages of skeletal lovlies wearing stuff you can't afford and couldn't wear.

And oh yes wow! There's this thing called sex! And it's really wonderful and we're really surprised nobody's written about it before because it's really interesting and exciting and you should do lots of it. And there's also this thing called "Oral Sex" (urrgh!) but we talk to some women who say it's quite nice really. And if you don't do lots of it in lots of whacky positions, even if they give you cramp and you can't keep your teeth in, then you're just a teensy weensy bit sad. Also scientists say that sex might be the key to understanding men. Some chance!

Then there'll be another serious article about the beggar-women of Calcutta (after all we are the thinking woman's glossy). Regarded as untouchable by the society they live in, expected to throw themselves on their husbands funeral pyre, they scrape a living in the gutters of this great city. Their plight is an unspeakable human tragedy. Hugo McMurchison (isn't he a hunk? that's my boyfriend) takes some heart- breakingly dramatic photographs as they scavenge the smoking refuse dumps and asks no deep searching questions. At least they don't have to worry about staying thin (Oops)!

In our recipes section we'll be explaining the pleasures of food. Then in our health and beauty section, we'll be telling you not to eat any. Then there'll be some more pictures of stick women so gorgeously angular that anybody who attempted to snog them would probably puncture a lung. Oh and then you know the rest. Stars. Premium rate tarot lines. Before and after shots of operations that will turn out to be carcinogenic in ten years time.

The Seven Pillars of Stupidity

A great deal of nonsense is talked about our holy book, but that is after all as it should be. It is said for example said that The Seven Nonsenses of the Na La N'Worb did originally enumerate seven nonsenses, rather than the six that we currently revere and hold to be holy. Indeed! There will always be those who wallow in the stinking hell-pits of the grossest heresy and cast-iron documentary proof. There will always be those who claim that the holy book does not represent the mysteries of the eternal universe as best as they can be phrased in human language. Rather they will claim that it resulted from a freak period of sobriety arising from the late arrival of a giro and the unacceptable immaturity of a batch of home brew in 1974. There will always be those who despicably claim that the seventh nonsense was and is religion itself. And that this beautiful life that we lead was regarded by our founder as even more nonsensical than the Sixth and Most Powerful Nonsense, the Idiocy of Idiocies - professional wrestling. Do you think we like wearing these leotards? Wait till we get our hands on them.

Some people criticise our attitudes to homosexuals. It is the root and staff of our faith. They foolishly point to the passage which we duly acknowledge and hold holy - "Oh what is the point of all this homophobia? Shouldn't we all just be nice to each other? That's what I always say." Yet these same queer-loving heretics wilfully choose to ignore a passage on the following page where his holiness, Worb Without End, displays his mild dislike of Barbara Streisand. Surely there is no deeper and more heartfelt appeal to abjure the pleasures of men's bottoms. We rest our case.

Sex, sex, sex! Can't you ask me about anything else? Well, I'm sure you would have got round to it sooner or later. A lot of, well, nonsense has been talked about the Song of the Second Nonsense. It's an allegory! Can't you see that? It has to be. Anyway most of it is physically impossible. Not even a man with as much free time as the Na La N'Worb could... With so many? In such a short space of time? It's an allegory. See? The world is full of people with dirty minds. Yes that does include the police, though we got those copies back eventually. For the last time, it's an allegory. It shows how depraved the man who follows only his rabid desire for sexual fulfilment becomes, how he reduces himself spiritually. It beseeches us to live a chaste and wholesome life. Yes, it does. It's in there somewhere. No I can't remember exactly.

Very well, one last question. Yes, we celebrate Christmas. Oh look, I don't know why, we just do, I mean everybody does don't they? Oh, don't they? Are you sure? Oh yes, you're right, that's it, the Third Nonsense, everybody giving each other presents nobody wants. No. That's enough for today. We must peruse the catalogues in sweet anticipation. As our founder might have said, "Santa. Santa. Santa."

Ennui Go, Ennui Go, Ennui Go...

It's true. There are no good reasons why I shouldn't paint my arse blue and take up Mongolian throat singing either. But that in itself isn't going to make me... Ah, hello. I think you've probably come in in the middle here. Some explanation probably needed. What's happening? Well I'm back, after a dour and German essay laden summer and wait a minute! Yes, here it comes. Ooof! Yet another dilemma with its horns right up my jacksie.


Life when it happens as trailed, pretty much as discussed in all those novels, movies and soap operas disguised as serious drama about thirtysomethings on BBC2 (who's that fooling?) is boring and predictable. Life when it isn't as described and endlessly discussed is sometimes exciting but mostly just plain terrifying. And this isn't just some little detail like how hard it is to get a wet-suit off if you're a fat bloke, or how when two people romantically involved get real, real close and stare into each others eyes like they do in the movies, all that they see is a blurred jumble of eye-sockets in cheeks and noses in foreheads, this is a biggy. I really wasn't expecting this.

I expected stiff joints, wrinkles and flabbiness. I had steeled myself ready for the irregular shape of my head being revealed to the world through male patterned baldness. I understood that in time things will shrivel, fall out and fall off. Yup, I've got used to that. What I didn't understand was the sheer unexpected horror of the other stuff. I'm still not quite resigned to it. Like instant hard-ons in the presence of anything female (Ages 12-14) and unexpectedly shitting myself (Ages 6-7 and that fortnight in Egypt) I'm still, perhaps forlornly, hoping it's just a phase.

The boredom. The boredom and the shopping. The marrying and the multiplying. The knot-tying and the nesting. The DIY. The exotic travel poker (I'll see your week-long stay in an authentic moot house in Vietnam and raise you a Machu-Pichu). It's as if most of the people I know have been the victim of some inverted, metaphysical, Mafia-style punishment - they've had their heads set in concrete. Same old opinions or no opinions. A look of fear and panic in their eyes when you talk about anything that doesn't come flat-packed for self-assembly or can't be bought with a cash-back mortgage. And do you know what I think causes this? Too much money and regular sex.

Argh (there go my balls and any regularity I ever had)! What have I said? No, no! Wait just a minute, I wish I hadn't said it either. Forgive me please. Maybe it is a rosy glow of nostalgia, but weren't people actually just a little bit more interesting when they were penniless and weren't fully coupled up with kitchens to paint? I don't know what I'm fretting about anyway. Statistics keep telling me that a good proportion of these happy couples will be suing the pants off each other in five to ten years, furtively shagging other peoples spouses or running off with seventeen-year-olds and arguing endlessly over who gets to take little - insert trendy middle class baby name here - to didgeridoo lessons. I'm looking forward to it. It has got to be more interesting.

The Clean Hand Gang

Mumbly's Note: This note was slipped to me in the local DIY store. I didn't see the man who gave it to me, I was too busy wasting my life arguing about rawl-plugs. By the time I looked up, I could only see a tall figure strolling purposefully out of my life, past the sand, cement and paving slabs, past the mediterranean decking kits. Out of a life he'd changed forever. Thank you, whoever you are.

Welcome to the Brotherhood of Leisure. We are professional men, bankers, doctors, dentists, accountants, engineers and bookmakers. We take pride in our work and we know our limits. We feel strongly that our leisure time is for LEISURE and would dearly love for the world to agree with this seemingly harmless concept. However, evil forces are at work and we, few though we are, dare to resist them. Of course, all right-thinking people would find the prospect of joiners carrying out hysterectomies, or painters and decorators piloting our aeroplanes or interior designers giving odds on the 4.40 at Kempton truly horrifying and repulsive. Strangely the thought of a banker putting up his own shelves or an accountant laying a patio, to us equally distressing, is met by the general populous with equanimity, even approval. Indeed, many men are coerced into these unnatural acts against their will. Brothers, we know you are out there, we feel your pain and this is for you. Never more need you swear at a bruised thumb or be tormented by a sloping shelf. Follow our three steps to happiness and your days of being asked if you're going "to leave it like that," will be over.

Step One. Embrace your incompetence. Your complete uselessness is your closest ally, your undeserting friend. No longer will your inability to do those 'little' things around the house be a source of shame and humiliation, an endless amusement to your relatives and friends. Remember, if you can only do a job badly, do it really badly! It's amazing how difficult a truly bad paint-job, in several gaudy colours is to cover up. Especially if you take care to walk it into the carpets in every room in the house. You won't be asked again.

Step Two. Scotch all rumours that DIY is money saving. Whenever visiting the DIY store always buy the most expensive thing in enormous quantities. When returning to the family home explain that there was huge saving if you bought four tonnes of pea gravel and anyway what did we use the spare bedroom for? Wherever possible try to make your DIY projects the cause of costly legal action. Large holes in party walls is the oldest trick in the book. How did you know that you shouldn't use a sledge hammer to drive in a picture nail? How were you to know that next door's cat would fall asleep in the cement mixer (actions brought by animal protection charities are particularly effective)? You're an amateur. Haven't you been saying all along that this is a job for the professionals?

Step Three. OK. The warnings have gone unheeded. Time for desperate measures. Get violent. We know this is against your sense of honour and justice, but it's the only way. Few live-in partners will have the heart to nag you to finish a DIY task that you've seriously injured yourself attempting. Step ladder falls (recommended from the lower steps only), the minor sacrifice of the top of a finger, or perhaps a toe, usually puts a halt to any further discussion. Still fewer significant others will insist that their beloved does anymore DIY after he or she's 'accidentally' drilled through their loved one's hand while putting up a shelf or inadvertently stapled their ear to an interestingly shaped piece of decorative hardboard.

Step Four. The Rest of Your Life! Your house may be a parti-coloured smoking ruin. You'll see your neighbours in court, the light of your life is a stigmata-ed martyr, but you've made it. You have made your point. You have regained control of your life. Never more will anybody say to you "It's only a little job." or "Think of the money we'll save." Brush the petrified pooch off the varnished-stained sofa and sit down. Relax, you're a man of leisure.

Hair Today...

The Gnome introduced me to her posh hairdresser. I like it. In a sort of diluting down of Groucho Marx's famous quote, I'm most at ease in clubs that will let me join, but would rather I didn't. As I sit there waiting for Petal, my personal stylist, I feel about as elegant as a sack of potatoes that's been on a three day bender. All around me are brightly coloured bottles of fabulously expensive chemicals that claim to do things that I never knew needed doing. There I sit, marvelling that I've ever managed to get through life without menthol scented wave rigidising plasma. And doubting that that bright green stuff really does de-sex your follicles, no matter how much comfrey it has in it. In and out walk fabulously thin, fabulously well dressed, unnervingly unattractive women.

What is it with miraculously thin and impeccably dressed women and kissing some special magic piece of air hovering about six inches above each shoulder? Maybe that's where their g-spot is. That would explain the appalling luck I've had with such women. Their magic button is in a place that I not only can't see but would require a step ladder to reach. I suspect the real reason that they don't actually kiss each other is that it's just not safe to venture too far into the chemical cocktail of perfume, cosmetics and miracle hair care products surrounding their heads. If they did actually kiss each other Mediterranean style (greeting the Gnome's father for example, is like being intimately nuzzled by a power sander) they'd probably both stagger backwards and pass out. Either that or some ancillary chemical reaction would turn their foundation a deep, reptilian green.

Thankfully, Petal arrives and wraps me in a black kaftan thing which I always try to get into from the wrong side thus necessitating a half-assed passo doble. Then she hands me over to the wash your hair girl. Now look there is nobody less qualified to indulge in body facism than I, but, well, in posh hairdressers, there is definitely some sort of beauty apartheid being enforced. All the "stylists" are lithe, elegantly dressed and well, stylish. The wash your hair girls are uniformly of a greyish pallour that I did not think to ever see again, now that I've left Scotland. This is what I really don't understand. Don't these shuffling acned cygnets become swans at some point? How does that happen? Maybe all it takes is a full kiss on the lips and they emerge from the miasmic haze rosy-cheeked and beautified.

Finally we get down to business. In best Harold Pinter/Stasi style the glasses come off and the interrogation begins. "What kind of conditioning do you use?" "Erm, well, ah." "Is your hair dry or fly away?" "Nggh?" "Do we need to combat any styling build up?" I've been accused of many things but never a build-up of style. Thinking about it though, any luminous herbal concoction that would remove heavy build-up would sell well with men in the age range 14- 85 (probably some sort of non-rigidising plasma).

Petal, ever the professional, seems to manage to regard me with an expression of wry puzzlement, but the wash your hair girls, being nearer to mere mortals, (and I suppose it's fair to say, very near this particular mere mortal, not noted for his pleasant fragrance) can only manage unalloyed disgust. "When did you last wash your hair?" "Erm, Arrgh!" Why are they running the water so hot? And then back to Petal for the real killer - "How would you like it?" "Well, erm, shorter."

The Strongest Medicine

Smile. It may cause more trouble than you think. I got told off for smiling recently, well actually for sniggering. Thinking about it now, I think this has to be the most outrageously unjust telling off I've ever received. I got told off for laughing at the appalling incompetence of my captors. And these were the self same people who'd been all laughs and smiles when I'd bought my ticket, no mention then about the plane being full. No mention then about the plane getting smaller (yes, really). Not a whisper about a confirmed seat reservation not actually meaning that you could get a seat. Oh no. And lets get this straight. I was the wronged party. The only one with any right to get upset. But still they were most definitely put out when I started cheering myself up by giggling at their incompetence. "Excuse me sir, you're not being very helpful, we have a situation here."

Well as it turned out, standing at the desk and ridiculing the flustered staff worked, it got me on the plane (although I suspect were airline ground crew allowed to carry firearms it would have got me shot). The full power of derisive laughter should never be underestimated. It reminded me of an article I read this week about a computer security conference. Hey no! Please! Wait! Nope, no good. Half my audience have just passed into a tedium coma (see now why I don't talk about my work much). Ah well, as those of you who haven't already dropped off to sleep at the very mention of this subject will guess, this isn't normally the kind of conference which provokes much hilarity, yes of course occasionally some bod gets up and says "And I thought Kevin was sieving for prime numbers, but in fact he was using elliptic curves!" Yes well of course THEN there's some hilarity, or at least a few muffled titters (I didn't get it either) but normally they're quite sober affairs. Except when a government minister turns up to address them about the most draconian security bill since... well, ever. And proceeds to go through the nasty list of pathetic attempts at flattery of his eminent audience, obfuscation of civil rights issues with fear of drugs and terrorism and ends up by saying and anyway, it isn't that draconian really, I mean we are supposed to be the nice party and ooh look fluffy bunnies. What did they do? They started to giggle. Little did the poor minister know that they'd all been down the boozer the night before and made a list of the things they thought he might say. This had turned the poor Minister of the Crown into nothing much more than a garrulous bingo caller. Poor bugger stumbled bravely through everything on their list. It's a wonder nobody shouted "House!"

The Eighth Commandment

I couldn't move, I was too tired, too fagged and fashed, too care-worn and care-torn. Drifting in and out of consciousness during my mandatory, elongated wait for a US internal flight. And even if I could, where would I go? The video screens were everywhere, the soundtrack echoed the length of the airport. There was nowhere to run. Outside the airport was a conurbation which I can only describe as 200 square miles of Bracknell (the town, not the Lady). Anyway, I was an old hand by now, I'd been in the States six days - I'd got used to their breathtakingly mendacious advertising copy. Still a small voice of reason shouted "Don't be stupid, you can't teach drive, 'To drive' yes. Boy you're going to get the cream of the crop applying after this advert aren't you? 'I'd like to do a degree in capitalist virtues please, can I do feminine intuition as a minor?'". And then another voice "Oh, God, maybe they do teach it, like they teach creative writing, can you imagine - 'Welcome to Perserverance 101, this is your impossibly heavy boulder which you'll be failing to push up this steep slope for the next six months. Please read the safety instructions and sign this disclaimer.'"


Even with these voices arguing in my head I could still manage to doze fitfully, as I said I'd become inured, after just six days, to a high level of background imbecility. Then it got worse. "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." Oh my Lord, can they really have a pan-ethnic selection of college professors reading "If"? How cheesy can you get? Then it got worse. What are they going to do at the end though? Eh? Where it says "be a Man my son", oh no they haven't. Oh no they can't, they have, they've bowdlerised it!

Bowdlerisation. Sometimes it's good to have something named after you. The Guillotine for example, I bet Monsieur Guillotine was thrilled. Wellington. Macintosh. And Marco Polo had such a success with those mints (sorry). Ah but then again, I bet Bowdler was pretty pleased as well, snivelling little shit that he must have been. Even though he's dead I don't think it's too late to give the bastard a taste of his own medicine. We should get all the lexicographers of the English language (I was talking to a lexicographer recently - turns out there aren't actually that many of them) in a medium sized room and ply them with fine wines and good food and then hand them brown envelopes containing not insubstantial amounts of cash and the following specimen dishonest entry: 1.)The act of completely ruining the work of a genius by removing or altering slightly saucy or politically inconvenient passages. 2.) To fuck something up good and proper for no apparent reason cf.

It takes a special kind of idiot to Bowdlerise something. It's very akin to Dan Quayle in full view of the world's media adding that extra 'e' at the end of 'potato.' It's like the curator of the Tate saying "Well, we're very pleased to have these paintings from Picasso's Blue Period, but to stop them being a bit samey I've gone over some of them in a pink wash." Yup, that's America.

Two Step Pogrom

This sounds like about Step 4 in an American style self-help program that no doubt actually exists. It's the one they send people on when they find themselves wanting to memorise the "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (lets face it, when that happens, you're in need of some sort of counselling) - "Learn Gradual Anger."
    This is what I have finally decided I need to do in response to a world in which you pay good money for a novel only to find that the page following 218, just when things are getting interesting, is 91 (thanks Faber and Faber, standards have obviously slipped a little since old Tom was in charge). Add to that delivery men who don't, well, deliver. Car mechanics who...(no need to explain that one). Picture framers who can't frame pictures. Nggghhhh! Ngggghhhh! AAAAArgh! And see? Here I am, already at Stage 2 of my extremly limited getting angry process. Stage one is obsequious, cringing, "no that's quite alright", "not at all, yes I'm sure it will still work just as well without that bit you've just broken off, yes it probably was my fault for using it." And from there, without any intervening petulence, or tetchiness, let alone any actually productive sternness, it's an effortless step to "I will carpet bomb your house and the houses of all your family and friends and the houses of any other people who you vaguely know or even nod good morning to while you're standing at the bus stop." What's particular futile about Stage 2 anger is that the only external signs, visible to the recalcitrant tradesman are a slightly purple tinge to my complexion and an inability to take notice of the "Push" and "Pull" signs on doors as I flee from the premises.
    I suppose I shouldn't grumble. I suppose I'm lucky just to be alive. Lucky to be healthy. Lucky to always have enough food. Lucky to be worrying about having too much food. Lucky to be safe from persecution and torture (notwithstanding my Nazi neighbours). Lucky to have work. Lucky to have friends. Lucky to have a lover. Yes, I am. And in comparison with all this astounding luck, I suppose my grumbles pale into insignificance. Even so, although I didn't pay that much attention during four years of a philosophy degree, I did manage to grasp the idea that this happiness lark is, well, complicated.
    Even though nobody is going to wake me up at three in the morning and try to crocodile clip my nipples to a car battery. I still feel the fundamental human need to complain. And anyway, I wouldn't put crocodile clips past the residents' committee. It would all depend on how much fun they suspected me of having (see: happiness, complicated stuff, me being happy makes other people vengeful and miserable - "I wasn't actually disturbed by the music, it isn't actually that loud, but I heard LAUGHTER") or whether I'd yet again used the WRONG DUSTBIN! I am a criminal the like of which they've never seen before, God knows what they'll do when they catch me pissing in their fish pond. Maybe I'd find out that there's such a thing as Stage 3 anger.

Sins of the Flesh

The mind can play tricks but the body just tells you lies. Big fat hormonal whoppers. There are endless stand-up comedy routines and cartoons putting forward the idea that a man's penis has a mind of its own. But this is just a quaint fiction put around by men to hide the true horror of the situation. A man's mind IS his penis. Or at least its influence is far more instantaneous and difficult to resist than any cute picture depicting a dialogue with it would have you believe. I was walking past a strip club on the edge of Soho once. There was a girl in the window trying to drum up trade. As I walked past she caught my eye. I don't quite know what it was she did. But she was obviously very practised at it. She sort of stared at me and widened her eyes in this super sexy fashion , instantly tugging at something well below my heart strings (I don't know if it's possible to voluntarily dilate your pupils, but that's what she seemed to be doing). This is the kind of thing that if you were sending your daughters to Swiss finishing school, you'd hope they'd be teaching them. They'd never go hungry. Never mind that setting the table, addressing the servants, how to eat a pear with a knife and fork nonsense. Huh? No. Sorry. No idea where that tangent came from. I appear to be being sent telepathic messages by a Maltese brothel keeper. Now where was I?
    She wasn't even that good looking, plainish-looking in fact and fully, almost frumpishly clothed. This woman was obviously a professional, obviously sitting there for no other reason than to pull in the punters. When not tempting drunkards to their penniless doom with her industrial-strength come-hither looks, she seemed to be posing for a painting called "The Face of Boredom". But what flashed through my mind? "Maybe I'm different from all the others, maybe I've got a special something that attracts her. Maybe she really does fancy me..." Of course, the thought didn't last long before it received a terminal kicking from my common sense, but even so, the fact that it made it as a thought at all shows just how easy it is for our nether regions to punch the rationality override button. And ah yes, I suppose it does reveal in startling detail what a pathetic creature worthy only of utter ridicule I am. Ah well, too late now.
    As you can see, I worry an awful lot about these random, unaccountable, dark and daft thoughts. But when, as sometimes happens at the end of a long evening with an old friend, we begin volunteering confidences, and I start to stutteringly confess them, I always get the same reaction - "Yeah, yeah, everybody wants to do that," or "Really? That's your dark thought? That's the worst you can do?" and then for a few minutes I find my self in the weird situation of worrying that perhaps my dark thoughts aren't dark enough. Then I realise how drunk I am and go to bed.

Different

It happens occasionally. Despite the bear pits, the man-traps, the trip wires, snares and sniper's nests that beset my psyche. Every now and then, still it hits me, something makes it through, under the barbed wire, shimmying between the search lights. Out to the perimeter, to consciousness. The desire to do something different.

And I don't mean dye the carpet Prussian blue and deck my parlour out in the manner of a nineteenth century dandy. I don't mean stencil my khazi (you can't use ordinary stencilling paint for this, but you can buy it mail order from a nice little company called Latrine Dreams Ltd...). Or build a mediterranean-style water feature out of an old fiat bravo. Or stuffing quail with prunes and marinating them in sake. None of that, I don't mean the kind of difference that you can buy at all good art shops and hardware stores or larger supermarkets. And I don't mean "all in a good cause", pogo sticking across Peru, sitting in a bath of bake beans, bungy jumping different. Or "Seemed like a good idea after eight pints" different (although there are of course also lots of these).

No, I mean something earth shattering, bridge-burning and possibly arrestable. Of course the ones that break through most often are the ones about you guessed it. Like bending the cute girl sitting opposite you on the train over the seat back and rogering her senseless (for some reason physical impossibility or at least a high risk of cramp are ever present with these particular urges). Or leading a march of Greeks on Stone Henge claiming that we paid a bloke called Eric twenty quid for it and we have a receipt and anyway, even if we do nick it, it'll be much better looked after for posterity in Athens, out of all this nasty rain (of course the real fun there would be watching them trying to take it on the plane as hand luggage). But then there's real high wire adrenaline fuelled stuff. Telling somebody what you really think when they ask you what you really think, "Take, away the... (tits and arse /rakish god looks, freakish height and square jaw, delete as appropriate) and nobody would pay you the slightest attention." And then stand back, watching the tear in the social fabric rip wider and wider. Or to not tell the truth, to tell lies or create a diversion, but to just throw away the script and do something genuinely flabberghastingly unexpected. Like going into a song and dance routine in the middle of a job interview that you've obviously bollocksed up - "I'm not sure that I do have those skills but now I'd like to sing 'The Moon and I' from the Mikado please excuse the falsetto." Or talking dirty to the man who rings you up in the middle of your dinner to tell you that "we're doing a promotion in your area on replacement double glazing and..." (low groans)"What are you wearing?"

Yes, just occasionally, I have the urge to do these things. But I don't.

Suffer Little Children

It's not that I want them to die in a gutter aged 25, surrounded by debt, failure and hypodermics. But I refuse to believe that's the only alternative. And anyway, there are many deaths. Some of them living. I know of what I speak. I was an accountant for a while and although I managed to stop it before it reached any of the vital organs, I watched a (once) good friend of mine completely embalmed by this profession. Right down to the sudden discovery of a passion for football and German cars. Cheery eh? But I do want them to be badly behaved. Much more badly behaved than I was (although I don't think they could be much more idle).
    What am I talking about? Well, erm, there comes a time in a man's life (I didn't think there did, but here it is) when his thoughts turn to how delinquent he would want his children to be, even if he has no firm (give over) plans to have any in the near future. Or maybe I haven't gone broody. Maybe it was just that nasty little advert that set me thinking. Open with a shot of a bunch of six year olds queuing in gowns and mortar boards. Some snide voiceover saying "If you want them to get this far, they're going to have to start early". Cut to some shots of a little treasure beaming in a child-actor death-rictus whilst supposedly learning awesome stuff from a CD ROM and a magazine in weekly parts. Yeah right. From the people who bought you "Crochet Your Own Furniture" in 6 million installments. What are you ever going to learn from a publication targeted at people too stupid to buy books?
    I just feel sorry for the poor sods. At that age, I'll allow, it would be nice if they could read, but surely there must also be plenty of time set aside for covering every available surface in excreta and vomit and scribbling with ball pen and wax crayon on all expensive decorations. No point doing any redecorating in here dear, not if we're ever going to have children (why hadn't I though of that before?). Oodles of time must also be allowed for putting the cat in the tumble drier (now I'm in trouble), climbing on the dog, hitting next door's kids, breaking their expensive toys and putting toast in the video.
    Who am I fooling anyway? What does it matter what I think? Even if I am blessed with children the one thing you can guarantee is that they'll do exactly the opposite of what you want them to. I once sat opposite a woman at a Christmas dinner who was furious with her husband because she'd just given birth to a boy. Yes, that's about as rational as it gets with children. But if you can't deal with that fifty-fifty boy girl thing at birth my guess is the rest of their lives is going to be quite a struggle. You want a rebel, you'll get a goody two shoes who invites you round to look at their regency effect coving. You want a clever clogs, you'll get a footballer (but not if there are still sharp objects in the world with which to Bobbit myself).

Metamorphosis

DR WHIZZ-BANG MAHONEY'S
PERSONALITY SURGERY
YOUR SOUR DISPOSITION TURNED SUNNY
OR YOUR MONEY WASTED

That's really what it said. Right there in the back of the glossy women's magazine he was holding. There amongst the adverts with "before" and "after" pictures of tits and noses. Ten minutes ago I wouldn't have believed it, but now?
    I didn't want to talk to him. When I saw him walk into the bookshop I dived into an alcove and furiously studied a shelf full of books on yoga positions which ease the pain of menstruation. He must have already seen me. His grinning head appeared above a huge pile of the northern realist psychobabble hit - Men are from Leeds Women are from Bradford. "Hello!" he exclaimed. I winced at his condescending tone.
"Hello Tim."
"Fancy meeting you here!"
"Well I only work just across the road so, you know, in my lunch break, oh gosh!, is that the..." He broke into a grin at the sound of my feeble excuse, he was shaking his head.
"No need for the old excuses, I've changed." He placed a firm hand on my shoulder, "Come and have a drink."
"Really Tim, I must be..."
"Look. I know. I know you don't like me and I don't blame you, I did used to be perfectly loathsome, if this was me sixth months ago I wouldn't blame you, but I've changed, well actually I've found somebody else who has changed me."
    Oh Jesus, God no, please! Please don't let him tell me he's got religion! I don't think I could bear it. Or wait a minute, he couldn't mean a woman could he? Don't tell me he's stopped his tom-catting at last. Surely not. Was it that that I hated about him most - his unfathomable, inexhaustible attraction to women? Or was it his casual cruelty to them? How many tipsy and tearful gorgeous girlies have I listened to on the stairs at parties telling me about how shy and sensitive he is? Yes, there is some jealousy there no doubt. But what about his homophobia? And his racism? His narcissism? His sudden discovery of an all-consuming passion for football? No. I suspect what makes me really loathe him is his god-awful dunder-headed condescension.
    All this running through my head and Tim still talking, but I'd learned long ago that the only way to survive exposure to Tim, whilst avoiding lengthy periods of silent rage and noisy indigestion was to smile benignly, nod from time to time and pay not the slightest attention. How did I get to know him anyway? Ah yes. He was her ex-boyfriend wasn't he? The one she was trying to get over. Sudden tears in the middle of snogging sessions, it's not you it's me etc.. Was he still sympathy-fucking her on the side? Probably. Ouch, ouch! Why did I have to have that thought? Let me out, I've got to run away. Hasn't he shut up yet? What can he be possibly be talking about for so long without the slightest encouragement? Ah yes,
"... and I was! I really was a changed man," - himself!
"Haven't heard a word have you?" Tim was grinning broadly.
"Well, you know Tim, lot on my mind, and I really do have to be..."
"But that's what I've been trying to tell you. You don't have to be like this with me any more. I've changed. I've had my personality surgically altered."
"Surgically altered?" And that's when he showed me the advert and told me all about it. The brief chat with Dr Mahoney, the sudden blow on the head. Two hours later he woke up £5000 poorer and a changed man. "Go on," he said, "try me." So I did. And I must admit I was impressed. He was erudite (it occurred to me now that I'd never see Tim in a bookshop before "The Operation") and witty as we covered all those previously cringe-making no-go topics of conversation. I found myself admitting that I didn't have much to do that afternoon and taking up the offer of a drink. It was a very strange sensation, the same voice, the same face, but I was enjoying his company. Hours had passed when he finally looked at his watch. He looked a little nervous, could it be? Possibly, unsure of himself? They really had given him a complete over-haul. "Gotta go mate, hot date tonight."
"Haven't lost the old magic with the women then?" For the first time that day he frowned.
"Well, that's the funny thing...."

The Master Moaners of Surrey

It begins again, the early mornings, the late nights, the feeling that the task you have chosen for yourself is similar to kicking the dead bodies of the cast of "die Meistersingers" over the Brenner pass. Topped off by a week in the former DDR talking pidgin "German" to a group of Olympic standard complaining spinsters from Godalming. I've been learning German for two years now. I've passed all the exams with flapping colours. Can't speak a word. I can't even manage restaurant German. I'm still not certain until it arrives which animal it's from (it's always meat, unless it's Apfelstrudel) or what shape it's supposed to be.
    Of course it's true that languages evolve. Nobody sits down and designs them. But sometimes, when you're a student of one that's not your own, paranoia can get the better of you. For example, the use of prepositions in German. It got in that appalling state just by accident, no evil intelligence was at work, I'm absolutely certain (well, nearly). But as I struggle with it, I can't help feeling the designing hand of a woman in a black PVC cat-suit who gets cressy at the thought of foreigners having to spend hours and hours learning these two, three and four-letter instruments of pure torture, still not getting it right. "That's because I don't want you to get it right," she cackles "I want you to be punished" (swish, thwack, howl).
    In English there are of course quite a few bits of the language that even people who've been doing it all their life can't quite get the hang of - split infinitives (how come that an entire nation across the water can survive perfectly well without thinking this is a crime?), certain useless remnants of the accusative (twit- Who! twit-Whom! a dreary note), less/fewer, discrete/discreet, discomfit/discomfort and on and on. I tend to leave all these grammatical equivalents of the scrotum weight in the dimly lit dungeon where they belong (first Sunday of every month, after Songs of Praise finishes - no entry without a studded, leather- bound copy of Fowler's English Usage) but lampooning and lambasting the poor unfortunates that fall into these linguistic mantraps seems to be the only fun that some people ever get (these aren't the same mewling spinsters who... no, no, that way madness lies).
     I sometimes wonder, is the evident pleasure they derive from pedantry really the result of pent-up sexual, or perhaps violent desires? Are they on diets and desperate for something to do to keep their mind off cream cakes? Is it that or kick the dog? Or is the highlighting of solecisms the only thing that really gets the blood beating in their ears? Maybe this is the really insurmountable barrier which prevents me from becoming middle class - I would rather have a jump than gleefully write '(sic)' next to the howler of my enemy. And of course I can't be working class because I would rather, yes, sleep with a woman! than beat the shite out of somebody outside a chip shop. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the English. Ah yes! That's why I want to learn a foreign language.

Gallic Smug

I'm not doing it, you can't make me. I'm not writing about what we're going to call this decade (noughties, zeros, naughties, twenty-hundreds whoa! whoa! there, I've done it). I'm not going to write about the strange absence of Millennium bugs and what a bunch of charlatan scaremongers. And I'm not going to future gaze and I'm not going to say anything like "as we go into the next millennium".
    No. I suppose it looks likes money for the oldest rope when this is the way you pay for your hi-fi, your Playstation, your Orkney Smoked Intermediate Salmon, your cool-filtered Czech Pils and it's five-thirty on Christmas eve and all you have to do is trot this out and then you can get down the boozer. "Could you just give me 500/1000/2500 words on what we can look forward to in the next millennium love - you know the sort of thing - blah blah advances in science, blah blah world trade global village, blah media literate generation, population explosion ethical question of gene superbugs designer babies organ hypermarkets." And lo and behold they have - everywhere, see! There it is, right next to the review of the last hundred years letting you know that "Without doubt, The Spice Girls were the girl band of the century" - very informative that, were all these retrospectives written by amnesiac fourteen year olds?
    I decided a long time ago that I wanted to be in Greece for the arrival of year zero. A low-tech country (at least it was when I first went about six years ago) where if the electric goes off you're not likely to freeze to death, there's always plenty of home-made wine and baclava and always plenty of female members of the Gnome's extended family, skilled in the near-eastern martial (marital? no, give over) art of aggressive hospitality to defend you against any doomsday-eve looters. Still I was curious to know how things had gone back home. The weird thing is, you can't find out from buying the English papers. Almost nothing can be gleaned from the slivers of "news grouting" in between the mood pieces, thought pieces, style pieces and front page photo features ("Liz Hurley went shopping this morning amid rumours that she'd run out of milk and bog roll") they all sort of expect you to have watched the telly. The gist I did get was that Dome celebrations had been a bit of a let down. I always had a problem with the symbolism of the British millennium festivities. I couldn't even make up a story (and that's saying something ) as to what the hasty but ferociously expensive construction of the worlds largest Dutch cap has to do with anything. Curiously though, the "body zone" - the eighty-foot high, fibre-glass Man With No Knob - was very popular.
    Paris stole the show with the elegant trick of putting fireworks all over the Eiffel tower. See? Simple, yet effective. No reason to set fire to the Quartier Latin to show their jubilation. Bloody French eh? Just 'cos they've got more style, more culture, incalculably sexier women, edible food and fast trains they think they're better than us.

I am a Doughnut

If this turns out to be a little shorter than than the normal weekly magical mystery tour of wit and wisdom, it's probably because I've lost feeling in my hands. I'm typing this into a piece of wondrous technology which is about the same size as a corn cob.
     Here I am in Berlin, for reasons far, far too boring to explain. Suffice to say the most interesting thing at the conference I've been supposed to be attending for the last two days was the shoe buffing machine in the Gents (no, that's not quite true, there was the intriguing question of why there was shoe horn hanging next to the toilet in my hotel room) anyway, sanitary installations in general were more fascinating than the supposed central attractions.
     I've been here about about two days now but I don't think I've been anywhere near this city's famous decadent core, not that I've looked that hard - what would I do with it if I found it? I am improving though. At least this time I've managed to escape serious injury when attempting to open the fizzy drinks from the mini-bar (it really is so much easier when you use a bottle-opener). I've also ventured out each night in search of new experiences, rather than sitting in my hotel room transfixed by mucky television. According to the guide books, the most happening 'scenes' are the gay scene, and techno music scene. Well, this isn't the first time I've strangely regretted the fact that I find men's arses so unappealing, but that just leaves techno. I've spent the last couple of days trying to work up the courage to go to one of these cool clubs. Hasn't happened. Normally it's my congenital scruffiness that stops me getting in these places, but that doesn't let me off the hook here. Berlin's clubs are relaxed about these things. And anyway, now that I have the Gnome acting as wardrobe consultant, I find myself the owner of a silvery grey shirt which as techno as anything. Parading in front of the mirror in it though, trying to pluck up the courage to go to "Delicious Doughnuts Research" (Techno clubs get no cooler) I realised what the real problem is - I don't have a techno body.
    But Berlin, and Germany in general has a great many other attractions and compensations. One of the most appealing for me being that wherever you are in Germany, you're never very far from a sausage and only ever a brief stroll away from a decent glass of beer. And maybe my indulgence in these simple pleasures goes someway to explained my unsuitablity for all night techno-bopping. When JFK visited Berlin and inadvertently proclaimed himself to be a doughnut there were doubtless a few sniggers, but in my case, maybe it wouldn't be quite so far off the mark.

Some Sober Reflections

Eaarrgghh! I've been too ill to read or think this week. Maybe it was those cold damp spaces between the beer and sausage emporia in Deutschland. Or maybe too much jabbering and coffee drinking with coughing and sniffling students. Wherever it came from, it laid me low for a good few days and I don't think my head has fully cleared yet.

And so I was given the opportunity to once again revisit the joy that is going to a work Christmas party and staying sober. Why do I have experience of this? Well for a whole year, I gave up drinking. Not because I had a problem. Well, look, yes, I did have a problem. I was boring. Not other people, no, no, life is far too short to worry all that much about other people, no, I was boring myself. And that is something that really has to be attended to. I'd heard all my one-liners, quips and anecdotes too many times. And on the whole, taking a break from booze worked. My worst (and most pathetic) fear - that my dearest drinking buddies would desert me proved groundless. My health might have improved slightly, although, rather gallingly I didn't lose any weight (I was furious to discover that the Gnome did - fewer nights out, fewer Guinesses, meanwhile my waistline continued in its quest for planetary status). I have seen the truth about drunkenness and sobriety and I'm here to tell you that office Christmas parties are the only occasions I've encountered where it is actually medically dangerous to be sober. A man can die from sustained cringing.

Ah yes, the pitfalls and side-effects of over indulgence are well documented, but the dangers of under-indulgence and abstinence are less well known. Of course gut-wrenching piety is the worst and the most obvious, but thankfully not something to which I'm prone. Too many traffic cones and bread trolleys are in a watery grave because of my nights out, too many people I don't think I've ever met eye me with loathing and suspicion, for me to ever be in any danger of preaching to anybody. But when you forego the drink, other, more sinister things happen. Chemical changes occur. Slowly but surely, your manly hormones return to their 1985 levels (for me anyway - I was sixteen). This has got to be step three or four on any alcoholics anonymous ten-step programme - "Get some baggier trousers!". And keep fit - who knows when you'll give in to that urge to chase the girl cycling past in a mini-skirt and tell her you love her. And that isn't the worst. As well as hormone levels soaring, self-knowledge levels rocket to potentially toxic levels. There is now no longer a point in the week where you think you are young, handsome and funny. There's no hangover to blame for your faltering memory, poor work performance and bad body odour and (why didn't I see this coming) when you give up drinking - you're sober the whole time! Friday night at midnight - there you are, bright as a button. Now you have time to do all those self-improving things that you'd always told your self you'd do, and if you're not very careful, you'll end up doing them.

Half-minute Hero

"What does it mean? Tell me you bastard! What does it mean?"
     Stephan shifted in his seat as the memory of the fear hit him, as it pulsed through him he almost thought for a moment that he would shit himself again. What was it? The price of the suit or the embarrassment of a sudden sprint to the Gents that saved him? Or Lucy's hand resting gently on top of his on the arm rest. He managed to not even flinch and kept his eyes firmly fixed on the screen as he saw himself in an even more expensive suit lifted up by the lapels and slammed hard and high against the wall of an office, very like his own office, but bigger of course, and through the window, a stylish city nightscape, not the fourth floor of a multi-storey.
    They'd found a big, big guy to do the lifting and throwing, though still not big enough he thought. Mind you, would anybody ever look that big to him again? The likeness of his screen self was unnerving, his squarer-jawed, bluer-eyed, pectorally-enlarged twin. He hoped he never met him at a party - it would be too depressing. And the bluer eyes, still defiant and the squarer jaw still firm even as his shoulders blades met with the masonry. None of the tears and whimpering, the unspeakable stinking, shit and bloodstained suit. No. Don't dwell on it. In this moment of uniquely mixed emotions, Stephan was amazed to find that his hand had made the journey, first to Lucy's knee, then to the hem of her skirt and then the further short distance to the top of her stockings. She brushed it away, but gently, with a little murmur in his ear of "later". Jesus! He giggled to himself, they'd been right. He'd lost a few bets, but that was alright, everything was alright, everything was bloody marvellous.
    He hadn't put the close-up in the script but here it was. Wrong somehow though. What was it? Yes - the eyes. Too manic, too frantic, a film-director's psycho's eyes. Nothing like the still, unblinking reality. That was what it was that had turned his guts to water, not the noise, not the strength, not the violence. As the lights came up and the applause rippled around him, Stephan found himself in the grip of a thought. That's probably what heroes of old were like, dangerous unblinking bastards who wouldn't take no for an answer. Unfaltering in their quest for truth. How many time had the security guard hit him? But ah, there was the drinks table, the bonus check, the crowd of smiling quizzical admirers. Lucy, her hand on his thigh. The award.
"Tell me what happened again"
"He did a serious of ads with no real point - you know, just random, surreal, mysterious, arty stuff - for some beer"
"And?"
"And some nut got hung up on them, thought they were sending him messages, he gets into the ad-guy's office and beats him black and blue. And when the ad-guy gets out of the hospital, he makes an ad out of his experience, and the story gets round and the beer sales go through the roof."

Winter Warner

The clocks go back, winter draws in. Cruel things happen to my mind and body at this time of year. All of a sudden it's dark in a morning and it's dark on an evening and I want to hibernate, just curl up with some good books, some good music and some high fat foods. Yes this time of year, no matter what the state of my waistline - now there's a dependable, fixed point in this uncertain, turbulent world, as the asterisk at the bottom of all those reassuring/terrifying financial services ads says quite rightly the value of shares may go down as well as up, but my waistline? Well, that's seen a steady annual five percent growth over the last ten years. Gentlemen of the city. Put away your deriviatives and hedge funds. Bet on my belly! Now then, where was I? Ah yes, this is the time of year when my appetite has only contempt for fruit and vegetables (unless they are in the form of that glorious golden winter warmer, the chip buttie) I want beer, the thick brown sweet English stuff and I want lard!
     Anyway what about Dinosaurs. Seen it? Don't worry, wherever you are, you will. "Walking with Dinosaurs" - a miraculous melange of hi-tech computer animation and, erm, glove puppets. Is it just me who keeps hoping that at some point the camera will pan left to reveal Sooty ripping flesh from the innards of a decaying diplodocus? Worse than that, this program has caught a terrible disease of modern living - Discovery Channel English. The chief form of address in Discovery Channel English is what future grammarians will refer to as the "brannagh". This is a very vague sentence which accompanies random panoramic footage, and a loud crescendo of sickly sweet orchestrals stretching across centuries and continents. The "brannagh" has curious antecedents earliest of which is of course the "erm". The cynically minded (or perhaps just the minded) might say that the "brannagh" is merely an "erm" with a budget and an agent. But its direct forbears are those thrilling, daring high wire jumps across crevasses of ignorance that you find at the beginning of exam essays. Essays written by people who were far too full of the joys of life to actually attend any lectures or read any books. "As the waters cooled and the Alps forced their way to the sky, the allosaurus would find it harder and harder to find the sphagnum moss they so desperately needed. Deep in their burrows the ancestors of mammals that would one day play paintball and drive Ford Sierras snuggled up in their nests of straw and prepared to sleep snugly through the next ice age."
     What a bewildering week it's been, although I must confess most of that bewilderment has been in a self-applied liquid form. The Lodger has finally finished his thesis and, if he manages to avoid a fatal dogfight with his supervisor over punctuation, it should all be tied up before Christmas. So we've been celebrating. For a moment there as we were popping the bubbly, he seemed cheerful and sensed his achievement, but now of course we're back to mumbling, grumbling and dire predictions of future failure. Maybe it's just the lengthening nights and the chilly weather.

Will Ye No' Come Back Again?

Where had he come from? Lets just say he stood out. Celtic top. Celtic scarf, Celtic shorts. A mysterious little knitted woolly hat that said - yes, you guessed it. He was a different colour from everybody else - a livid purple colour that only a dedication to the consumption of cheap lager and the avoidance of all sun-care products can achieve. He was taller - and about twice the weight of anybody else in the carriage. He wouldn't have looked out of place in any bar on any wet Saturday afternoon in Helensborough, but this was a bright sunny day in July (don't they stop the football season for ten minutes in the Summer?), and this was the 7:15am from Cambridge to Kings Cross. And where the hell had he got his lager from? Didn't they stop doing the cans with the ladies posing in negligees on the sides sometime in the late eighties? How does that fit it with their nouveau-lad marketing? Well there she was - Deirdre, smiling out from both sides of the can in a frilly little nylon number, and there he was taking a long draught before holding the can high and giving Deirdre an admiring leer. And then leering at a charming young red-headed futures broker from Waterbeach who was suddenly wishing she'd worn a longer skirt.
    The Japanese guy was heavily involved in his copy of Yomiuri Shimbun. His little exhibitor's name badge which he'd left pinned on his lapel said he was called Tatsuo Mishima and the little Union Jack on it perhaps suggested that he spoke English, but there wasn't really a language course that could have prepared him for this.
"Dae yae li' fitba'?" Mr Mishima dropped his paper and peered through his frameless Jean Paul Gautier specs. This hadn't been on his "Business English in 28 Days" cassette.
"Velly Solly," look, he really did say that. I could fall in line and pretend he said "Very Sorry" but he didn't. He really did say "Velly Solly"
    A bit louder and with more lager-scented spittle - "Dae yae li' fitba'?" Terror was beginning to overtake incomprehension on the Japanese guy's face, he had no idea what this green and white and purple man was saying - or indeed in what language, but he was beginning to sense that it was probably important that he gave a correct answer. Maybe he was also sensing that the Telegraphs, the John Grishams and the Joanna Trollopes were being discretely lowered and he was becoming the centre of attention.
    Once more with passionate intensity, "DAE YAE LI' FITBA'?" It looked as though the Japanese man was going to start crying. The eyes over the Grishams, the Telegraphs and the Trollopes saw everything and did nothing. Finally the spectre from the Celtic twilight seemed to realise that he was talking to a foreigner and therefore should speak more slowly and loudly.
"DO YOU LIKE FOOTBALL?" and it worked. He got it, by Jove he got it. The Japanese guy realised what was being asked of him and agreed as readily as anybody has ever agreed to anything that he liked football. "Ah yes! Football! Velly good." The pairs of eyes returned their to Florida law cases involving unfeasibly beautiful defendants, their women in floral prints searing joints on the tops of Agas, their detailed reportings of gross indecencies in Dorking. But it wasn't over yet.
"Dae yae li' Rangers?"
With a perceptible gasp the carriage re-clenched."Velly solly?"
"Dae yae li' Rangers?"
"Velly solly?"
    Tatsuo Mishima had wrung his Yomiuri Shimbun into a tattered mess. He looked as if he was about to wet himself.
"DO YOU LIKE RANGERS?"
    You could see the look of uncertainty on the Mr Mishima's face. Was this really the way out? Was it really going to be this easy? Then he went for it in a big way.
"Ah yes? Rangers! Velly good."
    How could he have got any more purple?
"Why d'you like Rangers? They're cra' !" and then in outrage to the whole carriage "this can' likes Rangers! Why d'you like Rangers? They're fu' in' cra'!" He was getting so excited that he was spilling his lager. "See Rangers fans? Know what ah dae tae Rangers fans..." We were all practicing our excuses, explaining to ourselves why we were quite right not to lift a finger while we watched a microchip wholesaler from Kyoto get the shit kicked out of him for admitting to supporting a football team he'd never heard of, why it was much better to concentrate on descriptions of everglade crime scenes, passionate glances at the vicar and letters to the editor deploring the uses of the words "chilled", "stressed" and "isn't it". But miraculously there was no need. The train stopped at Ashwell and Morden and the green and purple and white knight alighted, perhaps to test the sectarian allegiances of Northern Hertfordshire.

26th May 2002

Introduction

I'm fairly sure that the main reason I didn't make it past my first and only interview for a journalism job was the fact that I couldn't spell the word "accommodation". A spelling test was a cruel trick to play on a grown-up with only eighteen years of full time education. It was a bad blow, which I handled poorly, visiting the verge of madness and becoming an accountant. And oh, what a long, dull trip it's been back to some form of sobriety, solvency, and sanity.
    Why am I doing this? Well, this is what I always really wanted to do - but you know how it is. You start off so well, with the best of intentions on a direct course for fame riches and world domination and then somehow, if you're not ever so careful or ever so focussed, you keep putting off whatever it was that you really wanted to do because well, there's homework to do, and then there's university, sex and drinking to do and then oh shit you need money quick get a job any job and then oh god I'm an accountant, quick change jobs any job so long as it's not this. And in and amongst there's the quest for love, affection, emotional support and instant dirty sex, linked inexplicably, yet inextricably with far more furniture assembly, hoovering and conversations about astrology than one might legitimately expect.
    That's why it's taken me so long. And that's why I'm going to publicly, right here and now, make a promise to write something here every week. And not just any old rubbish. Something that's as witty, interesting and funny as I can manage, with none of that slipping into dull ranting or showing you pictures of my cat.
    I also promise not to agonise endlessly about the benefits of monogamous cohabitation as against the attractions of sexually omnivorous singularity, though this is going to be harder that you can ever realise.
    But wait! That's not all - you lucky people! Anything else I write - and there are here around me the crumpled and disorganised beginnings of at least half a dozen novels, a couple of films, hastily scribbled half-finished ideas for aphorisms, conceptual stirrings for the slogans to be written around the edges of future pound coins (yet to be translated into Latin) etc. Yes, anything else that I actually manage to get finished, that will go here as well. Unfortunately, there won't be any whizzy graphics on this site because I have all the graphical and visual skills of a really great artist who's just had his head cut off but if anybody wants to volunteer their services, please get in touch (no, I'm not going to pay you, so don't start).
    See you next week.

Plumbing the Depths

Sink blocked last night. Cowardly I know, but I was still rather glad that I'd already announced that I was going out and unavoidably had to leave The Lodger and The Helene peering into the murky waters armed only with an ineffectual plunger. The enlightened design of modern day sinks makes them impossible to unblock this way. Overflow you see. As you press down with all your strength on the plunger all of that force is immediately redirected, not down at the troublesome U-bend ( now there's a word I've overused recently) but down, up, round and oh bugger, straight out through the overflow. The plungee left damp and cursing. Spectators in helpless fits of laughter.
    Got back to find the sink still blocked but the kitchen now smelling like the swimming pools of my youth. The Helene had resourcefully popped out and bought some foul smelling, heavily chlorinated gloop which claimed to unblock even the most troublesome sinks. "Will unblock any sink" it claimed. But if the bugger really cuts up rough, leave it over night. Hopeful and expectant glances all evening. The gloop doesn't budge. Next morning, fowl-smelling gloop still growling in the bottom of the sink. It's going nowhere.
    Why was I in such a hurry? I can see now of course what the sensible thing to do would have been. A little thought. A little planning. Rubber gloves would have been useful. Ah but then, if I just put a bucket under the U-bend and then if I just unscrew this and let it drain. Yes, that's draining out nicely, I'll just leave it, go and have my breakfast now, yes, patience. Or maybe, maybe if I just undid it a little more, well then it would drain more quickly. Yes, that's fine, I can leave it now, but perhaps, perhaps if I just unscrew it a little. Oh shit! shit! shit! vicious corrosive gloop spraying out in every direction like an ornamental fountain going everywhere except the bucket. Yet another one of those moments when I would have loved to have seen the expression on my face - like when I came back from a Sunday lunch-time drink to find the waters of the washing machine lapping gently over the front doorstep. Quick get a mop! no quick rinse this flesh eating gloop off my hands. No! Not in the sink! There's no U-...
    Most upsetting of all, it turned out that it was all my fault (just like it was with the washing machine). An inch thick plug of solid lamb fat, completely blocking the U-bend, which must have collected there the night before when I ran some water into the roasting tray, I was only trying to make the washing up easier for The Lodger. Still, despite the panic and my reddened and itchy hands (I comforted myself with the fact that Sodium Hydroxide isn't actually toxic, merely an irritant) I spent the rest of the day rather pleased that I'd handled such a practical domestic problem myself. Should have used rubber gloves though.