Trying. Very Trying.

This time of year tends to be a quiet one for a writer and freelancer.
The big boys are winding down for the consumer-fest of Christmas and all their projects have been written and are well underway, the small guys jettison every freelancer wherever possible to help bridge the lean month or so, and so we writers retreat back into our novels and screenplays, circling producers in the Radio Times, going through the inbox sending a little nudge emails to every contact in the hope of stirring up some work, or interest, and generally take stock of the progress (or lack of it) over the past year.

And you know the main thing I’ve realised over the past 12 months?
That the old adage of 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration holds more true now than ever before.

A writer’s life is one of networking, contacting, emailing, calling, smartphones - constant, neverending effort. Even when not writing my brain is chastising me for not writing.

Watch a film – mind giving your grief, go out shopping – same, go to the gym, ok just for a while but then back to it!

It’s like being on a Roman Galley, no respite, the mental whipping continues over and over screaming ‘Why are you not writing’. The novel, the screenplay, the short story, all of them on the shoulder, malevolent and chippy, pick pick picking at you and your lack of effort.

It is with you always, and that’s not healthy, but then if I finish this project it will go away wont it? No it wont, because the next project is already barging it’s way rudely to the front of my mind like a navvy at a bar on payday.

(All the time you’re writing of course you are chastising yourself for not replying to the 77 agencies that have replied to YOUR initial inquiring email)
I went to a networking event on Tuesday night in a beautiful bar in Bristol with Bristol Media, all very lovely; fizz, good chats about writing, work, intelligent people with passion chattering away into the night. And you know what I felt? Guilt. All the talk about writing when I could be at home writing. Arrrgh!

It’s a bloody nightmare.

And this is where the perspiration quote really sticks. The perspiration should surely be produced through the act of writing, not through the act of trying to get people interested in your writing, and finding work and hassling people who don’t want to be hassled.

I should have been born many years ago and lived in a garret retained by a wealthy merchant as their playwright. That would have been nice.

I lie in bed at night and I dream of the six figure publishing deal that will mean that when I see that 41 cm of fresh snow has fallen on Val Thorens overnight I can book it. Not think ‘I must delete that frigging app, it only brings pain and misery!’
But then that little part of my brain wakes again, maybe if I got out of bed now, and went and wrote through the dark quiet of the night I might get that deal, get that success, get the steep and deep powder that I crave.
Oh well, all we can do is try, and keep on trying.

Reading: I, Partridge by Coogan, Ianucci et al

Listening to: Backspacer by Pearl Jam – although I have just listened to Desolation row 6 times on repeat.

Desperate measures

The shock of Gary Speed’s death is the perfect example of how depression works. Outwardly a man with everything; success, talent, love, support, friends and family, money and acclaim. No clues. No fear for his safety. Pure disbelief.

Of course his is one of many suicides over the weekend but his high profile in the British media casts more light that usual upon this death, and the manner of it.
And once again makes people who have never suffered, or felt any urge that the world, and the people in it, would be better off without them, screw their brows in consternation.


It is one of those things that cannot be described to those free of depression.
The weight, the feeling of utter contempt for oneself, the sureness that you are ruining the lives of those around you. Your total USELESSNESS. The belief that your mental state is adversely affecting the very people you want to protect from your depression.

The cycle is truly vicious.

I have tried to deal with my particular form of the illness in my own way, but the more you understand it the more you realise that these are patterns that are replicated in so many other lives.

The need to close off from everyone and everything. Draw the curtains, ignore the phone, the post, the knock at the door. Withdrawal. Then comes the paralysis of action. A complete exhaustion that renders the sufferer unable to function properly, even for the simplest task. Anyway, the suffering of depression has its many forms, I wont list them here, it is pointless, only those who know, know.

Instead let’s look at one of the key issues raised by Gary Speed’s death. That no-one knew. Everything he had achieved, everything he had in life he did with the real man hidden from view. This is the experience of so many sufferers. We must not, can not, open up to other people, it is the pure evil nature of depression that when in the midst of it you will not tell people to avoid worrying them. And once it has past, be it a day, three, a week, a month, your brain comes out fighting and you hope and HAVE to believe that it will not return. Or at the very least revisit a long, long time it the future, when maybe you have learnt to deal with it better. Yes, next time you’ll see it coming and hide it even better than the last time.

Of course we understand the absurdity of being depressed in a time and place where we have more than any human beings have ever had; living longer, more affluent, safer, healthier, there should be nothing to worry about right?

Right. Yet another reason for the guilt and silence. We have no right to be depressed. We are spoiled brats moaning about how awful life is when we should be living the dream of consumerism and enjoying the vac-packed green beans flown directly from Kenya for our stir fry. The ridiculousness and irony of the illness is more than apparent.

So many geniuses and brilliant people are, or were depressive – many are sadly no longer with us because they could not go on with the pain they carried around.. You don’t need me to google them for you, but the list is long and sad and sobering.
My own life has been affected by the suicide of my Dad’s father when my Dad was 15. The ripples still float out and reach people he never even knew would exist.

Recently we have had insight into crushing depression from Stephen Fry amongst others. But the stigma remains.

So the next time a friend doesn’t return your text message, or ignores your calls, or you want to tell them ‘everyone gets down sometimes’, or ‘pull yourself together’ or ‘just get on with it’ maybe they need a little less judgement and a touch more understanding.

And maybe we can help create an environment where both men and women can articulate their desperation without fear. Maybe the desperate silence can be avoided if more ears are open. And maybe less families will have to go through the numbing, sickening loss and grief that Gary Speed’s family are experiencing right now.
Love, respect and peace to you all.

Real books V Kindle

I had a look at a Kindle for the first time yesterday and as much as I tried to have an open mind (I didn’t) I wasn’t surprised to find I hated it.

I felt exactly the same as the first time I used a CD. Before CD’s (and the even more detached itunes) we used to know the names of tracks, and the order of them and we had a solid connection to the art itself, an LP or single was a beautiful, colourful, tactile delight, before you even discovered the music that was going to shape your life.

The lovely little messages etched into the smooth vinyl, the hiss and crackle, the turning over half way through, the placing of the needle on the groove, I loved it all.

So forgive me if I cannot get excited about staring at a piss-poor electronic screen, a soul-less window that further distances me from the mind and hand of the author.

‘But they’re really good, you can have hundreds of books at once’.

I don’t want hundreds of books at once, I want to have a relationship, organic and growing, with the book in my hands, the book that has been crafted and sweated over, a direct connection from the creative brain through the hand to the page and into my brain.

I want to finish it and caress its cover and kiss it, as I have done with many books that have delighted me and lifted my spirit.
Most recently Lean On Pete by the wonderful Willy Vlautin. (I had to go into the spare room and have a little cry).

I could never feel the same about reading the new Douglas Coupland or James Frey direct from a grey screen, or discovering the joys of Carey or McKewan or Bukowski (as I have recently) via a toy.

I’m sure I’m wrong, I often am when it comes to things that I perceive to be pointless that take over the world. U2 (thought they would be gone by the end of ’83), Madonna (I predicted Cyndi Lauper would have more longevity) the internet (‘what’s the point of that? It’ll never catch on’. Me, circa 1998.)

Nothing can compare to finding a tatty copy of The Ravens, the Count of Monte Christo or Papillon whilst back-packing in some small backstreet second-hand book exchange in Bangkok or Hanoi, and adding to its well thumbed life.
Taping it up with gaffer tape and then passing it on for someone else to have a mind altering experience.

Or in some cases bringing it home and having it proudly on your bookshelf as a memento of another time (my copy of Sideshow I bought at the entrance to the killing fields in Cambodia still give me a frisson of revulsion and fascination whenever I glance its cover on the bookcase at the top of our stairs.)

Books play a huge part in our lives, both myself and the future Mrs. L (although I’ve been informed she wont be taking my surname. Very wise) love to discover new authors and new series and buy them one after the other until another new bookcase is required. Will we really feel the same just having a list of tracks on a box?
I’m certain I never will.

In much the same way DJs, dance music and mixing saved vinyl I’m hoping that the huge number of comics and graphic novels that are produced monthly and yearly will protect printed media.

I for one will not be buying a Kindle and I hope for the sake of protecting the poetic soul in all of us neither will you.

Just read: Lean On Pete by Willy Vlautin.
Now reading: The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe
Listening to: God hates a coward by Tomahawk.

Drunk is poetry

As human beings continue their never ending search for self destruction I thought a light-hearted missive might be in order.

I was reading something or other not long back (Wodehouse I think) when a drunken character was described as ‘in his cups’.
A delightful expression I thought and it got me thinking.

What other expressions for drunkenness are a credit to the English language?
In my time I’ve heard, or used, wankered, twatted, pissed, muntered, bladdered, battered, hammered, arseholed, plastered, caned and of course the ubiquitous fucked; the list goes on.



But what of those expressions that show the true diversity of this jewel of languages? That illustrate the endless possibilities of English to articulate one state of being in countless ways.

‘In his cups’ I particularly like, and is possibly of Roman or biblical origin.
‘Shedded’ is one I’ve heard and apparently is short for ‘my shed has collapsed and taken most of the fence with it’. Possibly not the easiest way to verbalise your drunkenness.

The Aussies have given us ‘paralytic’ since the early 20th century, and ‘shot full of holes’, which they lifted from the Kiwis in world War One, and good on them for it.

‘Smashed’ sounds like it’s a modern invention to me, but comes from an old American saying ‘smashed as a brandy peg’. Smash being a type of brandy apparently.
‘Pickled’ is wonderful, as is ‘piddled’. ‘Pie-eyed’, is a peculiarly American term that reached our shores in the late 1800’s.

It’s amazing how each word or expression brings to mind a very specific level of drunkenness. A man who was ‘tipsy’ or ‘squiffy’ or ‘sozzelled’ wouldn’t hit his wife would he? But someone who is ‘tanked up’ might.

They are also, like much slang, time capsules that appear and disappear in short time periods. ‘Swipey’ for example is recorded from 1844 but had pretty much died out by 1900, ‘rat-arsed’ is a wonderful newer invention, first heard from teenagers in the ‘80’s.

In the late 1700’s you might have ‘swallowed a hare’ or if in port ‘swallowed a sailor’. Something that might get you an odd look in Brighton in the 21st century.
The 1920’s had a string of lovely descriptions that really put you right there amongst the flappers; ‘ossified’ ‘spifflicated’, ‘canned’, ‘corked’, ‘scrooched’, ‘jazzed’, ‘zozzled’, ‘owled’, ‘embalmed’, ‘lit’, ‘potted’, or ‘fried to the hat’.
All of which applied presumably to that wonderful chronicler of the jazz age F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The amount are incredible, the diversity staggering, it’s a book topic not a blog entry so I’ll leave you to seek out you own and bask in the glow of our wonderful language.

And forgive me if this blog entry is a little disjointed, I was at a friend’s stag do last weekend and was ‘crapulent’ to the point of being as ‘stewed as a fresh boiled owl’.

Just read: Ham On Rye by Charles Bukowski
Listening to: Official sountrack to the motion picture Kick Ass.

Riots? same as it ever was.

I find myself somewhat conflicted over the current spate of rioting that’s breaking out like unsightly zits all over this country. My natural left-leaning nature is being sorely tested by a sneaky little right wing side of me that is inflamed by certain aspects of modern society.
Whilst rioting itself is nothing new, in London or anywhere else, and will always be part and parcel of life in Britain (my favourites are the Luddite riots of the early 19th century. They smashed machines up, these current ones were organised on Blackberries. Go figure)
I can’t help feeling that what these youths need is a bloody good hiding. To quote Pink Floyd ‘a short, sharp shock’.
But how can I have such a violent lurch to the right? Am I, indeed, becoming more conservative as I get older?
The 20-something me would have delighted in the chaos and anarchy, but then what did he know?
Nothing, he was an idiot.
And that’s the main issue here, young people are stupid. I’m not talking about the remarkable kids that appear week after week on University Challenge, who are au fait with the laws of motion, the pelvic bone of the Amazonian tree frog and the periodic table, they are a different breed and we’ll need them later. They’ll probably be the ones in 30 or 40 years sitting on committees trying to work out what should be done about the rioters in New London smashing up hover car showrooms.
No, the problem we have is that to be young means to know better than everyone else, when actually you know the square root of fuck all.
And how the youth enjoy their ignorance, it’s a badge of honour to know nothing, but they still demand respect for doing so. See, I can feel a rant coming on. And that’s no good. Regardless of the feelings they evoke we need to look at the issues that have caused these riots.
Could it be that creating not only a society, but a entire civilisation, on consumer greed, envy, 24 hour advertising, bad credit and a scrabbling need to possess ‘things’ and ‘stuff’ to fill the empty voids in our lives that used to be filled by blindly following God and King and Country, might have been a bad model?
But that’s the dream we’ve been sold and as long as uneducated disenfranchised young people, whose own parents were the same, keep being told what they ‘deserve’ without being given any means of achieving it we’ll continue to reap what we sow.
How are your cuts to public services looking now Prime Minister?

Reading: The Wine-Dark Sea by the incomparable Patrick O'Brian
Listening to: Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 1 in G Major, amongst others

Blinkers on

So I have 50,000 words of the novel now and it is rapidly slithering out of control.

Writing a film script is tough, writing a novel is tougher. At least in the first draft. With film you have a specific scene, you decide what order you want those scenes, I use index cards, other systems are available, then you get the charcters in the scene, you decide what they want, and then you put obstacles in their way, then you see how they get what they want.
Conflict is all. Economy of words, and what is happening between the lines is all powerful.

The trouble with prose is that you are able to go on flights of fancy. Without the rigid parameters imposed (necessarily) by screenwriting, the mind wonders, it tries to cram in every aspect of the scene, every sense must be catered to, every whim of the mind appears on the page. Both mediums are hard, very hard, to get right, but with prose every little idea has a knock on effect, your mind recalls snippets of conversation, moments in the past, a look from a former lover, an awkward moment from a conversation over 20 years ago, a perceived slight at the hands of someone older, a hairbrush tangling in the hair, a smell, a taste. It's really quite distracting.

But then I suppose that is what a writer must do, like actors we are only at our best when our emotions are right up there at the surface, able to draw on every tiny aspect of our lives. It is not a healthy thing we do, days pass without proper connection or conversation with others. The curtains remain drawn, the door remains locked, and we chip away trying to get that word or phrase. We are as Robert Downey Jnr pointed out at the Oscars, 'the sickly little mole people'.

Is it worth it you may ask?

I think so yes, you don't choose writing it chooses you. As with all art forms. You can ignore and let the 'what if?' thoughts fester in your soul, or you can take a leap and get it out of your head and onto the paper, where is lies lifeless and not what you felt it should be. You then work on it, work on it, work on it, try to get every word exactly as you want it. A myriad doubts linger, keep you awake, make you think 'this is pointless'.

And then what?

You have to let other people read it, and give you their opinion.

OTHER people.

THEIR opinion.

What new hell is this?

So the novel oozes onward, the story loses shape, the friends read it and think, what exactly? Even if they tell you they like it do they really? Are they merely stroking your ego out of kindness?

Who knows?

You must just keep going and hope that when you get to the top of the mountain all that time spent with your face up against the rock was worth it.
You must look at the view, enjoy it, feel the accomplishment, feel the achievement.
And then?

You have to rewrite and edit, every single word, every single page, whilst keeping the whole end product in mind.

You've reached the top of the mountain. Now you must lower yourself safely down.
And hope the rope doesn't break.

Reading: MIND GAME: How the Boston Red Sox got smart, won a World Series and created a new blueprint for winning by the writers of the Baseball Prosectus.
Listening to: Troublegum by Therapy?

Rendezvous with destiny

Apparently every person who chooses to join the armed forces nowadays is a hero. Not the word I would choose. A hero is someone who does something heroic. Not someone who puts themselves into the possibility of harm’s way, that may then lead to them doing something heroic. Perhaps. I’m not disputing they are brave, but heroic? No.

I was thinking about this the other day because it came to my attention that a rather amazing chap passed away this year. A man who in my own understanding of the word is ‘heroic’.

Dick Winters was not someone I grew up knowing anything about, unlike Douglas Bader and Guy Gibson, whose derring-do was drummed into me at school. No, Winters was a man I read about in Stephen Ambrose’s brilliant ‘Band of Brothers’ and then watched being portrayed by Damian Lewis in the remarkable mini series of the same name.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania he was a high-achiever at both school and college and upon the U.S. entering World War Two, he joined up. He excelled again in training and was selected for officer candidate school. He heard of a new regiment, one that used parachutes to jump into action, a new form of combat elite, and was sent to the 101st Airborne division at Camp Taccoa, Georgia.

More strenuous training was endured, the drop out rate was high, Easy company, Winters’ company, sailed to England and set up in Wiltshire. More training followed, Winters was now leading 1st platoon.

They all knew their day would come.

In the darkness before the land assault on D-Day Winters and his men flew into heavy fire over the Channel, many of the C-47 planes were torn to shreds or blown clean out of the sky, losses were huge. The men stood in their stick in the noise and the Ack-Ack and the hail of fire then jumped out of the planes over France. Many were shot on the way down, many perished hitting trees or were drowned in rivers and other waterways, some survived.

Dick Winters, unaware their commanding officer had been killed, and without any weapon or equipment, rounded up 13 men and attacked a howitzer battery of some 50 Germans artillery men. The guns were trained on Utah beach. The assault knocked out the guns, killed, wounded or captured every enemy soldier and is taught at Westpoint to this day as the perfect way to take on a fixed position against superior numbers.
He was awarded the DSO and promoted to Captain.

In Operation Market Garden he led from the front again, taking out a group of SS infantry of 300 with one platoon.

In the Battle of the Bulge, with Winters now as battalion XO, the 101st were completely surrounded by 15 German divisions supported by heavy artillery, for a week, the line was thin, the cold was brutal, the shelling was constant, casualties were heavy, but they held. Winters then led his men to assault the town of Foy. They took it.

He became Major, and acting battalion commander of 2nd Battalion.

They moved into Germany and were given orders to capture Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden. They were sunning themselves on the balcony enjoying the contents of Himmler’s wine cellar when the word came the war was over.

Eventually Dick Winters returned to the U.S. he married, raised a family, got more education from Rutger’s, through the GI Bill, excelled in a number of companies, began his own. He continued to lead by example, training officers, giving talks on leadership and attending reunions with his friends and comrades. He built a house on quiet farmland back in Pennsylvania.

Some quotes from his memoirs bear repeating:
Lead from the front. Say, “Follow me!” and then lead the way.
Remain humble. Don’t worry about who receives the credit. Never let power or authority go to your head.
Hang Tough!--Never, ever, give up.

In a world were the word hero is banded about a little too often for my liking I’ll stick with Dick Winters, and those other men of the Screaming Eagles, who left their jobs and lives in big cities and small towns and threw themselves out of planes into the inky night engulfed by violence and death because they believed that to not do so would lead the entire world into darkness.

Dick Winters reached his ‘Rendezvous with destiny’ in January. He was 92.

Reading: Tales of ordinary madness by Charles Bukowski
Listening to: The Velvet Underground by The Velvet Underground

Castaway

There has been a steady stream of hideousness in the news, despite the media’s obsession with deflecting us away from the stories that matter, based around two wealthy people getting married. I’m steering clear of all that for now as there has been something that is so wonderful and life-affirming I am in a state of utter delight every day I sit at my desk.

BBC Radio 4, described, quite rightly, by Stephen Fry a few years back, as one of mankind’s greatest achievements, has released the last 500 Desert Island Discs, available to listen to on the computer whenever you like. I’m in heaven, the opening bars of the music alone (By the Sleepy Lagoon by Eric Coates) has me in a state of excited anticipation and total relaxation.

The perfection of radio, the intimacy, the privacy, the feeling of being in a special place, alone, listening to remarkable people who have lived remarkable lives, is pure joy. To be able to relive those I’ve adored and discover ones I’ve missed is wonderful.

The website says it is trying to sort out all of the recordings since the series began in 1942. I’m fervently hoping they do, I can’t wait to hear the thoughts and favourite music, the odd luxuries and the great books choices, of people such as Celia Johnson, Michael Redgrave, Guy Gibson, Alfred Hitchcock, Frankie Howerd, John Osbourne, Alan Bennett, Bill Shankly, anyway, you get the picture.

My fingers and toes are crossed.

It’s hard to explain my feelings about DID, maybe it’s a throw back to my pre-teen years, lying in bed with my head under the pillow, listening to my little red transistor radio, gripping the plastic handle as I heard of exotic locales, derring-do and the mysteries of the universe via scratchy voices that made the world seem so vast it was beyond comprehension. It felt like I was the only person listening, and at its best created an excitement and tension that no other medium can match.

One of my greatest hopes growing up was that one day I’d be on there, picking my tunes, dissecting my life, and discussing how I’d survive on a desert island. Such a simple concept, and yet it creates the most engaging portrait of those who participate, getting underneath the public persona, lifting the lid on what makes these people tick whilst making us think and smile and empathise.

To imagine something being created now that is still running, and as good as ever, in 60 years time is almost impossible to imagine, but DID will be that age next year. A remarkable feat that is a testament to it’s creator Roy Plombley and the simpler days of pitching ideas, where someone said ‘I’ve good idea’ and someone else said ‘let’s do it’, as opposed to the myriad bullshit of focus groups, test audiences and endless coffee drinking that surrounds the creation of ANYTHING artistic nowadays.

So I live in hope that it survives another 60 years and fills many more lives with joy and maybe, just maybe, if I work hard enough, get lucky enough and sell enough copies of my novels etc I will make it on the show to tell them I don’t want the bible, but do want a lifetime supply of pick n mix.

Well I’m off, I’ve been listening to Martin Pipe’s and Nick Hornby’s and Ricky Gervais’s and now it will be Morrissey’s.
Marvellous.

The world is not all doom and gloom afterall

, sometimes there’s simple genius.

Reading - The last testament of the holy bible by James Frey
Listening to - Live on the Sunset Strip - Otis Redding

How delicious is irony?

Andrew Marr has been a journalist for thirty years. Firstly with the Scotsman, then the Economist and the Independent, which he went on to edit for two years. He’s written for the Observer and the Express and has also become a familiar face on British television as the BBC’s political editor and the writer and presenter of fine BBC documentaries, that have also pulled in more income in book form.

Now I went to journalism school, got a degree in it in fact, and we had to write long-winded and often painfully dull essays on contempt of court, slander, libel, public interest and free speech.

It was perhaps the most distressing part of the whole three years, but we had to be taught, we needed to know, we couldn’t go out into the world of rat-like cunning that journalists inhabit without the knowledge of what we could and could not do.

Now, I’m sure Marr is a fine chap and he seems to have carried the sword and shield of truth and justice throughout his career higher and prouder than many who inhabit that slurry-pit of agenda-driving and misinformation. However, when I read that he was one of the people who had demanded, and received, a so-called ‘super-injuction’ from the high court lest we, the people who have been paying his salary very nicely for those thirty years, should discover the truth behind the jocular grin and the sticky out ears, I was a little perturbed.

Delving deeper did nothing to quell the uncomfortable feeling that Mr. Marr was having his cake and eating it too.

Having held him up to be a man of integrity and objectivity it did not sit well with me that one of the very journalist’s who has made a decent living (no mean feat) from journalism he must have harried and hassled the truth out of many a sticky corner. Always, no doubt quoting the inalienable right for the public to be told what is going on in the lives of those who have outstripped our meagre achievements. How we love to read or listen or watch as politicians, actors, sportspeople and the other celebrity Gods fall from grace as their unwise liaisons, sexual peccadilloes and nefarious dealings are spread out in front of us under the banner ‘public interest’.

Where do interest and mere titillation separate? I’m not sure any of us really know.
But surely the fact that Andrew Marr, respected voice, objective, fair, balanced, was giving us some of this information whilst having an extramarital affair, scrabbling to discover paternity issues over a small child and generally carrying on like a Tory backbencher from the Major years sits a little crooked.

Now I couldn’t care less if a politician or any other public figure gets off by dry-humping Louis Quinze furniture as long at it doesn’t affect the way they do their job. In fact for some artists to do their job they HAVE to do certain things the rest of us find distasteful or downright bizarre.
So what? Hump away!

What is harder to stomach is the idea that a journalist, who has made a life out of winkling the truth out of others, and presenting these truths to us for our delectation, might feel he deserves to be treated differently when he’s caught with his trousers down.

His admittance of embarrassment and uneasiness at gagging his own kind is something which only partially excuses his actions. I wonder if next time one of his sources tips him off to an unsavoury story concerning two families, a small child and questions of ‘who’s the Daddy?’ he might lay off.

Call me cynical but I went to journalism school; of course he wont. Saying one thing and doing another is the cornerstone of the hypocrite. Maybe he’ll move into politics, I’m sure he’d find the water warm and welcoming.

Reading: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Listening to: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death by the Dead Kennedys

Dark shadows in the East

So another friend falls from the bachelor tree amidst the sound of creaking limbs and ‘one night only’ wildness. This time with a farewell to single-dom that took place in Slovenia. To be precise the rather wonderful and beautiful capital of Slovenia: Ljubljana.

Now I have never been anywhere without a guidebook since my childhood but there was something very relaxing about going somewhere and not feeling the need to know everything, go everywhere, see everything. It’s something I may take on board the next time I visit somewhere new with the future Mrs. L. It would be a most agreeable change for her I’m sure.

Banter, badinage and japes aside I was still struck by the wholesome nature of the city, small, pretty, sleepy, even the punks were apologetic. There was one thing that did shock though. Something which we have been putting to bed for at least a generation, but something that other parts of the world are unwilling to even contemplate. That is that we are all the same, regardless of colour, ethnicity, creed or sexuality (I’m including religion, you’re ALL crazy).

Seemingly the racist chants of crowds in Italy, Spain and other parts of Europe are not only for the fervent football fanatic. It runs deeper. I’ve heard casual racism in Thailand and other places but was shocked to be out in a modern European capital and have our guide (female, 21, travelled, decent education) happily declare ‘we don’t have black people here, we don’t like them, they are sleazy and disgusting.’ This was such a jolt, so out of leftfield, I wasn’t sure how to react. In fact I hadn’t given a reaction by the time she made her next statement.
‘Do you prefer asians or blacks?’
Still stunned I tried to point out that individual people can be awful or nice, trustworthy or vile, regardless of the colour of their skin. She talked over me by explaining that in Slovenia they don’t mind Asians as much as blacks because at least they work hard.

This wasn’t said for effect, it wasn’t said out of a youthful need to show off, it was so bald, so ingrained and so effortless. I didn’t know what to say.
Later as the poor Stag (now a poor married man) Will wandered the rather hip, cool ‘city within a city’, where graffiti is king and cheap green shots flow like brackish water, another shock.

‘you’re friend’ said one harmless looking pot-smoker as I said hello to his dog, ‘is he a faggot?’
Again I was stunned into silence, as my brain raced to come up with something, anything, that may answer this question.

Do eastern European homophobes honestly think that all gay men dress in a giant afro wig and polyester disco outfits? On the evidence of his question it seems they might.

Staggering.

(For the record Will is not gay, despite same sex boarding school)
So as we continue to shrug off the shackles of our recent Empirical past and deal with the fall-out and the repercussions and the guilt and try to find a place in our Country, and our heart, for the plethora of peoples and cultures that we so happily took from, before deigning to allow them to come here to do the jobs we couldn’t possibly do ourselves (help people, serve people, clean up after people) bear one thing in mind.

We are doing something right, we are doing something righteous, we, who come generations after the Raj and the rubber plantations and the slavery have, at least, shown that tolerance is not only everyone’s right, regardless of any prejudice that may still lurk within. We are able to let it go and allow people the freedoms they deserve.

As for Slovenia, if you want to be in the EU and be included in our gang for protection and financial support, you may want to try and understand the irony of a small nation, trying to find it’s feet, being allowed to do that by the bigger boys and girls. Please join us in the present and leave your past behind.

Just read: The True History Of The Kelly Gang – Peter Carey
Listening to: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – Smashing Pumpkins

Libya, or Operation Blind-Eye

Libya, oh Libya, that encyclopaedia, oh Libya the tattooed lady. (Almost © Groucho Marx ‘At The Circus 1939)

So the UN had got it’s panties in a bunch over another oil-rich nation. Funny that. The axis of evil, or the axis of ‘people the American government can’t do business with because they want to do what they wont rather than what we tell them to do’ has fallen foul of the international community once more. And suddenly fighter jets are covering a no-fly zone, hurried meetings and proclamations from the mouths of politicians fill the airwaves. Words like democracy and despot and nutter are flung about as the western media moguls line their ducks up alongside those they put into power, here and in the U.S.

Is Gadaffi any more power-crazed than George Bush Jnr with his direct link to God, or Tony Blair who was on Libyan soil pretty recently (2004) where he declared we must ‘move on’ from the pain of the past (PC. Yvonne Fletcher, Lockerbie etc), could that have had anything to do with the other thing that was happening there at the time (As Mr Blair met Mr Gaddafi, it was announced Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell had signed a deal worth up to £550m for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast (BBC News)) surely not, and you would be a ‘nutter’ to suggest it.

The attitude of the west to these dictators is so mind-numbingly hypocritical as to leave one breathless.

The arrogance and sheer barefacedness should be shocking but cause nothing more than another world-weary shrug around the world.

Iraq – here have some weapons. Oh look he’s got weapons, destroy him!
Burma – Burma, erm, Myanmar, erm, where? democracy, dictatorship, civil liberty, erm, do they have anything apart from suffering people, like oil and stuff? No? right, moving on.

Iran – nuclear power? Right, let’s get into there. But you’ve got nuclear power, yes, but we are non-violent and serene and worldly. You are just the cradle of civilisation.
Zimbabwe – oh, yes, tricky one, come back to us when everyone’s starving to death.
Niger – never heard of it, next.
Rwanda – no words to describe that vile colonial-ethnic abortion.
Fiji – oh yes, nice water, erm, beaches? Next.

Obviously solutions to these horrific humanitarian catastrophes are well beyond the mind of most of us, there are no neat and tidy answers to any of them, but stopping a military junta from controlling its people by policing with the military of a few select OTHER countries through the UN (the picture of Colin Powell holding up a vial of clear liquid in the UN before invading Iraq still haunts) is ludicrous.

Put it this way, if you’re a poor, average, working citizen and the skies above your country buzz with bombers and the ground rumbles with approaching tanks I would be wondering a) whose side are they on? b) whose side shall I say I’m on? And c) I wish we weren’t the 9th largest oil producer in the world? Or maybe we could see some benefit from OUR country’s riches.

My heart goes out to them one and all, normal people ripped off, downtrodden and coerced by their own people, and the people coming as their ‘saviours’.
From some nightmares there is no escape.

Reading – Tintin and the Red Sea Sharks
Listening to – Creedance Clearwater Revival – At The Movies

HBO

Home Box Office. A TV station started in the 60’s, that showed the ‘Thriller in Manilla’ in the 70’s, started making their own films in the 80’s, a pioneering cable channel, the first satellite channel and for me the finest example of television available in the 21st Century.

The list of remarkable HBO television is long, from The Sopranos, Deadwood, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Generation Kill, Flight of the Conchords, The Wire and Six Feet Under. The Larry Saunders Show, Entourage, The Life and Times Of Tim, Boardwalk Empire, Treme, and my new fave Eastbound and Down, the quality, audacity and envelope-pushing displayed by the little company from Manhattan, that grew into an independent monster, is astounding.

(The list is huge and I wont list everything but take a look, it’s mind-blowing)
And the reasons behind this extraordinary programming? It’s simple. It’s the reason Larry David pitched up there for Curb, the reason The Wire was so vast, all-consuming and sprawling, the reason David Chase felt his ending of the Sopranos was THE ending, and that reason is that HBO trust the writer, they trust the creator, they are a bastion of creative protection. They give the creator/writer the ball and say run with it, allow your characters to breathe, allow your story to unwind organically, we trust you, you are the best, do what you like.

What an incredible feeling that must be, what empowerment, what fulfilment.

Anyone who saw the patchy but often spot on ‘Episodes’ recently, or any of the other shows that lay out the experience of writers within film and television, has some understanding of the head scratching, the bullshit, the lies and sheer monstrous power of studio execs when it comes to making TV for the masses. I pity the writer who, having sat through a meeting with 12 people, none of whom get what you’re trying to achieve, each hand you a script covered in red pen, most of it contradictory, and tell you to come back it 2 days with it all changed.

Test audience scores, advertising pressures, the bible-bashing lunatics, the share-holders, the high-ups who are desperate to cover their ‘ass’. And the subsequent crap that rolls downhill smothering the creative process will kill a good idea dead, as surely as if the writer has been taken down a side alley and had their imagination shot.

HBO doesn’t have that. HBO you pay up front and by doing so you are trusting them to deliver often brilliant adult comedy and drama, without the soul-searching, hand-wringing and moral panic attached to swearing, violence and sexual content stifling the output.

In this context HBO are a shining beacon of hope. Brilliant people given free rein to create and execute what they feel is right, treating the audience as grown-ups, exploring themes and characters to provide life-altering viewer experience.
Thank you HBO and long may you continue to stand up for all of us who want to see life as it is, not through a studio filter with all the edges shaved off.
To paraphrase Kenny Powers, you’re fucking out, HBO are fucking in.
Peace out.

Reading – The True History Of The Kelly Gang – Peter Carey
Listening to – The Boston Baseball Band – Go Red Sox!

Is there anybody out there?

Watching Professor Cox on the rather magical 'wonders of the universe' two things occur to me.

One, how did someone so interesting and intelligent have anything to do with a song so execrable as 'Things can only get better'?

Two, how can we take life seriously when we (by we I do, of course, mean incredibly smart chaps like Cox) know virtually nothing about the universe in which we live?

Certainly the mindbending knowledge already in human possession is a laudable feat; space time, relativity, quarks, gravity, atoms and the rest, but the shortfall is astounding. For example our galaxy revolves around a black hole and everything in existence will eventually be sucked into it, or not, or we will never get close to the event horizen to find out, or we will, or we'll be destroyed by something hitting the planet, or not, or the planet will get rid of these beastly upstart human beings, who've only been around for a few hundred thousand years, and continue happily on it's life journey (over four a half billion years and counting) with barely a moment's hesitation.

I'm beginning to see why some people believe in a invisible man in the sky who threw it all together for his own amusement in 6 days (the 7th was presumably used to catch up on his Sky Plus recordings).

In an infinite universe amongst infinite universes it seems unlikely, why bother? However, I can see that having a nice little delusion to hide behind rather than go through the head-scrambling alternative as us athiests have to might give some relief, whatever gets you through eh?

Now, as a man whose grasp of astrophysics is chiefly made up of watching Red Dwarf I love the fact that Professor Cox and his ilk hand us this information in easily digestible chunks. What I don't enjoy is the nagging feeling in my mind that occurs at least twice daily that all in all nothing is important, nothing has consequence, there is no great scheme and we are adrift with nothing but hope, bizarre belief systems and fledgling space exploration for chums.

A feeling that is only intensified after watching a clever bloke tell me that indeed we are doomed, the planet is doomed, the whole of human history will one day soon mean absolutely zip, nada, nothing.

I guess that means I can have another beer...


Listening to: The Galaxy Song - Monty Python
Reading: K-Pax - Gene Brewer

Obsession

We're a curious bunch us men. What is about us that makes us so prone to obsession?

Sure, women can be capable of the same proclivities, try Valentino, The Beatles, Take That, shoes, but ultimately women have a stronger grasp on the ridiculousness that true obsession brings. Maybe it's the fact that they can grow new people inside them or something. No, to truly grasp the horror of obsession we need to look to the male.

Certainly many men avoid the curse of the obsession too, wisely continuing on with their lives as if unimportant transient things were just that, but for the rest of us? Forget about it.

The soon-to-be Mrs. L will gladly tell you of the months spent eating Italian food, drinking Italian wine and trawling Bristol for cannollis during my Sopranos phase and my recent trip to LA was marred somewhat by my need to tick off 'Entourage' locations.

I wont even begin on Liverpool, That is for a whole blog of it's own (once and only once I promise).

For those of us with the curse there is nothing to be done, whether it's Dylan, Zappa or Neil Young, a sports team or sport itself (cyling, mountain biking, snowboarding, climbing, you get the idea), traction engines or the complete works of Alan Moore, once gripped a man stays gripped.

My formative years had a few: Spiderman, The Smiths, The Doors, 2000 AD, alongside the aforementioned Liverpool, but I thought in my later years I would be free, or at least able to free myself.

Apparently not.

My new obsession is all-consuming, ludicrous, wonderful, exhilarating. It has taken over. It is baseball. Major League Baseball. A new world designed perfectly for an obsessive.

RBI's, the bullpen, pinch hitting, strikes and balls and bunts and grand slams. ERA, boxwrap, National league, American league, relievers and closers, fly balls, pop ups, ground outs, double plays, wild cards and walks, bench clearing rucks and reversing the curse.
There are no end to the rules, the history, the rivalries, the players and coaches, the wonderful ballparks, and the not-so-wonderful (Tropicana Field anyone?).It's the obsession that keeps on giving.

I know it's daft, I know it's ridiculous, I don't care. Sure, you can trace this new obsession back to me getting a Blackberry for the first time, with its built in MLB app, or you can point to the future Mrs. L letting me keep ESPN America on the Sky package. You might even, if you knew me well, see that the pain, consternation and utter contempt in which I hold my old true love, football, has left a chink, a door ajar, in need of exploration. My obsessive nature needed somewhere to go. Whatever. I am hooked and the very fact it is slightly mad only adds to the joy.

Obsession should be unfathomable to everyone else, that's the point, that's one of the best things about it. Only those obsessed with the same thing get it. It's a club, a secret society, something of our own.

And as for Fenway, the Green Monster, Yawkey Way, Pesky's pole, Sweet Caroline and Dirty Water, the Curse of the Bambino, winning it all after an 86 year wait, Schilling's sock and Manny being Manny, staying faithful, and everything else Red Sox: I'm in.

Someone once said, love the game and it will love you back, I agree unconditionally, whole-heartedly and without reservation. Take me baseball and do with me as you will.

Listening to: Neil Young - Le Noise
Reading:Bright Shiny Morning - James Frey

A writer's life

Well, I've finally gone and done it. 
One might imagine that as a writer the last thing I need to do is to give myself MORE writing to do. That is, however, erroneous.


The more a writer writes the more a writer writes. 
Let me explain. 
Many of the greatest writers have talked about procrastination, the feeling that anything is preferable to actually sitting down and writing. F. Scott Fitzgerald struggled to convince his wife that staring out the window for hours was writing. Douglas Adams said he loved the sound deadlines made as they whizzed by.

Indeed from my own experience there is no surer sign that I am not writing than an emptied dishwasher, a clean floor, a tidy bookshelf or a good honest weekly shop at Tesco. A full fridge and freezer is testament  that no words have left my head and made it to the page that day. Conversely a slovenly front room, dirt trodden into the hallway and an empty biscuit tin mean that I am off, away in my flight of fancy machine from which I need to be shot down, if I'm to rejoin the rest of you people in what we loosely describe as society.

And there's the rub, the more I write the more I will write. Ergo a blog is a natural facilitator of the process, a loosening of the muscles if you will, a warm up.

So I hope you will bear with the self-indulgence and let me continue to search for the right words by laying down some wrong ones before the main event.
Toodle pip.

Reading: Faithful by Stuart O'Nan and Stephen King 

Listening to: Mozart, The Magic Flute