Show us yer stash

We should all take a moment to reflect upon the true meaning of Christmas, to put aside all the trappings of the festive season that distract us from that which is most important, that which should truly be uppermost in our thoughts at this festive time of year.

So let's forget about family, Jesus and all that shit: let's talk pressies.

As I never want anything but books, CDs or DVDs - and because my family have long since given up trying to fathom my tastes in such things - they simply ask for a list from which they can pick a couple of items. It's a good system that avoids all that unpleasant business of pretending to look pleased about the Jeffrey Archer novel your granny bought you because "you like books".

Hence, I was the lucky recipient of the following stash:

CDs...

• 76.14 by Global Communication (the nice 10th Anniversary edition with a second disc of remixes and b-sides
• Soup by Bola
• Live '04 by Mouse On Mars

DVDs...

• Sideways
• Napoleon Dynamite
• Doctor Who: City Of Death

I was especially pleased about the Doctor Who DVD as City Of Death is the first story I specifically remember seeing on television. I must have been only four and a half years old but I clearly remember Julian Glover ripping off his rubber human face to reveal his true seaweed-like cycloptic alien face beneath. That scared the shit out of me at the time (c'mon, I was only four) but, even though it looks exactly like what it is to my thirty year-old eyes - a funny rubber head - it is still an smart and very funny story (based on a story by David Fisher but completely re-written by Douglas Adams).

I also watched the Doctor Who special on Christmas Day, The Christmas Invasion. Most enjoyable. I think David Tennant will make a fine Doctor (despite being asleep for most of the story) although the story did have that air of being but a taster for the next series in the same way that Christopher Eccleston's first episode did. Eccleston was great in many ways as the Doctor but his attempts at being quirky always seemed a little forced. Tennant, on the other hand, is more naturally eccentric. Like Eccleston, it will probably take a couple of episodes for his Doctor to properly settle in. There are, however, reasons to look forward to the next series of Who:

1. The return of former companion, Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen) and a rusty, beat up old K-9
2. The return of the Cybermen
3. The return of director Graeme Harper who gave us two of the best stories from the 1980s: The Caves Of Androzani and Revelation Of The Daleks

But... um... enough of the fanboy guff.

As New Year's Eve approaches, I am trying to be at least a little hopeful about what 2006 may bring rather than harbouring my usual thoughts of, "Oh God, not another year of this shit."

Look, blind optimism doesn't come naturally to me, OK?

Happy Easter... or something

Apparently, there is some annual festival happening in a couple of days so have a very merry one... or else.

You have no idea how much I am going to enjoy doing absolutely nothing for a week; no getting up at 6.00am, no forty-seven and a half hours of paperwork and constant telephone calls. Nope, I am going to sleep late, drink some ale and wine, read a couple of books and watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

I spent four years bored to tears living in Devon, the middle of nowhere, miles away from anything interesting and now the thought of spending a week in Devon, the middle of nowhere, miles away from anything interesting sounds like absolute bliss.

I'm so fickle.

Have an utterly splendid Christmas wherever you are. And that's an order.

Quote of the day

Sometimes you read things that strike such a chord of recognition that the pages of the book seem like a mirror...

I yearned for 'tranquility', I longed to be left alone in the underground. Because I was so out of the habit, 'living life' oppressed me to the extent that I found it difficult to breathe.

- Notes From The Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Read A New Author Month

My friend Roger Morris, whose novel Taking Comfort is released next April as part of the first wave of titles to be published under Macmillan's controversial New Writing venture, has come up with the idea of "Read A New Author Month" or RANAM.

Simple idea: Starting in 2006, people will read only novels (or short story collections) by debut writers during the month of April. Of course, Roger's first novel will be published in April 2006... It is not entirely impossible that he initially came up with the idea for RANAM as a bit of a cheeky gag to promote his novel but he has quite rightly realised that the concept is a good one (besides, he will only be eligible to promote his novel once - nothing he subsequently publishes will be by a new author, will it?). It is difficult for new writers to get noticed these days so anything that can give them a chance for some publicity is a great thing.

Roger has set up a Read A New Author Month website that will feature lists of books by new writers currently available and forums where people can suggest titles and discuss the books they are reading. He is also hoping to drum up interest from publishers and maybe even some big-name writers - after all, every author was a new author seeking attention at some point.

It sounds like a splendid idea to me, an idea that could really take off and become a significant event on the literary calendar.

To find out more, go visit Roger's Plog (blog + plug = plog... geddit?).

Hot tag action: read a new author month

Criminal underworld

Hmm, this is interesting: Anthony Minghella's new film, Breaking And Entering, is to be scored by Underworld. What a curious combination. Apart from Truly, Madly, Deeply and, to a lesser extent, The Talented Mr. Ripley I'm not a huge fan of Minghella's films. The English Patient, in particular, ranks among my top ten most hated films of all time: bloated, trivial, superficial, sentimental; an example of style over content labouring under delusions of grandeur, the mistaken belief that sumptuous photography and design equates to profundity and grand artistic achievement: David Lean Syndrome, perhaps.

But he does undeniably have a good eye and is, judging from interviews, an intelligent and nice man. He has returned to London to make his new film, "a story of theft, both criminal and emotional". Despite my feelings towards Minghella's back catalogue, this sounds like an interesting proposition.

Underworld are one of my favourite bands and, like Orbital before them, I've always thought that their style of urban electronica, ambient and harsh by turns, has always had an inherrently cinematic quality so it will be interesting to see how this project works out.

It's also about time Underworld toured the UK again as it has been far too long since I've gone mental to Moaner (which is my absolute, all time favourite live show closing tune - beating even Orbital's Chime).

Sundry Sunday Guff

By pure chance I have noticed that this blog is six months old today. Six months? It only feels like a few weeks since I overhauled the site and installed this blog. Shit.

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Right, you had your chance but my NaNoWriMo 2005 novel, Helix, has now been unceremoniously obliterated from the server, never to return.

To those unwise fools who did download it: It's not too late to destroy it before you pollute your brain with such drivel.

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In the six months that this blog has existed, I have somehow managed to not mention Doctor Who. This is possibly because I strive to not reveal what a total geek I really am. I realise this is a futile gesture and that I am lying to myself.

I'm a geek and I love Doctor Who.

Having said that, I have never, ever been to a sci-fi convention and I do not possess any costumes (although, with the freezing early morning walks to catch the bus to work at the moment, a long, stripy woolen scarf doesn't sound like a bad idea). But I do own several DVDs... Um, at least one (mostly two) of every incarnation of the Doctor going right back to William Hartnell.

I also like Red Dwarf, Farscape, Blake's 7, Angel and Firefly.

So much for all my flouncing around pretending to be a highbrow cinephile and devotee of serious literature and art. Actually, I am a highbrow cinephile and devotee of serious literature and art... but I just also happen to like cult sci-fi TV.

I suppose you can appreciate both.

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I am currently reading Notes From The Underground by Dostoyevsky and wondering how some Russian writer who died 94 years before I was born knew me so well.

Richard Pryor, R.I.P.

Richard Pryor has died at the age of 65 after suffering for many years with multiple sclerosis.

Born in Illinois and raised in a brothel, Pryor started out trying to appeal to respectable audiences until he experienced what he called an epiphany whilst onstage in a swanky Vegas hotel in 1967. He looked out at the audience, said, "What the fuck am I doing here?" and walked off stage.

He reinvented himself and cultivated his 'angry nigger' style of profanity and storytelling, the influence of which can be seen through not only successive black comedians like Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock but also the likes of Bill Hicks and even Robin Williams.

He moved into films and became one of the first black men in Hollywood with the power to pick and choose his own projects.

His stand-up routines often drew on personal tragedy, including one infamous incident when he set himself on fire whilst high on cocaine. Probably the best example of his stand-up material is the 1980 film, Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip.

Raise your glasses, if you will, and drink a toast to a great man of comedy. Cheers, Richard.

Work

So, I am still temping for the City Council but they have moved me sideways into a department that controls repairs to council homes in Oxfordshire.

An external contractor has a call centre that takes calls from council tenants needing repairs and then the call centre passes those requests onto our little team at the Council's "Building Solutions" depot. Every morning I have to collate these requests, separate them by priority, allocate jobs to the workmen and handle all their appointments. I also have to record and file all the workmen's daily timesheets and sign off all the jobs they have completed on the computer.

Not too hard, you may think. Ha ha. Well, no, it would not were it not for the fact that I also have to deal with all the emergency calls that come through from the call centre and call centre starts phoning me at about 8:30 every morning. When they do call, I have to drop everything, take a note of the emergency job, enter the job on the computer and then call an appropriate workman to send him on his way. And then there are the chasers for jobs that had a low priority but the due date is now imminent. And there there are the recalls where workmen have done a job but the problem has recurred (workmen don't like recalls because they don't get paid for them). And this goes on all day... the phone rings all bloody day.

Of course, you know how much I hate telephones.

So, I have to get into work for 7.30am if I am to make a dent in the workmen's job allocations before the phones start going nuts and I don't finish until 5.00pm... and there is the forty-five minute/one hour journey to get there and the same back: It all adds up to a long day starting at 6.00am when I get up. I sighed such a heavy sigh of relief on Friday evening when I left work because I knew I had two days off

Frankly, I hate it. I basically have no time for myself during the week. I wake up with a groan as I imagine the problems and hassles I will have to deal with during the day ahead; twelve hours later I stagger back into my room, eat something, shower and then have an early night. That's it, that's my life.

But what choice do I have? Seeing as I have been so spectacularly unsuccessful at getting a decently waged permanent job this year, I have no choice. Still, at least my bank balance is a little healthier; as a temp who is paid by the hour, a forty-five hour week is financially beneficial.

I need to do something, damn it; but what? I've always lacked direction, a concrete idea of where I want to be and what I want to be doing. Should I make another attempt at university? Studying what? I like writing stories, making music, tinkering with websites... but do I want to spend thousands of pounds studying one of these things? Writing: I feel I have filled my head with far too much nonsense from self-appointed "experts" of fiction about what makes a "good story" so I don't fancy that. Music or sound engineering: I don't want to be a sound engineer for other people - I like writing music and go and read up on the technical stuff as and when I need to - but neither am I a classical musician. Web design: yeah, because there aren't enough web design graduates out there already. Besides, I do all of the above for fun, for me: would studying any of them formally drain the enjoyment from them? Would studying any of the above get me a frickin' job?

If I was interested in making stuff I'd be sorted; there is a shortage of builders, people qualified in useful, practical trades. Unfortunately, I have as much manual dexterity as a penguin... with no wings... who's dead.

Or maybe I should become a perpetual student: grab all the loans and grants I can get my grubby hands on and just accumulate disparate qualifications in any subjects that interest me. I clearly have no affinity for the world of work - I am as career orientated as a lobotomised amoeba - so maybe I should just screw as much dosh as I can out of the system and spend the rest of my life learning stuff for the fun of it.

OK, who will give me money...?

Oh, all right then.

OK, OK, here it is - my NaNoWriMo novel, Helix [PDF document - 505KB].

Just bear in mind that, A) it's a first draft and, therefore, rubbish, B) it was written in twenty-three days and, therefore, rubbish and, C) future rewrites are going to have an entirely different plot structure that will hopefully be less rubbish.

You have been warned.

I get the feeling I am going to regret this.

[EDIT] - Oh, Christ on a bicycle, I just read some of it by mistake. It's safe to assume that none of this drivel is going to find its way into future revisions. No way. It's shite. I'm going to put a time limit on how long it is available on this site: one week. You have one week to download it and then - pfffft! - gone forever.