Mmm

The three of you who read this spiel regularly will have noticed that dispatches from my Great Glasgow Odyssey have dried up. Simple enough reason: after the hijinks and crazy adventures of actually getting here life has settled down into a regular and, frankly, unblogworthy routine. I got a flat, I got a job (oh, please rest assured that I still believe banks to be agents of Satan himself even though I work for one now. I pretend that this is an exercise in irony but, let's be honest, I'm a sell-out) and for the time being it's going to be the mundane business of grafting and surviving.

Still, you'll be glad to know that I have actually been out socialising with work colleagues. No, really! I got drunk and everything. Of course, I do end up being a bit boring and wandering off home at a sensible hour so as to not piss all my money away. Plus, after a few drinks I like to get home to my own music collection and my bed. But at least I am making the effort to not be a total hermit.

I've also been trying to sell off some of my CDs and DVDs, partly because, having dragged my hoard all the way from Oxford and up to the second floor of a tenement building, I've come to accept that there is a very strong likelihood that I am never going to watch or listen to a fair portion of my collection again and that those items are an unnecessary burden*. I'm also fucking broke and need some cash.

So, blog posts will be not so frequent for the moment, such is the ebb and flow of inspiration and the creative urge.

Oh, I have been recording unusual and extraordinary names during the day job but I will save those for a later date**.

* My book collection, however, is sacred and will forever accompany me on life's journey.
** And, you know, when I've got more than two.

Tan mah hide

The reason a post that was going to be about fake tans ended up being about flat hunting is because I was ruminating on the number of browned-up young women at work which, in turn, reminded me of a letting agent who showed me round a flat (you see, there is some kind of order in my seemingly random thought processes).

This agent was a woman in her early forties, I'd guess. She was good looking with a slim yet curvaceous figure so it was a shame that she went to such lengths to make herself look ridiculous: strappy vertiginous stiletto shoes, a sleeveless, frill-trimmed blouse with plunging neckline to accentuate an ample bosom, a short, butt-hugging skirt that was smart in itself but dragged into trashiness by the rest of the ensemble, all topped off by the fake tan. I don't know what was worse: the luminosity or the telltale patches of pasty white flesh on the palms and around the soles of the feet. When I should have been paying attention to her spiel about the property I was actually thinking that if you are going to wear revealing clothes over a bottle tan-job then you really should make sure that all visible areas are adequately treated.

I couldn't understand it. Here was a perfectly attractive woman who had made herself look utterly ridiculous because - why? - she thought it made her look glamourous, sexy, younger? Sorry lady, just makes ya look kinda' cheap and pitiful.

I know that there is a terrible, terrible pressure on girls and women to look good, that they are bombarded by the media with images of supposed physical perfection but let me set something straight:

Fake tans from a bottle look like exactly what they are: fake tans from a bottle. They don't make you look as if you have been jet-setting around the world, they make you look weirdly orange. May as well tip a pot of paint over your head because the effect would be no less convincing.

While I'm at it, fake boobs look weird and unnatural, botox-injected lips look weird and unnatural, facelifts look weird and unnatural. All those images of so-called beauty that assail us every day from every direction are carefully engineered, expensively mounted, grossly manipulated: i.e. fake, as fake as a tan from a bottle. They have nothing to do with real beauty in real life.

You know what real beauty is? A body and face animated by humour, joy, intelligence and compassion*.

Now that, that, is sexy.

* Well, OK, and an acceptable level of personal hygiene.

Almost too convenient

So, the wedding over and my newly-wed chums off to Thailand for three weeks, I settled into their house, fed the cat, succumbed to satellite TV (I'm not proud - I only have the five UK terrestrial channels at home which I barely watch but, dagnabbit, there are lots of episodes of Malcolm In The Middle, Futurama, South Park, Family Guy and The Simpsons that I've never seen; I had to make the most of the opportunity), and, most importantly, looking for somewhere to live.

You know, it's almost enough to make me believe in fate the way things worked out: a six-month job assignment coming to an end, the house in Oxford in which I've been lodging for four years being put up for sale and my friend's house in Glasgow being available for me to stay rent-free for three weeks, all those events occurring at around the same time, circumstances dovetailing oh so conveniently to facilitate my escape to the land of porridge, haggis and loch-dwelling monsters. I don't believe in destiny or suchlike woolly concepts but all these circumstances don't 'alf coalesce into one fat gob of coincidence.

But to drag this post screamin' and cryin' back to the point, I spent three weeks on buses, trains and feet scouring the city for a place to call my own. Due to my budget, all the places I looked at were modest 1-bedroomed flats in old tenement buildings. Fine by me - that was exactly the kind of place I was looking for. I must confess to nurturing a clichéd romantic vision of the lowly writer tucked away in one of the less affluent areas of the big city, eking out a modest living by day and working on his literary masterpieces by night in his humble abode. But, you know, with all white goods provided and high-speed Internet access. I'm such a fake.

Most of the flats I looked at were more or less suitable but what often put me off were the living conditions of the incumbent tenants. It doesn't matter how good a property is if, when you go to view it, you are presented with piles of pizza boxes, bottles, dirty dishes and some guy plodding out of the bedroom in his boxer shorts scratching his balls. Likewise, discovering that the soon-to-be evicted tenant keeps a cat in the flat that's shut inside all day and therefore performs its ablutions anywhere it sees fit does not create a favourable impression no matter how well appointed the place may be. How many times did I hear an exasperated landlord or letting agent say, "Err, we will, of course, get the cleaners in to give the place a thorough going over... um..."

Just as my three weeks of free accommodation were up, I found this place. It had everything I wanted with just a couple of caveats: electric rather than gas cooker, some slightly disconcerting dips in the floorboards in the bathroom, plumbing to the shower that is, as my dad observed, "a little Heath Robinson", a noisy extractor fan in the kitchen*... Nothing major but enough for me to want to go away and have a think about it. I told the landlord that I was definitely interested and would get back to him the next day. As I was leaving I had to make way for a young woman who was also there to view the flat.

I thought it over, decided that the benefits of the flat far outweighed the quibbles I had and so decided to call the landlord and tell him that I wanted to take it. "Ah, I'm so sorry but the girl who came to look round right after you accepted the place on the spot. But, look, I've arranged to meet her tomorrow to sign the agreement and pay the deposit. If for any reason she changes her mind then I'll call you straight away, OK?"

Disappointed, I said OK but resigned myself to the fact that I had lost the place. Oh well, I still had a couple of days left and a few viewings booked. I'd just have to keep looking.

Whaddya' know, the next day the landlord phoned me: "She can't get the deposit together after all so if you are still interested...?"

Yes, yes, yes, fuck yes, I have the money in the bank and I can give you the deposit right now. (Obviously, I played it a little cooler than that.) Yet another dollop of good fortune spooned onto the gob of coincidence that has brought me here.

When I met the landlord later to do the business, he told me that after we had spoken on the phone the girl had called him to say that she had got the money together after all. Ha! Tough shit, lady, the place is mine.

All I had to do then was find a job, which I did just as the last of my funds were trotting merrily out the bank: another happy coincidence.

I'm actually a little freaked out by how everything has slotted so conveniently into place. This isn't how it usually works. What's going on? Well, best not to get too paranoid about it - just enjoy it, Stevie boy.

And rest assured, dear reader, I am.

By the way, this post was going to be about fake tans. Kinda' went awry there, didn't I.

* The landlord replaced said noisy fan before I moved in which was jolly decent of him. He also replaced the broken toilet seat. Oh yeah, I've gotta' show you the toilet seat - it's a work of art. I'll post a picture later.

Anti-climax

The football the other night turned out to be an anti-climax. I don't mean the match itself (although I gather from people who follow such things that it was a nil-nil draw - ooh, exciting stuff...) but in terms of post-match mob disorder outside my building. True, there were lots of people wandering around on their way home and a big queue developed outside the subway station but apart from the odd whoop and holler wafting on the breeze through my window it was all pretty civilised. No gangs of footy fans stripped to their underpants, chanting, dancing around with sticks and worshipping fire... nothing.

There is another match on this afternoon - Rangers vs. Liverpool - and there is a steady stream of people heading towards Ibrox stadium as I type. The only mildly anti-social behaviour in evidence is a regular flow of lads taking a piss up the wall behind the shops on the main road. I have a clear view of that from my window: no sign of hidden spears or nunchucks. Disappointing. Maybe things will liven up after the match.

Chill Da Wren

Children. Hmm. I'm not great with kids. They make me uncomfortable and I never know what to say to them. Why this is the case, I don't know. Thinking about it, I never got on with kids when I was one so there's no reason why I should get on with them now. Then again, I often don't get on with grown-ups either. Fuck it: people, I basically have a problem with people. But children in particular are small and weird and I don't know what they're for.

Case in point: a couple I know, good friends, have a son who must be about three years-old (I can't be exact without sawing him in half and counting the rings). This little boy had never taken to me. Whenever I attempted to communicate with him he always gave me this slightly uneasy look as if I were some tramp who barks and rambles incoherently at you and just won't go away even though you have given him all your spare change. (To be fair, though, he's a wary little thing and looks at most people like that; it's not just me).

So, we're all at my mate's wedding in Glasgow and guess who I've been placed next to during the wedding breakfast - that's right, the little boy who looks at me as if I'm the biggest freak alive*. What to do, what to say? I sit there talking to my pals round the table, occasionally glancing in the kid's direction and smiling but he is too busy investigating a bottle of bubble solution and a bubble ring. He was having trouble getting the hang of blowing bubbles but eventually managed to blow some across the table in front of me. I cooed some googly baby noises and made a grab for the bubbles that passed before me. The little man seemed greatly amused by this. He was even more amused when his bubbles ended up floating on the head of my beer and amused still further to blow bubbles in my face when the starters arrived. Then his dad and I tried to catch the bubbles in our mouths which he thought was the funniest thing ever.

I was his pal after that and he no longer looks at me as if I might be a maniac who could kill him with an axe.

Oh Christ, this post is quite sweet. I do apologise. I don't know what's come over me. I'll try and find something to rage about next time.

* Don't even think it, motherfucker.

Energy prices

I don't know about you but, in anticipation of the big increases of energy prices, I snapped up a capped tariff on my electricity supply until the end of August 2009. Just as well because following EDF's 22% gas price increase and 17% electricity increase last Friday, and British Gas announcing a 35% increase on gas prices and a 9% rise on electricity today, capped tariffs are vanishing faster than support for Gordon Brown.

The capped tariff I managed to get from Scottish Power is ten percent more than the variable rate I was on but if the prices go up by 20%, 40% or even 60% as some are predicting then I'm bloody lucky to have got that capped rate at all.

I don't know what is more frightening: the rocketing energy prices or the fact that I had the wherewithal to take measures against it: I'm usually a bit rubbish at financial planning.

Work 'n' fitba

Tomorrow night sees Rangers play Spanish team FBK Kaunas. This will be the first football match played at the Rangers' home ground, Ibrox Stadium, since I moved to Glasgow

Why should I, utterly indifferent to the Sport Of Overpaid Simpletons as I am, give a toss? I'll tell you why: Ibrox Stadium is half a mile up the road and my building is right next to a bus stop and a subway station. This means that tomorrow night there will be hoards of football fans milling around right below my window; and Glaswegian football fans can be... a spirited bunch. Advice has been unanimous: "Don't go out."

I'm not worried, though. I'll get some beers in, pull a chair up to the window and observe the shenanigans from the comfort of my second-floor flat. And when Rangers have a home match against their great local rivals Celtic, well, that should be a riot (perhaps literally).

Oh, and I started a new job today. Financial admin computery stuff, very little customer contact, no answering phone calls, dead convenient location, overtime available if I ever need a bit of extra dosh. Sorted.

When is a church wedding not a church wedding?

But enough about weird dreams: Let us return, gentle reader, to my Glasgow Odyssey.

Although, as an aside, "odyssey" is one of my problem words, a word that I can never remember how to spell and have to look up every time I use it. It's not as if I am generally bad at spelling - I have no problem remembering how to spell "onomatopoeia", for example - but there are a few words, "odyssey" being one of them, that just won't stick. "Occasionally" is another one: one "C" or two, one "S" or two? I never get it right first time.

Anyway, this wedding in Glasgow was held at a rather splendid building called St. Andrew's in the Square. It is a big old auditorium that has a café-bar in the basement which means that you can hire the space, the catering, the drinks and the waiting staff in one convenient package. But the great thing about St. Andrew's is that it is a restored 18th Century church but is no longer used as such. This means that you can have a church wedding but are not tied to having a religious ceremony (my friends had an humanist ceremony), and you can hold the reception complete with bar and band or DJ there as well. Result.

It really is a brilliant venue for a wedding and we had one hell of a party there. It almost makes me want to get married just so that I can hold my wedding there.

Almost.

Planes, Trains and... er... just planes and trains

What was I saying? Oh yeah: Glasgow.

It all started, as these tales so often do, with a wedding. Actually, no, it started with me missing my flight from Birmingham to Glasgow on account of the fucking hopeless train service from Oxford. I should have known better, really: I have never had a train journey to or from Oxford that has gone entirely according to plan. Delays, unannounced cancellations or the train coming to a halt and standing dormant for hours for no apparent reason: any or all of the above occur without fail every time.

Nevertheless, I foolishly thought that taking the train to Birmingham International Airport would be the most straightforward way to catch my flight. I simply had to make sure that I allowed plenty of time to make my flight in the event of some unforeseen delay. I really should have known better, shouldn't I.

I was surprised to discover that there was only one train every hour to Birmingham Airport. To put this in context, Birmingham is about 65 miles from Oxford, they are connected by direct rail links, one of which passes through the airport's station before reaching main stations in the city itself. Oxford, although not a huge city, is home to one of the most prestigious universities in the world and a popular tourist destination and yet none of the train companies see fit to lay on more than one train an hour to one of the nearest international airports. OK, yes, London Heathrow Airport is about ten miles closer, but still, Birmingham isn't exactly a tiny hamlet whose airport is a short sliver of cracked tarmac overgrown with weeds.

But what do I know?

My flight was at 11.55am. The train journey would take about one and a quarter hours. Departure times from Oxford station were 8.30 and 9.30. If I caught 9.30 then I would be able to check in at the airport about an hour and ten minutes before my flight. That was pushing it a bit, I thought. I know, I'll be sensible and responsible and catch the earlier train and arrive at Birmingham with over two hours to check in. So I got up nice and early, checked the web for any reports of problems with trains that day, set off with my bags and walked the mile and a half to the station, arrived about twenty minutes before the train was due to arrive only to discovered that at the last minute, out of the blue, the train had been cancelled.

I was somewhat perturbed by this turn of events but consoled myself with the knowledge that I could still get to the airport in time to check in if I caught the next train at 9.30. No problem. It would be fine.

Or it would have been fine if the 9.30 train had not been forty fucking minutes late. Forty minutes. Technically speaking, I did finally arrive at the airport in time to check in for the flight if I had only been taking hand luggage. Unfortunately, I wasn't only taking hand luggage and the hold had been closed fifteen minutes before I got there. There was nothing for it but to fork out some ninety quid for the three o'clock flight that afternoon. I spent three hours in the departure lounge bar and drowning my anger.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Cross Country trains for making me miss my flight and costing me £90. It gives me great pleasure to know that I will never have to step foot on one of your tardy, overpriced and overcrowded trains ever again. My thanks also to First Great Western for their equally useless services in and around Oxford during my time there.

Despite this less than auspicious start, my Glasgow Odyssey was destined to improve greatly; but that's a blog post for another day.

To be continued...

(Look, I'm just trying to inject a little drama and suspense into this ultimately unexceptional anecdote, OK?)

I will write about Glasgow soon - promise. In the meantime...

Woke up... scratched arse... lay in bed half-erect wondering if I felt like cracking one off... couldn't be bothered in the end; will probably save it up for a porn-assisted stroke session tonight... eventually got out of bed for a dump and a shower... decided to go to the shop for eggs, chopped tomatoes, olive oil and a new hammer before having breakfast... need hammer to assemble new CD case for cupboard in lounge... put on CD - a bit of Living Colour because I felt like some thrashy funk rock this morning - and thought about what to have for breakfast... got sidetracked into writing this mundane spiel about the minutiae of my everyday life... my stomach is growling impatiently and yet I keep typing this garbage and trying to envisage exactly how dull and mediocre a person would have to be to spend all day engrossed in this pitiful drivel... welcome to the blogosphere.

Brief sort of update thingie

Went to wedding in Glasgow four weeks ago, stayed at friends' house while they were on their honeymoon to look after their cat and look for a flat to rent, spent a lot of time on buses and walking around, eventually found a nice one at a decent price, slapped down deposit, hired van, drove back to Oxford today and will spend the next week packing and saying farewell to chums before driving off to new life in Scotland.

Will write about said Caledonian adventure in more detail sometime soon. Promise.

Oi, Pavlov, get to bed!

I love bed. Being in bed is one of life's greatest pleasures; and, no, I'm not talking about that - "makin' fuck" - I simply mean the whole sitting watching TV or reading a book or lying down and sleeping business. I always read in bed. It's wonderful, bliss.

And I shouldn't do it.

I have started attending a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy group to learn how to stop thinking that I'm a loser and give myself the confidence to go out and live life. I'm only on Week No. 3 so don't ask me yet how it's done.

Anyway, today we looked at how depression can adversely affect sleep and some techniques for overcoming the problem. The essence of these techniques is to train your brain to associate "bed" with "sleep" so that when you do go to bed you subconsciously tell yourself that it is time to sleep rather than dwell on problems or worry. To aid the training of your brain is to make sure that you only use your bed for sleeping and not, for example, watching TV or... um... reading.

Suddenly a few things make much more sense like, for example, the fact that when I read in bed I become drowsy very quickly and end up having a nap; and napping during the day is not good if you are having trouble sleeping at night.

In the past I thought that the problem was with my glasses and that I needed a new prescription. I had an eye test and got some new specs but, nope, eyes still got tired. I thought that maybe the lighting was insufficient in that corner of the room so I got a reading lamp for my bedside cabinet. Nah, still got tired.

Today it occurred to me that the reason I get tired quickly when I read in bed is because my brain thinks that I should be going to sleep. Likewise, maybe I have difficulty getting to sleep at night because when I go to bed there is a part of my brain thinking that it should be reading.*

This idea got me thinking about how much human beings are driven by instinct despite our big brains and oh-so-clever capacity for abstract thought that raises us above the level of "mere" animals. Perhaps what does raises us above the level of animals is that we can acknowledge the fact that we are driven by instincts and can define and embed new instincts into our minds.

But greater minds than mine are no doubt ruminating on these ideas in much more depth than I ever could. I'm just another guy trying to learn how to get my shit together and survive.

* I do not, however, salivate when I hear a bell.

Friends for sale

The son of an 88 year old widower has found a couple of drinking pals for his dad after putting an advert in the local post office and offering a rate of £7.00 an hour.

He and his dad interviewed a few candidates and took three of them out for a "trial drink" at the local pub.

I can understand that it's difficult for an elderly man to meet new people to go to the pub with when he is living in a nursing home but doesn't he feel a bit strange knowing that his new drinking pals, no matter how much he has in common with them, are being paid to hang out with him? To be fair, one of the two successful candidates has waived his fee but the other is taking the dosh to top up his pension.

I don't know - strikes me as a bit odd. On the other hand, I'd happily accept £7.00 an hour to hang out at the pub listening to old people's life stories. It would be great for gathering writing material and it would be a nice little earner to boot. Yes, this could be an interesting career move. I should get some business cards printed up and tour the local old people's homes.

Stuff and... things

Bloggity bloggity blog blog blog... come on Steve, gotta' blog about something. Haven't blogged anything for over ten days; surely you can't be suggesting that nothing has happened in that time? Well, admittedly, not much has happened what with your last temp job assignment finishing last Friday and taking a bit of time off to investigate the work/accommodation situation in Glasgow, but that's not especially interesting, is it? It's not as if you've spent the time partying and whoring your way around the seedy underbelly of Oxford. Does Oxford have a seedy underbelly? Must do - everywhere does. Maybe that could be a little project for you.

Still, doesn't help with the immediate problem of not having much to say. I suppose you could mention your ongoing obsession with your Last.fm stats, especially since you discovered that damned eclecticism test and have been trying to listen to as many different genres as possible to bump your score up. Come on, you know you have eclectic tastes, you don't need validation from a bunch of database statistics. Tragic, really, and not worth sharing with the world.

You could talk about why you failed to note the passing of Charlton Heston the other week given the fact you often post photo-memorials for cultural figures. He was, after all, a genuine old-school movie star. You could have commented upon your ambivalence towards his death given the fact that, for example, he was a vocal supporter of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the 1960s but his latter day public advocation of gun ownership was deplorable; that and the fact that you never warmed to him as an actor despite his star status. True, he was in A Touch Of Evil, one of your favourite films of all time, but the reasons for it being one of your favourite films of all time have absolutely nothing to do with him. Anyway, it's old news now - no point in mentioning it.

Oh well, if you haven't got anything to blog about then you haven't got anything to blog about. Never mind, it's Sunday: why not make yourself a nice strong cup of coffee, curl up with Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and listen to some Otis Redding... or Alban Berg... or Muddy Waters... or Fudge Tunnel... or Sly & The Family Stone... or Ramones... or Luke Slater... or... oh, just go and check your Last.fm stats and then decide. Pathetic. It really is.

Thou shalt always dance

Another Monday night and another gig in Oxford, this time to see the performance poetry/electro/hip-hop stylings of Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip.

They filled the stage with antique furniture - a desk, drinks cabinet, a battered armchair, old lamps with faded, frilly shades. Mr. Pip and Mr. Le Sac proved to be most congenial hosts, engaging in funny banter and bemoaning the fact that they had been given a complimentary bottle of wine but no corkscrew. At various points in the show one would sit back in the armchair to sup a glass of wine (once a corkscrew had been blagged from the bar) to allow the other to fly solo for a while. And the tunes, of course, were great and I had a jolly old boogie.

I had hoped that the crowd would be a little more animate than they were at the Fall gig a few weeks ago... Oh well. I'll grant you that Le Sac 'n' Pip have yet to release an album ("Angles", due out in May) and many people are only familiar with their hit single from last year Thou Shalt Always Kill. I confess that I had only heard three of their tracks before I went to the gig but that didn't stop me getting into all the other cool stuff they played that I didn't know. The rest of the audience, though... well, some of them did a half-arsed movement of the shoulders but they only sprang into life when that song came on.

What's the point of that? What's the point of going to a gig to hear only one song and not show any interest in the rest of the act's material. To be fair, the crowd did cheer and applaud between tracks but, jeez, if a self-conscious uncoordinated numpty like me can jiggle his bits to unfamiliar tunes then anybody can.

Sorry, but Oxford gig crowds are rubbish.

Springtime in England!

Even in England, with its unpredictably eccentric meteorological quirks, you don't expect to wake up in April in springtime to a sight like this out of your bedroom window:

Whacky old England.

Falling

On Monday night I ventured out to the Oxford Zodiac - sorry - the Carling Academy Oxford (gotta' love corporate chain-branding for that underground vibe) for some raucous post-punk noise with Mark E. Smith and The Fall.

Turning up far too early, I retired to a nearby pub which was full of St. Patrick's Day revellers and spent a couple of hours getting suitably leathered.

At around 9.45pm I stumbled into the venue just in time to catch some VJ doing an audio/visual scratch mix thing that went on far too long, although I thought the cries of "piss off!" and "get off the fucking stage, you wanker!" from the crowd were a little harsh.

Speaking of the crowd, I was curious to see what cross-section of the Oxford populace would be there. Oxford doesn't strike me as the kind of place that would embrace a mad, wasted Manc bloke mumbling and screeching scathing social commentary over abrasive punky guitar noise.

Turns out I was right. The band emerged on stage and started to thrash out an impressive racket for a minute or two before the man himself, the legend that is Mark E. Smith, took to the mic and I dutifully cheered and started jumping around with a gusto.

Sadly, though, there were only about ten of us down the front getting into the spirit of the thing. I kept looking around only to be greeted with the sight of a room full of people just standing there staring at the stage with their dead eyes, no joy, no enthusiasm.

Despite this apathetic response from the crowd, the band played tight and good and we dedicated few at the front did our utmost to show Mark & Co. that their efforts were not entirely in vain.

I left the gig exhausted, my ears ringing, and baring a big stupid grin. I had a fucking great time but I felt a little sorry for all those poor lifeless bastards in the crowd who didn't appear to have any idea of what was going on or why they were there. They probably should have stayed at home and listened to their Coldplay albums.

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Anyways, I am now off to Devon for the Easter weekend to chill out and finally reading that damn Tristram Shandy novel.

Whatever your plans, enjoy yourself and don't eat too much chocolate.

Hunter S. Moses

This gave me a good chuckle this week:

In the third chapter of the biblical book of Exodus there is an account of how Moses hears the voice of God talking to him via a bush that "burned but was not consumed". According to Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the explanation for Moses' experience in the wilderness is that he was under the influence of an extract from an acacia tree that altered his perception of time and made him believe that God was speaking to him through the burning bush.
- Pete Tobias, The Guardian, Saturday March 8 2008

Could it be that Moses wasn't conversing with the almighty at all but tripping his tits off and talking to a shrub? Could it be that the stories that form the very foundation of Christianity are merely the mad rambling hallucinations of whacked out dopeheads, that religion is just a load of made up nonsense? Surely not!

As my pal Wendy quipped, Book Of Exodus: Fear & Loathing On Mount Sinai. Imagine it:

And when the LORD saw that [Moses] turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses, we're in bat country!

Leap, y'all

2008 is a Leap Year and today is our extra day. Tradition has it that 29 February is the day when women are "allowed" to propose marriage to their men. (Interesting how, even in this enlightened age of equality*, it is still often the man who is expected to propose - not always, for sure, but often. That has certainly been the case amongst my friends. Then again, maybe I just know a lot of unusually old fashioned people.) I have long been aware of this tradition as I expect many of you have too.

An additional proviso to the tradition I was not aware of is that if the man declines the marriage proposal then he is obliged to furnish the woman with a new gown.

Thanks to my chum Wendy Vaizey for that interesting nugget of trivia.

If any of my female readers wish to ask for my hand in marriage then please form an orderly queue and leave your proposals in the 'comments' of this post. I await your requests with great anticipation.

I thank you.

* Yeah, right - not if much of the "hilarious" commentary on Hilary Clinton's Presidential campaign is anything to go by, or salary comparisons between the sexes, or the persistent "glass ceiling" in many industries, and so on.

Twin casualties

Last night I dreamt that I was in an episode of Casualty (a British TV hospital drama, for the benefit of my foreign readers). All the doctors and nurses were running around as usual looking after the sick but the weird thing was that each patient was the spitting image of their attending nurse or doctor, as were any friends or relatives accompanying them. It was strangely creepy like that scene in Being John Malkovich when the eponymous actor enters his own head and ends up in a restaurant where everyone sports his face.

I can understand why I might have dreamt about a TV show that I watch only occasionally: My chum Paul Campbell is going to be writing an episode for the show (well done Paul!); but what the whole twin thing is about, I know not.

Sunday babble

About 100 pages into The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne. Hard work but I think I've settled into it verbosity and mad digressions. Keep telling myself that I've read Ulysses so, hey, I can fucking read anything.

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I went to the The British Fantasy Open Night last night on the flimsiest of pretexts - my chum Jai Clare invited me. Got drunk, talked to some interesting fantasy writers, chatted up a nice auburn-haired film producer, joked that I could be the next Hugh Grant or Jude Law, gave her a phone number, possibly mine. Feeling a bit sluggish today.

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Had a dream that the house I lodge in was some sort of boarding school except the internal layout was completely different - but it was the house I lodge in. Anyway, the cleaner managed to utterly humiliate me in front of my fellow pupils by pointing out that my bed linen stank of cum.

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My resolution to stop buying books until I substantially reduced my "to read" pile has failed abysmally. Awaiting my attention once I have concluded my business with Mr. Shandy are:

• Other Voices by Andrew Humphrey
• The Complete Enderby by Anthony Burgess
• The Famished Road by Ben Okri
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
• L'Assommoir by Émile Zola
• La Bete Humaine by Émile Zola
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
• On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Turn of the Screw / The Aspern Papers (Omnibus) by Henry James
• The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson
• London Orbital by Iain Sinclair
• Nature's Numbers by Ian Stewart
• Continent by Jim Crace
• Pesthouse by Jim Crace
• In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin
• Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality by John Gribbin
• The Major Works by Jonathan Swift
• Palm Sunday / Welcome To The Monkey House (Omnibus) by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
• Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel by Lucy Fry, Heidi James and Kay Sexton
• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
• Plays And Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
• The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
• Luis Bunuel: New Readings by Peter William Evans
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
• River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Writing to the Moment: Selected Critical Essays 1980-95 by Tom Paulin
• How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now by William H. Calvin

Utterly ridiculous, isn't it. Still, it makes for an artificially long blog post.

Interpretations

The literal minded among you may interpret the dream related in my last post as an anxiety dream about my hiring a car to drive 100 miles to a wedding in Dorset having not driven for three years.

Maybe, but it all came back to me in seconds. I'd forgotten how cool driving is. I had my homemade Amon Tobin compilation CD blasting out the speakers and there wasn't too much traffic around so, apart from getting lost briefly due to confusingly labelled signposts and the odd obligatory muppet driver getting in my way, I really enjoyed myself.

Oh, and the wedding was quite good too: some blonde Welsh tart of my acquiantance was marrying some American fella. And if Suw Charman (for it was she) wasn't already queen of the blogosophosphere, she damn well will be when the photographs of her gravity-defying burgundy corset hit the interwebs. We are talking Cleaveage Of The Decade™. The geeks of the world will gawp in amazement when those puppies hit their Macbook screens. Oh, and a good time was had by all, yadda yadda yadda.

But I'm pretty certain that my driving dream was not about driving at all.

No parking

OK, seeing as I have been inundated with... um... two requests for disclosure, here is the dream I dreamed the other night:

I was driving a big family estate car through a typical residential suburb. I turned into a cul-de-sac of five or six generic detached houses that all sat upon raised ground with sloping driveways running down to the road. I turned into the driveway of the house in which I apparently lived. I took the car up the driveway, allowing gravity to slow the car down, put the clutch in and pressed the brake pedal. The car came to a halt in front of the garage door but instead of staying put the car began to roll back down the drive and into the road even though my foot remained on the brake pedal.

The car came to a gentle halt by the opposite curb. Frowning, I gently moved the car forwards, mounted the driveway, took my foot off the accelerator when I reached the garage door and firmly applied the brake pedal, but yet again, once the car had stopped it began to roll back into the road.

I tried again but this time, once the car rolled to a halt in front of the garage, I applied the foot brake and the hand brake. No good: the car rolled back again. This time, though, a neighbour was pulling into the cul-de-sac and had to come to an abrupt stop to avoid a collision. I looked out of the side window, shrugged and mouthed an apology. My neighbour waved and manoeuvred around me to reach his own driveway.

Annoyed now, I attempted to park again, this time slamming down my foot on the brake pedal and yanking up the hand break, but still the car rolled back into the road even faster than before. More neighbours were driving into the street and I had to swerve to avoid them mouthing sorry at them.

Again and again I ascended my driveway, slamming harder on the brake pedal, yanking up the hand brake with all my strength and every time rolling back faster and further into the road, dodging my neighbours' cars, rolling up the pavement, onto their front lawns, across their driveways as they themselves were parking on them, skidding and dodging. It was Cars On Ice.

The car eventually slid to a halt. I clung to the steering wheel, breathing heavily. I didn't know what to do. The car would not stay on the sloped driveway. I couldn't leave the car where it came to rest across the middle of the road. I could not park at the roadside where the car could not roll away - that was somehow not an option - but I could not leave the car until it was parked. I was stranded, helpless.

My dad emerged from the house and strolled over. I wound down the window and said, the brakes have failed. Dad nodded and said nothing. He looked away, stared into space. It's not my fault, I wanted to say. Dad sighed. His eyes tried to communicate sympathy but they could not disguise his disappointment, his resignation, as if to say, he can't even park the fucking car.

Enigmatic blog post title that gives no indication as to what the post may be about and is quite possibly longer than the post itself

Last night I did something that I haven't done for a very long time: I awoke from a dream and... wrote it down.

Leave a comment if you wish to know what the dream was about.

Mentally challenged headgear

Oh, I forgot to mention that the latest issue of Mad Hatter's Review is online. It's got some tunes in it. By me. Check the about page for direct links. Etcetera.

Job done.

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I think I'll buy one of those little tabletop ironing boards. And an iron

The Coens on fire, Camden burns

I was very shocked to wake up this morning to the news of a major fire at Camden Market. I'm not intimately familiar with the place but I have strolled around the market and drunk in many of the pubs around there. There are several great gig venues in the area too like Koko, the Electric Ballroom and the Roundhouse that I visited several times last year.

Damn, a real shame, that.

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In an attempt to rekindle my interest in films, I made the effort to go and see The Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country For Old Men. And what a relief it was. After two disappointing films, Intolerable Cruelty and the utterly pointless (if beautifully shot) remake of The Ladykillers, No Country For Old Men sees the Coen boys on cracking form. I read the novel last year when I heard that The Coens were making a film of it and I immediately realised that McCarthy's sparse, violent and melancholy neo-Western was perfect material for them. And how. It is reminiscent in tone and pace of the brothers' first film Blood Simple but in an older and wiser way. Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are all wonderfully understated in their roles, Kelly MacDonald is strong too.

I can understand why the ending has pissed people off but, having read the novel, I was prepared for it. I don't think I would have minded anyway: I wouldn't have expected a nice, tidy and typical thriller-style ending from the Coens anyway - that is not what the film (or the novel) is about.

To find out what it is about, I suggest you go and see it, think about it for a while, see it again and then read the book. Or read the book first; I always prefer to read the book first for some reason.

Anyway, the film is good enough to make you think that it should be law that all McCarthy adaptations are made by the Coen Brothers. Having said that, The Road is currently in production under the directorship of John Hillcoat, the fella who made the Nick Cave scripted The Proposition, a powerful film that stayed with me long after I left the cinema even though I didn't really know whether I liked it or not as I was watching it. I think Hillcoat and McCarthy will be a good match. Also, Blood Meridian (which is on my ever-growing "to read" shelf) is on the slate for Ridley Scott. McCarthy... Ridley Scott... hmm, it could work; Ridley is nothing if not eclectic in his choices.

As yet untitled blog post

I don't know where to begin so I will skip the beginning and begin in the middle.

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Finally went to see a shrink - sorry - counsellor today and it turned out to not be as an horrific waste of time as I might have feared. She discerned very quickly that I am not interested in discovering why I am a miserable failure with no self-esteem but how I can stop being a miserable failure with no self-esteem. Yes yes yes, it's all because of my mother probably, great, but what do I do about it? I'm not interested in examining the past, I want to fix the now. She said the three magic words before I had a chance to bring them up: cognitive behavioural therapy. I decided I liked her very much at that point. "Oh thank fog* for that, she gets it." She is going to refer me to a CBT group which is nice. Unfortunately, the next round of classes doesn't begin until the beginning of April but, I don't know, having somebody who knows what they are talking about acknowledge that I have a real problem and could offer a practical way forward was comforting. April, though... bit of a long way off. I may buy myself a copy of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies (seriously) to tide me over.

I feel oddly... validated

She was also quite attractive. She wore nice boots.

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I am glad to hear that despite the death of Heath Ledger production of Terry Gilliam's new film The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus will continue.

When I first heard of Ledger's death I could not help but recall the collapse of Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and think, "Oh no, not again." I don't wish to sound as if my desire to see a cool movie overshadows the sad loss of such a young human being but I am glad the film can be completed. Dr. Parnassus (along with the upcoming Dark Knight) will give us a final glimpse of how this intriguing young actor might have developed, and what better tribute to an actor is there?

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I am fucking loving Bartók at the moment

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Don't know how to finish either so I will stop here at the end of the middle.

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* As an ignostic, I am loath to use the phrase "oh my God." However, from a purely aesthetic point of view and in certain circumstances "oh my god" is exactly the right phrase to use. Therefore, in order to circumvent my distaste for the word "god" whilst not depriving myself of the satisfaction of using the phrase "oh my god" I am experimenting rhyming substitutes such as "dog", "fog", "bog". I must confess, though, that it just isn't the same**.

** However, I have found a most favourable substitute for the exclamation "for the love of god", namely, "oh for the love of fucksy". Go on, try it. The next time you feel the need to express your incredulity at the sheer stupidity of a person or persons in your immediate vicinity, try screaming from the very depths of your diaphragm, "Oh for the love of fucksy!" It really works.

In Review (finally): 2007

2007: The year I stood up in church during a friend's wedding ceremony and read out an extract from The Velveteen Rabbit - a moment I will always remember with great fondness.

2007: The year we lost Kurt Vonnegut. The discovery of his work in my late teens was pivotal in my development as a serious reader. Having gobbled up Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett I felt the desire to adventure deeper into the literary landscape. I was in the habit of picking books at random from shop shelves, reading the blurb, scanning a few pages, impulse buying. One book I found using this method was Jack Womack's Random Acts Of Senseless Violence, a disturbing and vivid vision of social breakdown. I enjoyed it immensely. One of the quotes of praise on the dust jacket likened Womack to some guy called Kurt Vonnegut so I went out and bought Slaughterhouse 5, the title of which sounded vaguely familiar.

The book was a revelation. Funny, serious, wise, angry and compassionate, a moving story of war and the bombing of Dresden that somehow involved time travel and extraterrestrial zoos. Reading this book I realised that serious fiction could be funny and stories didn't have to be told in chronological order. I was amazed how effortlessly Vonnegut took all these fragments, all these disparate threads, and somehow tied them all together on the final page. Most of all I was won over by Vonnegut's wry charm and humanity; reading him was like being taught life lessons by a favourite uncle. "Come here, son, I want to tell you a few things about the world."

Reading Vonnegut is liberating in that he shows you that you can do anything you damn well please in fiction - his books are like permission slips. I'm very sad he is gone but I'm happy that he was here at all and gave us so many wonderful words.

2007: the year I read Ulysses and I finally finished Boccaccio's Decameron. I experienced something of a reading renaissance in 2007: I always have a book on the go but for some reason my appetite became particularly voracious (which maybe explains my resolve to conquer James Joyce's colossal tome). I read a lot of excellent stuff including Pamuk's My Name Is Read, John Fowles' The Magus, Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual, several Richard Brautigans (what a beautifully quirky turn of phrase that man had), The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, Slow Chocolate Autopsy by Iain Sinclair and José Saramago's Blindness, the last of which affected me the most with its harrowing vision of the ease with which "civilised" society could collapse.

If my appetite for reading increased in 2007 then my interest in film waned considerably. I know I've complained bitterly about Hollywood remaking every good Asian film barely five minutes after its released but it now it seems studios are cannibalising every nation's celluloid history including their own. We're going to get Paul W.S. Anderson's remake of The Long Good Friday pointlessly relocated to contemporary Miami, Ron Howard doing Michael Hanecke's Caché (Hidden), Michael Hanecke doing an American remake of his own Funny Games (why Michael, why?), The Taking Of Pelham 123 and Fritz Lang's Metropolis for fuck's sake. What happens when you've flogged a franchise to death with increasingly shite sequels? Why, you simply start again by remaking the original! Hello Halloween! And talking of John Carpenter, hello Assault On Precinct 13 remake! Hello Escape From New York remake! Apparently John Carpenter is happy to piss all over his own back catalogue of DIY cult classics by endorsing uninspired remakes.

The event that epitomised this trend for me is the fact that Martin Scorcese finally won his long-deserved Oscar for his laziest, most derivative film. Not only is The Departed inferior to its Hong Kong progenitor but it also feels like Scorcese simply imitating his own past glories. You'll say I am taking this far too seriously but watching The Departed and witnessing the subsequent praise and adulation Marty received actually kinda' hurt.

Thank Whoever, then, for David Lynch who delivered three hours of magnificent dread and weirdness in the form of INLAND EMPIRE. It doesn't matter that I didn't follow the half of it, I loved every damn digitally videoed frame of it. Even when I had no idea what was going on I never felt that Lynch was wasting my time with mere self-indulgent waffle - which, coincidentally, was exactly how I felt reading Ulysses. I seemed to be in that kind of mood in 2007. The only other films I enjoyed at the cinema were Zhang Yimou's Curse Of The Golden Flower which, despite the lukewarm critical response, I really enjoyed, and Hot Fuzz, the most gloriously absurd and entertaining film of the year.

Never mind, I procured lots of good music this year. I got stuck into two genres that I have long-intended to investigate properly: Post-punk and classical. By "classical" I really mean "orchestral", I suppose, because the era I have been drawn to has been that of 20 Century modern composers. Yes, I'm loving all that dodecaphonic atonal shit.

Best albums released this year? Chicago, Detroit, Redruth by Luke Vibert, Book Of Dogma by The Black Dog (well, OK, I admit that this is a compilation of previously released material but much of it has only appeared on vinyl so it still counts), Whisper Me Wishes by Kettel, Oblivion With Bells by Underworld, Foley Room by Amon Tobin and the magnificently barmy Tromatic Reflexxions by Von Südenfed.

I managed to keep a New Year's resolution for once by going to some gigs, something I hadn't done for a long time. I went to see Aim, Bonobo, Underworld and Amon Tobin and I'm so glad I made the effort. Music really is one of the things that makes life worth living - a world without music doesn't bear thinking about.

But otherwise 2007 sucked. Let's see if I can get my shit together in 2008, eh?

Ha. I say that every year.

Thanks y'all

Thank you all who commented on my last neurotic outburst about my writing or lack thereof. OK, I'm not writing at the moment: so what? I am, however, reading like a fiend and have a ravenous appetite for knowledge at the moment, be it for literature, science, film criticism, music theory. My brain must be demanding nourishment for a reason and I will know when I am ready to write again.

Once again, excuse my daft outburst.

Sundry Saturday gubbins

Walking home from the shop along Walton Street in Oxford and who passes me? Only Jeremy bloody Paxman. S'true.

On an utterly unrelated note, I saw Amon Tobin do a DJ set at The Forum club in London. Fuck me if the bass in that place didn't almost cause a prolapse. A bloody good night only marred by slightly higher than usual Twat Quota in the audience, four Shoreditch yahoos wearing sunglasses in particular. Never mind, it was still a blinding show with Tobin mixing up his own stuff with music that has inspired him into one big jazzy drum 'n' bass pudding. He even played Second Bad Vilbel by Autechre, my favourite track by them and one I never thought I'd here in a DJ mix.

Other than that, nothing else exciting to report. The job still sucks and I'm currently reading The Magus by John Fowles which doesn't.

Time at the bar please, gentlemen

I'm wondering if it is not about time I gave up these fanciful notions of being a writer. I haven't written anything substantial for two years and, frankly, the desire to write, the need to write, has gone. If the passion isn't there then why bother? No point in persevering if the drive isn't there - you'll only produce half-arsed drivel. Maybe I've just been kidding myself that I am a true creator; maybe I am nothing more than an over enthusiastic reader suffering from a romantic delusion of being an artist.

Who cares? Too many talentless hacks out there scribbling away at interminable drek as it is. Why add to the stockpile?

Jimmy Page hurts little finger!

This is apparently what passes for big news these days.

For fuck's sake

Waxwork figures of George Clooney and Brad Pitt at Madame Tussauds had to be recalled for repair after just one day on show because... they were mobbed. Clooney's face was retouched to remove all the lipstick and Brad's arse had suffered from too much pinching.

A spokesman for Madam Tussauds said:

"They have been mobbing the whole set, kissing and touching them for a photo, but this is what it is all about so we are not going to stop them doing this, although we will keep an eye on things."

The Tussauds' management may have had a very different response had customers been molesting a bicycle instead of waxwork figures of Hollywood hunks. A man in Ayr, Scotland, has been put on the sex offenders' register for attempting to fornicate with a bicycle in a hotel room. Two cleaners knocked on his door and, receiving no response, unlocked the door with a master key whereupon they discovered the man naked from the waist down holding the bicycle in front of him and grinding his hips back and forth. The cleaners, who were "extremely shocked", reported the incident to the manager who then called the police.

I remember watching a television interview with Anthony Burgess many years ago. The discussion had got around to his dislike of skinny models. He related an anecdote about how he once hooked up with a supermodel and, even though she was extremely beautiful to look at, he likened making love to her as akin to "sleeping with a bicycle". Maybe this Scottish fellow remembered the same interview and reasoned that enjoying sexual congress with a bicycle would therefore be the closest he'd ever get to sleeping with a supermodel. Or maybe the gentleman was taking Flann O'Brien's theory about men swapping atoms with their bicycles from The Third Policeman to its extreme.

But that is not the point. The point is that this man has been put on the sex offenders' register for having an elaborate wank in a hotel room. Yes, embarrassing for everyone involved but it's not as if he had done it in a crowded shopping centre or cycled onto the pitch during a Premier League football match and violated his vehicle in front of the crowd and millions of television viewers. I could understand the cleaners being upset and the manager asking the man to leave the hotel but calling the police and getting him put on the sex offenders' register? A rapist is a sex offender. A paedophile is a sex offender. Someone who buys video images of child abuse is a sex offender. How can being caught cracking one off in a hotel room be comparable? It's overkill. What next: teenagers caught in their bedroom having one off the wrist by their parents are to get shipped off to a young offenders' detention centre? What an utter waste of judicial resources and a shameful trivialisation of genuine sexual offences.

Random ramblings of a Sunday afternoon

Boy, this blog is dying on its arse, isn't it? I can barely manage one post a week and even then I seld