All back to mine...

Shutdown

2004-12-19T16:54:00.000Z

(0 more posts)

"...My farewell e-mail reads:
Farewell to thee
I'll pass through your world with ease
Like wind blowing through the leaves

My head they tried to wreck
And i just laughed and said:
Guess who lost the go in the go for it..."

This party's over. I'm going home.

2004-12-19T16:46:00.000Z

(1 more post before shutdown)

So this is it. The end of the line. All change. After nine months of posting, it's time to go.

I'm going to post this, post the final post, turn off the computer and kill another drink? for good.

I hate goodbyes. They make me feel sick. And besides - I'm off out to the pub one last time with the lads in a bit, and there'll be enough real goodbyes there to break my heart without having to go through it all here with you.

I will say this though. I hope you've enjoyed reading. I hope you've been informed, educated, and most of all entertained. I hope everything works out; I hope things just keep getting better. Take care. And always remember: dreams never end. The sun also rises.

...

2004-12-19T16:06:00.000Z

(2 more posts before shutdown)

I want to cry. I want a drink.

I've just realised something...

2004-12-19T15:12:00.000Z

(3 more posts before shutdown)

...Nobody blogs at the weekend. Here I am on an inescapable deadline (sometime this afternoon the computer will be turned off, the leads unplugged, the monitor and tower thing and keyboard and speakers and printer packed into boxes), here I am on my last day of blogging, my last day in London, my last day of living alone... here I am with three more posts to go EVER: and nobody's there.

After today I won't even be able to read your comments or access my email for a couple of weeks. It takes that long to transfer a broadband account at Christmas, apparently.

So that leaves me here, alone, talking to people who can't listen. I'm a voice in the wilderness; I'm the man behind the soundproof glass; I'm... I'm that guy you walk past in the street, slumped against a doorway in the rain with an upturned hat on the floor and a dog on a string, shouting at you, desperately trying to make you understand, furiously trying to tell you something. And nobody's listening. Walk on by, baby. Don't look back.

There's always a price

2004-12-19T11:36:00.000Z

(4 more posts before shutdown)

Endings, beginnings. They're inseparable, they're yin and yang, two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. They're... symbiotic.

Of course I'm excited about Oxford. Of course the idea of spending the rest of my life with The One has me looking forward to every single moment of it. Of course I want to get out of my flat in North London and into the House of Laughter and Forgetting on the banks of the Isis... but I'm still sad about leaving London. I've got advanced nostalgia for it already. I'm sad about the fact that my spontaneous drinking with P and S and N and M and Ourkid simply won't happen again. I'm sad that we're not going to win another quiz night in the pub together; I'm sad about the fact that our Wednesday night European football sessions won't happen again. I'm sad that S won't be popping in for a cup of tea or a bottle of wine at random times of the day or night again. I'm happy as a boy can be that I'm moving in with The One... but I'm sad that there's a price to pay for it. And there is a price. There's always a price.

Endings are the price we pay for beginnings. Sadness is the price we pay for being happy. You can't start a new life without leaving an old life behind.

London Bridge to Highbury Corner

2004-12-19T11:28:00.000Z

(5 more posts before shutdown)

I came back from The One's for the last time just now. London was beautiful. On the 43 bus from London Bridge... the pale winter sun dancing silver and gold off the Thames - east all the way to the mini-Manhattan of Canary Wharf, past the clumsy stateliness of Tower Bridge and about 2,000 years of history; west towards the Tate Modern and St Pauls, the crucifix on top of the dome golden and too bright too look at, and beyond to Blackfriars, the South Bank, Waterloo, Parliament, with the Millennium Wheel just visible in the background... and then on through the city and Moorgate, past the weird mix of imposing ancient and brash chrome-and-glass modern... even the lopsided jumble of Old Street, the faded grandeur of The Angel Islington and the flotsam and jetsam of Upper Street on a Sunday morning looked kind of beautiful.

London looked like it looked the first time I ever saw it.

My flat

2004-12-17T22:09:00.000Z

(6 more posts before shutdown)

I'm having a Friday night in. Woohoo! Jingle bells! etc

On the other hand, however, I'm also in rather a reflective mood. This will be my last night in alone EVER in my flat. I moved here in 1999, just as things went horribly awry with The Anti-One, and if my first few months here were horribly unhappy and my last year-and-a-bit here really very happy indeed, the time inbetween has been... a state of some ambivalence.

I work here too, of course. This is my home and my office (my home office). There have been times - whole weeks nearly - when, thanks to a surfeit of Duty Free cigarettes and alcohol, I've not so much as stepped outside for days on end. There have been other times when I've hardly been at home at all. I've thrown up and had sex in every room in this flat. I've fallen asleep or passed out in every room in this flat. And one time on the stairs outside. I can direct taxi drivers to this flat from central London - in my sleep. My postman, the square caretaker, the newsagent, corner shop owner, post office man, Chinese takeaway lady, the bloke in the chipshop and two greengrocers all say hello when they see me. My insane turkish barber once bought me a pint in the local pub.

My most promiscuous and most lonely years were spent fucking or not fucking people in this flat. I've fucked strangers, work colleagues, friends and one chick whose name I didn't even know here. (She spent precisely 58 minutes in my flat - I know that because I put a Faithless album on when we arrived and it finished just as she left.) I've fucked a lot of people I didn't really care about or even liked that much here. But I've spent more time wishing I was fucking here than actually fucking here.

I've spent more hungover days in this flat than anywhere else I've lived - and I've drunk more here by myself than anywhere else I've lived. I learned how to drink alone here... roughly at the same time as I learned how to work alone. (I should have written something about the pleasures of drinking alone. I probably won't now - or if I do, you'll have to pay to read it, like everyone else.)

And this is my last night here alone. I've got the bottle of red, naturally, and there is a little vodka to finish off if required. By rights I should be in a pair of shorts playing Grand Theft Auto and eating a bargain bucket of fried chicken and either fucking or not fucking someone I don't really like that much, too. Or passed out in the kitchen. Or some sordidly enticing combination of all the above.

Instead... instead of that I've wrapped some christmas presents, packed some boxes with essential reference books (The Guinness Book of Hit Singles, the Virgin Encyclopedia of Pop, a Stone Roses biography, a thesaurus), made myself a curry and put a last load of washing in. Of course, it is only half ten, the night is young, there's still time for all that... but if I'm being honest (I'm always honest - it's my saving grace, my heroic flaw) the night won't end in one last goodbye-to-the-flat blowout. Apart from anything else I don't want to fuck anyone other than The One ever again. I'd rather eat roasted vegetables with her than fried chicken on my own. I'd rather wake up next to her than on the sofa, or the floor, or the stairs. She doesn't really get PlayStation, obviously, and I'm not about to say goodbye to drinking too much yet, but then you can't have everything. The point is: I'm ready. I'm ready to say goodbye to my flat. I'm ready for the next place.

Guns of Brixton

2004-12-17T18:28:00.000Z

(7 more posts before shutdown)

Last night contained two firsts.

We went to see The Charlatans at Brixton, courtesy of a friend who sorted us with free tickets and aftershow passes; and after the gig, as we hung around by the VIP bit waiting to flash our laminates and get shown through, I met my first groupie. (I say "first" here as in "the first I've met", not as in "the first of many I will meet", natch.)

She was, admittedly, gorgeous. Blonde, willowy, shitfaced... everything a boy could ask for. She grabbed me round the waist and whispered into my ear: "what does a girl have to do to get backstage round here?". I was too taken aback to think of anything clever to say in reply, and besides, The One was stood right next to me, looking murderous. "Umm, you need a pass," was about the best I could manage.

Brilliantly, she then turned to The One herself: "You're a girl," she said, "you know what it's like - can you get me backstage?"

The One told her in no uncertain terms to go fuck herself. The groupie's comeback was perfect. "Looks like I'm going to have to at this rate..."

As if all that wasn't enough excitement for one night, as we finally reeled out of the party at 1-30 or so and into the nearest minicab office we nearly got shot. All seemed fine - the old geezer behind the counter stated a price, we agreed, he pointed to a row of cars outside and indicated we should get in one. We did. The owner of the car went ballistic.

It turned out that the one car we picked, casually letting ourselves in and telling the driver "Blackheath please mate - and can you turn up the radio?", wasn't actually one of the waiting minicabs at all, but just some bloke. His door shot open, our doors were flung open... "get out my fuckin' car you cunts!" he yelled. As we stumbled out, the real minicab driver appeared and pushed the man back against his own bonnet.

"Don't you call my customers cunts!"

"Your customers got in my fuckin' car, you cunt!"

"Who you calling a cunt?"

Meanwhile a third minicab driver told us to get in his car and hurry up about it. We did. As we drove off we saw the first man indicate a shooter in his waistband.

Groupies and guns and rock 'n' roll all in one night. This, children, is what you get when you go south of the River.

Neither fast nor furious

2004-12-15T23:33:00.000Z

(8 more posts before shutdown)

By the way, can I just say that it's rather difficult to concentrate on writing a profile of Britain's most successful post-ironic punk-pop girlband when the gayest film in the world ever is on in the background. Vin Diesel - I mean, really. Stop kidding yourself! Get out of your muscle car and kiss him, you fool!

Indian summer

2004-12-15T22:55:00.000Z

(9 more posts before shutdown)

Another bottle of wine tonight. (Chilean white - I am nothing if not democratic in my drinking; global even - and I feel guilty visiting vineyards from the same continent two nights running. I guess in that sense I'm like some kind of hoary Rolling Stones world tour: if it's Wednesday, it must be South America - "helloooo Santiago!")

I keep meaning to have a night off the sauce - and then something keeps happening to send me back to the pub and the off-license, to revisit the corkscrew and the glass. Last night it was S and his following of the star to my flat (I bring Gold, Frankincense and... Booze!); tonight it was getting a phone call asking for 1,600 words on Girls Aloud by tomorrow afternoon.

Trust me bambini, that kind of shit can't be written sober; that kind of deadline can't be met clearheaded.

My nightly insobriety is nothing new, of course; I've been drunk just about every night since I turned 18, but of late I've increasingly come to realise that I'm no longer the most together person of all the people I'm drinking with. In fact, these days I always seem to be the most drunk.

On Sunday P, N, S, P's mate S2 and I met in a pub in London's fashionable East London for a few beers and the top-of-the-table Arsenal Chelsea match. Naturally the tension of the occasion demanded the drinking pace be quite, well, demanding; and of course as the match progressed and tensions rose, the pace increased. After final whistle we decamped to another pub (one where people weren't actually fighting) and had a few more. And by the time last orders came around I was shitfaced. I mean - arseholed. Mullered. Banjaxed. Off my fucking tits.

Everyone else seemed ok. Everyone else, in fact, was amused by just how pissed I was. And it didn't make any sense. I couldn't understand it. The whole thing was quite... confusing.

Time was when even as all hell broke loose around me I'd still have enough shit about me to find a taxi, to order the right kind of kebab, to wake up (most of the time) with the right person and in roughly the right environs. Time was it was always someone else who fell over first, someone else who threw up first, someone else who had to be shown the door or escorted home. These days... these days that person has been me an awful lot.

You'd think one would build up a tolerance, not have that tolerance eroded over time. You'd think that after years of practising, I'd be able to drink for real by now, keep it together for longer. In the logical course of events you'd think I'd start as the pissed friend and end up as the together friend, not the other way around, surely?

Not that I'm concerned of course. Not concerned in any "we're concerned about you" way. I mean, it's a bit embarrassing being the most pissed and all, but hey, whatever. In fact, I'm considering it a last blowout. As from five days time my life will be all vegetables and country air and quiet nights in by the log fire and shit anyway. These are... my salad days. My dog days. This is my Indian Summer.

another list?

2004-12-15T02:07:00.000Z

(10 more posts before shutdown)

In the absence of anything new or interesting to tell you about, and in the interests of letting the death scene milk itself for a while, I'm going to follow the time-honoured tradition of making a list rather than actually doing anything. This post will teach you nothing; it will enrich your lives in almost no way whatsoever; it probably won't even hold your interest to the end... but it will give you an insight into my day. You lucky things.

So. Things I did today.

1. Made a list of things to do today.
2. Watched Tony Blair on This Morning, followed by Darius on This Morning. That's right - our Prime Minister appeared with Philip and Fern (just after an item on preparing roast potatoes). And he wasn't even top billing.
3. Started to sort through the contents of the sideboardy thing I keep my decks on top of. Filled three bin bags full of rubbish, including utility bills from 1999 and no less than four incomplete decks of cards.
4. Took a break from that to furiously smoke cigarettes, drink about a litre of coffee and try not to cry after coming across a bundle of letters from The Anti-One... including her final letter in which she apologised for ruining my life.
5. Came very close to keeping the letters. Then burned them.
6. Went out and bought more fags. Wore biggest coat and woolly hat to disguise the fact that I hadn't actually had a shower today. Or bothered to really look in the mirror in any significant manner.
7. Took a phone call - from a magazine I've not written for before - asking me if I would be a laddish agony uncle for them. Pointed out that I'm already exactly that for another magazine. They said it wasn't a problem. Told them - in that case, I'm listening...
8. Filled a binbag with clothes for the Charity Shop.
9. Filled another binbag with old trainers.
10. Had an enormously frustrating conversation with a simpleton in a call centre in Newcastle about transferring my broadband connection on Monday when I move. Managed to stop myself using the phrase "Shut up and just listen, you Geordie bitch..." but only just.
11. Printed off all outstanding invoices.
12. Took them to the post office, along with 22 Christmas cards for commissioning editors - frankly I couldn't care less just how merry their Christmas is, as long as they remember to commission me again afterwards. (And the cards, postage etc are tax-deductable.)
13. Wrapped The One's present.
14. Gave up on doing anything constructive, noted it was 6pm, watched The Simpsons.
15. Took a call from S - he was at the bottom of my road with two bottles of Australian white. Hurrah!
16. Drank two bottles of Australian white with S whilst taking the piss out of CSI Miami.
17. Watched Fistful of Dollars and finished off my last bottle of Baileys.
18. Idly surfed for porn for a while... but my heart wasn't in it. Will there be porn after The Move, I wonder? Considered finishing off my last bottle of vodka - and then looked at the time and thought better of it.
19. Sat and made a list of things I did today.
20. Err, there is no 20.

Everything's going to be as beautiful as I feel it will be

2004-12-13T22:39:00.000Z

(11 more posts before shutdown)

And now we enter our last week. Despite the pessimism of some it seems that exactly one week from now The One and I will be drinking champagne and eating fish and chips in the House of Laughter and Forgetting on the banks of the Isis in the City of Dreaming Spires.

"Our" last week. That's "our" as in - my last week in London. My last week blogging. Your last week reading anything (new) on here. Our last week together. You and me - we're on a deadline, baby, we've got one eye on each other and the other on the clock. After next Sunday... well, it's all new for me, and all old for you. The woods decay, the woods decay and fall. The sky bruises - and we must be gone!

Let us sit upon the floor, and tell sad tales of the death of Kings...

So, will I miss you? Of course I'll miss you. I'll read you, naturally, but (for me at least) reading is nothing compared to... being read. Your comment book, your email, it's ok - but it's nothing compared to... being read by you. I'll miss pissing you off (hunny), I'll miss provoking you (kitzi, raspberry), I'll miss making the same cultural references (newly). I'll miss making you wish you were more pissed, more hungover, more arsey and obnoxious and arrogant (everyone). I'll miss wondering if in different circumstances I could pull you (everyone else). Which is not to say I won't still wonder what it would be like to have sex with any of you (I wonder what it would be like to have sex with almost everyone I meet, read, see, listen to, or hear about)... just that I won't wonder so specifically.

When I started this The One and I had been an item for about five months. And about nine months later we're moving in and my whole life has changed. When I started this I called her The One from the start - and in retrospect it's obvious why. I obviously knew. I was obviously, well, right. It's interesting though - the first other blogs I read were Si and Newly - and both were attempts to chronicle the aftermath of a breakup. Si quit his after he got over his breakup; Newly recently talked of doing the same. In nine months everything changed for them. The next blog I started reading was Tamara and Allie. Allie doesn't even post anymore; and Tamara has fallen in love. Nine months - everything changed. I've wondered a few times exactly what the purpose of these online journals are and it seems to me they're (the interesting ones at least) chronicles of change. They're snippets of lives in flux, is what they are. Even if at the time of starting, the change isn't planned, comprehended or anticipated. All good blogs are about change. And once that change is achieved... well then the blogs decay, the blogs decay and fall.

I'll say this though... and then I won't dwell on endings until the end: everything I've said is true. And everything I've said I've meant. And I miss Allie. And I'll miss talking to you. And I've been drunk for, ooh, 70 per cent of my posts. And I'm banjaxed now. And I hope everything's going to be as beautiful as I feel it will be. And I know everything's going to be as beautiful as I feel it will be.

The Good Life

2004-12-09T13:53:00.000Z

(12 more posts before shutdown)

So then! Finally... The One and I have exchanged contracts on our Dream Home in Oxford - the House of Laughter and Forgetting, as I've now dubbed it. We pack up her two cats and Terminator X the goldfish and wave two fingers at London for the last time on December 20th. From then on it's Tom and Barbara all the way...

On the way to a tres swanky magazine's Christmas party last night we stopped in at John Lewis to look at kitchens. The fridges and ovens, sinks and worktops - they were easily far more exciting than the free cocktails and all-you-can-eat canapes that followed. What does this say about me? That I'm old enough to get more excited about a Smeg fridge than I am about gratis alcohol? Or that my familiarity with free caparinhas has finally bred contempt for them?

Today I've given up on doing any actual work. So we've got a whole shitload of fees and expenses and bills and mortgage payments to make... whatever. I'm surfing for fitted bathroom designs!

(BTW - I move in 11 days; there are (after this) 11 more posts before shutdown. Anyone else think sometimes there is harmony in the Universe after all?)

Dude! Sweet!

2004-12-09T13:47:00.000Z

(13 more posts before shutdown)

I'm not normally one to post things I've read elsewhere... but I couldn't resist this. From this week's popbitch:

>> Celebrity California Stupids <<
Gwen is, like, oh my god, dude...

Gwen Stefani on songwriting:

"Tony called me and I was like, 'Dude, I suck.' And he was like, 'Dude, come over.' So I went to his house and a bunch of our friends there were playing these tracks that Tony was doing that were, like, stupid. I was like, "You did not do these." And he's like, 'Yep, you wanna hear your tracks?' And I was like, 'Nuh-uh, you did not.' So he pulls out this one and I'm like, 'Oh my God, that's my song.' "

Thanks, Gwen...

The end of Harry Potter

2004-12-07T01:09:00.000Z

(14 more posts before shutdown)

Jesus. You people. Methinks the ladies doth protest too much?

The last thing I'm going to say on the subject is this: my main objection to little Harry, the thing I say about how immersing yourself in pretend, simpleton worlds stops adults thinking properly, stops them thinking for themselves... the blustering indignance, the frantic naysaying, the kneejerk agression of your responses all go to prove exactly my point.

And that will be the very last rant on this blog. Admit it - you love it, you dirty cows.

Sucking Robbie Williams' cock

2004-12-02T22:15:00.000Z

(15 more posts before shutdown)

Over heard on the bus today, around 3-30pm, as we passed a billboard advertising Robbie Williams' Greatest Hits album:

First 13-year-old schoolgirl (SG1): Robbie! He's well fit! I love Robbie!
Second... etc (SG2): I love him more! I love you Robbie!
SG1: I love you Robbie! You fit motherfucker!
SG2: I'd fuck him!
SG1: Ewww! I wouldn't fuck him. He's a slag innit. I'd suck his cock though.
SG2: I'd suck his cock and then fuck him.
SG1: Would not.
SG2: I fuckin' would.
SG1: Not if I sucked his cock first.
SG2: Slag.
SG1: Bitch.
SG2: Fuck off slag.
SG1: You fuck off bitch.

...and so on, for the length of Upper Street in Islington (a good 10 minutes at that time in the afternoon).

I was the only one on the bus laughing.

WPWRHPADSIAAPRINSWFHFUTAGG*

2004-12-02T21:01:00.000Z

(16 more posts before shutdown)

*Why People Who Read Harry Potter Are Dangerous Social Inadequates And Are Probably Responsible In No Small Way For How Fucked Up Things Are Getting Globally.

Okay, so the last rant wasn't the very last rant after all. It never is though, is it? Like the last dance, the last fuck, the last drink... there's always an encore, always one for the road. Well, blame a certain Raspberry for this one. She, literally, asked for it.

I hate Harry Potter. I mean, I don't hate anything, really, but I hate that little four-eyed shit. I hate the people who read him, anyway. The adults who read him.

It's not a religion thing - worship who the fuck you want, kids - it's a... social adequacy thing. What I hate is the fact that adults, grown-ups, decision-makers, family-raisers, voters, the people who are supposed to be running things, read Harry Potter and think it's simply marvellous. It's a children's book. It's a book for children. And I don't care how well they're written, children's books are children's books for a good goddamn reason.

In the world of Harry and chums, things are very simple - there's yer good guys; and there's yer bad guys. There's left and right, right and wrong, black and white. The good guys always win. The bad guys always get their comeuppance. It's Scooby Doo, basically. (If it wasn't for those meddlin' kids...) It's a simplified, childish view of reality. It's not reality at all. It's a make-believe world.

In the real world, the world adults have to deal with, have to create and form and make better for their children, things don't work like that. The good guys aren't all good, the bad guys aren't all bad. Right and wrong are often matters of opinion, or geography, or religion, or upbringing, or luck. There are no black or white decisions - only varying shades of grey. And those trying to do the right thing don't always succeed. And those doing the wrong thing don't always get their comeuppance. Sometimes... bad things happen to good people, and the beautiful die young, and the innocent get fucked and the devil takes the last bow. Sometimes shit ain't fair, kids, and that's the world.

Dealing with that, understanding that, is what being an adult is all about.

Adults who read Harry Potter, however, kidults, to use a particularly tabloid phrase, they don't want to believe in the real world. They read children's books because they want things to be black-and-white again, they want the world to be clear-cut and obvious, with clearly defined good guys and clearly defined bad guys. They want to know (for example) that every Iraqi is a terrorist (hey - guess what? NO Iraqis are terrorists! No Iraqi has ever perpetrated a violent act against the United States unless in self defence! None! Ever!); they want to know (for example) that their Western, relatively modern (in theological terms) religious belief system is superior and more correct than any others and that that knowledge gives them the right to forcibly impose that religious belief system upon everyone else; they want to know (for example) that the use of Napalm against civilians in Fallujah is justified because of... because of all of the above. Because we're nice democratic Western Christians and they're a bunch of raghead heathen bastards. Because we're the good guys and anyone who isn't us is a bad guy.

Adults who immerse themselves in children's books so much as has happened with Harry Potter are blindly groping towards a childish view of things, they're running away from all the grey areas that make up the real world. They're trying to escape having to deal with reality - in all its difficult, morally-complicated, brain-hurting, conscience-examining, thought-provoking forms. They're trying to escape having to THINK.

And that's why I hate the little fucker. He's stopping adults from thinking properly, from thinking for themselves.

(It's not just young Harry of course - but he started it. Flick through your last few years' cinema listings... what do you see? Scooby Doo, Scooby Doo 2, Spiderman, Spiderman 2, X Men, X Men 2, The Hulk, Godzilla, Lord Of The Rings... I can't be bothered going on. But this kidultness, this childlike moral stance for adults, it's dangerous. It gets Last Action Heroes elected in California, it gets simpleton genocidal maniacs second terms in the White House, it gets innocent people killed.)

Mi vida nonsensica

2004-12-01T16:07:00.000Z

(17 more posts before shutdown)

I've just written 2,012 words for a national newspaper headlined "How A Nazi Scientist Created Flying Saucers… For The Americans".

When I've calmed down I have to start on 1,600 words for a woman's glossy feature about the secret techniques boys use when they're pulling chicks.

This morning I had to fight not to rewrite my album reviews for this week because I said that Cher's leotard in the video for Turn Back Time scares me... and the editor thought it might be a catsuit. We had a 20-minute discussion about it before she agreed to simply changing the word "leotard" in my review to "catsuit".

At some stage I have to phone up my solicitor and ask her why we haven't exchanged on our dream home in Oxford yet.

My life is ridiculous.

My pants

2004-11-30T14:22:00.000Z

(18 more posts before shutdown)

My poor pants*. They don't know whether they're coming or going; they don't know whether they're wet or dry, whether they're being washed or being aired. What they're indisputably not doing is being weared**.

My flat is still on the market (we've worked out a way to move on the sale of The One's flat alone... but sustaining two mortgages will be little short of crippling, so selling mine too is becoming a matter of some urgency) - in fact, it's on the market with two estate agents. Consequently it's available for viewings all day every day (come: view! Take a look around! Picture yourself living here! Picture your sofa there, picture your pictures on the walls! Picture yourself cooking in my kitchen, sleeping in my bedroom, washing your face in my sink! View! View... and then buy!) and, because I work from home, I often get minimal notice that people are on their way round. Of course I don't want to be here when they view... so I've been doing a lot of sitting in the pub by myself of an afternoon.

Anyway. I've been trying to keep the place in a state of some tidiness and attractiveness, but sometimes things can slip. Like - when I do washing. On Friday I washed my pants; on Friday evening I put them out to dry on the little rack by the radiator. I had heard nothing of weekend viewings and figured I'd be ok. Friday night I went to a gig with The One, leaving pants out and steaming. At 8pm I get a message - can we do a viewing at 10am Saturday?

The One lives a good hour and a half away from my flat, right across the city. So for the first time since God knows when, I find myself up at eight on a weekend morning and training, bussing and legging it across all London town in order to get here in time to hide the pants. Back in the machine they go, and I'm out of the flat again by 9-45 to meet P for a spot of breakfast.

I'm back by 11 and the pants - still damp - are duly replaced on the rack. At 11-30 I get a call: can we do a viewing at midday? Pants - back in the machine. Me - back to The One's to prepare for the dinner party that night.

When I return to the flat on Sunday evening, the pants have been in the damp washing machine all weekend... and so I wash them again. Sunday night - pants are back on the rack.

Monday morning I get another call. Can we do a viewing at one and then another at three? Pants - back in the machine.

It's now Tuesday lunchtime and I've just put the pants back on the rack after washing them all for the third time in five days. I've also been wearing the same pair since Sunday. One more viewing and I'm microwaving the bastards.

* Pants - not in the American sense of trousers, but in the British sense of... undergarments. Smalls. Trolleys. Particulars.

** Yes, I know that strictly speaking weared is not a word - but it rhymes better.

Hangover supplemental

2004-11-29T22:00:00.000Z

(19 more posts before shutdown)

The thing about hangovers is this: they work on opposites. They fuck you up physically, sure, and the physical symptoms are too obvious and too immediate to warrant any kind of explanation (bent double over the porcelain, reaching for the bucket under the bed, crouched fetal on the bathroom floor...) - but it's the mental symptoms that do you, in the end. The mental afflictions associated with the hangover - they're what fuck you. And it's because they work on opposites.

When you're hungover you can't stay asleep... and yet waking is hell. You can't lie down - the rollercoasters! - and yet you can't stand up for falling back down. You're freezing cold... and boiling hot. You sweat... and shiver. A cigarette seems like the only thing that can save you... and as soon as you light one you want to throw up again. A drink, a hair of the dog that bit you, could top you up and sort you out... and yet the very thought of the pub knocks you sideways. Same with Full English Breakfasts. Same with Children's TV. Same with social interaction. Same with being alive.

And that's the thing about hangovers and opposites. Hangovers fuck you up because they remind you more poignantly, more immediately, of humanity, of what it is to be alive right now, than anything else. The hangover is a thrillingly potent affirmation of life - look at me! To live through this, to survive this, to be conscious of this pain, this misery, this self-inflicted hell... now THAT is proof that I'm truly alive! Touch me! I'm sick! - and yet, when you're hungover, all you really want to do is die...

When you're hungover you're far more alive than when you're drunk - every single cell in your being is screaming its existence, weeping and gnashing and begging you for mercy... and all you want to do is stop. All you want to do is make it all numb and quiet and dead. When you're hungover you're conscious of every single facet of your existence... and you're weeping for oblivion. That's the thing about hangovers and opposites. That's why hangovers are hell.

Tonight I have been mostly...

2004-11-28T23:32:00.000Z

(20 more posts before shutdown)

...lying in the bath in a flickering candlelit semi-dark, listening to Gilles Peterson and sweating off the hangover.

Today's hangover was hell; today's hangover was war. It started off as localised skirmishes around the back of the eyes as I struggled into consciousness, it started with border troubles at the temples and at my nerve-endings; and by midday had developed into serious political instability around my stomach. Initial attempts to diffuse the situation by flooding the area with peacekeepers in the form of Nurofen, Lemsip, weapons-grade coffee and Marlboro red, only worsened the civil unrest - all it did was make my hangover angry. By mid-afternoon my hangover upped the ante and invaded the rest of my body. The situation went global... and there was nothing to do but run the bath, soak the shivering wreck of my being and let the fucker exhaust itself. It's now 12 hours since I woke and I feel the battle may be turning in my favour. The sun also rises. Some day this war's gonna end, son.

As so often with these things, the cause of all this distress was small enough. The One and I had a minor dinner party for three friends round her place last night (oh, we're so in our thirties and work in the media). Naturally we didn't want to have a running-to-the-off-license situation... so naturally we bought six bottles of wine and 24 beers just in case no one actually brought any booze of their own. Of course we started cooking, tidying, preparing around 1pm yesterday... so of course we started drinking the wine ourselves at around 3pm. And nobody arrived till 8pm. And they brought champagne.

The party itself was lovely - but The One and I were comprehensively hammered before the soup was finished. I remember challenging all comers to a game of tennis (?). I remember doing my impression of a cat. I remember telling someone about my brief career as a purveyor of class A drugs to the upper classes (another time, kids). I remember demonstrating how Ewoks dance. I don't remember anyone going home... but I do remember insisting I do the washing up before going to bed as The One crashed out on the sofa. I remember having the fantastic idea of pouring all the odd bits of wine left over into one glass so I could keep drinking as I washed up all the other glasses. I remember having to do four separate loads of washing and drying because it seemed we'd used every single goddamn knife and fork and spoon and plate and bowl and pan and dish in South London. I remember The One asking me what time it was as I woke her up and put her to bed. I remember telling her 4am and I was just going to smoke one last cigarette and finish the last glass of wine before joining her... and then suddenly it seemed to be this morning and my body was in social, physical and economic meltdown.

And now? Now all soapy and mellow from the bath what I really fancy is a glass of merlot. But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to go to bed. I'm going to go to bed and read until I fall asleep... because that - and not cat-impressions and drug stories and pissed sporting challenges and ewok-dancing and obsessive washing up until four in the morning - is what adults do.

Sundae girl

2004-11-23T23:47:00.000Z

(21 more posts before shutdown)

Oh - and before I leave this to finish the Merlot and watch Rambo (no, really!) - Raspberry, my love, I promise to bring my old opinionated know-all head out of retirement one last time to tell you why People Who Read Harry Potter Are Dangerous Social Inadequates And Are Probably Responsible In No Small Way For How Fucked Up Things Are Getting Globally.

Um, just not today ok? Sylvester Stallone's been dropped back in 'Nam and he ain't bloody happy about it!

PS - I will say this though. The War Against Terror - has there ever been a better acronym?

Like a venereal disease

2004-11-23T23:04:00.000Z

(22 more posts before shutdown)

So then, there's a new fad in town and (loth as I normally am to gaze at anyone's navel but my own) I'm far too tired after spending the day writing about
* Victoria Beckham
* When Men Are Ready To Commit
* Next week's album releases
* The Truth About Flying Saucers
to bother thinking of anything original of my own to say. So... the way it works is this. A very fine man mentioned me when he did this, so I have to mention three weblogs I enjoy reading, and we all mutually masturbate ourselves (metaphorically speaking, natch) into a nice warm fuzz of literary achievement...

(Sorry - that sounded way harsher than it was supposed to. I was just trying to give myself spurious ironic distance. I love it really.)

First: The Hun. Or the Odd Child. She's got bags of talent and almost no direction whatsoever and I like that about her most. She also takes shedloads of drugs and has a fairly filthy sex life and I like that about her too. And I think she's everything that's good and bad about this medium - horrifically self-obsessed, monstrously narcissistic... but entertaining enough to make it a virtue. One day she'll start writing about something other than herself - and it will either be brilliant... or terrible. Until then she's a sharp shining shaft of potential.

Second: Tamara. I fell in love with Tamara almost as soon as I read her. (Actually, to be perfectly honest, I fell in lust with the idea of Tamara and Allie's Californian chick-flat: the pyjama parties! the steamy secrets of the shower room! the giggled intimacies and... ok, I'll stop there.) Um, anyway, once I'd got over that I fell in love with Tamara. She does short sentences perfectly. No, really. I mean: perfectly. She's beautifully honest, refrains from unnecessary self-pity, swears pithily and in another life I would happily attempt a trans-Atlantic seduction. And if all this is making you want to vomit... remember that at the beginning and the end of it all is the fact that I consider her the best writer I read on the web.

Third: Newly Single. Or rather - Newly Shaggable. (Form an orderly queue ladies - and watch out for the fluffers.) And not because he's written about terrible experiences with great dignity and nothing in the way of self-bigging-up hyperbole; and not even because he's not attempted to ascribe any great meaning to what he's going through (a trap most bloggers seem to fall into) - but simply, fundamentally, because he seems like a Good Bloke. He reminds me of my eldest brother, in fact. He's... brilliantly English, in all the best senses of the word. And if I were to meet him in real life we wouldn't even talk about this self-indulgent nonsense. We'd talk about football, and chicks, we'd talk about kebabs and Belgian beer: and I can't think of a better recommendation for reading anyone's blog than that.

So there we have it. Another little blog-fad passed on... like a venereal disease in the underpants of your hard drive. Scrub your smalls well tonight, liebchen!

Beer and football and violence

2004-11-19T20:29:00.000Z

(23 more posts before shutdown)

I'm having a night off tonight. (By which I mean I'm having a night in with a bottle of £4.99 Australian red, as opposed to a night out with the boys and the Guinness.) It's a self-improvement thing; an economy thing; it is, as Homer Simpson so beautifully puts it, drinking with the Lord.

To be honest I'm exhausted after the England match on wednesday. If the atmosphere in the Bernabau stadium, Madrid, was, um, heady to say the least; the vibe in the pub in London's fashionable East London where we watched it was also somewhat strained. To wit - too much Guinness and lager, too much tension, too close to actual, immediate violence.

It was S. He was wound up. Work things, chick things, whatever (who knows?). The football was obviously not helping matters - seeing England not only play badly but subject to horrific racial abuse is not conducive to a relaxing pint - but, really, P, M, Ourkid, D, K, and M's brother (and myself) all seemed to be coping well enough. Not so S.

We were sat in the kind of corridor bit between the big screen and the bar. It was a squeeze to get past.

Random Large Shaven Headed Man (RLSHM) bumps into S: Oh, sorry, mate...
S: What?
RLSHM: Sorry.
S: You think that's good enough?
RLSHM: What?
S: I said YOU THINK THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH?
RLSHM: What?
S: I do NOT appreciate being elbowed in the back.
RLSHM: What?
S: You think it's funny? Elbowing me in the back - you think that's funny?
RLSHM: You fucking what?
Me, P, K, etc: Alright mate, don't worry about it...
RLSHM: Wanker.
S: What you say? WHAT YOU FUCKING SAY?

etc.

This continued on broadly the same theme for, ooh, 90 minutes or so. Ahh, the fun. How anyone made it home without a trip to Casualty still eludes me.

Oh, by the way...

2004-11-17T23:43:00.000Z

(24 more posts before shutdown)

We're not going to Australia. The One turned the job down. We've spurned adventure in favour of... bliss.

The last rant

2004-11-17T23:25:00.000Z

(25 more posts before shutdown)

Call it disillusionment. Call it boredom. Call it... anything you want to, baby, but I've been thinking about why I do this and I'm having trouble coming up with any viable answers.

So at the beginning it was a laugh and I didn't expect anyone to read. And then I realised some people were reading and I started showing off. And all through that time it was a big penis-waving "look at me!" ethos that drove my nocturnal literary emissions - look how drunk I got last night! Look how in love I am! Look! Look! Look!

And then I started getting bored with telling drunken stories and in love stories and realised that even more people were reading and started trying to educate. This is the theory of the Anti-One. This is the theory of Pornography. This is what I think and I'm right because I'm cleverer than you. (I am cleverer than you, by the way.) And then... and then I started with the politics and now, frankly, I'm bored to tears.

I am bored to tears with my own blog.

Look. I write for a living. All I do to earn money is write stuff. Sometimes I write what I'm told - what do you want me to think? What line do you want me to take? - and sometimes I'm told to write what I think. Either way, what I do, the way I pay for my beer and my sandwiches, my bread and my circuses, the roof above my head, is write.

And, to cut a fucking rambling point short, I'm tired of having to think of new and interesting things to educate you with. I'm tired of having to explain the theory of the Anti-One, the theory of pornography, of why you shouldn't vote republican or even why Harry Potter is such a dangerous little shit... I'm tired of doing it because that's what I do for a living anyway.

So here's the deal. From now on - no more theories, no more politics, no more education and no more judgement. From now on it's just about what it was in the beginning... look at me! I'm shitfaced again!

World of twist

2004-11-09T17:24:00.000Z

(26 more posts before shutdown)

There's a documentary on tonight; it's about how man landed on Mars. (Or Venus or somewhere.) Or might have done. It's part of a series about man landing on various planets. Or how he might have done. And how it might have looked, what might have happened, how it might have been done.

It might have been very thrilling, the world might have gasped - ooh! - the men involved (and women, let's not get totally down on the chicks here; yer average Doris might be just as adept with a space pod as the next man. Or woman) might have gone on to become leaders, presidents, ambassadors for a whole new age of tolerance and understanding... hey! The world might have been a beautiful place.

Fine.

A year or two ago the British TV sensation was a series called Walking With Dinosaurs. Shot and presented in the style of all natural history films since Attenborough, it followed the lives and loves, the births and deaths of various stegasauruses (stegasauri?), diplodocuses etc with remarkably candid and lifelike effect. Except of course, it was all made up. At best it was guesswork. We don't even know what goddamn colour these animals were.

But didn't they look pretty!

I saw another documentary recently. It was about what might happen if there's another Ice Age. The oceans might rise up and flatten East Coast America, wipe out Japan; Europe might be crushed under the unstoppable weight of an unstoppable ice cap moving unstoppably southwards. All human and animal life might be obliterated.

Like wiv those dinosaurs innit.

What is it with all this conjecture? We live in an age of supposeds. These documentaries, these "natural history" shows, are based solely around what might have been, what might have happened, what might be true. There are no facts. Or if there are they're used only as stepping stones to fantasy and are therefore debased, rendered redundant. (Man walked on the moon. The moon is in space. Therefore... man could go anywhere in space!)

These aren't films I'm talking about. These programmes are calling themselves documentaries. They're literally pretending their fictionalised account of reality is reality.

Is the real world, the actual world, all the genuine history and recorded fact just too dull? Have we so fully explored the lives and loves, the births and deaths of all the actual animals in existence that we have to make up stuff about animals that died zillions of years ago (fuck the monkeys, give 'em pterodactyls!)? Are the real instances of genocide, huge-scale human suffering and natural catastrophe so dull that we have to invent scenarios exploring new ways to show assured human destruction (earthquakes in Turkey? Bollocks - let's have... an ice age!)? Are our achievements not so impressive that we have to pretend we've been to places we'll never go? (Holidays in the sun? Nah. Show 'em man walking on the sun)?

You want to know what I think? I think it's all symptomatic of how scared we all are. We're scared of reality, scared of what we've done to the real world; we're scared of ourselves, what we've become. And so, like children or victims of extreme trauma (self-imposed trauma, in our case) we're retreating into a little make-believe world, a fantasy world... where we Walk With Dinosaurs, where we surf the next Ice Age, where we explore whole new planets. And presumably, don't fuck them up quite so badly as this one.

(This by the way is why adults read children's books like Harry Potter - because they're too weak-minded to cope with the real world... but I won't start on that one. I'll leave the speccy little bastard for another day and another beating...)

Whizz! Crash! Bombs go off!

2004-11-05T22:44:00.000Z

(27 more posts before shutdown)

Fireworks! God, I love fireworks! The fifth of November, Guy Fawke's Night, and all across merrie old England the skies are lit like it's Day of the Triffids...

I got in from the pub at about 10-30 (I met ourkid, S and N for a few early evening looseners at around 6pm - once ourkid had told us about his childrens-ITV-presenter-snogging exploits of the night before (oh, yes!) everyone's thunder had been stolen somewhat and the evening petered out by 10pm) and I've spent the hour or so since cross-legged in front of my window with a glass of Bailey's, a pack of Marlboro, an ashtray and a tube of Pringles... gasping, ooh-ing, ahh-ing and generally losing myself in the wonder of the rockets, the whizzers, fizzers, boomers and blasters across the London skyline. Kids - I fucking love fireworks!

From my flat I can see the displays from Barbican to Finsbury Park, from Kentish Town to Hackney - and to say it's a full-on, lights-off, eyes-wide and window-open experience is to only get halfway there. It's blatantly the most fun I've had alone in my flat since last November 5th.

Which reminds me - tomorrow is The One and mine anniversary...

The Hollow Men

2004-11-03T13:51:00.000Z

(28 more posts before shutdown)

Oh, you stupid wankers. Everyone's laughing at you - and not in a good way, either.

This is the way the world ends - not with a bang but a whimper.

A letter to America

2004-11-01T17:58:00.000Z

(29 more posts before shutdown)

Dear Americans

Please, just for once, try not to do the stupid thing. Just for once: stop, look and listen before you vote. Just for once, put aside kneejerk prejudices, jerkass reactionism and asshole ignorance and THINK before you make a decision that could endanger yourselves and all those (few, dwindling) nations who consider themselves your allies.

I know neither candidate is exactly the right man. But just as surely as innocent deaths follow illegal invasions, as overbearing and ill-earned arrogance provokes nothing but scorn and hate, one of the men is overwhelming the wrong man.

Vote for the wrong man tomorrow and you will surely condemn yourselves to four years of pain, stupidity and a dumb slump into injurious self-pity. Vote for the wrong man tomorrow and you will inspire nothing more than contempt from the rest of the world - allies included. Vote for the wrong man tomorrow and you frankly deserve everything you get. I mean it: you've got a chance to turn the whole situation around - vote for the wrong man and IT WILL GET WORSE.

And if you don't know who the wrong man is... then you've already fucked up.

Sweet dreams - and don't have nightmares.

Love

The World.

PS - Thanks for all the memories. You can have them back now... they may be all you'll have left.

PPS - We'll keep The Simpsons though, cheers.

Old world/new world

2004-10-30T01:25:00.000+01:00

(30 more posts before shutdown)

So then, as someone infinitely more Shakespearian than I once said, when troubles come, they come not as single spies... but in battalions. We have new developments. New spanners thrown in the works.

As keener readers will be aware, The One and I are moving out of London. Moving in together and out of London. Moving to Oxford and A New Life. I'm going to continue freelancing, she's going to eighty-six her job in Beauty Journalism and freelance too. We're going to live in our beautiful terraced house on the banks of the Isis with the cats and the garden and the vegetable patch and the real fire and the evenings in and the lovely pub at the end of the road and it's going to be as damn near perfect as a boy and girl could ever wish for.

And then today the spanner was thrown. Today The One was headhunted. She was offered a job. She was was offered a job as Beauty Director for a very prestigious magazine. It's more money, more perks, more prestige; it'll set her CV up for life. And it's in... Australia. Effective immediately. We'd be in Sydney by Christmas.

Of course, I'll follow her to Australia and beyond, I'd follow her to Baghdad if that's what she wanted... and a year ago, six months ago, we'd be down the Embassy right now sorting out visas - but we're about four weeks from exchanging on our Dream House for Chrissakes. We've built up one Ideal; and now, suddenly, out of the blue, we're shown an Alternative Ideal. Until today, all I ever wanted was four weeks away from happening: a beautiful house with the girl I love. Until today, The One felt exactly the same. Now... we're not sure.

Part of us wants to say fuck it, one last time, one last hurrah, let's blow it all off and have an adventure, let's go to Australia and let the devil pick up the pieces - and part of us just wants to, like, grow vegetables and work for ourselves and drink wine on the sofa watching the cats sleep by the fire in our lovely house on the banks of the Isis.

And the maddest thing is, I think I'm leaning more towards the latter. Don't get me wrong - if she wants to go to Australia, I'm going with her and it's going to be the most amazing thing that ever happened to us - but all in all, I kind of feel (to quote a better lyricist than me) my wandering days are over. I must be getting old.

John Peel RIP

2004-10-26T15:49:00.000+01:00

(31 more posts before shutdown)

This is very sad news. I used to collect Peel Sessions records obsessively - I used to buy singles by bands whose music I had never even heard simply because I had read somewhere that Peel was into them. I first heard The Jesus and Mary Chain on his radio show. Likewise Joy Division. Likewise My Bloody Valentine. Likewise The Streets. And any man who lists Teenage Kicks by the Undertones as the Greatest Record Of All Time is always going to be sorely missed.

The only upside of the whole affair is that Radio 1 have been playing Sombre Indie all day. The news may be sad, but at least the soundtrack is fantastic.

The rollercoasters

2004-10-26T01:08:00.000+01:00

(32 more posts before shutdown)

Oh my head. My poor head. What have I done to you? I've been in Isabella's metaphorical Switzerland for most of the day, hiding from the Hangover Nazis (they've not so much been sniping at me as blanket-bombing, blitzkrieging, rolling in the Panzer divisions and sending in the heavy artillery). Do I feel bad? Put it this way: I've felt better. In fact, I think I've spent the whole of my life thus far feeling better than I do today. I'm hungover for England.

Yesterday, was of course, the football, Manchester United versus Arsenal. And that of course meant arriving in the pub at 3pm in order to get a seat and a couple of Guinness down us before kick off at four. Naturally the drinking pace picked up as the match progressed and the tension grew... and if I'm being honest, I'd say that by final whistle (shortly before six) we were drunk.

And then we had a few more to calm down.

And then we headed off to another pub to play pool. Seven or so games into what was turning into an epic doubles encounter (me and P verses S and N - we were 4-3 up and growing stronger with every fresh pint) we were challenged to a match against a couple of blokes with tattoos. Who, it transpired, were fresh out of jail that day and had spent even longer drinking than we had...

Of course, the sensible thing would have been to lose graciously, make our excuses and leave. So what did P and I do? We fucking hammered them. Twice. The second time I even did that raise-your-head-and-wink thing that Tom Cruise does in the Color of Money as I potted the black. One threat of "a serious kicking" later, we were out of that pub.

P went home. S and I headed to another pub... to have a few more to calm down.

It couldn't have been much past 10pm but I was as drunk as I've ever been. I had to leave S when the rollercoasters kicked in. We were sat on stools at the bar and he was telling me something incredibly important - and behind him the room kept slipping. If I concentrated it righted itself; if I looked back at S it slipped again. The rollercoasters are horrible enough when you're in your own bed - when you're a mile away from home and don't trust yourself not to throw up on the bus, they're pretty much the worst thing in the world.

"Gottago," I mumbled and I was out of there. I remember nothing more... until I woke this morning fully dressed on my bed with an uneaten plate of toast next to me. I've taken this as a sign of maturity - a year ago it would have been fried chicken.

For once I'm in awe

2004-10-22T01:48:00.000+01:00

(33 more posts before shutdown)

This guide to surviving a hangover is absolutely brilliant. I love her, whoever she is. If only for this paragraph:

"Shower. This is a neutral phase. You can stay here as long as you want. You are safe here. The shower is like Switzerland. You're the Jew. The hang-over is a nazi sniper. I recommend you sit down in Switzerland and stay here for a while."

Seriously. Brilliant.

Addiction

2004-10-21T20:40:00.000+01:00

(34 more posts before shutdown)

So there seems to be some doubt/disbelief/relief/celebration about the whole shutdown situation... but the reaction du monde seems mostly to be scepticism. To reiterate, this weblog is now on a deadline, it's on a timeline, it knows its date of death. In 34 posts' time, it will be no more.

Why will it happen? Will it happen at all? What have I set myself a date-of-death for? What could persuade me otherwise? Let me illustrate by means of a story... and tell you about another deadline I've set myself.

Part One: The Story

While I was (briefly) at University I knew a girl who was studying Psychology. I met her in the first week of our first year there, when she approached me at the bar and asked me to be her three-year case study. Apparently, as part of her course, she had to pick a real-life subject for psychoanalysis, and after nine terms of counselling, inkblot tests, word association games and the like, present a fully-rounded psychological profile. She didn't know me... and that's why she chose me.

Of course, being an eternally narcissistic sort, I was only too happy to oblige, and for the four terms I was there, all was peachy keen and psychologically sorted. And then I got kicked out. Before I left I apologised, profusely. After all - I'd fucked up her course, she would now have to find a whole other case study.

"You know what the real choker is?" she said. "You were the easiest case study I could have hoped for. You were textbook. I mean - you were right off the page..."

I was - I am - apparently, a classic addictive personality. ("Thankyou very much," I said. "So people just can't help but get addicted to me?") According to that girl and her textbook I will gamble until I lose everything - or win everything. I will drink until I'm drunk or there's nothing left to drink. I will take whatever drugs are around and I will keep taking them until I run out or something dramatic happens to stop me... and so on.

Grim, huh? Well - not exactly. Because, apparently, the other classic sign of the addicitve personality is the setting of deliberate and indelible targets. And whether they're personal targets, career targets, gambling targets, health targets, whatever... the addictive personality will make a goal and stick to it, for better or worse. (I'm not leaving this poker table until I've won the lot; I'm not leaving this pub till last orders; or... I'm quitting all drugs NOW; I've found The One and I'm going to be monogamous forever...)

Part Two: The Other Deadline

I started smoking when I was 14. I started for the only reason anyone should ever start - to be cool. (Have I told you this already? Apologies if I have, feel free to skip through to the asterisk * mark.) We had moved to Manchester that year and I wanted to cut it with the cool kids. That meant smoking, and that meant I became a smoker.

And you know what? I loved it. I still do. I love smoking. Anyway...

*From the very start of my smoking life I set myself a deadline. I didn't want to be one of these sad people who are always quitting and restarting, who tell themselves they hate smoking even as they reach for the Silk Cut - I was going to smoke Marlboro full strength or nothing, and I was going to smoke them until a very specific day and then I was going to stop.

I will quit smoking for good the day I find out I'm going to be a father. I said it when I was 14, and I stand by it now. As soon as I know I'm going to be a Dad, I'll smoke my last fag. And guess what - it'll be easy. I've set myself a deadline and despite everything else I've fucked around with, I've always kept deadlines. For 18 years now I've lived with that deadline... and that's why keeping it will be easy as anything.

Why? Because the humiliation of not keeping it will be so much worse. Because I have a textbook addictive personality and that means that keeping the quitting deadline is exactly as important as maintaining the addiction - because it's part of the addiction.

In a way, for any addiction, the quitting deadline, the date-of-death, is not only part of the addiction, it's the very raison d'etre for the addiction...

And that is why, bambini, there are only 34 more posts to go.

Reunion Blues

2004-10-18T17:42:00.000+01:00

(35 more posts before shutdown)

The beautiful Tamara has been writing about her recent school reunion here and it's reminded me of mine. Which wasn't so much a parade of happy memories and rekindled friendships... as an evening of complete non-recollections and reconfirmations that wankers generally remain wankers all their lives. People I couldn't remember ever seeing before in my life were behaving like arses... and when I pointed them out, I was told: "don't you remember him? He was an arse at school as well..."

As I've said before (and the Libertines said before that) we'll die in the class we were born.

So anyway. I went to school up in Manchester, and four years ago, neatly tied in with the Millennium Celebrations (the millennium - how yesterday does all that seem now? How... last century?) they had a reunion for all those who left in 1990 and thereabouts. So of course, me and the boys all made the trip up north, hired the Dinner Jackets, tied each others' bow ties, slipped a bottle of vodka in the inside pocket for old times' sake, and duly went along.

You know, I've always had a theory that reunions in general are essentially worthless exercises - for the most part I've deliberately stayed friends with the people I wanted to be friends with and lost contact with everyone else for a damn good reason. There are exceptions, but it's mostly true, and that night pretty much confirmed it. Besides - those few people I did have an interest in seeing again were far too cool to come to something as bourgeois as a school reunion.

Before dinner, as we all stood around awkwardly sipping Bucks Fizz and flicking ash into the plants, I recognised precisely one person. A girl.

"Who's she?" I said to S (who I was at school with and now live five minutes' walk away from in London). "I recognise her. What's her name?"
He stared at the chick. "No idea. Doesn't she look a bit young for our year?"
She did look a bit young. And cute, as it happens. Perhaps, I figured, she knew my little sister, who went to a nearby school and left three years after me.

After dinner, a speech from some Scouser who never even went to our school about what a great place it was and still is, and a great deal of cheap red wine (included in the price) to dull the horrific forced cheeriness of it all, I found her by the bar.

"Look," I said, "this isn't a line or anything, even though it's going to sound like one - but do I know you? You can't have been in my year because I would have definitely remembered your name..."

It was a line of course. I couldn't remember the name of two-thirds of the people in my year.

"You do know me," she said. "I used to work in the pub on my summer holidays from University. I had to get the landlord to throw you and your mate out once after he punched the fruit machine."

And that's how good I am at reunions. There I was, surrounded by people I had spent five days a week for five whole years with, people I had grown-up with, had my first snogs with, had my first drinks and smokes with... there I was, surrounded by all the people who had surrounded me through my most formative teenage years and I couldn't recognise any of them.

But I see one girl - one girl across a crowded room of my peers and erstwhile confidantes - one girl who served me beer for a couple of months one summer six years ago, and I'm onto her like a shot. This either says something fundamental about reunions... or something fundamental about me.

Oh - and since you're wondering, nothing happened between me and her. All she remembered about me was how often I used to fall over.

A sober interlude

2004-10-15T19:17:00.000+01:00

(36 more posts before shutdown)

So then. The One has accepted an offer for her flat, our offer for the Dream Home in Oxford has likewise been formally accepted, the mortgage application (it gets complicated - we're having to get a stopgap mortgage until I can sell my flat - for a while, we'll technically have two mortgages and, um, no money) has gone through okay, the solicitors are getting ready to solicit, the surveyors to survey... and barring disasters, gazumpers or bad luck, we've been told we're going to be moving in "within six to eight weeks".

After two months of boredom and frustration, where nothing seemed to happen and it felt like nothing ever would, suddenly things have picked up pace. Suddenly we've got a deadline. Suddenly the whole Rest Of Life Together reality of it all has kicked in. Suddenly we're going to be living together by Christmas. This Christmas and every other Christmas for ever. And I don't mind telling you, I'm shit scared.

Of course, I'm ludicrously happy about the whole thing. But scared too. Part of me can't actually believe that she wants to go through with it. Sure - I'm a charming bastard, I spin a good line and don't look so bad across a candelit table... but I'm also lazy, arrogant and have borderline addiction issues. I would fuck me - but I dunno if I would want to move in with me.

She, on the other hand... I wanted to move in with her from our first date (I wanted to fuck her on our first date too, of course). I don't call her The One lightly - and full of shit as I normally am, when it comes to her I'm straight down the line. And you know what the strangest thing is? She gets that. She gets it.

Lemsip and vodka chasers

2004-10-14T19:36:00.000+01:00

(37 more posts before shutdown)

What's the best thing to do when you've got a cold?
Go clubbing!

Er, actually it's not. But that's what I did anyway. Last night, by half-time in the England v Azerbaijan game (we won 1-0, thanks for asking. Owen, with his head, midway through the first half. A sweet cross from Ashley Cole connected on the right side of the six yard box and headed back across the keeper) there were five of us in the pub - me, P, N, M and S - and all five of us were variously hacking, sniffing or blowing into hankies. And drinking Guinness.

"More iron in Guinness," said S, sniffing.
"Good for you, innit," said P, coughing.
"I feel like shit," said I, massaging my temples.
"Me too," said N, rubbing his eyes.
"Do you think they'll give me a Lemsip and vodka to chase my pint with?" said M, blowing his nose.

The game finished at 7-30pm. The boys did the sensible thing, and after having one more for the road (sans Lemsip and vodka, sadly - apparently you need some kind of pharmaceutical license to dispense paracetamol) all shuffled off home. They will have been warm and dry and tucked up in front of the telly by nine. Me - I went clubbing.

The One and two friends were across town in a club that for one night a month plays exclusively music that was made in Manchester between 1984 and 1994. It's clearly the best club night in London and The One wasn't going to miss it. I was missing her... and so I zipped up my jacket, pulled on my Blair Witch grey woolly hat, braved the wind and the rain and made the half-hour walk through the flotsam and jetsam and orange light of early-drinking London to meet her.

"I feel like shit," said I, upon arriving.
"Do you want a Guinness?" said she.
"I've got a Lemsip in my bag you can have for when you get home," said her friend.

A light bulb went on. One pint of Guinness with Lemsip and vodka chaser later and I was King of The World. My nose was clear, my throat was silky, my head crystalline. I was up and on my feet and feeling fine. Are you asking? I was dancing.

I kept dancing till the records stopped and the club emptied and they kicked me out.

"You know, it's amazing," I said to The One as we fell asleep this morning.
"Mmmwhatis?" she mumbled.
"How good I feel. I mean, after the match I felt like shit... but now I think I'm cured. Maybe I've drank the cold away, maybe I've danced away the headache."
"You'llfeellikeshitinthemorning," she breathed and fell asleep.

Today... I'm not feeling so great. I feel like shit, in fact.

Lies, damned lies, and mortgage applications

2004-10-13T15:50:00.000+01:00

(38 more posts before shutdown)

God, I hate forms. I've spent the afternoon lost in a wilderness of mortgage form-filling pain. One application for a joint mortgage - I mean, how difficult can it be? Sure, these things are always going to be a bit complicated... but that's why we're paying for an independant mortgage advisor.

One fax alone this afternoon spanned 29 pages and took me 53 minutes to send. Fifty-three minutes. And because my fax machine came out of the Pyramid of Cheops, every page had to be fed in individually.

It's a bloody good thing the footy's on this evening. Come 5-30 I shall be ensconced in the boozer in an England shirt, waving a pint of Guinness and shouting rude things about Azerbaijan. Stupid Azerbaijanis.

Reality bites

2004-10-12T17:18:00.000+01:00

(39 more posts before shutdown)

I haven't actually earned any money for three weeks. This is what comes of taking a holiday when you're a freelance journalist - you pay twice. Once for the flights, the apartment, the beach towels and so on... and then once more by virtue of not earning anything once you're out there.

Not getting paid holiday is clearly some kind of karmic balance for getting to spend the rest of the year laughing at everyone with normal jobs.

Anyway, today I finally submitted some ideas to various newspapers and magazines. None of them are any good, of course, but that wasn't really the point. The point was to say "Look! I'm back and available for work!" and have them think of their own ideas and commission me to write them again. It's a subtle dance, kids.

Besides, I'm having a problem with motivation. My head is full of memories of the French Riviera, of mornings spent in the Marche Provencale pottering by the olives and the cheese, the vegetables and fruits and fish caught fresh that very morning, of afternoons spent lying on the beach or swimming in the astonishing clear sea, of evenings spent eating those same fish, drinking local red wine by the bottle, strolling along the harbour as the stars come out...

Mes petites, this was all less than a fortnight ago. And compared to it, waking to the October rain and lowering grey of an autumn in North London and sitting at a computer drinking tea, smoking fags and writing all day, does not, I'm sorry to say, hold too great an appeal.

The Great Theory of Pornography

2004-10-08T21:09:00.000+01:00

(40 more posts before shutdown)

So here's the thing. As all of you are no doubt all-too aware (with sweaty palm and moist brow, with quivering lip and dilating pupil), the very means by which you're sating your desires for reading my blog is also the means by which you look at porn. Oh come on, stop pretending. You know you do - you can't help it. The internet - it's porn city, baby; it's a fantasy world of fantastic flesh; it's... Alice does Wonderland.

Of course, naturally, you don't use the internet exclusively for porn - oh no, not you! You're using it to read this, for a start. You use it to write your own weblogs. You use it for work, you use it to check the football fixtures, to read online newspapers, to see what's happening with your favourite bands, to buy books, CDs, to play games, to chat... but let's not kid ourselves completely. You also use it to look at rude pictures.

And you spend more time looking for rude pictures than you do looking at rude pictures. Not because they're difficult to find (they're easy as pie) - but because according to The Great Theory of Pornography, the search is more important, more exciting, than the viewing.

But before we go any further, let's be clear. You're not by any means "into" pornography. Heaven forbid! You bought some magazines as a teenager, naturally, you looked at the lingerie sections in your mum's home shopping catalogues, of course, but it's not like you're into porn. In fact, every time you find yourself coming across a website that tickles your fancy, every time you find yourself coming across a download that pricks your interest... you tell yourself it's the last time. After the final act, with Internet Options up and Delete Temporary Internet Files selected, you tell yourself - no more porn. I'm an adult now, and adult sites just aren't for me.

Before the moon waxes full again you're back. Every time. Every single furtive time. It may be that you even have some CDs hidden at the back of a drawer (underneath the instruction manuals and the backup disks, labelled with something dull and innocuous-sounding) that you slip in and check out from time to time. It may be that you add to them occasionally. It may be that you're building up quite a collection...

Hey, don't feel ashamed. Like I said, that's basically what the internet's there for. Pornography - it's literally in your face.

But here's the thing. There's so much porn out there, so much variety, so many different ways to do the same essential thing, show the same essential parts, act out the same essential roles... there's more there than you could possibly watch if you dedicated the rest of your life to it. And every day it's being added to. You've seen loads already (more than your sweatiest teenage dreams would have thought possible) and yet you keep coming back for more. You're never content with what you've got.

This, my secret fumblers, is the crux of the matter. This is where I hit the nob on the head. When it comes to pornography, you're insatiable. Everyone is. Enough is never enough. That CD you've got - surely now that it's filled with images you won't need to look for any more? That's what you told yourself at the time, right? One saucy CD and that's me good to go. No more surfing. And yet... the lure of the new sends you right back to the mousemat and the old left-click routine.

Pornography is all about the new. It's about seeing something, someone, you've not seen before. Or seeing someone you have seen before do something you haven't seen her/him do before, wear something you haven't seen her/him wear before, smile, pout, grimace in a way you haven't seen her/him do before. For the viewer of porn, the finding is more important than the viewing. The excitement of the chase, the thrill of the new, is ultimately more fulfilling than the lonely moneyshot that climaxes it.

A viewed pornographic picture decays over time, like a sepia-tinted photograph - only in fast-forward, in hyperspeed. Images are drooled over once, twice, three times (a lady) at most... before they feel "used-up", soiled, spent. This is why internet porn is expanding at a faster rate than anyone can keep tabs on, it's why pornography is a bigger business in the United States than the car industry, it's why the adult film industry makes a whole shitload more money every year than Hollywood does - because old porn, viewed porn, is soiled, useless porn. Like a spent Kleenex it's good for nothing but flushing.

The fact of the matter is, when it comes to pornography, there's no such thing as a favourite image, a returned-to photo, an oft-watched DVD. From the filthiest addict to the most casual user like yourself, if you've seen it before, it's not gonna do the trick. It's got to be new. It's got to be... virgin.

Besides...

2004-10-08T01:50:00.000+01:00

(41 more posts before shutdown...)

I couldn't go and leave you for good before I shared The Great Theory of Pornography with you all, could I? Trust me, it's a honey. It's a stud, a bitch, a twink, a babe, whatever floats your boat. It gives good copy. I've been saving it, delaying it, keeping it ripe for you. Tomorrow I'll post it. You'll cream yourselves. There won't be a dry seat in the house...

Okay, I'll be honest...

2004-10-07T22:09:00.000+01:00

I was thinking about not returning. I considered doing a runner, flirted with desertion-fantasies, toyed with the idea of leaving you high and dry and without another drink for the long cold night ahead.

Kids, I came back from holiday and things were just so goddamn perfect out there I forgot about you. And - in the words of Outkast, I'm just being honest - when I did remember, I felt no great need to blog. Sorry.

But then... but then I thought of Tamara. And then there was the Yoda impression. And then there was nothing on telly tonight. And then I looked up my number of posts and it was like, 157. And that seems such a crappy number to end on (like being 17 years old - I mean, really, what is the point? Sixteen you can smoke, 18 you can vote: at 17 all you've got is awkwardness and bad skin. But I digresssssss...) so I figured I might as well make it to a nice round number. And you've got so much to learn. So now there's a deadline. Two hundred. So hear this: at 200 entries to this blog I quit for good.

That means you've got 43 more snippets from me; 43 more pearls to recast before your chosen swine; 43 more reasons to wonder what I look like, who I really am, whether I do drink as much as I claim to, whether I'm a goddamn genius or just another full-of-shit chancer with a smart mouth and a neat way with a semicolon (I'm still wondering about that one myself. Oh! Stopped wondering - I'm a genius!); 43 more opportunities to laugh, cry, or wonder why you never do either anymore.

Okay, I've just realised - that's 42 more entires after this one, not 43. Tempis fugit meine kleine bambini! The sky bruises... and we must be home!

Au revoir

2004-09-18T23:50:00.000+01:00

I go on holiday tomorrow. I won't be posting for a fortnight.

Children - be strong. And remember... dreams never end.

Supermarkets are the pinnacle of Western Civilisation

2004-09-18T23:32:00.000+01:00

I love supermarkets. I think I get more excited in a supermarket than I do in any other public place. They fucking rock.

Here's why: you walk in a supermarket, any time of the day or night (ok, I live in London, they're open 24-hours a day here, you country-livin' folk will just have to bear with me) and it's immediately, automatically, the safest, best-lit, warmest, most comfortable goddamn place you've ever been. Walking through those doors, picking up a basket and past the newspapers to the flowers and vegetables... it's like going back to the womb. It's... comfort. Any time of the day or night.

But I'm not going to go off on one here, because frankly, I go on holiday tomorrow, there's no wine left, and I haven't packed yet. So let me cut to the chase.

Supermarkets have more food, from more places, than any man could eat in a lifetime. They have shit there that I can't pronounce, from places I've never heard of. They epitomise the absolute victory of capitalism... no matter the season, no matter the weather, no matter the economic state of the world, you can walk into a supermarket in North London and buy fruit from an unpronounceable island in the south Pacific and have it for tea that night. Your bog standard sugar snap peas come from Zimbabwe, your onions from Spain, your potatoes from Crete... cod stocks are depleted to the point where there literally aren't enough fish in the sea - and yet you can load up on enough frozen cod in batter to see you through a good few nuclear winters. Olives? Straight from Greece. Grapes? Australian. Sun dried tomatoes? Italian. Raisins? Californian.

For exactly all the same reasons that I shop at the local greengrocers (support your local tradesman/farmer against the rise of global capitalism) I can't resist a supermarket. Forget your arms races and your Nike trainers and your free democratic elections... the fact that I can walk into Sainsbury's and buy fruit and veg from every corner of the earth shows that, in the end, capitalism has won.

Is this a good thing? Goddamn right it is! Those Kiwi fruits are tasty!

All of the above

2004-09-15T23:16:00.000+01:00

Where have I been? I nearly posted last night, as it happens. It's been a week of silence (two if you don't count my cursory last effort) and last night I nearly posted. Thankfully, I didn't. Common sense prevailed. Eh? I hear you cry. What? Well... here's what I nearly posted:

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Man Rediscovers He Gets On Well With Drugs. (And More Crucially, That Drugs Get On Well With Him.)

It's not much of a post, is it? Well, that's why I didn't do it. But to explain...

Last night I got fucked up, good and proper. I rediscovered drugs. More - I rediscovered just how much I like drugs. I've never really told you about me and drugs have I? (Apart from the legal ones, obviously, the drinking and smoking and being in love and being addicted to my own narcissism.) Okay; fine. Sit comfortably, children.

I used to do drugs like they were going out of fashion. The thing was - they weren't going out of fashion. They were indisputably in fashion, they were very much of the moment, they were totally NOW. Drugs: they were so in season it hurt. And kids, I was a fashion victim. I was the first on the muthafucking catwalk. When I was at University I did as much and as often as I could. Whatever I could get my hands on I'd sniff, smoke, swallow... I sold, I bought, I toked and bonged and caned and nosed and downed and drowned in the stuff. I swallowed pills like I was Pac Man; I chased the dragon like I was St George or someone. And, truthfully, I fucking loved it. I was made to do drugs; I got on enormously well with drugs. We were soulmates.

I've said before that I have an addictive personality (people can't help but love me). I've said before that I'm the modern equivalent of the rogue male - I'm the junk male. The fact is, if it's there, I'll try it. The other fact is, that's what got me kicked out of University. And that's why, when I was kicked out, I stopped. Overnight.

Was there cold turkey? No. Was there therapy, detox, doctors and counsellors? Of course not - I'm English. I just dealt with it. It was easy. I stopped all illegal drugs overnight and it was easy.

So for the last 12 years or so I've had a rule. No drugs... unless I'm in Ibiza. And as I'm at best in Ibiza for a weekend a year, that's all been good. (Last time I was in Ibiza I didn't sleep for 72 hours. When I arrived home I passed out on my sofa at 8am Monday... and woke up at 10am Tuesday. That's a coma. I haven't been back to Ibiza since.)

But last night I got caned. I got fucked, walloped, faced. I got ripped to the tits. I went out with P and S, watched the football in the pub with a few pints of Guinness, came home at about 10pm, spoke to The One on the phone for half an hour or so, watched a documentary on the IRA, and then got fucked up. I went to bed about 5 this morning: the sky was blushing with dawn and the first birds were singing. My radio was as loud as it would go. I fell asleep staring at a poster on my wall convinced it had winked at me and all I could think was - goddamn, I've missed this shit. I'd rediscovered just how well me and drugs get on. It was like... coming home.

So, why am I telling you this? A few theories:
1. Because I'm trying to shock crap American God-bothering Bush-voting arseholes from ever reading me again?
2. Because of an overbearing need to confess my sins?
3. Because this is a diary and I can't help showing off (see below)?
4. Because I'm caned again now?
5. Because the thought of telling you about the hellish tedium of moving house, the panic and exhiliration of my current work situation (more later - above, probably) and the fact I'm going on holiday in a few days time so won't be posting anything at all for at least a fortnight after this Sunday is all too much to put in one single entry so I thought I might as well write about something else entirely?
6. All of the above?

You decide. Except, if I'm being honest, I'm only on the vin rouge tonight. And perhaps the real reason I'm posting is because, well, I've written some 12,000 words in the last three days and frankly, none of them have been about myself. And those kind of withdrawal symptoms hit harder than any others.

Paradise lost/found/regained (delete as appropriate)

2004-09-07T11:14:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the protracted silence. I am in house buying/flat selling Hell. More later.

Stars and stripes

2004-08-30T22:25:00.000+01:00

So I'm having an argument courtesy of someone else's guestbook (sorry ourkid) with an American.

Now I have this thing with Americans. A slight confusion in my own head about them. On the one hand - I was born in America; I hold dual UK/US nationality; I've been there many times; San Francisco is probably my favourite city in the whole world (London comes in second, Paris third, with Barcelona a very creditable fourth); and generally, on a one-to-one basis, most of the many Americans I've met have been thoroughly decent people. I can think of at least three American bloggers I read every day (two of them live together - ding dong!) who if I knew in the real world I would almost certainly want to get drunk with.

But this girl - she sums up everything that pisses me right off about America. Perhaps the bits I like are the groovy, enlightened, liberal bits. (She is certainly none of those things.) Perhaps it's that actually, the groovy, enlightened, liberal bits are not actually representative of the nation as a whole. Perhaps the Dubya-voting, WWII-started-with-Pearl-Harbour (and not two years earlier when Germany invaded Poland)-thinking, United-Nations-defying, can't-find-Iraq-on-an-Atlas-but-want-to-decimate-it-anyway assholes actually represent the majority. God, I hope not.

I know that often in this blog I'm down on the Americans. And that's because stupid, insular, you'd-be-speaking-German-if-it-wasn't-for-us Americans do piss me off more than any other people on Earth (and I do mean ANY other - consider that for a moment). But for all you right-thinking Septics out there: don't take offence. I know that all too often a few bad apples can spoil the crop, and that George W Bush technically didn't get the majority of the vote last time around, and that for every person that thinks Arnold Schwarzenegger is the right person to be in charge of the fourth largest economy in the world, there's someone else who gets cold shakes at the very thought of it... I know all this. I know you're not all bad, that there is hope in the proles, that the sun also rises... I know this and deep down I love you all really.

But please, just so we're clear: the fact we're not speaking German really has very little to do with you. And the fact you're speaking English has everything to do with us. Thankyou.

I am looking at you...

2004-08-27T22:31:00.000+01:00

Off to Oxford tomorrow, me and The One and a list of properties to check out. We're viewing houses all day Saturday, going on a pub crawl Saturday evening (the only real way to get a feel for any area) and spending the night at the Randolph, darling. (We would be staying somewhere cheaper, only I screwed up and left booking it until this week. Consequently the only place with a room free on the Bank Holiday weekend also happens to be the swankiest hotel in the whole damn city. Oh well!)

Sunday we have lunch with The One's parents. I feel I should point out that her father looks uncannily like Robert De Niro in Meet the Parents. "I am looking at you," I can picture him saying, with that downturned mouth thing and his two fingers moving from his eyes to mine...

Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented

2004-08-27T00:06:00.000+01:00

I never kept a diary as a child. I never did as a teenager either; and even in my difficult twenties I couldn't see the point. Diaries - they're mostly a chick thing anyway, with their floral covers and canny little lock-and-key mechanisms. And once you break into them (I have sisters) they seemed to be... well, boring. Certainly teenage diaries, anyway. "So-and-so looked at me and winked in double maths," is about as racy as it gets between 11 and 16; "Life is, like, shit and stuff, and only Morrissey understands my pain," pretty much represents the apex of psyche-revealing revelations.

It's not that different for twentysomething diaries - or "journals" as English students and anyone who's stumbled across The Doors/ French poetry/ Brett Easton Ellis novels/ Che Guevera/ Almost Famous insist on calling them. In fact, if anything, they're more embarrassing: at least the teenage diaries were written in a rush of pubescent longing and frustration, at least they were honest. Twentysomething "journals" are often tempered by a desire to create ART and as such seem to end up as mostly awful pretentious shite and bad poetry. With the same "so-and-so slept with me and now won't look at me in the bar; life is, like, shit and stuff, and only Jim Morrison understands my pain," underlying themes.

(Which is not to say that teenage and twentysomething diaries are wholly bad. Just that they're not actually good. If they act as a kind of cathartic release, if they keep some kids from cutting themselves or smoking smack or getting on the high school roof with a rifle, then they can only be applauded. I'm just saying that their literary value is all but zero.)

Because this is the point, isn't it? The literary value of diaries, journals, blogs, call them what you will, is all but zero. Even the diaries of famous people are pretty goddamn dull, at the end of the day (at the end of every day, as it happens). The most famous diarist ever kept a pretty dull diary. Have you ever read The Diary of Samuel Pepys? It bored me to tears. The Great Fire of London is barely mentioned and even the stuff about shagging his housekeeper palls after a while. The rest is... well, boring crap about his life. Who cares?

This is why I never kept a diary. Diaries are motivated primarily out of narcissism. Diaries are kept because the writer wants a reader. (There's no such thing as a genuinely "secret" diary - everyone wants their diary read. Why else would they bother spelling correctly? Why else would they bother writing anything at all? Why do blogs have comment sections, hit counters, visitor logs?)

The irony is - I never kept a diary because I was too narcissistic.

Sure, I scrawled the bad poetry, I formed a band and got angry with a guitar riff and a lyric, I even wrote a whole novel of juvenile angst... but I never kept a diary. I never kept a diary because according to the rules of my own arrogance, people who kept diaries were pussies who pretended they didn't want their shit read because they were scared of being exposed for the shite writers they are. And then what would they do? If even their secret diary was worthless, what release would they have? Me - I was always like: be good, or don't bother at all. Allow everyone to read it... or put down the pen and do something else instead. I never kept a diary because I couldn't see the point of writing anything if it wasn't for an audience. I was a cocky little sod.

Now...? Now every bad poet and wannabe Brett Easton Ellis posts their most intimate shit for a worldwide audience of whatever-billion readers every day. Everyone is putting up, fronting up, writing up. Everyone's become the cocky sod I was 15 years ago. Blogger is awash with the flotsam and jetsam of people's lives. And whilst some of it is undoubtedly good, whilst some people genuinely have good things to say, or at least a good way of saying things (both are of equal value), a lot of it is crap that should never have made it out of the floral covered lock-and-key diary of yesteryear.

And now I'm keeping a diary. I'm keeping this diary, this weblog. You don't know me... but you know all about me. You know what I do for a living, you know (roughly) where I live, you know I drink too much, smoke too much, that I have a somewhat dodgy past; you know about The One, about my pending move; you know how many brothers and sisters I have; you know what I think about love, about dreams, about Olympic badminton finals, and now about diaries.

Would I have written this if I didn't know you were reading it? Of course not! I'm only writing this because I know you're reading it! And that, kids, is why, after all these years of scoffing at diaries and journals and other such literary aides de masturbation, I've clocked up some 25,000 words on this one.

Be honest. How often do you check your comments section? How thoroughly do you preview your posts (with dictionary and thesaurus, with delete key and backspace)? Why are you writing your blog at all? Isn't it because you want people to read? Isn't it because you want them to be your friend...?

Am I being harsh? Probably. Am I being truthful? Certainly. And like Georges Braque (see point about arty French types, above) said: truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented.

Knight errant

2004-08-25T19:30:00.000+01:00

So as if this wasn't bad enough, the thing I really can't understand about Sir Mark Thatcher is why on earth he's a Sir at all? As far as I can see he's done little of anything in his life other than have an evil bitch for a mother and get lost in the desert once during a car race.

So am I wrong? Has Sir Mark actually done anything to merit his knighthood? Anyone? Anyone? Thought not. Stupid corrupt class system. (And the thing is, if my mum was Prime Minister you can bet your ass she wouldn't give me a knighthood. But then she wouldn't destroy the NHS, privatise our core industries, introduce poll tax or generally oppress the tired, the poor and the huddled masses, either... so fair's fair, I guess. Still - Sir Drinkalot has a nice ring to it, no?)

I am a Golden God!

2004-08-25T00:19:00.000+01:00

Exciting news!

So a few years ago I was in a band - we were a fucking good band too, and I wrote a bunch of fucking good songs. We didn't play any gigs or anything, but thanks to my job I got us mentioned as "ones to watch" more than a few times in the press...

We were good - but we were never serious or anything.

Anyway - the band carried on without me and they've only gone and got a record deal! The CD comes out next week! And two of my aforementioned fucking good songs are on it! And it's been reviewed in a national magazine that has nothing to do with me! (The review uses the phrase "sparks with raw energy"!) And it's getting a play on the radio next week! And this evening, the record company boss (record company boss!) got in touch about sending me royalty cheques!

Royalties for rock 'n' roll songs I wrote in my bedroom... seriously: that's just about the coolest goddamn thing that has ever happened (and believe me, I've had a lot of cool stuff happen over the years). And this is clearly the most exclamation marks I've ever used in one posting! Or anywhere! Ever!

To quote the Beastie Boys: let's go crazy fuckin apeshit!

Clean living

2004-08-24T01:03:00.000+01:00

Sober, that's me. Sober as a new-born baby - and (given I've done nothing constructive tonight other than have a bath) about as pink and fresh and bored as a baby too.

The hangover this morning was horrific. That last Baileys before bed was perhaps a creamy half-glass of booze and ice too far. You know how it is when you're forcing yourself to stay awake so you can finish your drink? When you've got one hand over an eye to cut out the double-vision (believe it or not, that actually works) and your head propped against a cushion to stop the room spinning and you have to keep your fingers working on the TV remote because any more than 20 seconds of one channel proves too much information for your brain to handle? Well, that was me last night. I don't remember the journey from the front room to the bedroom - and trust me, kids, that ain't no long journey - but when I woke this morning I was in pieces.

So, given that this morning's was the fourth head-fucking hangover in as many days, I've done the sensible thing tonight and drunk:
Ribena (three pints, approx)
Coca Cola (one can)
Coffee (four cups)
Tea (two cups)

My body is a goddamn Temple. And not the Temple of Doom, either.

PS

2004-08-22T23:46:00.000+01:00

It's NOT "Team GB". It's never been Team GB. It never should be. It's the British Team. Mathew Pinsent, Paula Radcliffe, that young boxing lad (who, incidentally, is my new hero), are not members of Team GB. They're members of the British Team.

It's confusing enough that the mother tongue is a bastardised Germano-Franco-Latin hotch-potch as it is without gratuitously Americanising it. BBC - you should be ashamed of yourselves.

I mean, literally, perfect

2004-08-22T23:20:00.000+01:00

It's 11.17pm on Sunday night and I have the following to report:

* I'm drunk as hell.
Went out for a few civilised drinks with S - we used to share a flat, before then we were best mates at school, and the news I'm going to move to Oxford is actually quite hard on both of us - in a masculine, heterosexual, no-touching way, obviously. Anyway, we had a number of pints, talked a lot of shit, he caught a bus to East London and his girlfriend and I walked home shitfaced. It was beautiful.

* Paula Radcliffe
Poor girl. I can only quote Brendan Foster: "Sitting on a roadside in Athens crying is no way to end your Olympic dream". Horrible.

* Allie
I love you. And if Tamara wants to join in (dates and spontaneous street-snoggage and all) that's cool.

* Mixed feelings
Nights like tonight make me wish I wasn't moving out of London. The exhiliration and energy of Islington on any night is a rush - and it's a rush that can't be replicated anywhere, a rush wholly unique to Upper Street. On the other hand - I'm glad I'm moving out of London. Because the exhiliration and energy also involves keeping an eye out for the mugger, the fight, the shady bloke in the park on the shortcut home...

* Swedish semi-disposable furniture rocks
Sorry, but IKEA rules. If you're looking to tart up your flat for a quick sale on a minimum budget, there really is no other place to go. I spent yesterday there with my parents, and after much swearing with an Allen key today, my flat looks eminently buyable.

* Plants are the future
All of the IKEA points above, only with the added bonus that you're recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen.

* Baileys
I'm drinking a very large Baileys right now, and if only I had some olives I think life would be perfect. I mean, literally, perfect.

Papering over the cracks

2004-08-20T11:56:00.000+01:00

Things I Have To Do Today.

1. File the body language piece.
2. Ignore the boys-and-make-up piece till next week.
3. Change the Hoover bag.
4. Mop the kitchen and bathroom floors.
5. Bleach the bathroom tiles.
6. Find some kind of enamel paint to hide the chips in the bath.
7. Dust. (Dust? Who dusts these days?)
8. Sweep, clean then hoover the front room.
9. Buy some flowers.
10. Buy some paint for the windowsills and doors.
11. Clean the cooker.
12. Water the plants.
13. Try to do something about the sticking front door lock.
14. Make an appointment to get a valuation for the flat.
15. Shower/shave/generally make myself presentable for the theatre tonight with The One.

God, putting your flat on the market is such a DRAG. Ordinarily numbers 1 and 15 on that list would constitute a full and productive day. It all seems like far too much effort - and this is simply the tarting-up preliminaries.

A plea (with apologies to Tamara & Allie for nicking the format)

2004-08-19T20:26:00.000+01:00

Dear Mr Interweb

Hi, hope you're well. I just thought I'd drop you a line to check everything's ok and stuff, as well as to see if you can help me out with something.

Thanks for all the free porn and stuff, and there's no faulting your use as an invaluable tool for plagiarising foreign newspapers that my editors won't have read... but can I just ask one little favour from you?

Please: stop distracting me. I'm trying to work. I'm trying to write 1400 words on the psychology of body language in yer everyday boy-meets-girl situation and every time I attempt to do any research on it you keep offering me more porn. I know you mean well - and truly, ordinarily I'd be very grateful, but just this once - just this one night - can you not share your smuttier side with me?

I promise that tomorrow I'll lustily embrace all the filth you can throw at me - but tonight I need to get this done before the wine runs out. Deal?

Thanks, I knew you'd understand.

Love

AD.

ps - thanks for your help with that self-googling thing too. I had no idea I was so popular!
pps - don't tell anyone else about the porn thing, either!

Sport Is Where Men Become As Gods

2004-08-18T23:00:00.000+01:00

Right. Enough of the bollocks about career and stuff. The last thing I (ever) want to do is preach so I think it's time we got a whole lot shallower again.

In other words, let's make a list!

What shall we make a list about? The Olympics!

So: Five Things I'm Loving About The Olympics, as of this moment, right now, home from the pub where I watched England win at football and with a big tub of olives and a (very) large Baileys in front of me:

1. Olives. Goddamn I love olives. You know how much I love olives? Pretty bloody much. I could quite literally eat olives for ever - and not just cos it's the Olympics and medal winners get olive wreaths. As Plato himself famously said - those olives are tasty green motherfuckers.

2. Olympic Winners Getting Olive Wreaths. No offence to you Septics* out there, but really - you want class, you hold the Olympics in the Old World, baby. (Oh - no offence to Australia either - on reflection, Sydney was pretty classy, but it screws up my argument, so let's just leave that for the moment, eh?) The only single thing in the history of the Olympic games EVER that was better than the Barcelona flaming arrow to light the Olympic torch is the Greek olive-wreath malarkey. (And maybe Jesse Owens 1936. But that was in Berlin, so I'm still right.)

3. Synchronised Diving. Since when did Queer Eye For the Straight Guy get to choose Olympic sports? Hilariously homosexual and all the better for it.

4. Great Britain Coming Fourth In Just About Everything. Hurray for us! We're nearly quite good!

5. The Power Of Suggesting You Care About Things You Really Have No Interest In Whatsoever. This morning I watched women's canoeing for an hour and a half. This afternoon I caught a bit of three day eventing action. Last week I was a big fan of synchronised diving. And don't even get me started on badminton, sailing, rowing, curling... The Olympics does that brilliant thing of telling you something's interesting (because there's a chance of a bronze for Britain in it) and then sucking you in to the point where you CARE about badminton goddammit! You're shouting at the TV - you cheating Taiwanese motherfuckers! Do I understand the rules of any of these sports? No. Does that stop me telling everyone in the pub how we was robbed of our bronze? Hell, no!

Now, don't we all feel better? Oh - and England beat Ukraine 3-0 (I think). It had precisely nothing to do with the Olympics. And I was a bit drunk by the end, so don't take my word for it. We won, anyway - but then we always win when it doesn't really matter...

*Septic - American. From the rhyming slang: Septic Tank - Yank.

Career advice interlude

2004-08-17T11:27:00.000+01:00

So it seems I'm under pressure to explain/justify/reveal the mysteries of my career choice and attendant lifestyle. The fact of the matter is I'm naturally lazy and naturally narcissistic - and have simply been lucky enough to find a way of earning a living that indulges both.

The thing is - any book or lecturer or careers advisor will tell you that simply being talented as a writer is not good enough to make it as a journalist (let alone a freelance journalist), that it takes qualifications, a shitload of hard work, blah blah. For my money that's crap: talent is always enough. Talent and luck. And a willingness to work for free at the beginning.

Ah, now you've mentally switched off. Well listen: there are two routes in. There's the qualifications route, and there's the way I took. If you really want to make a career out of writing you'll have to do one or the other. All I can do is tell you the way I did it.

I got kicked out of University; I found myself aged 20 with no qualifications and no real direction, but with a whole shitload of talent. So what did I do? I got in touch with every magazine I could think of and begged to write for free. A few of them told me - yeah, knock yerself out, we probably won't publish anything though. So I did. I spent three years writing for free, submitting reviews and features and articles without any of them ever getting published... until finally a couple did make it. And then a couple more. And then I started getting commissioned to interview bands. And then I started selling those interviews on to the nationals. And then suddenly a job came up with a national newspaper in London and I was getting paid to write full time.

In fact, not only was I getting paid to write full-time without any qualifications to my name, I found myself telling Graduate Trainees - people with not one degree but two - what to do. I found myself asking them to do my research! I couldn't help wondering why people would stay at University for years simply to be told what to do by the likes of me. I still wonder.

I didn't have any qualifications, but I had talent. And I'd spent three years working for free in order to prove it.

Hunny Bunny, Newly Single, it is easy. But it's not as easy as sticking at what you do already.

Less is more

2004-08-13T14:30:00.000+01:00

Was up till 3 this morning drinking vodka and playing nerdy online computer games with P.
"There'll be none of this once you move," he said.
Wrong! There'll be much more of this, surely?

Since waking today, I've...
* watched two episodes of Frasier.
* listened to the same CD three times back to back
* had a cup of coffee with S
* smoked seven cigarettes
* played with my Spiderman Triple Action Web Blaster until the goldfish got a bit scared of it
* sent an angry email to a company that owes me three and a half grand for work done and only want to pay me 2,750.

Because the last one counted as work, I don't feel it's been a total waste of a day. (The Spiderman thing was good too.) Besides, I'm meeting P and N in the pub at seven so I don't want to exhaust myself before then, do I?

Oh yeah - and it's Friday 13th and as everyone knows, it's bad luck to do anything constructive on Friday 13th.

Minor tantrum

2004-08-12T12:58:00.000+01:00

I dunno about you, but I'm the kind of person who has to have something as soon as he decides he wants it. Once the idea is in my head, I want it in my hand. That's why I'm crap at buying things from amazon or ebay - if I buy something I want it immediately - not in three days time and subject to the vagaries of the Royal Mail.

Likewise the move. Yesterday I went to Oxford; I identified areas; I registered with estate agents. I looked at little terraced cottages in Jericho, Grandpont and Osney Island. I walked along the river; I checked out local pubs; I popped into local shops. I want to move there straight away. I want to put in an offer today. I want to exchange tomorrow. I want to be living there by the weekend. This whole business of cleaning my flat, of The One cleaning her flat, of painting doors and windowsills, of getting the flats valued, getting them on the market, getting surveys and joint mortgages and solicitors and bollocks is too much of a drag. My parents tell me we'll be lucky to have moved by Christmas. Christmas? Screw that, I want to move NOW!

Choose Life

2004-08-10T16:40:00.000+01:00

Amsterdam was lovely. But screw that for the moment - I have news.

A decision was reached. On Friday morning, as we lay supine on the lawns by the Van Gogh museum, sipping ice-cold coke and smoking Marlboro cigarettes in the clear sunshine, The One and I had a Moment. We're going to move in together. More than that - we're going to sell each of our flats and buy a place together. More than that even - she's moving out of South London; I'm moving out of North London. We're moving out of London. The One and I are going to Oxford.

My job means I can work anywhere; and I've lived in Oxford before, I know its nice bars and groovy restaurants, its hidden cafes and slow backstreets. She hates her job; she's going to quit. She's going to quit journalism. She's going to open a second hand shop, selling records and clothes and knick knacks and flowers to the young and trendy of Oxford town centre.

Boys and girls, we're opting out of the rush and jumble of London, the sweat of the Piccadilly Line and the flotsam and jetsam of Leicester Square, Charing Cross and Tottenham Court Road. We're waving goodbye to the adrenaline and madness of Soho, the poses and piss-poor attitude of Covent Garden; we're waving two fingers to the cooler-than-thou of Old Street, Shoreditch and the Angel Islington... we're leaving it all and fucking right off to a better place.

A terraced cottage by the Isis, a garden with vegetables, a short walk to a proper pint. Bicycles. Finishing work by six. Theatres, cinemas and galleries you don't have to take a second mortgage out to visit. We're choosing to live with less money, less things to spend it on, less work. But we're choosing to live with more... Life.

Her flat is to be valued this week. Tomorrow I catch a train to Oxford and start on the estate agents.

Jollydays

2004-08-05T11:40:00.000+01:00

Quick one - I'm off to Amsterdam today (in about 20 minutes actually). Minidiscs, elvis shades, shorts... all packed. Hair - cut. Fish - fed.

What this means for me is - hoorah! Holidays till Monday!

What this means for you is - boo! No posts till Monday. Be strong, kids. Hold tight. Take each day one at a time. Remember: the sun also rises.

The Dread

2004-08-04T15:23:00.000+01:00

I woke this morning with The Dread: that gnawing, prickly, just-out-of-reach, half-memory that something went wrong last night, that something was said, or done, that was wholly bad. And because it's The Dread, of course, I can't remember what it was, or might have been.

The Dread - it's like Original Sin. It's something you know you're going to get royally fucked for... but you have no knowledge of what it is you're supposed to have done. You know you're going to get punished, that you're going to have to pay a price... but you don't know why exactly. Just that you probably deserve it.

I remember the start of the evening alright. I met M, P, N and Elder Male Sibling 2 in a bar in London's fashionable EC1. I remember the start of the evening - because the Anti-One was sat outside (she didn't see me; she left almost straight away); because M was in there before me; because the table football was free and nobody would play me.

I remember it being Happy Hour; I remember sinking a lot of Portuguese beer; I remember marvelling at the suddenness and ferocity of the rain at dusk.

I remember Happy Hour ending and walking through the rain to another pub; I remember S turning up late in that pub; I remember switching to Guinness and the drinking pace being quickened. I remember disagreeing with N about the forthcoming US Presidential elections ("If they vote Bush back in they fucking deserve everything they get, the stupid wankers," was, I think, the gist of my argument. Sorry y'all.) I remember seeing a blonde girl that I thought I recognised and almost talking to her but being unable to think of anything to say that wouldn't sound like a cheap line.

I remember switching from Guinness to vodka.

I remember M, Elder Male Sibling 2 and N leaving at some stage. I remember... I remember...

I remember not much after that. This morning there's a bus ticket in my back pocket timed at 12.30 am, there's chip wrapper in my bin, and most mystifyingly there's a cheque for £189 in my wallet. Whatever happened... is anyone's guess. But I've got The Dread.

Your homework for today

2004-08-03T15:12:00.000+01:00

I want you to do the following for me:

Buy this album

And then buy this book

And then experience the elation and impotence of knowing you've found true, pure, soaring genius... and that you'll never, ever, not if you tried for the rest of your life, write anything so good yourself. It will lift you up and break your heart.

I'm old... and my skin is cold

2004-08-03T11:09:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was my birthday - hurrah! Another year closer to oblivion. Interestingly, today is Terry Wogan's birthday: as he said this morning, you know you're old when you've got time on your hands, parsley on your chin and the rest of the soup in your lap.

Even more interestingly, my birthday always makes me think of a very special day in 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on the morning of my 18th. Bless him. It was very sweet, but really - a card would have done.

It took a lost weekend...

2004-07-31T16:52:00.000+01:00

Spent the day making a minidisc for Amsterdam - The One and I go on Thursday, there to spend a long weekend with her friends... They're having a party and wanted me to DJ - I couldn't be bothered schlepping all my records over, so instead have compiled two and a half hours worth of live mixed minidisc, which I can simply plug in to their stereo and dance away myself. Kids, it might just be the future of DJing.

Anyway, I love making a minidisc (or compilation tape if you're still in the 20th century). Every time I do it something mad pops up in the middle and I think: my God! Why don't I play that every time...?

So here's the tracklisting. "Eclectic," I think is the word. Also, "genius".

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Lost Weekend (always had to start with this - "it took a lost weekend, in a hotel in Amsterdam..."
Len - Steal My Sunshine
Jackie Wilson - Sweetest Feeling
Emotions - Best Of My Love
Stevie Wonder - Superstition
Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince - Summertime
Kings Of Tomorrow - Finally
Moloko - Sing It Back
Gerling - Enter Space Capsule
Beats For Beginners - Summer Lovers
Beach Boys - Wouldn't It Be Nice
Beatles - I Feel Fine
Stone Roses - The Hardest Thing In The World
Doors - Touch Me
Fun Lovin' Criminals - The Fun Lovin' Criminal
Primal Scream - Loaded
Happy Mondays - Step On
The Las - There She Goes
Byrds - Mr Tambourine Man
Bobby Darin - Somewhere Beyond The Sea
Neil Diamond - Cracklin' Rosie
Eddie Cochran - C'mon Everybody
Fine Young Cannibals - Suspicious Minds
Pet Shop Boys - Always On My Mind
Human League - Together In Electric Dreams
Outkast - Hey Ya!
Dee Lite - Groove Is In The Heart
S Club - Don't Stop Movin'
Abba - Does Your Mother Know
Pulp - Disco 2000
Primitives - Crash
Mock Turtles - Can You Dig It?
Supergrass - Alright
Madness - House Of Fun
Chas n Dave - Rabbit
Junior Senior - Move Your Feet
Jackson 5 - I Want You Back
Beyonce - Crazy In Love
Billy Joel - Piano Man
Kinks - Sunny Afternoon

They'll dance, they'll laugh... and at the end, they'll cry.

Smoking harms you and others around you

2004-07-30T23:44:00.000+01:00

Conversation on the way back from the pub just now:

Homeless Person (HP): Got any spare change mate?
Me: Sorry...
HP: Got a fag then?
Me (I always give cigarettes to homeless people - god knows why): Sure mate, here you go...
HP: Is that Marlboro red?
Me: Oh. Er, yes.
HP: Have you not got Marlboro light?
Me: Um, no. Just these.
HP: Here - have it back. Too strong for me, those things - they'll kill you, you know...

In the pub tonight there was a band of wandering head masseurs. No, seriously. There were two chicks of vaguely East European extraction (I'm guessing Serbia, but could be the lowlands of the Rhine - either way they were quite foxy) and they were going round the pub offering "back, neck and head massages" for a small fee. What did we do? We clubbed together and got P a head massage. How long before the first "you know his groin is quite stiff, love" comment got made? Oooh, about 30 seconds. To be fair, P did look very relaxed afterwards. Relaxed and (frankly) aroused, if such a thing is possible.

But you know, in my day, the beer was considered relaxing enough. (And arousing enough.) Well - the beer and the fags. The beer, the fags and the conversation. And the kebab on the way home, of course.

Wake up! It's a beautiful morning

2004-07-29T12:47:00.000+01:00

The cricket's on the box, the kids are playing in the square from 9am till teatime and the pubs are full from midday. Yes, Summer's here and the time is right... for remembering the point of freelance journalism: ie grabbing a book and a minidisc, a couple of cold beers and a pair of sunglasses, and heading to the park to "think of ideas to pitch". Or failing that, spending the afternoon supine on the grass with New Order in your ears and the sun on your face and nothing to look at but the au pairs and young mums of North London...

Me, I'm about to don a pair of shorts and an England top, get a haircut and head for the green. But I'll be thinking of the rest of the country, sweating into their shirt-and-tie combos, cramped in their shiny suit trousers, locked in their suffocating offices till the evening. Oh yes, I'll be thinking of them. Thinking of them and laughing: suckers!

Phyrric victory

2004-07-27T03:00:00.000+01:00

And now, predictably, I can't sleep. It's 3am. That's what I get for trying to be healthy.

Deadline

2004-07-26T23:17:00.000+01:00

Wake up and smell the Ribena: for tonight I blog sober. Having been dosed up on Sudafed and alcohol every night since last Thursday - and given that tomorrow I'm down (and out) with a Sarf Laaandan crew - I figured this was my big chance for a night off.

And so... so we have the usual ingredients of a night off. We have a good half a litre of Ribena despatched already, we have The 101 Most Embarrassing Sexual Accidents (no, really) on TV and I've mostly been listening to William Shatner sing Pulp's Common People (courtesy of this amusing Welshman) on my computer. Well it beats looking for porn...

But then the whole day has been quite sensible. Today was a work day; today was one of those left-it-till-the-deadline days. And when I'm on deadline I can be a serious young man. Deadline days mean a near-continuous supply of weapons-grade coffee, a chain of cigarettes you could almost measure in dead bronchioli, and a constant background roar of The Clash and The Libertines. All of which help focus the mind to the job in hand and distract one from thoughts of PlayStation, cricket on the telly, or cute chicks in the park.

And so the upshot of all this impeccably focussed behaviour is that a fortnight after it was commissioned and some five or six albums and a whole shitload of caffeine and nicotine after I sat down this morning, the Fathers Who Kill piece is finally done.

Come Wednesday of course they'll be wanting changes, but for now I'm free from any commissions, sober as a baby... and don't really know what to do with my hands without work or wine to keep them occupied.

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I sing not loud or long

2004-07-25T23:21:00.000+01:00

Last night we went out for dinner.

Picture the scene, gentle reader: the south bank of the river Thames at Tower Bridge, gateway to London, entrance to the Western World. A table outside a bistro in the dying light of a balmy summer's evening; some chilled white wine, some velevety red, a glass or two of champagne, a bottle or two of Italian beer. Gnocchi, pizzas, monkfish and penne picante... me, The One and the Siblings, toasting ourselves and each other and all the happy chances that brought us to this moment. There was laughter, anecdotes, memories old and new; there were birthday presents given out (to my sister) and there were promises of presents to come (for me, as it happens). There was toasting and there were moments of silence. It was... lovely.

After dinner we repaired three minutes walk along the river to All Bar One. And there, amidst the council throwouts and the nasty haircutted city bankers, the Ben-Shermaned boys and the denim-skirted girls, the shouting and staring and bitter taste of sex and violence, we drank fat pints and remembered that for every beautiful example of European Cafe Society that London can offer, you're never very far from real English culture. The apple doesn't land far from the tree, kids: and we'll die in the class we were born.

Amidst the rock 'n' rollness, some reality

2004-07-25T23:15:00.000+01:00

So you know what I did today? I bought a pot of mint. From a farmer's market. And then I took a cutting of basil from The One. And then I brought them both home and put them on my windowsill, next to my pot of rosemary. I later used some of the mint, when I boiled some potatoes for my dinner.

Just in case I was looking at all cool for a while back there... I thought you should see the flipside.

When in doubt, make a list

2004-07-23T11:14:00.000+01:00

Pretty bored today. Bored and hungover. Last night ended with me and The One throwing ourselves around the dancefloor to the Buzzcocks and S Club 7 whilst my siblings, friends, pretty much everyone else at the party and even the DJ looked on in bemusement. Still, at the time I thought it was ace - such is the power of Guinness and vodka/lime chasers.

Anyway, got a whole bloody feature to write today and I'm too bored to start it. Someone said that only boring people get bored... and that could be true. But it reminds me of the ace story of Prince Boothby, the decadent aristocrat who murdered himself because it had become such a bore getting dressed and undressed each day...

So instead of writing useful and informative things about familial homicide, I'm going to think of a list of things to which I'm currently addicted. As someone cleverer than me once put it: you've heard of the rogue male? Well I'm his modern descendant, the junk male.

1. Booze (obviously).
2. Marlboro cigarettes. Breakfast of goddamn champions.
3. Coffee. Strong, sweet, milky. Lots of everything is the golden rule for a cup of coffee. At least three cups to be served with the first two cigarettes of the day before dressing, washing, etc.
4. Television. The tackier the better. Especially the mildly titillating quasi-pornographic kind, as evinced by the likes of Hollyoaks or Beverly Hills 90210.
5. Championship Manager 03/04 for the PC. This has replaced Final Fantasy Tactics for the GameBoy and Vice City on the PlayStation as my current biggest source of wasted time.
6. Public adoration. I despise them... but I need their love.
7. The One. I can't get enough of her.
8. Nasty undercooked fried food served by unhygienic-looking Turkish fellers and smothered in limp salad and mayonnaise. But only between the hours of 11.30pm and 3am.
9. Lemsip/Nurofen/Sudafed. Anything with paracetamol in, basically.
10. My own name in print. Especially with accompanying photograph.

Having just reread this I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a very nice person. Please don't believe that. I'm ace, really. Trust me.

The Fastest Shower Ever Taken

2004-07-22T17:46:00.000+01:00

Quick, hurry, quiiiiick...

I'm in a rush. Got a party on a boat to go to, complete with free booze, barbequed food and assorted siblings, friends, aquaintances and The One. Fifteen minutes ago I finished writing a problem page ("my mum doesn't approve of my boyfriend...") and now I'm squeezing you in before The Fastest Shower Ever Taken.

Last night I finished writing about the modern Premiership footballer's preference for a Bentley (no, really - it seems you can buy class, just like they teach in America) about 2-30am... and this morning I was up at 9am to talk to a forensic psychologist. Kids, I barely had time to squeeze in a couple of hours on Championship Manager 03/04 amongst all the work: life is hard.

Anyways. Gotta split. The soap, the shampoo is calling...

Spice o'life

2004-07-21T20:44:00.000+01:00

Here's a thing. I love my job - I love the fact that I don't (usually) have to get up especially early in the mornings and can keep writing all night if I want, that I don't (really) have to answer to anyone on a daily basis, that I don't (normally) need to take on commissions that I don't fancy doing too much... but most of all I love the transience, the flimsiness of my job.

I love the fact that I take a commission, I write it, it's out there, it's gone. I love the fact that few things last longer than a couple of weeks and nothing ever longer than a month or so. I love the fact that one day I can be writing about something important, fundamental, life-changing... and the next I can be banging on about shopping, or Big Brother, or my ex-girlfriends. This is what I thrive on, this is the reason it's the only job I've ever stuck at, the reason I'm so goddamn good at it.

However, sometimes things can get a bit silly. Here's my to-do list for tonight:

* Write a 600 word intro to a feature on footballers and their cars (rest to be written tomorrow when the pictures come in).
* Research some figures on domestic violence for a 2,000 word report on "familicide" - the phenomenon whereby a woman (and/or her children) are murdered by her husband/their father - full report due in monday.
* Outline a brief for a first-person piece on why lads are scared of having their hair cut.

I mean, really. And they say boys can't multitask?

Drinking with the Lord

2004-07-20T11:36:00.000+01:00

On the Simpsons today:

Homer: So they think I might have a drinking problem...
Marge (reading from an AA pamphlet entitled: Is Your Spouse a Souse?): Homey, do you ever drink alone?
Homer: Does the Lord count as a person?
Marge: No.
Homer: Then yes.

The funniest thing about drinking alone is that you somehow manage to drink an awful lot more than usual... without getting drunk.
Without any social interaction, you have nothing to measure your drunkenness against - and so you can find yourself sitting on the sofa polishing off a bottle of wine in front of Big Brother (for example) thinking: I'm sober as a Judge! It's only when you try to get up to go to the toilet or make some more chips or text The One to tell her you feckin love her you do, that you realise that somehow, despite your self-evident sobriety, all motor skills, reasoning and grasp of basic verbal communication seem to be malfunctioning somewhat...

There's good and bad in everyone

2004-07-19T18:28:00.000+01:00

On the downside:
1. I'm suffering with the flu: my sinuses are so bunged up with cold and shit that I feel like I've been repeatedly punched in the face. There's a slim chance I actually was repeatedly punched in the face last night (I was very, verrrry drunk), but as The One hasn't mentioned anything, I'll assume I wasn't.

On the upside:
1. The Christening was beautiful, the baby was cute and didn't cry, the booze was free and plentiful and we even made our train back on time.

2. Belle and Sebastian at Somerset House was incredible. I mean, literally, incredible. The second-best gig I've ever been to. (First best? New Order, Manchester G-Mex, 1988, supported by A Certain Ratio and the Happy Mondays. But I was 16 then, and the world was a different place.)

3. I found my Birth Certificate. Get down! (It was cleverly hidden amongst the details of a rent agreement from 1998 at the bottom of a wardrobe. I'd obviously put it there in a state of some paranoia.)

Tripoli, south east London

2004-07-17T23:23:00.000+01:00

Hurray! Colonel Gaddafi wants to buy Crystal Palace football club! This has cheered me up no end.

Whatever happened to Saturday night?

2004-07-17T19:08:00.000+01:00

Okay, so nothing bad happened in the end. Well, not to me anyway. (Floods in India, bombs in Baghdad, war, famine, death, pestilence... it all passed me by yesterday.) Perhaps Newly Single was right. Perhaps I just needed a drink.

But if something bad happened to you last night... I told you so. I tried to warn you, and you didn't bloody listen, did you? Now who's sorry, eh?

Anyway. Last night was a welcome home dinner for The One: we ate Chinese on the sofa, we drank Pinot Grigio by the bottle, we watched action films until we fell asleep. When I woke she had her head buried in the gap between my arm and my chest and I watched her until she opened her eyes. The first thing she did was smile. We both fell asleep again listening to the radio and with the morning rain drumming on the windows. She was only gone ten days or so, but Jesus, I missed her.

Tonight was going to be an engagement party in London's fashionable (though dangerous) Hackney. Sadly The One is still wiped out from her trip abroad and I'm doing the sensible thing and having a night off the sauce. (I've amended my previous one-night-on, one-night-off drinking strategy into a one-night-off-a-week plan. It's going well so far - tonight is to be my first night off.)

Besides. Tomorrow we're on a train at 8-40am, speeding through the English countryside, northward-bound, to a Christening. We'll be toasting the baby by 10, and drunk before midday. Tomorrow night it's back to London for a Belle and Sebastian gig. Really - I need a night on the Lemsip* tonight, if only to fortify me for the long, painful, boozy road ahead.

Fairly ironic of course, that it's Saturday night on which I choose to abstain. There I am, shitfaced through much of the working week... and the one night when everyone else cuts loose I stay at home with a mug of hot lemon and Big Brother on the box. Ironic? It's quite literally like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife. Or not, Alanis.

*Lemsip: a popular cold remedy available over the counter in England, comprising of sachets of lemon, asprin and paracetomol, to which you add hot water. Also excellent as a hangover cure, or just if you need some kind of mild, sweet hit on a night without alcohol. Ignore the bit on the packaging about only taking one every four hours.

By the pricking of my thumbs...

2004-07-16T15:20:00.000+01:00

Ever have one of those days when you've just got a bad feeling? When - for no discernible reason - you're struggling under a growing sense of impending... badness?
I've got that feeling. I've got a bad feeling about today...

2004-07-16T12:38:00.000+01:00

The One flew back into the country this morning (about three o'clock this morning). Hurrah! It feels like years.

2004-07-15T17:17:00.000+01:00

Bad head today. The worst head in fact. Ooh, my head!

It was P's birthday last night, and to celebrate the fact that he shares his anniversaire with the whole French nation, we duly repaired to... er, a Belgian bar.

The only problem with Belgian bars is they serve ludicrously strong beer. Like, 8 per cent strong. And they serve it by the pint. That's the same as drinking a pint of wine. Naturally, after a few hours' toasting:
(a) P's 33 years and the subsequent end of his Earthly Ministry
(b) The manifold and subtle skills of Belgian brewers
(c) Gustav Eiffel (Belgian (not French) Tower builder, kids), Enzo Schifo (extravagantly gifted Belgian footballer from the 80s), Hercule Poirot (amusingly-moustachioed Belgian detective), and
(d) Ourselves for being able to think of three famous Belgians
it became clear that we had downed the equivalent of seven or eight pints of wine each. Alas! Clear heads gave way to muddled thinking, reason to emotion, and the evening collapsed like P's dodgy ankles. By closing time we were well and truly Banjaxed. Zeebrugged. Poiroted.

One of my exes was there too. I've not seen her since we split up, back in about 2000. I have a foggy memory of using the phrase "the years have been kind" when I spoke to her last night. I can't remember what she said in return.

Of course, as I left the bar at closing time - hugging and back-slapping and shaking hands all the way - I felt bloody great. I felt like Mr Big Goddamn Invincible Belgian Man. I felt like the King of Belgium. "I'm the King of Belgium!"

One bus ride, bag of chips, and seven hours fitful sleep on the sofa later, I felt... like I feel now.

2004-07-14T16:04:00.000+01:00

Perfect. I appear to have lost my birth certificate.
There I was this morning, happily and very grown-uply filling in a form to register my change of address (after six years) on my driver's license... and then it gets to the bit where I have to send in my birth certificate as proof of ID.

Now I know I had my birth certificate last November, cos I renewed my passport. I know exactly where it should be... or failing that, another two places it might be. I even know a third where it could have ended up. Nope, nada, rien, zero.

Three hours later the flat has been turned upside-down and I haven't a clue where the bastard is. (What I did find is a whole lot of letters from my time with the Anti-One (see posting for Tuesday May 4th somewhere around here if you don't know to whom I am referring) which obviously helped my good mood enormously.)

I've got the feeling that losing one's birth certificate is rather serious, no? At the very least it's another shining example of just how shambolic my life is.

2004-07-14T00:15:00.000+01:00

This is about the best thing I've read in years. Seriously.

Oh - and as for my one-on, one-off policy booze-wise... well that's all gone to hell. Today was such a non-achieving day that I figured I might as well drink another bottle of red and at least go to bed feeling I've done something with the last 24 hours.

2004-07-13T13:44:00.000+01:00

So then, this Dutch girl has a good game: she's asked me five questions - I give five honest answers. If you want me to ask you five equally pertinent questions in turn, then read on...

1. So how much DO you drink?
I drink every day. Or at least most days. Technically I suppose I had my first drink when I was a baby - my Dad used to dip his little finger in his whisky and then have me suck on it to get to sleep... but I didn't get properly, seriously, blacking-out-and-throwing-up drunk until I was 14. I'm currently trying to initiate a "one on, one off" policy - meaning that (for example) because I drank a bottle of wine last night, and I know that tomorrow I'll be getting mullered for P's birthday, tonight I'll limit myself to maybe a quiet pint or a single whisky before bed. I love drinking: I think it makes me a nicer, funnier, better-looking person all round. I only wish I could remember more of what happens when I'm drunk.

2. So what would you do if you could be God for a day?
Anyone who answers a question like this with an answer like "eliminate poverty and war and injustice" deserves to be crucified. Me - I'd quit wasting time and cut straight to Armageddon. I'd be one vengeful, omnipotent motherfucker.

3. What is it that you have done that you regret the most?
When I was four I made a mother's day card at playgroup (I later got expelled from playgroup for making a parachute out of a Corn Flakes packet, a handkerchief and some string... and then jumping off the slide onto another child. I think I may have broken her arm - but I didn't mean it, and frankly I can't help feeling that the kind of precocious intelligence it takes to fashion a (semi) working parachute aged 4 deserved praise, not condemnation. Anyway...) and I proudly took it home and gave it to my Mum. She was delighted. It was, after all, a beautiful card, and made with love. Later that afternoon she wouldn't let me watch TV or eat a biscuit before dinner or something and in a rage I fetched the card from the mantlepiece and ripped it up in front of her. She burst into tears. Technically I've done nastier things in my life, I've fucked people up mentally and physically... but of all the horrible things I've done in my 31 years, that's the one that keeps me awake at night.

4. What is the greatest invention of all time?
Not the car, not the telephone, not the computer, or paperclip, or biro or anything invented in the last 200 years. The greatest invention of all time is the alphabet. Everything begins and ends with the alphabet. Full stop.

5. Who would you call if you only had 30 minutes left to live?
In this order:
1. A priest. I'd confess everything, beg for forgiveness and hope for the best. If ever there was a time for hedging one's bets God-wise, this would be it.
2. My mum. To apologise about the mother's day card incident.
3. The people who kicked me out of Oxford University. To finally tell them to go fuck themselves.
4. The priest again. To confess about phone call 3.
5. The One. Because I want her voice to be the last thing I ever hear.

And that's that.
So here are the rules, as I've understood them. If you want to play too:
1. Leave a comment (with email address) saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I will respond with five pertinent questions.
3. You'll update your blog with my questions and your (searingly honest) answers.
4. You'll include this explanation.
5. You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
Bob, as they don't say in Holland, is your uncle.

2004-07-13T00:17:00.000+01:00

That'll be about right then...

Forrest Gump!

What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
brought to you by Quizilla

2004-07-12T21:20:00.000+01:00

Right then. The vino tinto is slipping down a treat, there's 45 minutes before Big Brother and after reading an excellent rant here by a hot Californian chick about the over-riding gaeity of Spiderman's seemingly-straight lovelife, I think it's time to share with you...

The Grand Theory of Heterosexual Gayness
(with particular reference to popular films and music)

First of all: it's not a gay vs straight thing - the theory could equally be called: The Grand Theory of Homosexual Straightness. Or Straight Homosexuality. Or Gay Heterosexuality. Or whatever. The crux of the matter lies here: popular culture's portrayal of Romance (capital R) is increasingly almost wholly devoid of sexual tension. Like a romance between a straight person and a gay person.

Now it can't be just me, and I can't be so soused in pornography and violence and the general casual degredation of sex to be numbed to the beauty of pure, innocent lurve... but every single time (every single time) I'm confronted with a 12-rated heterosexual on-screen love affair these days, I can't help thinking - is that the gayest thing, like, ever?

I'm not talking about prancing hobbits here either. The old electricity of boy-meets-girl has been totally lost in a morass of feelings and sensitivity and sweetness...

Look at Lord of the Rings (seeing as you've brought it up): they were so busy on concentrating on the ideals of duty and integrity and fidelity in the Romance between Aragorn and Guinevere (or whatever her name was) that they forgot to add any pizzaz. Where was the charge, the spark, the look in his eyes that said "Once I'm King I'm gonna give you what you've been waiting for, baby..."? Where was the look in hers that said: "And once Mr Frodo gets his shit together I'm going to show you just why it was worth waiting for..."?

Cast Richard Burton and Liz Taylor in those roles - or Kirk Douglas and, well, anybody - and you'll have known EXACTLY why she didn't sail into the East.

Now... now the boys have to be as girly as the girls. Why? Because the big market for Romance now lies squarely with the pre-teens. And (for obvious reasons) you can't introduce sexual tension into that equation. You can't have kids looking at Liv Tyler at the wedding scene and thinking: "she's gonna get the banging of her life tonight".

The same is true - in fact more so - with pop music. Pick a boyband, any boyband. Sure, they're pretty: but can they fuck? The answer is almost certainly, no. Look at them - these aren't boys any girl wants to actually get down and filthy with: they're boys they want to take home and have tea with, boys they want to play dressing-up with, boys they want... to actually be girls.

Pop Idol winner Will Young is openly gay - and yet gets thousands of screaming girls at his concerts. He's the apotheosis of Gay Heterosexual Love. "We love you Will!" read the banners - and it's cool for these 12-year-olds to love him, because he's never going to love them back in any unsavoury, physical, way.

(Meanwhile, poor Will can't actually find himself a boyfriend. Now there's irony for you.)

Not to put too blunt a point on it: Spiderman, Aragorn, etc, plus just about any young male pop star, are being presented in a way that robs them of any overt sexuality. They're men who never fuck their girlfriends.

Anyway, I rant. The point is this: without that tension, that fizz, that unspoken promise of raw animal lust to come (offscreen, natch, post-credits, backstage)... we're left with Romance. And nothing but Romance. Romance without lust. Heterosexual Gayness. We're left with Will and Grace. They love each other... but they're never going to actually have sex - like, ewwwww!

Sadly, any kind of romance, gay or straight, that doesn't involve lust, is doomed to be pretty short-lived. And that - more than any evil octopus men - is why Spiderman is doomed to die alone.

2004-07-12T18:06:00.000+01:00

Oh my little ones, I feel terrible for abandoning you like this. It was neither sunshine, moonlight, good times or indeed boogie that has had to shoulder the blame for my extended silence... but a good old fashioned rash of viruses. Virii? Virux?

My computer (my NEW computer) has been reeling from the blows, staggering under the assault of every goddamn trojan horse, dropper and dialler known to man. From whence they came I do not know... but thanks to an all-out deployment of nuclear weaponry last night (till 3 this morning actually) with assorted anti-virus, anti-spybot and anti-annoyingtwatforplantingthemthereinthefirstplace software, the war, it seems, might finally be over. Good has triumphed over evil. It would almost be inspiring if it wasn't such an almighty pain in the arse.

Anyway. My apologies. I'm sure you've all moved on in my absence. Me? I'm going to cook some dinner now, open a bottle of Merlot, start on the second carton of duty free cigarettes, find some Spirtualized LPs and once I'm getting comfortably drunk, resume the important blogging business of education, information and entertainment... or failing that get back to trying to convince you that my seemingly dissolute existence is actually unremittingly big and clever.

Some things change; some stay the same.

2004-07-06T23:32:00.000+01:00

So I've been home on terra Angleterra for less than a week and already The One and I are back to a texting relationship... after a blissful weekend together, she flew to Ibiza this evening with work. She won't be back for 10 days.

A blissful weekend means... I cooked her dinner on Sunday and we watched the football and bet on which player would be the Lid Twat*; she cooked me dinner last night and we stayed up till the early morning listening to punk rock 45s and drinking cheap white wine. Where I'm concerned, Love means shouting Stiff Little Fingers songs and downing Pinot Grigio straight from the bottle and falling asleep in each others arms as the neighbours bang on the walls.

And now it's a week of old skool existence for me. The lads, the pubs are calling...

*Lid Twat (noun). The player who, at the conclusion of any major championship or cup competition, will be the first to "amusingly" detach the top part, or lid, of the trophy and place it on his head, all the while grinning like he's the first man to ever think of such a thing, and often, upon spying TV cameras, accompanying the gesture with an impromptu dance.
My money was heavily on Portugal's Christiano Ronaldo. Alas, the Greeks won, and we had no idea how to pronounce any of their names. I did win a small side bet on young Christiano crying though, which he duly and lustily did...

2004-07-06T12:13:00.000+01:00

Is it just me or is blogger straining under the pressure somewhat these days? Every other time I try to access a page it tells me I can't and logging in can take the best part of a Beach Boys record some mornings (that's about three minutes 30 seconds for the uninitiated). Perhaps it's the summer. I get like that when it's warm outside too. Sometimes it's all I can do to make it to the fridge to pour another glass of white before the exhaustion drives me back to the sofa and the soothing bliss of another Marlboro...

2004-07-04T01:07:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm back.

(1,000,000 Nerd Points to the person who knows what film ends with that line.)

Anyway, this is just a quick one to say...
1. Portugal was blissful
2. Despite the fact they beat us at footy
3. I'm quite literally brown - lazing around a pool for a week does that to a boy, apparently
4. I hope you missed me
5. I'll post something proper when I've had some sleep

One other thing - where are Tamara and Allie? Whither goest though, hot American chicks, in thy shiny car in the night...?

2004-06-25T00:43:00.000+01:00

It's a good job this shit only happens once every two years... because I for one can't take it anymore. I need 24 months to recover. England lost on penalties and I was quite literally shaking by the end. My throat is raw and I've lost my voice. My nerves are gone. I'm shot. Just as bloody well I'm going on holiday tomorrow.

2004-06-22T18:23:00.000+01:00

Now this makes me laugh. I write one little rant explaining how much I love smoking... and next thing I know the "related searches" bit at the top of this is full of advice on heroin addiction. How brilliantly American! In your kerrr-azy Oprahfied western democratic paradise, smoker today clearly equals smackhead tomorrow...

2004-06-22T16:49:00.000+01:00

Spent most of the day compiling a Holiday Minidisc... why? Because I'm going to Portugal on Friday! Ole ole ole! Of course, there's every chance England could get knocked out on Thursday night, but screw it - football or otherwise, lounging around a pool by a villa near Lisbon has got to beat working in North London any day of the week, regardless of whether Wayne Rooney is still making me cry tears of pure joy or not.

What's on the minidisc? Let's just say it starts with The Undertones (Here Comes The Summer...) ends with the Pogues (Fiesta) and takes in everyone from the Stone Roses to the Polyphonic Spree to New Order to Billy Joel and the simple act of recording it has got me into a seriously excitable Holiday frame of mind!

The One has chilled out a bit too. She's on the home stretch; the light at the end of the tunnel might just turn out not to be a train after all.

2004-06-20T11:06:00.000+01:00

The One is in a strange mood... and strange moods - like tears, laughter, enthusiasm and morbidity, are infectious.

She's working like a mad thing trying to get her coursework finished on time for her exhibition a week on wednesday - and being something of a perfectionist, firmly believes nothing she does is good enough. This weekend - which was supposed to be a rare and relaxing Saturday night at my place (for once) followed by freebies to a gig in the park this afternoon - has actually turned into a couple of tearful phone calls from her office and me sat around by myself wondering how to make her feel better and hoping I'm not part of the problem.

You know how when you go to the doctors you immediately feel more ill? How all the sick people in the waiting room drag you down to their level of sickness? So it is when you're on the phone to the one you love and she keeps crying and saying she can't cope. You feel like you can't cope either. You're hoping you're not one of the things she can't cope with. You can't ask her because then that would make you one of them for sure.

2004-06-17T21:16:00.000+01:00

Now that's a bit more like it.
All we need to happen next is France to draw with Croatia...

2004-06-15T01:23:00.000+01:00

Next week... Every Member of Parliament Trips On Glue: 20 reasons why over-the-counter hallucinogens promote rational decision-making.

Okay, so that's a joke. I stand by the smoking thing though: I get more grief off hayfever than Marlboro. Ban goddamn pollen, that's what I say. Concrete the countryside!

2004-06-14T23:31:00.000+01:00

Okay, so I was reading here something of a rant about smoking... and while I have no wish whatsoever to pick a fight with an otherwise sound man, I feel as the resident junk male (I'm addicted to addictions. Give me an addiction... and I guarantee I'll get addicted to it) I have a duty to defend one of my top five addictions. So...

In Defence Of Smoking
(or... Why Smoking Is Big and Clever and Makes You Look Cool And Certainly Shouldn't Be Banned By Wet Middle Class Liberals Petrified Of A Passing Wisp of Nicotine As They Enter Their Diesel-Guzzling, Ozone-Destroying, Asthma-Inducing People Carrier For The School Run Twice A Day...)

The essential point about smoking is this: it's the most life-affirming thing an ordinary man can do. But I'll come to that later (scroll down if you're impatient/illiterate). First of all I want to explain why every child should start smoking.

Smoking cigarettes should only be started between the ages of 10 and 16. (Any younger and you're clearly headed for a life of crime anyway and certainly don't need my advice.) It should only be started for one reason, and one reason only: to be cool. Or more specifically, to look like John Travolta in Grease/Marlon Brando in The Wild One/Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now/Christian Slater in True Romance. And this is a thoroughly admirable thing. Not only that - it's an essential thing.

This is what growing up is all about - the projection of the unattainable into our own lives. Touching impossible glamour from your drab suburban bedroom. Living the goddamn dream. When nasty little 14-year-old snot-nosed Johnny sparks his King Size, he thinks he looks like Pete Doherty from the Libertines. I mean, he really believes it. And that, and probably only that, is what gets him through the day.

Being 14 is tough, it's horrible. You look, smell, and sound like shit. All the girls in your class are getting off with the older lads and all the boys are fighting each other. If you didn't have the posters on your walls and the dreams of coolness in your heart, I swear you'd give it all up altogether. When you're 14 you can't be Pete Doherty (or Marlon Brando, John Travolta etc) - but you can at least copy them. And for around 20p for seven minutes of cool, yer Marlboro red are the easiest way to do that.

So that's why starting smoking is ok. Not only ok - necessary. So why continue? Why (for example) be 31 years old, of good upbringing and righteous beliefs and otherwise general sound judgement and excessive intelligence... and still smoke?

Because I'm addicted, dummy! Listen - it's not doing you any harm (and let's not start on the passive smoking thing. More people are fatally injured by their own trousers than die from passive smoking. Fact. Look it up) and it's an awful lot less harmful to me than the amount of booze I put away or (probably) the russian roulette I play with e.coli every time I get a kebab on the way home from the pub.

I actually love it. I love smoking. It makes me feel like I did when I was 14. It makes me feel like Joe Strummer, like Sid Vicious. It makes me feel like Clint fucking Eastwood. It makes me feel untouchable.

And this, boys and girls is the real kicker, the bottom line. Unhealthy smokers keep smoking cos they figure it's too late, what the hell, got the disease now, why stop?
Healthy smokers keep smoking because it proves their immortality. Look at me! (we say) I'm on 20 cigarettes a day and I don't even cough. I don't even cough! Medical science says they're killers... and I don't even cough! Ergo sum... I'm immune! I'm immortal! I'm Ozymandias of Egypt, look on my clean pink lungs, ye mighty, and despair!

For the healthy man with a nicotine addiction, the very act of lighting a cigarette is an affirmation of life far more profound than any religion can provide. With every draw and drag, every sharp inhalation and smooth exhalation, he's proving his vitality, he's proving his very alive-ness. To the healthy smoker, each cigarette is a confrontation with certain death (read the health warnings they print on the side: SMOKERS DIE YOUNGER)... and a victory. The fag is smoked to the butt, ground out in the ashtray... and the smoker is still alive.

Of course, there comes a point when the coughs do start and all, but hey, I'm not trying to disprove medical science here. I'm just explaining why I love smoking. I love smoking because it means I laugh in the face of certain death 20 times every single day. (And I get to look like Joe Strummer as I do it.)

PS - if you're offended, open a newspaper, turn on a television. It's pretty bad out there, no?

2004-06-13T23:16:00.000+01:00

I don't want to talk about it.
Except to say... for 90 minutes we were the better side. And I'm never eating another croissant again.