How My Clay Great White Shark Was Born (…If Only You Knew…): Part 2
Nothing to do with sharks: me in clay. Doing the hair was a nightmare, I tell YOU!
…But I kept going. I was in this. I couldn’t just give up (OooOOps, Ive been a naughty boy or girl and I haven’t yet read part 1, so please take me to part 1!).
Once I’d resigned my model to being total crap, things started to go much better. It was as if the hand of doom had been lifted and the clay wanted to cooperate. What can I say, I am good at kidding myself.
Stop. Wait: I haven’t said yet what happened when I noticed the fins I was yet to create…
Yes, I had noticed the fins of my rubber model shark before of course — you couldn’t help but notice them! — but up until now, I hadn’t considered how I would make the fins and attach them to the body. The logistics of it, which now revealed themselves to be perilous! Now I really looked at the rubber shark, I saw that the fins on the shark’s side splayed out and downwards beneath the submarine-like body. What a pain for a man who thought things were going better. So you could say that this presented a serious problem…with the clay still soft, how would I attach the fins and make them strong enough to support the immense weight of the body?!
I wouldn’t, that much was clear…I was in dire straits, again…
For ten long minutes — which, as any craftsperson knows, is a lifetime in the world of quick-drying packet clay — I ummed and agghed, considering how I could magically suspend the shark in the air and attach the fins. Then a stunning flash of inspiration struck me right about the head! I would rest the shark on something so it was off the table, and then add the side fins…
Another angle of the shark now getting there…before the big disaster that dogged me a good ‘n’
Yes, I know this solution sounds obvious, but trust me: when you’re in the thick of Great White Shark model-making, you don’t always see the most obvious solutions…
Now I had solved this somewhat fundamental problem, I was free to continue my quest. This I did with gusto: my next task was to build the–
WAIT! No, scratch that: my next task was to come to terms with the fact that I had made the tail of the shark way too flippin’ long! Not only that, but the shark’s entire body was way too long. Damn that rubber shark and my extreme excitement and enthusiasm…
There was no other thing for it. I couldn’t just stare at this dodgy specimen all day. I had to make an executive decision while the clay was still nice and soft, and that I did: sometimes you have to do this with model-making, and in this case, this meant cutting my shark in half and extracting a large part of the abdominal area.
Then followed a precarious few minutes as the fate of my shark hung heavily in the balance. The bloody thing just would not stick back together, no matter what orthodox and unorthodox tactics I used. I’m disgusted with myself for saying it, for creating this monstrosity, but it looked a lot like one of those cut-and-shut cars that used to be all the rage back in the 1990s (but stopped being all the rage when they started separating into 2 when drivers were joining the motorway at 90 miles per hour. Novel, but not what you ideally want to happen. Unless you have really annoying kids in the back and it’s a very long drive all the way from Cornwall to Scotland, that is).
If I’m making it sound highly dramatic, well, dear reader, that’s because it was…
Now I had the fin situation under control, it was time to pay some more attention to the head, which, up until now, had much more resembled a very angry cow. For a good twenty minutes I geeked around with smoothing the head and body into the right kind of shape, and then I moved onto the top dorsal fin and tail fins — both of which demanded a special skill-set that it appeared I did not possess.
After ten minutes, I sort of possessed it, but it wasn’t easy. I surmised early on that I would have to use a bit of cunning artistic license, otherwise the fins would be much too thin and, later, when the shark stood on them and I felt all proud and happy, they would collapse under its own weight and I would be sent frantic with annoyance and worry (and possibly embarrassment too, depending on who else witnessed my fishy shambles).
An hour and a half in and I was sweating…the clay was drying fast and becoming much less maliable!
Nothing to do with sharks — this is actually my brother’s face in icing on a poor quality gingerbread biscuit bought from the co-op on special offer (I did the face of course, you can’t buy them like this, duh). I certainly learned my lesson there.
I moved onto the gills. I really liked doing the gills, they were tough but fun. Then, horribly, terribly, it dawned on me that I hadn’t even started the teeth yet…
I needed to, and in a quickfasthurry!
So that was precisely what I did: one by one and looking like the kind of nerd that even a fellow nerd from Games Workshop would find unsettling, I cut the tiny razor sharp daggers from the clay I had left, and then, very carefully, went about putting them into position. I do not mind saying one bit that it was a monumental PAIN IN THE ARSE. You had to get the angle just right, or else the shark would be a laughing stock. Not really the look you want when you’re trying to recreate the world’s most vicious swimming predator.
I thought I was now out of the woods. That all my preparation and intense concentration had paid off. But over the course of the next three hours I was reminded, repeatedly, that I could not leave my shark’s side for even three minutes — less it become a disaster! As the clay dried, it was crucial to be in or near the immediate area drinking peppermint tea, hovering like a trenchcoat flasher, just in case a fin looked like it might fall to one side, or the thing might collapse in the middle, rendering the whole operation pointless.
So I was to be on vigil until it ended five endless hours later. Not one of the best wait-around times I can remember, but I was damned if Iw as going out and leaving that thing to its own sordid devices after what we’d been through together. No way was I going out to have a good time, only to come back with a smile on my face to see that my shark miniature had warped and twisted into a total flippin’ wreck!
Not this shark maker.
The finished article
THE NEXT DAY
All my waiting by the shark’s side had been more than worth it. My God I as relieved. The Great White Shark was just as it had been left before midnight! Now a light grey colour and seventy-percent hardened, all the effort and attention-to-detail was set forever and not going anywhere. Or at least until some moron picked it up and said “Wow, how long did it take you to make–” and then dropped it.
I thought that was the end of the making. I thought I had really done it. But no sooner had I started to relax than a tooth dropped out…followed by another! In the end, all of them dropped out and I spent another hour gluing them back in…
Once it was 100% dry, or so I thought, I decided I would sandpaper my shark. I would take it outside and carefully buff it until it was smooth (even though Great White’s aren’t smooth, but still).
It began well, but events took a sinister twist when the left fin snapped off, followed almost immediately by the tail. With the shark in three pieces, I won’t lie…for a split-second the urge was there in massive amounts to hurl the damn thing right over the next-door neighbour’s fence. But I kept my cool. No flying miniature Great White was potentially going to maim someone. Instead, I spent another hour gluing it all back together and staying close by with yet more peppermint tea. In times of strife, peppermint tea is nearly always the answer, as I believe I have demonstrated (warning: do not drink and model-make. It will only end in tears).
Later, I would paint it as you see in the picture, but first I wanted to show the shark to my friend Ola (via picture on my phone), who is a also a huge fan of these devastating beautiful creatures. I remember the text conversation we had quite well. It went something like:
Her: “Wow! It’s amazing!” I promise I’m not trying to big myself up, she really did say something like that.
Me: “Thanks!”
Her: “…So how did you do all the rows of teeth? You know…like they have? That must have been hard.” Something like that, I think.
Me: “Rows of teeth…?”
Oh God, oh no. A horror thought struck me: Great White Sharks had multiple rows of teeth and I had done just one row each…
And I call myself a shark lover!
Go and hug a Great White Shark RIGHT NOW!
How My Clay Great White Shark Was born (What A Pain In The Arse): Part 1
A rare photo of a Great White Shark looking gormless with that teddy-bear expression we all know and love. No wonder they hate human beings for capturing these embarrassing moments!
“I know what I’m going to make…” I said to myself. Actually I probably said it several times; probably I muttered it while rushing to finish my work so I could just get on with it. I was all excited. Inside me was the joy of a child — one of those really irritating ones who keeps poking you in the arm until you turn around and shout in his or her face all un-adult-like.
Then I announced, still only to myself, but still, it had to be announced and not just said.”…I’m going to make myself a Great White Shark out of clay!”
My oh my, it was a fine day (and that ends my bi-yearly attempt at poetry, don’t worry. How can someone spend so much time writing yet be such an abominable poet? I don’t know, but somehow I manage it easily).
I have always loved Great White Sharks. I mean, ask anyone, I’ve always loved all sharks — Tiger Shark comes a close second, followed by the Hammerhead — but the Great White Shark…this shark is different…to my mind, this animal holds a special sacred beauty which no other shark (or creature, with or without legs, for that matter) can touch. Millions of years old and sensational at all things killing-wise, it isn’t the violent misguided stereotype of the Great White which makes me love it so…no, it’s so much more than that. I love Great White’s so much I even bought the Jaws DVD box-set at full price (£9.99), even though it didn’t actually contain the original movie (just the slightly less legendary Jaws 2, 3 and 4). I know! There is a price to be paid for committment, what can I say…
Back to the day I decided to make the shark. It had been on my mind a while. Now it had to get done.
My plan seemed flawless. Using the clay-making skills I had been carefully honing since my sixth-form days — my last big clay model before I left college was a four-foot tall bizarre building where rent would have been very cheap, seeing as nobody had any floors or ceilings, although they did have gigantic windows to make up for it — I would construct an anatomically correct miniature Great White Shark to end ALL SHARK MODELS. Once the clay had dried and fully hardened, I would then paint it with painstaking precision, carefully taking the time to not insult the animal’s evolution.
A previous clay-making attempt…click my brother’s face to read about it. If you like. No pressure. Really
But the very act of doing so panicked me immensely. There were so many things to remember…to remember to remember…among many, many things which had to be right or else internet shark experts would come down on me like a ton of bricks, I had to 1) remember to get the shape of the head just right and 2) get the length of the fins right, too. I also had to make sure that 3) the shark was not too thin or too fat, and that 4) he looked supremely ferocious, but not so ferocious that my model only added yet more weight to the compelling yet inaccurate argument that Great White Shark’s are good for nothing but shredding human beings into tiny pieces for no good reason (they’re good for much more, and actually inhabit a unique role in the watery eco-system as a whole, don’t you know. And no, I didn’t rip that straight from Wikipedia. I adore my sharks, so I just knew it).
I began by ordering my clay — it was all very well talking about creating a Great White Shark model, but until I had clay in my possession it would be easy to wimp out and do a zebra, or a measly elephant (though the trunk would be a tricky conundrum, there is no doubt). There were two options: the big bag of brown clay stuff like what we’d used in sixth-form, which I actually preferred, or the more expensive individual packets of clay which you can easily order online. Both have their good and bad points. Although the big bag of brown clay would have been a better self-black-mailing device sometime in the near future, if I did go and wimp out — it cost more and would look very imposing, staring at me from the corner of the room, mocking me for not daring to open it like a man — I quickly decided that the small packet of clay would be better suited. It’d dry a hell of a lot quicker, which could be bad news all round, but I always find there’s something great about pressure and lack of time when working with clay. It forces you to focus more, and from that focus comes a conclusion of wild thoughts and imagination which you just don’t get when you spend hours and hours procrastinating about what to do and how to do it. The panic brings the best out of you.
Opening the packet, I was actually quite nervous. That may sound quite utterly stupid — I was on my own, and if it went wrong nobody but me and the mangled attempt of shark would know about it — but I can’t stand throwing things away. I’m bad enough with old T-shirts from years ago that hold some nostalgic significance which I can’t actually remember. With stuff I have made, if I throw it away, it doesn’t just feel like I wasted my time, it feels like I wasted a part of my soul as well.
I know, us bloody creative types…
Ah, I didn’t say about the model yet. I wasn’t going to make my shark just from a picture, oh know. You think I’m stupid? Not me. I mean, I would have done if I’d had to, but seeing as I had a small rubber shark (given to me by a then-girlfriend from years ago when she sponsored Derek the Great White Shark for me, swimming somewhere in South Africa, who knows where Derek is now…I just hope he is happy… ) to give me some semblance of help, I decided to model my shark roughly on that. There would have to be adjustments in form, of course — the rubber shark had a very dodgy bent tail and wasn’t a Great White or any other shark I recognised, but more a hybrid of every shark that had ever existed — but the essence of the idea was there, at least. All I had to do was craft a beautiful model out of clay based on that.
Hmm, simple…
Immediately upon beginning, I was besieged by a feeling that may be familiar to you…one of Oh no, this is horrifically difficult…more so than I could have ever anticipated! Actually it was probably the culmination of many feelings — dread, excitement, fear and loathing of my own stupid obsession with sharks that has always got me into model-making trouble — and for a few minutes it had me eating out of the palm of its decrepit paralysing hand. There I sat, rolling clay into more or less pointless sausage-like shapes, hoping that if I rolled it just right, the shape of the Great White would magically materialise out of nowhere.
Which it didn’t. Many other shapes materialised — the shape of a Giraffe’s foot, for instance, and what looked like a Mountain Gorilla’s giant nipple ,maybe — but the Great White, as in nature, eluded me.
I care, I really do. I even spent a while finding a picture that was the perfect compromise between aggressive and majestic. I could have so easily uploaded a hideously frightening photo of one launching out of the water, and I wanted to, oh I really did, but I restrained myself.
Take me to Part 2 right this minute! Or, if you like, read about my novel…
So, what’s your secret Hidden Talent?
Everyone go AHHHHHHHH now. Oh, they're so cute and furry and playful! Then realise that in 3 years, these two cuties will be ready to rip your face off. Suddenly cute doesn't seem like quite the right word...
Aside from The Undateables, I think Channel 4s new show Hidden Talent – about everyday people discovering raw potential for talents they never knew existed — is one of the best things I’ve seen on TV in a while.
Because:
1) We can all relate to it. All of us have tried baking a cake and found we were absolutely terrible, for example, and then discovered that, for no apparent reason, we just always seemed to be there in our car going 30mph when some poor sod was walking by completely unawares on the pavement. Likewise, some people just seem to always be the poor sod on the pavement; for whatever reason, they were born with that uncanny knack for always being unlucky in a hilarious way which benefits mankind more than it will ever know. Thankyou, poor sods. OK, so there are no awards for being the latter — and it has to get pretty bloody annoying, especially when it’s the third time in the same week and you come home with soaking-wet pants to the sound of your long-suffering wife crying “Oh Jim…not again, seriously…” — but it’s still a talent and we all have one, even if it is unfortunate. That’s better than nothing, right? At least we can say we’ve made our mark on this world in some tangible way.
2) It’s a hundred times more exciting to watch, say, than Foxes Live — another more bizarre Channel 4 show which documents what the lives of somewhat tame English foxes get up to when…well, when they’re just walking around and stuff, really. It genuinely is pretty pointless TV on a whole new level. The last episode saw a variety of these furry hated celebratory fiends going about all kinds of sordid mangey never-seen-before business: the biggest tragedy was that most of it wasn’t even live as had been advertised; the foxes had, apparently, seen the cameras coming (not that if it had been live it would have been that much better, as far as I can see. A fox rummaging through a bin is the same live or recorded, is it not?!).
3) Another reason why the Hidden Talent series is so good: it reminds us of old times. Alice-in-Wonderland-times — or Rambo-times, if you were a boy who cunningly managed to watch almost every 18-rated horror movie before he was 13 — way back, when we were smaller and our powers seemed unlimited. When adults were not just older, but also tragic and hysterically pointless. Take me for example. As a boy, people probably didn’t see much special about me, aside from my annoying ability to draw (my mum’s words, not mine, before you jump on me!): I seemed to have all the traits of Autism without actually being Autistic — Dyscalculia made me this way, and mangled my perception of spacial awareness and maths so severely that it warranted this statement all these years later — and a nose which was years ahead of its time in growth and maturity (we’re talking both girth and length. Really, it belonged to be in at least the year above). Yet put me up against the other boys in the toilets — even the taller boys who were said to have the advantage of a flicking wrist — and I was a formidable force to be reckoned with when it came to the who-can-wee-highest-up the metal urinals challenge. More an ancient rite of passage than just a physical matching of boy-against-boy in what might at first seem a trivial and debatable childhood act, it involved, as can be expected, three or four of us (it could be five, there was no strict enforcement of the law within these walls) all standing in line a set distance away from the urinals, and aiming the onslaught of our golden-power-flow heavenward to the highest point, until the arch of yellow descended, splashing everyone’s shoes with a very satisfying sound that made walking into chemistry with piss-soaked shoes easily worthwhile (it gives an interesting new angle to the expression “Don’t go near the golden arches!” don’t you think?). The other boys, even the bigger boys, didn’t stand a chance! To be honest, I look back all these years later and I don’t even know what they were thinking about going up against my turbo-bladder. Not only could I wee up past the metal and onto the unknown of the bricks above the stainless steel where really very few boys had ever managed to ascend to, but if I put my mind to it with particular, groin-straining, sphincter-tensing committment then I could occasionally blast it out of the window (that had always been left open for centuries to allow this sacred act to take place)! Honestly, the thought of piss dribbling down old bricks might sound rancid and wrong, but the sight of it could literally make a crowd of bigger boys gasp where they stood and say “I hate puberty!”.
So I guess what I’m really saying is this: don’t count yourself out, even if you feel like you have nothing left to give the world and your talents begin and end at just about being able to not over-cook pasta…because somewhere inside you is the raw potential for something bigger and better.
Even if it does involve a freakishly powerful bladder.
Oh no, I did a Torres!
The face of millionaire's gloom is a tragic, desperate sight...
Be warned: this is a football-related blog! But please don’t click away if you don’t love the beautiful game, for this post is about much more than just football, and I have a feeling most people will be able to relate to it. Trust me: you’re reading the words of someone who couldn’t talk to other men about football for a full and debilitating 30 years, so there’s no way I’d make this post too inaccessible.
When I first started learning about football around a year ago for this blog (my distinctly optimistic quest was to see if I could understand why people so loved football, and if I could go against everything I had done up until that point and somehow develop a genuine passion so that, when football came on the TV, I could jump up with my fellow countrymen and shout “FOOTBALL!” in that signature manly roar) Chelsea striker and blonde-haired, non-goal-scoring-sensation Fernando Torres was someone my feeble lack of knowledge latched onto in a big way: I admired how he could never-ever score a goal just like me down the park (when he was actually on the pitch, that was) and how his spectacular ability to be tackled by more or less anyone with legs would make him a popular target in parks all over the country, should he make the very un-wise decision of venturing outside his football ground and into the realm of small, angry children with a passion for kicking people’s shins and heads in (“For a millionaire you get A MILLION POINTS!”).
Oh, poor legend-of-extortionately-over-priced-Torres…there were days when he really felt my intellectual wrath; because as the goals didn’t come in and didn’t come in, his face of thunder growing darkly as he sat there earning hundreds-of-thousands-of-pounds on the bench, his name became synonymous with not only career failure, but failure of any kind:
I’d be walking with friends and see a stranger trip up over that dodgy piece of pavement which had nearly killed a pensioner just the week before: “Did you see that?” I’d say, “what a Torres!”
“Shutup, Chris,” they’d say, but I couldn’t help it, I was putting everything I had into learning how to do football, and this annoying symptom of sheer enthusiasm was the price.
I’d walk into the horrifically designed mirrored toilets at Cambridge Train Station and see a big yellow mess on the floor that really shouldn’t have been there considering how much bloody money we all pay National Rail every day. “Someone’s done a serious Torres,” I’d say, ignoring the other more disturbing Torres in the cubicle next door — brown and frightening, Chris, DO-NOT-LOOK! — and this would usually be as I realised I was stood in the first aforementioned yellow Torres (although technically this is inaccurate, as Torres’s reputation at the time was not one of missing them, as in missing the bowl, but for not even creating them to begin with. Although this analogy does work brilliantly for the brown Torres I described before…someone had definitely created that and it was literally as criminal as the wages professional footballers earn…).
And so it was that Torres quickly became associated, in my mind, with the failure of humanity in every single way you can possibly imagine. Until my friends got sick of me making this comparison, at which point I stopped (although it was too late for them, by then, as they were also saying it and it had got well and truly inside their heads!).
Then, one day recently, it all started to change…
OK, so Torres’s legs still predictably went to jelly whenever an attacker approached him (for those unaware of the man’s failings, the best I can liken his wobbly-legged manuevers to is the way in which, in The Birds, people get all panicked at the merest sight of a blackbird and start flailing around all over the place) but, every so often, when he was actually invited onto the pitch and had postponed his face-of-millionaire’s-doom for half an hour so, he was scoring goals. Not mega goals, usually, and not goals which will be remembered throughout history, but goals nonetheless. It seemed Torres’s career as a blonde-haired-laughing-stock was coming to an end…
…and this weekend, as Chelsea faced QPR, it finally happened: an event so unlikely that, when the wind was in the right direction, you could almost hear hundreds of thousands of very unlucky bookies complaining and muttering and complaining and handing over money. Not that you should feel sorry for these people, of course.
Yes, for on this particularly unfortunate occasion, QPR – home to professional thug and Twitter-addict Joey Barton — were set to be pounded in no small way by Torres’s legs, which had somehow done an Iron Man and turned from jelly to metal over-night! One goal? Oh, no, not today. Instead, Torres was to deliver a hat-trick (that’s 3 goals to those not in the know like I used to be) and it was about time. We’d all been waiting for what seemed like years!
The reason for this unbelievable change of fortune? The most likely theory, I think, is that Mrs Torres (Muma Torres, that is, with her legs made of thunder — I know, lots of thunder in this blog post, but that’s the only word to use — and her face made of scorn) sat Fernando down on her knee and gave him a very stern talking-to the night before the game, promising that if he didn’t deliver, she would no longer feel able to deliver the kind of professionally-dyed-hair that Torres had become so known for.
Here’s to Torres scoring more and actually doing his job. Yes, it means that I will have to find a new football player to ridicule, but at least it also means a few more exciting games for Chelsea! If it continues…
Novel writing: when deciding what novel to write feels TOTALLY impossible
Sometimes, when I just can't decide on what to write, I paint
For anyone out there who is right at the beginning of their career as a novelist — so early in their career, in fact, that at this point in time, calling it something so defined and formal as a career seems distinctly optimistic and in no small way stupid — deciding which kind of novel to write is quite possibly the biggest dilemma of them all. In my experience, those unfamiliar with this spectacle of hard-working bum-numbing slavery — those who, through no fault of their own, can only speculate on what writing a novel must be like — think that the physical act of writing is the hardest part, and that the decision to write the novel in question is formed somewhat easily from some grand idea which has been long in the making; an idea which just seems right somehow…in the same way that we all pick up a good book and find outselves entirely immersed, as if this novel could only have been written in this very specific way by this one author. (Ahhh, the romance of it all.) Yet the late nights, the early mornings, the totally all-encompassing nature of it all and the way it takes over every single aspect of your life, including sleep, are, for me, nothing in comparison to the gut-wrenchingly difficult process of choosing one novel idea over another. It’s a cruel and necessary game that plays out for all of us writers, and the simple fact is that it doesn’t ever get any easier, because the rules are always changing and we’re always looking to create something better. The problem, I suppose, is that while you are writing one novel — that book which to begin with seemed so right, so your own making — your mind is also, by turns, working in another direction towards a different novel idea that very badly wants to make itself known. And this is where the danger comes in. For what it is worth, here are my tips for sticking and deciding upon one idea and all other related matters.
Beautiful as it is, be grateful that you don't have to confront this non-saving entity every single day
1) Can’t decide which idea you want to write about? In the past, when I have been in this situation and forced it — become so fed-up with the procrastination of it all that I have found myself frantically writing a novel, any novel, just so it could be done and I could move on — the result has been at times OK, at times awful. A forced novel — that is to say, a novel which is born of desperation to put words on paper and fulfill the outline of an idea which is more mechanics than emotion — is a bad novel which will likely go nowhere. Whatever you want to write, a burning ambition to complete the project is the only common thread that links us all. Write that novel because you simply must do it. Write it because whenever you should be doing something else, the idea plays on your mind and just won’t leave you the hell alone.
2) A novel is not a loose outline of events without an ending, or a concept floating loosely between copycatting someone else’s work and two forged ideas. Never forge ideas together — what do I mean? I mean don’t take two or more novel ideas you have had and chuck them together as one, pretending that this might somehow work. Just because there is a beginning, middle and an end, does not mean that those ends go well in company of one another. Keep on point and you’ll be right.
3) Stop worrying about how people will react to the idea of your novel, and don’t be alarmed if you don’t see that idea already in print somewhere on Amazon. While it’s always good to know that there is a similar work of fiction out there — something of familiarity is welcome in such a lonely pursuit as this one — the fact that there isn’t can be a special, magical thing. It could mean you have stumbled across a concept which is unlike most and therefore impressive! Always remember that at some point in history, an idea was revolutionary and new and that author — think Nabokov’s masterpiece Lolita — was condemned for creating what is now considered a masterpiece. Bravery does pay, so forget what others are saying and doing, because that’s a waste of time. If you believe in your concept and believe you can make it reality, then you can. There is no doubt about that. Words are oganic, and it can be done.
Nabokov. Picture Copyright Mantex.co.uk
4) What are your strengths? I love reading thrillers. The Bourne Identity by the now deceased Robert Ludlum is a classic in my opinion. Yet, much as I adore reading this book and others like it — I just finished Drive by James Sallis which was different but similarly fascinating in form — I know that my strengths do not lie in the thriller-writing field. What a pain, would be so much easier if they did. The reason why: I find it difficult to be serious for that long, and my job as a freelance writer already commands enough of my time to be spent seriously. The up-shot of this is that after work I am glad to write in a way which feels completely unshackled. So, if you enjoy writing humourism, write comedy, or something with a comedic thread. If you enjoy writing romance and you are a man, do not be put off. If I were you, I’d just write whatever you enjoy doing and say bollocks to everyone else. You’re going to be spending one hell of a lot of time doing this, remember, so you want that raw enthusiasm to be present always. More importantly, if you ever expect a reader to pay for your work and spend many hours voraciously consuming it, you have a moral and intellectual obligation to them to produce work which is a direct representation of your most natural abilities.
5) Be careful about inserting religion, your own moral values and ideas into your novel: for me, this is a critical point. As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter if you are religious or not, what you believe or don’t believe, or what you think is great about the world. Just remember that your characters should — I think — begin life as people in their own right. This is not a crusade. They should develop their own voice, their own moral out-look in life and be capable of being in direct disagreement with everything you stand for. If you only ever write characters which feel like you and act like you do, how do you expect them to outgrow your own limitations and expand into something big, scary and influential to the reader? If writing about characters who are so different from you feels wrong or immoral, then perhaps this is the wrong genre to be writing in?
If you do have a cause to further, though — you want to write about something to further awareness, rather than to ram your ideas down the reader’s throat — go ahead. Write about what matters to you. I know I did with my debut novel, and it was the best decision I have ever made.
6) This could go on all day, but I will end here on this important point: sometimes, just sometimes, you will be in a strange mental place where 3 or 4 or 5 ideas all seem like the right novels to write at this very moment. This is, quite possibly, the cruelest game for the intellectual spirit to play, and it may just mean that yes…you are cursed: you must write all these novels one after another. Bummer. Bigggggg bummer. But, oh well, things could be worse. At least you have ideas. Right?
Things which make me happy (and which might make you happy, too)
1) On the train to London Liverpool Street: someone has tucked their newspaper — The Evening Standard — behind the vertical red hand-rail next to the carriage doors. Makes me happy to discover it waiting for me there, as though it was left there just for me (it’s always amazing when you find something free on an English train which has been ripping you off for many years). There are a hundred other free newspapers scattered around this carriage and this one shouldn’t be special, really, but for some reason there’s nothing like finding one of these anomalies. The person who left it there has even folded it neatly in half — no edge is creased — which leads me to believe that this may, in fact, be an elaborate ploy by the printers of The Evening Standard to appeal to the genteel side of the more discerning man (or woman) on the street.
2) Sitting around the dinner table with family, two conversations going on — Grandad and dad, my nan and my mum, football versus how to cook beef — and it sounds like a mess (I am involved in neither conversation, really), but amongst it all is a kind of tranquility which I know I am lucky to be a part of. Many people don’t have the luxury of a family, love, unconditional support and the presence of a person in another room when that’s all an individual needs. Actually, come to think of it, many people don’t have the luxury of a roof capable of keeping out the elements, let alone a dinner table. All of us with these things, we are all so very lucky.
3) A total stranger running up behind me in the street — for a moment I think I might be about to be mugged or something weird is about to happen, then I remember that this is Cambridge UK (home of the middle-class non-criminal) and it is the day-time, so both these scenarios are quite unlikely — but, no, it’s fine; this guy, he just wants to hand me the receipt I dropped on the floor, just in case I needed it. Yes, just in case I needed it. I almost feel like dropping it again just to test the theiry. This ain’t New York or Boston. The receipt is useless of course — I have already eaten my Double Decker and it was a fine and perfect combination of nougat and chocolate on top, no reason to take it back — but it makes me smile. The goodness of people can turn your day around.
4) I’m heading into town. When I left the house it looked fine, but half-way to the station it’s starting to rain — those fast-moving clouds on an endless blanket of grey that promises so much more to come. Then comes that instant, colossal, all-consuming barrage of water that seeps into everything and turns the pavement from silvery-grey to the mirrored reflection of a lake in just a few seconds. I get soaked through and when I arrive at the station and take pointless cover under the shelter — with all the other wet people who look like a Lama just spat in their face — I feel freezing, but it doesn’t matter. Feels like being alive. Autumn finally has smells and a personality and once again I smile. I am happy!
"Hi, I'm Dusty, and yes, this is how long my neck is supposed to be so please leave it out with the neck-based comments."
5) Making things out of clay, paper, wood — whatever. I have no idea where to put them — I already have too many and I wouldn’t ask a friend if they wanted a giraffe painted as a zebra, not after last time… — but that is beside the point! The creation of material things may seem, to some, like it’s contributing to all the crap on Earth, but I disagree. Creation in all forms is vital. Without it everything stays inside, and we already have enough inside, don’t you think?
Even if you consider yourself HOPELESS with creative things, you should try and make your face out of clay. If it goes wrong and it looks sinister, you can always give it to your enemy, can't you?
6) A surprise postcard from a friend. The fact I can barely make sense of the words is irelevant.
7) Making sleepy mistakes, then putting them right when wide-awake.
8) Almost falling out of bed: makes you feel alive!
9) The pan is over-flowing….but I get there just in time!
10) Tax rebates. I think that’s all I need to say.
11) A squirrel on a fence: we make eye-contact for just a second. As he scurries away, I wonder if he’s a male and we just communicated something vitally important and about what it means to be a male in this day and age. Or it may be my imagination: how do you tell the sex of a squirrel, actually?
12) Finding and reading other people’s blogs, websites and cool Tumblr sites by pure chance.
13) Charity-shop books with mysterious notes written on the pages…
We don’t ALWAYS know
Image courtesy of Stella Marr's blog/site -- click the photo and go to it now
A stranger walks past, head low, face seemingly indifferent as you pass by — actually, the expression on their face will depend on how much coffee you have consumed, how you feel about the current economic climate, where you grew-up, your blood-pressure and genetic make-up, who you hang around with, and a million other variables of this gigantic science-experiment we like to call life — and you think What the hell’s wrong with them? You’re feeling happy for whatever reason — or maybe not happy, maybe just content, that feeling where there is no wind or heat, where you’re gliding along in neutral — and, much as you know how it feels to be having a bad day, right now everything seems good. Nothing can touch you, and even if it could, you wouldn’t really care. Things just seem to be going right for you. In this moment you’re in your own little world and that stranger? he just seems to be making such a big deal out of things. Come on, you think, it really isn’t that bad.
Or it’s a businessman on his phone, or an angry man in a wheelchair who has a grudge against pedestrians and seems to hate anyone with legs. We’re all doing it, and, I suppose on some deep subconscious level, it’s essential to our survival in the way we view the world and our place in it, a cruel game of me versus you versus us: passing judgement on others every single day of our lives, and thinking that we know something about what they’re going through from the very little that we see.
But we don’t, and sometimes it’s good to be reminded of that fact.
Our closest friends have secrets, lies, things they’d rather not discuss with anyone else, things which don’t make sense to them — let alone that they could make sense for anyone else — and every person you walk past in the street, any street, is a mass of new experiences you could never hope to truly understand. From the second they were born they were on a different path, with a different family, with a different way of dealing with things, and a different reaction to the decisions of others that caused a series of life events that nobody else could really appreciate but them. But you. It’s not about religion, and it isn’t about how much you smile or don’t smile or changing your ways and trying harder. Even if they sat down with you every week for a year and told you about the hurt, the raging hot emotion of it all, the suffering and the good times, the rights and the wrongs, you’d never really know what they had been through – you’d never know, even, what was fact and what was fiction, as every word out of our mouths is, whether we want to believe it or not, I think, pre-edited to fit our version of events and the way we feel about it all. Our own personal truths. None of us know how we would react if we were put into the same situation as another person; we think we do, we imagine we might be able to and we compare what has happened with us to what has happened to others, but those are only opinions based on a quick, rough sketch – if you think you can imagine what someone else has gone through and really feel that pain, you are simply wrong. Because even if you’ve lived an experience that seems similar on the surface, beneath that is a wealth of information and light and dark that couldn’t be more different. Despite the closeness of shared experiences, even if you both get each other, you may as well be on separate planets.
Drugs, bad childhoods, good childhoods, addiction to life and love and everything in-between: so many variables.
Image Copyright The New York Times -- click the photo to go there now
And we forget all this sometimes, I think. We simplify things so we can make sense of stuff that we either don’t want to delve completely into, or would rather inspect on face-value from a comfortable distance. We see a guy or girl selling a Big Issue and we think we have the slightest idea of how they ended up that way; we chat amongst ourselves, ruminating pointlessly on how things should have been different and would have been if they’d made certain choices, or did something for themselves. Better families, better morals, better ethics. They seem so weak, don’t they? standing there begging for our money, yet I once bumped into a man who had been mugged of all his daily takings and who was carrying on not giving up. This man, he displayed a kind of will and testament to his right to be here that went well beyond just needing to do it; this was his basic human right he was fighting for. He was just trying to sell a few magazines on Christmas Eve and he was mugged, dragged into an alleyway and beaten unconscious for £35. People saw it happen, a bus-full of commuters, and nobody did a thing, all turned the other way. After speaking with him, I started to shiver. The gravity of what he had told me made me feel sick. The wealth of cruelty in the world seemed to surround me as I walked away that day, and it followed me home that night. Seemed to be in the eyes of every person, the towering buildings and the cars, so eager to get wherever they were going; the importance of society over everything else. I saw a child holding hands with his mother and felt sorry for him. So innocent, but one day soon these things would creep up on him and there is no escape, for nobody, nowhere.
It was a single 1 in the top right of my WordPress Dashboard that triggered the post you are reading now. I clicked on it this morning, saw it was a Like from a fellow blogger and clicked again to see the blogger’s profile – a smiling face, blonde hair, happy-looking; these were my simple first impressions. A minute later I was reading a post which gripped me completely on a blog which is nothing less than fascinating and what I consider very much essential reading. This is Stella’s blog and I do not use the word essential loosely. Stella’s writings are frank, straight from the heart and 100% educational on so many levels — words that have helped many and will continue to do so, that much is clear. A call-girl and hooker for 10 years who turned her life around with the help of some valuable friends, I can’t remember the last time I read writing of such heartfelt honesty. Thanks for dropping by and hitting Like on my blog, Stella, and wishing you all the best: you’re a role-model to anyone out there who has ever fought against something massive and enormous.
Because it’s about education and enlightenment, people. We need this, and without it ignorance gets to claw its way into every aspect of our lives. Stella Marr founded Survivors Connect to help others who have been the victim of trafficking and prostitution.
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My novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book (click the title for a review) is available through Amazon US and Amazon UK, as well as in paperback here.
Chad Degroot talks getting stuff done
THE DEDICATION INTERVIEW
Chad Degroot talks getting stuff done…
NOTE: The following intro might make it sound like this is only interesting if you have some connection with BMX, but I can assure you that’s not the case. Everyone can learn something by reading this, so be sure to check it out:
The name “Chad Degroot” may not be one which you’re familiar with, but in BMX circles it’s a name that’s been synonymous with progression and determination to get cool things done for over twenty years. Known by many as one of the most unique technical BMX riders around (as well as one of the most versatile), Chad doesn’t – and never has – limited himself to just progressing on a BMX bike. And although Chad might cringe at what I’m about to say next, it’s the truth, ask anyone: without him and the tight group he rode with during the 1990s — when BMX went through probably its biggest technical-tricks revolution — BMX would never have evolved to become what it is today. Back then, I was just starting out myself, and Chad’s flatland skills alone blew my mind. After that he went on to ride ramps as well as anyone, and use his numerous tech-skills to full advantage on street, ramps and in even more videos…
Tense spider-versus-man encounter!
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There was no caption for this photo I found on Google images, but if I were to write it it would probably say something like “shocked woman who has just seen a spider and, on closer inspection, noticed it had a siezeable penis too.” A confusing situation indeed. I have literally no idea if spiders have penises or not, and unless you are freakish in the mind I suggest you do not ponder it!
The title says it all. TAKE ME TO THE NEW SHORT STORYPLEASE MR PINK!
Jamie Oliver: Man On A Mission
Jamie back when Oliver Twist was more famous than him. Is it legal to get this excited about a fish? Unlikely.
At 10:22pm last night – May 31st, 2011 – Jamie Oliver broke down on national TV and finally admitted he was part man, part vegetable, sent from the planet FOODALICIOUS to take over planet Earth and convert everyone on it into good-food-loving maniacs physically incapable of cooking any meal in longer than thirty minutes. I know, it was a bomb-shell for me to! But calm down, that wasn’t actually what happened; that was just what I thought he was going to say. In fact, he didn’t – it was worse. He didn’t say anything much. For a change, and not in a nice way – and probably for the first time since being born into the world – Jamie Oliver was completely and utterly speechless.
Yes, you may wish to read that last sentence again. Then you may wish to double check you haven’t altered another reality and come back and read this (for what it’s worth I can assure you you haven’t entered another reality, but can you trust me? For all I know I may have entered another one before I wrote this!).
Jamie probably thinking "being more famous than Oliver Twist is amazing, I won't deny it!" And no, if you were wondering, he was sent from the future and does not age.
Back to Jamie and his rage and upset-ness.
Let me tell you, I felt his rage. Jamie, you see, had just been shut down again on his quest to bring better food to the school-children of LA. And when Is say again, I actually mean again-again-again-again. I’d be the first to admit that I didn’t used to be the greatest Jamie Oliver fan, but all that’s been changing recently. After seeing how much passion and dedication Jamie has put into this latest series – not to mention the numerous obstacles he’s encountered while trying to do something essentially simple: give American school children proper good food – my mind is made up. Absolutely. Jamie is a good man and we should be proud of what he’s doing.
Writing essentials: what is head-hopping?
A typical photo of a man who has just finished a novel filled with head-hopping.
by pure chance today I had to write a few articles about writing techniques. One of them was about the perils of head-hopping, and since I had the material there I decided to re-work it into the following post:
Let’s start with a definition. Not a conclusive definition by any means, but it gives you a general idea of what we’re dealing with: head-hopping is when a writer jumps from one point of view to that of another during a novel…
New short story up…How to have sex
If you're single and anyone ever poisons you and you need an emergency solution, looking at this photo for about ten seconds should do the trick, right?
Disclaimer 1, a serious disclaimer: although this short story doesn’t contain any really graphic content — nothing even as graphic as a sex eductation lesson at school, actually — I should say that if you’re under 16, you probably shouldn’t be reading this article. Obviously I can’t stop you, but I have to at least try. I’d rather I didn’t get a barrage of emails from angry parents around the world.
Here we go, then.
I’ve written about everything else, why not this…
Disclaimer 2, a less serious disclaimer: it’s been so long since I had sex I can barely believe I am writing this article. There should really be a misinformation law against it, and who knows, in some countries there probably is. But fortunately I live in the UK where misinformation from national newspapers is completely legal.
I KNOW HOW TO HAVE SEX, BUT WHAT THE HELL, CAN A LITTLE EXTRA INFORMATION REALLY HURT?
Guess what? You can buy ‘The Number 3 Mystery Book’ now on Kindle!
It’s a strange feeling actually having a book for sale…right now, if I am honest, I still feel a bit numb about it all. But that’s OK. There’s plenty of time to (hopefully) get excited in the coming days and weeks.
You can buy it at Amazon here.
Right now if you own a Kindle and live in the USA, UK or Germany, you can have it delivered digitally for around $1.
As soon as I can actually keep my eyes open long enough I’ll sort it out for the ipad and other digital devices. Then, hopefully within a couple of weeks, it should be available in paperback too.
Watch this space for an index of Mystery Book related posts soon…
What we can ALL learn from Rambo
Don't push me!
1) You don’t always need a thousand words to make your point. Three will do: “don’t push me!” Having lethal SAS skills also doesn’t hurt (you), but it’s not mandatory, don’t worry.
2) Violence solves everything. Anyone who says otherwise has clearly not seen the latest Rambo film, where the man himself single-handedly machine-guns several hundred evil enemies to pieces in a matter of literally seconds. Could the same have been achieved with mass conversation? Unlikely; you’d have to be pretty vengeful, and I’ve only ever met one person who came close (my maths teacher at primary school. When I was 8 she was seriously about 9 feet tall and the most bitter person you could ever not hope to meet).
3) The mean look is always in.
4) Never go anywhere without your hand-crafted machete. Not even the bathroom. ESPECIALLY the bathroom.
5) You can have a nick-name that sounds a lot like a nick-name for a dog and pull it off. But you have to be pretty ripped (see photo), or otherwise people are going to take the piss, and can you blame them?
6) Long words and intellect are all very well, but are they any good for running around in the woods and being harder than anyone else on earth? No. Rambo proves that there’s a career for everyone, even those who possess a killing instinct and don’t like working inside.
Amazon is a battle-ground
This is not going to be a funny post. I am not going to talk about how yesterday, I spent 45 highly frustrating minutes hiding like a spy in the utility room, trying to photograph the blue-tits as they attacked the bird-feeder outside, and how every time I made the slightest noise they all shuttled off, leaving me feeling embarrassed with just a blurry photo of something reminiscent of my sixth-form photography project, which was deemed ‘sinister in its abstract usage’. Nor am I going to talk about how it disturbed me today when, on the BBC News web-site, I came across a story about the new gigantic Boeing 747-8 plane, which immediately made me think of the Titanic and how that ended (I didn’t think of the Titanic because the plane also doubles as a boat, by the way, as it doesn’t. I thought of the Titanic because if you ask me, a huge great plane like that is just asking for trouble).
Instead I am going to talk about the battle-ground that is Amazon. The warriors, in this case, are not clad in armour but seated in front of computers across the land: they are independent authors, or indie authors, if you like (I personally don’t particularly like the term indie author; it makes me feel like I should be wearing tight jeans and sat here with a fashionable hair-cut I can neither comprehend or want, and that’s something which I’m just not into!). Definitely regression from what warriors of the past would have wanted for their kind in the future, but warriors nonetheless.
Because if you’re an independent/indie author on Amazon, you’d better be prepared to fight.
I think Amazon are basically good, let’s get that straight from the out-set. Yes they’re a massive corporate organisation who love nothing more than making stupid money and pretending they understand what it’s like to be a broke unknown writer, but at the same time, their platform is nothing less than essential for anyone wanting to sell their work in paperback or on the Kindle. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything the firm do – I don’t. But as with anything in life there are positives and negatives. And remember: with rare exceptions, you care just as much about making money as Amazon do. Or, more accurately, you need to make enough money to keep you going, which you could argue is the same for Amazon with their ever-increasing overheads. You can try and argue against that point by saying that you’re just one person and they are enormous and have lost sight of their magnitude in pursuit of success, but the argument drowns as soon as you realise that humans are all essentially greedy. Soon as we have anything, we all want something more, even if the stakes are very low.
But enough with the pessimism, and back to the battle-ground.
One really incredible thing about Amazon is that they offer you the opportunity to interact with a readership. Not a spokesman, not a manager — YOU, the author. This is possible through their Author Central programme, which gives you a customisable page to woo readers with, or via their numerous discussion forums where you can reply to threads and start your own.
The problem is that it’s getting out of hand. In a big and potentially damaging way. And readers are getting sick and tired of authors shamelessly promoting their work — which you really can’t blame them for, if I’m honest, so am I. To the point where now, I suspect that 75% of readers don’t even bother to click through to a book page unless they recognise the author’s name or the pitch was truly mind-blowing and they have to read that book. And to be honest, why should they? When almost every thread in a discussion is infected with someone — often out of context, with the most tenuous link imaginable — trying to sell their work, why should a reader waste their time on a complete unknown, let alone 6 hours reading their novel?
For the independent/indie author, it poses a real and difficult-to-process issue: do you risk continuous posting and hope readers will be intrigued enough — or broken down mentally enough — to check out your book, or do you hold off and hope that the other promotional work you do will pay off?
By the way, you can now buy The Number 3 Mystery Book for just 69p! Did I mention that?
There’s another dilemma, of course: if you don’t do enough promotional work and connect with your readers, then your work won’t actually find any readers.
What it comes down to, I think, is integrity. There’ll always be people who have no shame. People who really do think any publicity is good publicity. But at the same time, the real writers will eventually shine through. Until then we’ll all just have to hang on because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
C
You have to love them…
I am round — a perfect circle. (Well, most of the time. But when I’m not I get away with it, just — you can manage that when you’re the envy of every hungry human-being in the room.)
Another short story? Why not: The Swingers
Blue Valentine (the movie): what’s your opinion?
You don’t have to go very far to see how different people’s opinions on domestic abuse are. They range just as wildly as anything. After I’d watched Blue Valentine — the Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams (from Dawson’s Creek) film which caused such a stir when it came out in 2010 — I found myself on IMDB wanting to see what other people made of the film. Considering what I’d just taken in, parts of which horrified me no small amount, I was mildly surprised by what I found: a few people wondering what all the fuss was / is about, as if domestic abuse is something which always comes delivered in a fist and nothing else.
I don’t want to spoil the film for those people who haven’t seen it yet, but I think I can get away with saying this: Blue Valentine has a certain impact which, irrelevant of your opinion, is unmistakable. While there is no blood and very little actual violence, what does resonate powerfully is the contrast between the two time-lines which run parallel to one another throughout the entire film. As you follow the couple’s relationship in its earliest days, pre-marriage, and at the same time see the effect of certain events years later, you can’t help but experience a wave of emotions. Or at least I couldn’t. Because of this, Blue Valentine is both beautiful and nightmarish and in places wonderfully tender. In short, you really do feel as though the relatively small number of moments we the viewers get to witness provide a formula which will stay with you. After I’d turned the film off, I found that the seed began to grow, the formula expanding, allowing me to see everything in-between that the movie had alluded to.
Also impressive is Gosling and Williams’s on-screen relationship. Even in its dullest moments they are scintillatingly believable together, and the performances all-round match-up just as well.
Inhabiting a genre which is unlikely to be crowded for a long time to come — in fact, thinking in terms of genre, I struggle to think of more than 5 other films which fit neatly in — Blue Valentine could have easily been forgettable and all-too-easily brutal. Instead, and thanks to probably one of the best dramatic performances in recent years — you’ll know the scene when you see it — I can see people talking about this film in 10 or 20 years to come, and, when they do, the style the film was shot in — as if an invisible documentary maker was following the couple round at all times — will remain weirdly memorable.
The conclusive post on alien existence and the unknown
This photo was taken by a kayacker on Lake Windermere -- using a camera phone -- in late 2010 / early 2011 (I think). It's authentic, according to the experts. The only problem is that the phone's file size was so small that they couldn't tell if it'd been Photoshopped or not.
The other evening I found myself in a situation which is all too common: me on the one side, defending my opinion on aliens and unknown creatures, and my friends on one side, attacking me with their full-force, largely ignorant-of-any-research-or-knowledge attitude. Their argument, though riddled with holes and generally resorting to the weakest form of reasoning, was, much to my irritation, a good one. One that has stalled seasoned experts in their tracks and left them sweating: “you don’t know anything for sure, so shut up!”
These kind of arguments are unsurprisingly common when you’ve just published a novel on Amazon which is very much about Cryptozoological animals and the unknown (as well as being a comedy with great feedback so far from a wide range of ages, if you didn’t know!). Due to my enthusiasm for all things unknown-and-alien-related, I have to endure at least one argument every week, sometimes more. It’s a hard life when you’re fighting what feels like an entire planet of disbelievers…
My problem is I never learn. I always resort to the same points. I’ve said them so many times, in fact, that now all I have to do is open my mouth and it all comes tumbling out.
(And yes, I know I’ve probably single-handedly stopped my very-infant career as a novelist in its tracks, but that’s a risk I am willing to take. It’s an easily calculated risk when your book sales will likely never allow you to buy more than one decent meal every month, right?)
So, the main points I always resort to. Oh, and before we go any further I should say that this isn’t really the conclusive post on alien existence and the unknown. I just wrote that to get your attention, and you have to admit it worked, don’t you?
My goodness I feel smug right now after writing that sentence. You should try it sometime.
So, the points I always bring up:
1) The universe is really quite big. End of point one.
2) We are just a collection of what we call ‘brains’ in bodies. These brains, incredible and fantastic as they are, see things in a certain way. What we see is not necessarily all of what is there, though (and I say this without any scientific evidence to back it up). It may, in fact, only be a fraction of what is there, or a large amount of what is there. The problem is, we can’t see what we can’t see. We’d need someone else to conclusively tell us, and even if they did we probably wouldn’t trust that someone (or something). But then again, it wouldn’t be our fault. It’d probably be a large slimy creature.
3) Our technology is powerful, wonderful, astonishing, but it’s a long way off from being good enough to examine large bodies of water with any real conviction: this point always causes a huge-argument-flair-up. I quite like it actually. But think about it: Loch Ness, for example, is freakishly enormous. It is 23 miles long, 1 mile wide at its most, 600 feet deep or thereabouts, and has a surface area of21.8 square miles. In other words, it’s a bit of a whopper. Now, forget your opinion on the actual Nessie sightings over the years, and let’s look at this logically. If you wanted to scan that amount of water for a creature the length of a couple of cars, say, where would you begin? You could start at one end and go slowly, hoping you uncover something in the murky green waters that resembles a creature, but would that be a wise idea? Unlikely. It’d take you a hell of a long time — it has taken a number of researchers a hell of a long time already, as you probably already know — and you’d almost certainly turn up nothing. Does this mean that the Loch is not home to some kind of large creature? Of course not. Just remember: your house is full of spiders which you will never see, but that doesn’t mean they’re not actually there.
Experimental air-craft built by Canada between 1958 and 1959
4) “If I don’t see it with my own eyes, I won’t believe it.” I always love this one. It has to be possibly the stupidest thing anyone has ever said, apart from “I do love getting out of bed early in the morning”, “I love a bit of cabbage” or “Who is Led Zeppelin?” (I once met a man in Germany who had never heard of Led Zeppelin. And yes, I am being serious.)
Now, I haven’t seen Africa, or the first episode of Coronation Street, but I know that Africa exists, and that that first episode was indeed shot. I also haven’t seen the dog that walks around our village which my friend Dave says has a “human-looking backside”, but I know with reasonable certainty that this dog does indeed have a human arse (Dave doesn’t lie about things like that; and yes, why he was looking at a dog’s bum so much is highly questionable and I do try and stay away from him as much as possible, less I get infected).
…Or do I know these things? Well, in all likelihood, no, not if we’re going by the stupid rule that opened point 3 — I just have always assumed Africa must exist because there are flights there, and…well, it’s Africa! This is, of course, what makes it so difficult to work out whether we believe something abstract like a creature dwelling in a lake.
The fourth part of this point is imagine manipulation. Once anything is recorded — either digitally or in any other way — it becomes information, not proof. What this means is that anyone can video or photograph anything and then it’s perfectly understandable that someone else will stand up and say “That can’t be true, it’s been manipulated”.
Really, you can never know if anything is actually for sure, can you? Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith and decide whether you believe something.
4) Politics: you can disagree with me if you like, but I think that it all comes down to politics. Everything. The whole human-world is dominated by all kinds of people who want very different things. The knock-on effect of this is that one decision can make one person rich or another quite poor. Take looking for the Yeti as a good example. Yeti’s have allegedly been seen in the highest places in the world, such as the Himalaya (the original name, as opposed to the westernized one which adds an s). Unfortunately, though, looking for Yeti’s in the highest places in the world is tough for two very good reasons, and nothing like a leisurely tramp in the countryside: 1) the mountains border a number of countries –Nepal and Tibet to name but two out of six — and all the countries have different rules and regulations, and basically hate each other. Even now many of them don’t allow expeditions into places where sightings have occurred, and, if they do, they tend to have such strict policies enforced that finding anything of any use is close to impossible. 2) the terrain where sightings have occurred is extremely inhospitable — to the point where climbing it at such a high level would be suicide. This means that very often tracks can’t be seen, or if tracks are made — by any animal — they vanish before any evidence can be obtained.
Don’t get me wrong: I think that 98% of what’s claimed to be evidence of extra-terrestrial life / evidence of unknown animals is a lie. I just don’t think we can or should rule out that unknown 2%, do you?
Never underestimate people: 1) you have to love them readers
All too often I read an interview with an independent novelist and see something along the lines of: I did it all myself. The writing, the editing, even the formatting!
The exclamation point is justified. After writing a book entirely on your own, and spending what may be years — in any case, countless hours — huddled over your laptop or pad of paper, you can put whatever the hell you want at the end of a sentence like that. I believe you’ve earned it.
But one thing I don’t think you should do is keep your work entirely to yourself before you publish. For some reason — or maybe several reasons — many independent writers feel that they can produce a decent piece of work without having it vetted before it goes out into the world. I won’t lie, there may have been a time when I thought similarly, but after my experience with The Number 3 Mystery Book, where more than a couple of people played a vital role in reading and reviewing, I wouldn’t dream of releasing a novel any other way.
As I’ve mentioned in the Thanks section of the book, people like Duncan Kerr, Will Fairweather and Yasmin Selena — herself a talented writer — did an amazing job of pointing things out which I could never have spotted. For example, even though he’s not a writer, Dunc pointed out the contrast between light and dark in the book, and that the piece as a whole might benefit some from being made a bit smoother, while Will spurred me on during one month where I was beginning to think the whole thing was a waste of my time. At the end of the writing process, Yasmin was amazing. She read the novel in just a couple of days and gave me detailed feedback on everything from spelling and grammar — it wasn’t perfect… — to style and flow. And that isn’t it by a long shot. There were many other people besides that who played a part. (And I could go on all day about the many fine people who have already read / are presently reading the book and enjoying it.)
I wasn’t going to write this post — I’m conscious that I don’t want to ram my novel down peoples’ throats — but now I have I hope it might help some people. Just know one thing: you can only get better by showing others your work. Never be ashamed of what you have produced, and chances are that someone out there will love it too.
More coming soon on the marketing campaign surrounding my book. People have been asking me how that’s going, so I’m going to give it to them. For now, goodbye!
The strange anomaly that is the ‘clique’
According to one dictionary definition I’ve found – and from what I’ve seen they all say more or less the same thing – a clique is determined as the following:
clique [kliːk klɪk]
n
a small, exclusive group of friends or associates
[from French, perhaps from Old French: latch, from cliquer to click; suggestive of the necessity to exclude nonmembers]
cliquish adj
cliquishly adv
cliquishness n
Sometime, I don’t know when, the term ‘clique’ became something very negative. Something to frown upon. I understand why, of course, but from where I’m standing, when you get right to the root of it, it’s anything but.
One thing I think we all need to admit is that every single one of us is part of a clique. Unless you’re willing to seal yourself in a room and exist without any form of communication whatsoever, it’s impossible not to be.
Why do I think this point needs making? Because all too often I hear people talking about how something is “clique-ey” (the wrong terminology according to the above examples; I have to admit, though, that until today I had absolutely no idea that you could do something cliquishly!) in a negative way. Like it’s something they could never be a part of.
Wake up: the reason you feel like that, if you feel like that, I’m guessing, is probably because you’re not in the clique you’re observing. If you were then you’d feel all warm and fuzzy and Acknowledged. Loved. Isn’t that why we hang around in groups? Isn’t that why all of us carefully select — inadvertently, subconsciously, however it may be – some people and not others? Humans are pack animals, it’s the way we’ll be until some immense evolutionary change takes place, for the good or the better, so next time you find yourself hating a certain clique, look at it from another perspective: that of someone who is on the inside peering out.
Vin Diesel says “You can live without tea! And you WILL, or I’ll beat your ass!”
Vin easily winning the International What's The Strangest Pose You Can Manage Which Mainly Involves Your Right Arm? Competition
The third paragraph in this article — no, don’t read it right now, just hold on, we’ll be there in less than a minute — might sound exactly like something pseudo-meaningful Vin Diesel would say in one of his films – and yes, I’m being vague because I have no idea what those films might be…that’s my macho credibility, if I had any, right out the window, then – and in fact you’d be right in thinking it’s meaningful. Meaningful meaningful and nothing pseudo about it, as it goes. Because while it’s of no significance to Vin Diesel or anyone else, really, it is of great significance to me. And if you can’t write about that kind of thing in your blog, where indeed can you write about it? (Feel free to comment or email me with useless suggestions. It seems when I don’t say that I get a barrage of them, so who knows, maybe it might work better this way around?)
And yes, I’m sick of the name Vin Diesel too. And the word meaningful. Don’t worry, there’s a slim chance that I’ll ever subject you to either word any time soon. Unless he makes a film which I am likely to watch, and I lose my thesaurus. So yeah…after a quick scan on Rotten Tomatoes it seems we’re pretty safe, then…(and don’t worry, I guard my Thesaurus with my life. So would you if you’d paid £35 for it).
The Vin-Diesel-style paragraph in question, deep manly voice optional, of course: (Massive points deducted if you’re reading this and wondering what happened in paragraphs1 and 2. In fact, go and slap yourself round the face, please.)
Some things you do in your life you do because you feel you have no choice. Other things are done because you have too much choice, your brain gets scrambled, and you end up picking one at random – playing Russian Roulette. Then there are the things in between which just inexplicably happen. The result of a reaction built on a vague series of events. With me, eight months ago, an event happened which was partly my decision, and partly down to necessity.
And that event, dear reader, was giving up tea. Completely. No more caffeine. No decaf either.
Breaking it right down 100%.
For at least one year.
For health reasons.
To make me feel better. To give me more energy.
Oh, the horror of it.
But before I go any further, allow me to demonstrate how crucial tea was to my every-day life.
Being a freelance writer, nobody tells me when to take a break. Cool, right? I can make tea when I wish, and, if I want to, even indulge myself in ITVs Loose Women while drinking several cups (where I always learn a great many things which always seem useful at the time, but are rarely suitable to be included in my clients articles).
And the thing was, I was a late-tea-developer, which in many ways made it even worse. Having found my beloved tea far later than most – at around the age of 18, when I should have been more concerned about getting girls and looking in the mirror and realising my short hair, combined with large nose, made me look horrendous – I had at least a decade’s worth of time to make up for. And make up for it I did!
I drank tea in the morning: 4 cups at least. I drank 2 at lunch-time, and in the afternoon…well, maths was quite literally never my strong-point, but I really did lose count. The eagle-eyed of you will notice how I didn’t state how many cups of tea I used to drink in the evening…
But anyway, the point is that when it came time to quit tea for good – replacing it with the awful-sounding “Peppermint Tea” – I was what you can only describe as highly dependant. Imagine whichever character Ewan McGregor played in Trainspotting crossed with one of the most irritating contestants in The Apprentice and you’ll come somewhere near seeing how my decision-making process was.
And to begin with, I won’t lie, it was…
Actually much easier than I thought! I was going to invent some unsettling story there, but in the end honesty seemed favourable. I mean, seriously it was easy, much too easy…and considering my history it made no sense.
OK, so the first day was tricky, but in the main it was the routine I missed more than the actual tea itself. That was what I had come to realise.
8 months on? I’m still on the Peppermint Tea and sometimes, I’m not sure, but I think I come close to enjoying it (even if after 5 cups your breath does actually smell alarmingly like stale wee…). And you know what? I don’t see me going back to my old ways any time soon. That’s right, my days as an addict are over. I’m nobody’s gimp, not anymore.
I’ll definitely drink regular tea again, there’s no way I’m staying off it forever completely, but the point is I’ve broken that habit.
And that? That makes me very happy indeed, because for once — to end it as Vin might — I realised that we own our habits. It’s our job to beat them and show them who’s the boss, you know.
New in ‘short stories’…Today I did it: I actually PUT UP A TENT
I think I like this tent because it doesn't look like my nightmare vision of a tent. But then again, it may be using its unique image to lull me into a false sense of security before punishing me severely for crimes against tents. People, keep your eyes OPEN!
Tents baffle me. This is a story about my bafflement!
The curse of the monkey-arms
Meet Brian: the kind of neanderthal man who would, a long time later, eventually evolve into the blueprint for the modern secondary school Science teacher through just a couple of steps
My granddad does it, my dad definitely does it — sorry, Dad — and, based on what small amount of information I have been able to covertly mine from assorted family and photo albums, I’d hazard a guess that every single male in the Pink family ever has walked with monkey-arms.
That’s right: the arms hanging limp…the palms facing not inwards towards the body — as is the norm with modern humans other people are lucky enough to be related to — but the direction walked away from…
Evolution is amazing, though, isn’t it? Forget the science and the religion — it just blows my mind. However it happened, whatever force created it, is irrelevant to where we are now (or at least to this blog post; don’t bother emailing me to start an angry evolutionary debate unless it’s a good one, please people!). The fact that we are here at all, right now, going about our business and pretending to rule the world, is stupendous.
Now, you’d think that after hundreds, if not thousands of years, the monkey-arms would have slowly become obselete. Faded away. But no, people. In my family and maybe yours too, this is one stubborn evolutionary character trait that simply refuses to die.
For years I’ve been fighting the monkey-arms-thing on a deeply personal level, trying to integrate with the rest of society so that if I ever have off-spring they will not be cursed with the same fate as me, and tragically it would seem that the whole 30 years of war have been a feutile battle…
Becaue today, while walking past a particularly reflective enormous shop window and making the mistake of glancing in it, I saw that despite countless conditioning sessions — whenever I walk around I try and fight the monkey-arms and train my skeleton into accepting a new way of being — I am still, essentially, cursed more than ever.
That’s right: all that conditioning did nothing. In fact, I may have even gone backwards.
And the worst thing is that I have a beard, which only adds to the neanderthal image…
It’s a good job I’m self employed and hate looking at mirrors.
And, if you were wondering, I would shave it off, but I also have a larger-than-average nose.
One thing’s for sure: I think I’d rather have a beak and a beard than look like a twelve-year-old going to a fancy-dress party.
Why do we watch horror films?
Either a cannibal caught slightly unawares or...a great stand in for Richard O' Brien of The Crystal Maze fame
To say that films like The Hills Have Eyes or The Exorcist are, as I have sometimes heard horror films described, “Like something out of our worst nightmares” is missing the point in a big way, I think. I don’t believe that’s giving horror films the psychological credit they truly deserve. Because in nightmares, even our worst ones, the horror is temporary and the effect is transient; assuming we’re talking about the every-day usual kind which we’re all familiar with, and not nightmares associated with sleeping disorders such as Night Terrors, there’s very little permanent about them. As terrible as they can be, and as lingering as the effect of them occassionally is, after a while they lose their power. In time they morph into shadows of their former selves, and the more you think about them, the less you can actually remember being there, being afraid, or even what, specifically, the nightmare was actually about. Soon, you can’t even remember what gave them their power in the first place. Years later, they’ve faded completely.
I mean, think about it: how many nightmares can you actually recall with any degree of clarity?
Horror films, though…they’re different. In a horror film, everything is permanent. Unlike in a nightmare, you can watch and re-watch this terror as much as you like and every single aspect of it will manifest just as perfectly as the first time; there are no exceptions to this rule. It’s a nightmare you can immerse yourself in at will, and one which presents itself in the same way for everyone. There’s no need to explain to someone how this particular nightmare unfolded or what will happen next. And the best thing — if you want to call it the best thing — ? The nightmares just keep getting more real and even worse. Now technology and special effects have caught up with our imagination, there isn’t any power they can’t possess. The result: their capacity to scare the crap out of us is infinite.
And now, or within the last 20 years, something utterly astonishing has happened: for the first time in history, films have actually exceeded what our nightmares are capable of producing.
If I was a nightmare I’d be pretty pissed off, I think.
I’m sure that even if you don’t watch or like horror films, you’ll have heard of The Hills Have Eyes. The brainchild of a younger, trail-blazing Wes Craven (Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street), the film marked a turning point in horror cinema when it was released in 1977. After that, nothing was ever the same again.
I won’t go into detail about the plot, but in it — both the original and the 2006 remake — an American family make the mistake of taking a short-cut through the desert while en route to San Diego, California. After their vehicles are mysteriously thrown from the road, it soon becomes clear that the unforgiving foreboding landscape around them is not as lifeless as it first appeared…
Spoiler alert:
A man is burned alive in front of his family: you see everything. A young woman is sexually assaulted by the kind of man who you wouldn’t want to meet in any kind of alleyway — no matter how wide or bright — but would get an enormous round-of-applause on Britain’s Got Talent, thanks to his being so hideously ugly. People are shot, heads explode, and the violence…it’s relentless, brutal, and presented with the kind of production value which makes every moment feel genuine. The politicial context is also not for the faint-hearted; chances are that if I was American, I’d be feeling guilty about my government.
Basically, you can tell yourself it’s all acting, all effects, but this bloodbath, as you watch it, is all too real.
Now, just watching this film, I feel wrong. It isn’t even that I enjoy watching it.
But the point is I do watch it. Through all the atrocities and the gore I don’t turn it off. For whatever reason — and this isn’t one of those BBC News features, so don’t expect a cold, rational, reliable psychological evaluation — I feel victory during parts of it: my base animal self wants to scream and run; when the lead character triumphs over the evil cannibals, or when it looks like something might go right for a change. (Which is short-lived, but you knew that, right?)
My guess is that we all get something different out of horror films: some of us find them intense in a good way — a way of exploring darkness, maybe, without having to actually live it ourselves. Some people like the humour or being able to live out the “what would I do if that was me?” scenario.Some people just love the giddy excitement of it all, and that’s fair enough too. You can’t beat a bit of giddy excitement.
One thing is certain: horror films are not going anywhere. Now we’re seeing what our nightmares might be like, if we’d ever be able to harness their power and expand that split-second into something more permanent, there’s no way we can’r ever be addicted.
What’s this? Yes! A new short story: The Intruder
You can read it here
STOP THE PRESS! (Unless you’re The News of the World, in which case it’s a bit late to be shouting that.)
A vision of BEAUTY: I could have posted a photo of a double-yoke egg but I didn't want to be accused of blowing anyone's mind
You can buy a single egg with not one but two yokes inside! This isn’t some warped optimistic vision created by a late-night cheese-eating expedition, oh no: this is plain and simple scientific fact. You see dear reader, according to my dear mother, who is an expert on such things, you can walk into “any good supermarket” and source these wondrous evolutionary creations entirely at your leisure (or “leesh-yur”, if you’re American). Buy a dozen, go on! Or even buy two-dozen! (But no more than that, please. Spare a thought for other double-yoke-lovers, you cruel-cruel person you.) I dare say you can even demand someone bring you some of these beauties and it won’t be met with too much hostility. After all, if a paying customer should be allowed to demand anything it is a single chicken’s egg with two yokes!
But wait…it’s not all fun and games. Because after some quick research — very quick and highly inconclusive, that is — I have discovered that some degree of manipulation must be at work here. Either countless innocent chickens are being poked with electric cattle-prods or shouted at — how loud would you have to shout at a chicken (or a gang of chickens) to make it lay a double-yoke egg? — or somewhere along the line human intervention is doing its devious work, again.
And the question then is this: where do you draw the line? Three yoke eggs? Five yoke eggs? Or might a day come when egg-whites become endangered and legions of egg-white-loving chefs decide to rise up against the masses and go on strike, making countless dishes of food extinct overnight?
Personally I’m not too bothered about egg-whites disappearing. I’ve always liked the yokes the best.
Never underestimate people: 2) when emails come out of nowhere
If I'd have been an email-reading puppy, I'd have been this happy
You write a novel, you hate your novel, you love your novel, you edit your novel, you’re scared by your novel.
But mainly: you don’t know what the hell you feel about your novel.
Wait, yeah, you do know: If you’re novel was a person who came knocking on your door, you would floor it instantly.
…and then you actually do it. You find someone to format it — a pain — and you upload your book on Amazon, or wherever else you see fit.
Then you start the promotional stuff. This, in a bizarre kind of a way, is the fun — if terrifying — bit. Free of the woes of editing, you’re able to tell the world about your book. Yeah, woo! You don’t need to hide anymore. The book is real now. People can read it, consume it, and, with any luck, love it as much as you do (OK, not as much as you do. Much as you went through stages of hatred towards your book — to put it mildly… — a bond exists between you and it that no other human being will ever be able to appreciate).
When I started promoting The Number 3 Mystery Book I expected I’d send out countless emails and nothing would happen (read about anything Number 3 related here). My pessimism in this case is hilarious, if not downright odd — I am, and have always been, exceedingy optimistic about everything in life (you have to be to write a book; either that or just very, very bored). But what you have to remember, when promoting your novel, is just that: it’s your novel. To those people you’re contacting, you’re just another stranger who has written a book.
Let’s not talk statistics…let’s just say that most novels that are written are absolutely awful. So why do you think that a stranger should take you seriously?
So…because I didn’t expect anything at all, I felt completely free when I started sending my promo emails out. This made me happy and allowed me to keep on going, which was essential. So, as the days passed and no replies came in, I wasn’t at all bothered. In fact, if anything, I treated it like a race: how many emails can I send out before I get a response?
Then a reply came through which knocked me totally sideways. It was from the owner of an LA based website (ABLE Foundation), and her name was Jihan Cazares.
Jihan’s email was nothing less than amazing, and I quickly learned that the ABLE Foundation was very much in line with the concept of my novel, and with my aim to spread awareness about disabilities while also creating a book which would entertain. Not only was she extremely positive about my novel — I had sent her a rough description and a link to the page on Amazon US — but she wanted to know more about it and was even asking about if I’d be doing paperbacks (which I am…more on that in the very near future). Jihan may not have realised this at the time, but that email really mattered to me. To have a total stranger get back to me so quickly — and with the kind of friendly, enthusiastic tone usually reserved between good friends — was mind-blowing. Not only did it make me feel as though my book could potentially have mass interest, but it made me realise that it isn’t all about the sales. Sometimes it’s just about an email, a smile, and a spring in your step.
So, thanks Jihan!
Love Sex?
Call me a Thicko, but to begin with I didn’t get this ad at all. I just thought ‘well she looks quite happy’ and then ‘I suppose they just didn’t have room for the baby she must have had after not using contraception’. Then I realised I’d mis-read the line at the bottom (one day you’ll wish you’d had a Durex condom) and simultaneously saw the bulge. Didn’t I feel like a wally!
You really have to wonder what’s going on when you see a Durex advert on TV.
Already, you see, without you even really knowing it, your brain has just done a pretty impressive thing (unless you quite literally have just awoken from a coma which you’ve been in since 1921). Upon reading the word Durex, the left side of your brain, in its infinite wisdom, will have thought Right then, this is mine to take responsibility of, I’m having this puppy! Impressive, right? I mean, it doesn’t matter how lazy your brain has a habit of being, it will have done this all on its own. Unless you’re exceptional, which in this case isn’t much to be proud about, so wipe that smile off your face.
While all this was going on, don’t be thinking that the rest of your brain was just hanging out waiting for some complex calculation to do or some nice memories to process; no, at the same time, the right-hand side of your brain was doing its bit too: that’s to say it was assessing the tone of the word Durex. And if your right-hand side of the brain is anything like mine – whether you be male or female – then it will have made the following assessment: Ooh, it’s sexy time!
Anyway, enough about sexy time for now, and back to the point.
Seriously, enough about sexy time.
That’s better.
So…
What’s going on with Durex? To my mind, you advertise on TV for one of two reasons: 1) you’re looking to completely reinvent your image in a last-ditch attempt to get your message to the masses or 2) you’re in a highly competitive business, like cars. (Or 3) in fact: you own a massive global corporation and spending crazy amounts of money on enormous TV ads is really fun when you think about it.)
Durex? They’re not really either. I mean, how much can you re-invent a condom brand, short of putting rocket blasters on your rubbers or making them play your favourite kind of music? (Actually quite a good idea, now I come to think of it. Although saying that it might feel a little bit weird…playing out of your vagina….especially if it was Susan Boyle or something heavy like Zeppelin. Let’s not even mention Jedward…) And secondly, am I the only person who can’t think of another condom brand off the top of his head? And nobody be smart and say “Tesco value!” please.
All this analysis and speculation brings me to one double-faceted conclusion: either Durex have caught wind of another company who are ramping up their efforts to become the world’s leading condom brand — Alan Sugar and Tom’s secret plan alongside Tom’s amazing back-pain reducing chair, perhaps — or condoms are just generally going out of fashion. And who knows, that may well be the case – not that fashion matters: water balloons will always be popular even if safe sex isn’t.
And now we come to the advert itself…
Imagine what would happen if you asked the team behind horrendous poor-excuse-for-a-hip-young soap Hollyoaks to re-invent a Durex commercial. And now imagine that, during the excitement of the team being told they had been awarded this prestigious contract, someone with an obsession for late eighties film series Cocoon snuck in, locked an employee in the toilets, stole their highly, irritatingly fashionable clothes — please do not question their motive — and somehow managed to convince the director that they had a really great idea for what should happen at the end of the advert (a bright white glow appearing between the standing-up-sexy-couple). This is what the new Durex advert looks like, as of 2011.
What have Durex got in store for the future? Who knows, but I have a feeling this advertisement isn’t the last we have seen of them…
Meet ‘Help’, yet another short story…
Help
Yeah, if you’d hit that massive hard wall of glass in the background then you’d struggle to open your eyes for a bit too
I was a curious boy – curious about everything, obsessed with fossils, and birds of prey, and insects, and my grandmother’s magical fantasy garden…
Catching grasshoppers
When I was young, me and my brother — yes, I’m feeling like breaking some grammar rules today — spent a lot of time catching grasshoppers and crickets. I can’t remember how we learned this particular skill — a skill which my dad didn’t possess, and I can’t remember anyone showing us — but it was highly addictive and something which we both took very seriously. While our parents wandered around nearby, doing quintessentially adult things like thinking about the future and planning when to go shopping — two things which lost all credibility in our minds, as we focussed on this thing very much in the present — me and Maff stalked these most majestic of insects. And we were successful, really successful. Using a careful and highly strategic method which never failed, we caught grasshoppers and crickets over and over again.
Up until today, I hadn’t thought about any of this in years.Looking back, though, there seems to be no dividing line between that childhood and this life; no time when it stopped being important to do things like this. It makes me wonder how important catching grasshoppers and crickets really was to us as kids. The more I think about it, the more it seems that we took it for granted — just something which we did without any real effort, without even trying. Yet now I think of that time as special. Funny how things gain gravity all at once, such a long time later.
For these reasons and also just for the sheer hell of it, today, it being a bright, sunny day — the kind of day when grasshoppers would be loving it — I decided to see if I still had it in me (not the juvenile passion for doing all things that is exciting — I certainly hadn’t lost that). I knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as when I was 9 or 10, but what I didn’t realise was just how much I had forgotten in the last 20 or so years…
I probably shouldn’t be too surprised about that, seeing as how I can barely remember what I ate for dinner. But still, I really thought it’d be easier than it was.
It wasn’t easy, it was really, really hard. Just as predicted, the meadows at my local nature reserve — I am lucky to live not far from an amazing, immense space which glows in the Summer and the only downside is that you can’t go there at night as there are doggers — were heaving with life; the kind of intense, thrumming sound which is around you wherever you are, but that stops with eerie abprutness the second you take the smallest step forward.
“It was like I had the eyes of an eagle!”
After five minutes: nothing. I couldn’t even see any crickets or grasshoppers, let alone attempt to catch one. Where, before, the long yellow grass had looked serene, swaying in the breeze, now it just pissed me off. There was a moment at the ten minute or so mark where I considered abandoning my mission. But then I got a grip of myself. “You can’t turn around and just give up,” I said, trying to ignore the walkers who were passing behind me, probably wondering what I was doing prancing about in the grass all hunched over and concentrated. “If you could do it when you were 9 or 10 then you can damn well do it now!”
It was time for a re-assessment of my approach. What I had been doing obviously wasn’t working. Taking a step back, I tried to think like a grasshopper/cricket. Only joking, that’s taking it too far. But I did consider more deeply how to go about my task (I did briefly try to locate the long-lost memories of me successfully managing my task, but this did not last long, as it involved traipsing through the quagmire that is puberty. No thanks).
This time I was more careful. Everything was more thought out, less adult, and my footsteps caused less of a disturbance. Soon I was following grasshoppers and crickets of various sizes as they sprung from one long grass to the next.
And now, amazingly, I could see them amongst the grass. Before they’d been camouflaged and hidden. Now I could spot them from a distance. It was like I had the eyes of an eagle! A very bored eagle, but an eagle nonetheless.
I spotted an impressively-large grasshopper clinging to that long bit of grass next to the hundred-thousand or so others, you know the sort. This one was different, and I mean that literally: it was a scramble of browns and reds, with large hind legs and a kind of knowing expression on its face. Or maybe it was just the way it held itself.
Cautiously, I stepped forward and knelt down in front of it, being as careful as I could to avoid squashing the long grass behind me — the grasshopper’s expansive home, no less — with my gigantic human arse. As I brought my cupped hands down towards it there was a moment where we were both still as the most still thing. Then, swiftly, I closed my hands around it, expecting it to escape, as they always had done before, at that very last moment.
Except this time was different. I had finally done it: the impossible had been achieved. For just a few seconds, my little friend scampered about inside. Then I opened my hands ever so slightly and watched her crawl slowly out then vanish in an instant.
I tried to catch some more after that and failed. It didn’t matter. I had done what I had come for. I was in the sunshine. I was happy.
More stories like this over at Stories that are short.
Alternatively, if you enjoyed this post and want to read my new novel you can find it at Amazon UK here and Amazon US here (paperbacks are on the way soon, I PROMISE — email me if you need more details).
A big surprise
A bird of prey feeling very proud, as one of the rare bird's with discernible shoulders should
Yesterday afternoon at 4pm I was writing, mood: relatively content. Freelance writing, in the spare room which used to be our garage back when Chesney Hawkes was singing his blisteringly successful number 1 single ‘I am the one and only,’ and everyone down our street proudly wore a different coloured shell-suit (mine was purple with green and pink bits). As is usual at around 4pm, my Greyhound Jojo was beginning to get lively. This is very much the habit in our house. Greyhounds, despite their love of speed and darting about, tend to sleep a lot, only to become more active in the afternoon in the lead-up to food-time. This craving for activity is further encouraged by the fact that at around about 5:30pm, Jojo’s Master — and my dad — returns home from work. Basically, if you have four legs and an obsession with sniffing which is only just a bit less fantastic than your Master — easily the best thing in the entire world, even better than sniffing other dogs’ bums — this is the absolute most exciting time of the day.
So I stopped writing to watch my mum play ball with Jojo — something which happens like clock-work in the afternoons, and is carefully timed so that there will be an hour or so afterwards for Jojo to rest (because the moment her Master comes in she’ll go mad and run about, which Jojo never realises is a bad idea until the moment she pukes all over the carpet). A five or ten minute break is nothing less than essential when your working day is largely spent alone, imagining things. I highly doubt I needed to tell you that.
The game of ball, yesterday, was of medium quality. I say ‘medium’ because Jojo’s bal-catching capabilities are, at times, second-to-none. On a good day she can catch the ball after its first bounce every single time and predict where it’s going even before it’s thrown. On a medium day she misses it more often, and scampers about like a small horse who has just learned how to play.
I heard the noise but Jojo didn’t — no surprise; Greyhounds aren’t alert unless they see something, and besides that, she was too busy recovering from the game and enjoying having her belly stroked by mum. It was by the fence, whatever was making the noise. As I wandered over I had in my mind that it was a small bird scuttling about in the bush there, above my head, but as I scanned the smaller bushes and ground I saw it was a baby pigeon.
As anyone who frequently reads this blog will know, I am a bird lover. While many people cite the pigeon an annoyance and a bird which we can do without, I have always marvelled at them. Pigeons are, after all, one of the most intelligent birds there are, not to mention they have a powerful memory and sensory perception — something which by far not all garden birds possess.
So there was the pigeon; it’s fluffy head and naive wandering quality something sweet in an otherwise routine day. For about five minutes I chased it around in-between the small plants and bushes, trying to either scare it into flight or pick it up so I could set it free. The pigeon wouldn’t go with either option. It just wanted to strut up and down by the fence all day. And that would have been fine, if it wasn’t for Jojo having something territorial against it.
I had some success getting the pigeon to take flight in the corner of the garden, but this was to be short-lived, and led to it scrambling with confusion up against the study-window. From the way it did this I could see it was no more than a week or so old. All birds get confused by windows, it’s a fact, but this pigeon lost bright white feathers as it landed, unsure of which direction to head next.
I’d decided to grab the pigeon whether it liked it or not when I looked to my right and saw Jojo break away from mum. In the time it took me to register this, Jojo had grabbed the pigeon, sinking her teeth all the way through it. I stepped back and put my head in my hands, walked to the other side of the garden. Mum shouted at Jojo and told her to put the poor animal down but it was already too late. More than anything at that moment, I didn’t want Jojo to put the pigeon down. Cruel as it sounds, I wanted the pigeon to go now, to die quickly, for it to be smooth and finite. I just couldn’t stand the idea of being left with no other option but to finish the job myself.
We spent 10 minutes trying to free the bird from Jojo’s mouth. 10 minutes, but her mouth was like a vice. When I finally did get the pigeon out it was without its right wing. I buried it in the front garden, the poor thing.
I was in a rage after that. I rarely get in a rage, but this, all this, seemed like everything bad and doomed and broken about the world. I blamed myself for the death of the bird. Myself and my mum for allowing Jojo to murder it and not taking her inside the house while I dealt with the pigeon. As upset as I was about what I had just witnessed, I wasn’t angry with Jojo for what she had done. It tainted the day, this thing. Nothing is quite the same when death has left its mark before your eyes.
But on the bright side, at least it wasn’t some kind of rare bird of prey. That really would have pissed me off.
Tonight I’m going to see what all the fuss is about
The drama…the excitement…the forbidden passion and the endless teenage sexual tension — not to mention the vampires, did the vampires cross your mind yet by any chance? — no, I’m not talking about jumping in a time machine and going back to my first day at my local Youth Club (and I’m very glad about that. I’d never, ever want to be 15 and tormented by tits — both the hideous bullying variety who have fully-grown-man side-burns well before their time, and the splendid female kind — ever again). This is serious. Tonight will be the night that my life changes forever. And that’s exactly what I’m scared about.
For tonight will be the night I put aside every part of my brain saying a million variations of Chris, seriously, don’t do this, you will regret it and actually watch Twilight.
No, this is not a joke. Yes, this is a serious statement. I’ve heard all the bad words — “Stephanie Meyer can’t write! How on vampires-on-Earth did her book ever get made into a film?” — and all the good words — I don’t need to say much more than the words I love Robert Pattinson, do I? (And for the record, that wasn’t me just declaring my love for the man, that was supposed to be the exasperated voice of every teenage girl on the planet.)
See, I’ve decided that in order to move on with my life I need to get this out of the way. Once I have then I can get back to panning Twilight…
…Unless I find I actually quite like it…
Watch this space. Or don’t.
Frankly I’m giving myself the creeps now.
Breaking-Otter-News
Three things which crossed my mind as I saw this on today’s BBC News:
1) Does this fat, deeply unbothered animal look, to you, like it’s just returned from the brink of extinction?
2) Otters have very human-looking faces. This one resembles a man in my village who only ever wears a white vest and is known universally as “the village thug”.
3) It’s hardly surprising Otters became nearly extinct. Look how short this one’s right arm is! I’d also give up collecting food and fending off predators if my right arm was this short and I was this fat and very few people cared I even existed. (Unless this otter is a dwarf-otter?)
And while I’m at it, here’s a joke I know Frankie Boyle would approve of, from yesterday’s BBC News:
Post 98: Don’t be a (s)nob, buy a Big Issue
My local Big Issue seller and I have what I like to think is a somewhat unique relationship — that is, I bother to acknowledge his existence (whether I am buying a Big Issue or not) and he bothers to acknowledge mine (likewise), while for the most part the majority of people wander by without a second glance in his direction, some actively avoiding his gaze and others even taking the trouble to cross the street. But don’t get me wrong here, I can understand why people avoid the guy — I won’t deny it, I have avoided people like him in the past, for whatever reason — and I also highly doubt that he stands there eagerly expecting me to walk past and spend £2. All I’m saying is that from the look he gives me when he hands my Issue over, I am willing to bet that this moment means something, however small that something might be. I like to think I’m someone who he doesn’t look at and think What an arsehole.
I don’t buy The Big Issue for his personal charity or self-esteem, of course, or to make myself feel better and like more of a good person — I do it because The Big Issue is actually a good read and I’m always up for supporting a good cause if I can. That’s really all there is to it.
I see it like this: the way our lives eventually turn out is, to a large degree, dependant on thousands of unique combinations which are wildly out of our control. Our lives are also dependant on numerous other factors which are established well before we are even born and are nobody’s real choosing — things like history, soco-economic standing and family status. Things which just are the way they are. Yes, people who grow up as orphans or are abused for years probably have just as much power to change their circumstances as anyone else, but don’t miss the point: really, the gap between how some people end up on the streets and how you ended up in your high-paying, high-flying job is much smaller than you think. Flick a switch and everything really can change.
If you like to read and want to support people who are genuinely trying to help themselves, The Big Issue is a fantastic place to start. If someone took a risk and gave you a chance and it paid off for you, why not give it a go and help someone else out?
(This post is not affiliated in any way whatsoever with The Big Issue!)
Crimes against sleepage (and if you think I care that sleepage isn’t a real word, you are very much mistaken)
I'm sure it's obvious to anyone that this couple have made the fatal mistake of trying to put the covers on the bed TOGETHER. They will not make this mistake again. Mainly because this is the last time they will be sleeping together!
Out of all the mundane things in life which I absolutely hate doing – most of them unavoidable and inevitable things, such as waiting to fall asleep (POINTLESS and ANNOYING!) or putting on poorly designed socks which actually cause you real physical pain (EVIL! JUST PLAIN EVIL!) – putting the covers on my bed is easily in the top ten. You may think Well, if that’s all he’s got to worry about then he should shut his bearded face, that’s nothing! and you’d be right I expect – especially if you’re the proud owner of a new puking baby which refuses to shut up crying, in which case you have my sympathy, but really what did you expect? – but at the same time, there’s bound to be millions of lucky people out there with baby’s who don’t puke or cry all the time and who can relate perfectly to this woe of mine (they do not have my sympathy — because to me this kind of Omen-like-child seems to go against everything that babies ought to do. Except for when they’re changing a nappy and find an alarmingly colossal brown stinking sloppy gift in it. In that case the notion of unprotected sex must lose its appeal, I expect. It’s losing its appeal for me just thinking about it…).
Now onto why I dislike this putting-the-bed-covers-on-my-bed-thing, and here’s where my argument starts to unravel itself at alarming speed…can you tell I’m just writing this as I go? Ah, the beauty of being your own Editor!
…the reason it is such a hated task, for myself, is really because of all the stuff in my hovel that surrounds my bed – yep, it’s true, very little of the whole annoying drama is actually my bed’s sole fault. But still, if we were in some surreal LSD-induced court-of-law and I was taking my bed to court for crimes against sleepage – my mattress an imposing flat defendant with pipe-cleaner arms and legs, being represented by its more legally-minded friend the pillow in a battle-of-words which could potentially result in the worst sentence of all: being dumped in a skip or even set on fire! – I would argue that if the bed wasn’t there then the mess wouldn’t either. Ha! A pretty much water-tight argument if I do say so myself (still, I do hope I never end up in that court-of-law…)
Until I take my bed away…
The point is that someone needs to come up with an invention to make putting the covers on the bed and duvet a hell of a lot easier than it has been for the last however-many-thousand years (nobody say “Women!” or “Bedmakers!”) Cpink the blog does not endorse sexism or making fun of Bedmakers). Dragon’s Den is waiting . That new vampish, manly one with the big square shoulders and the worryingly deep voice is waiting to see your pitch…
When a cretin dispenses financial advice
"Really dad? Two plus two equals five? Yes! I always knew I was right and everyone else was wrong!"
As a child I had immense difficulties with telling the time (or, more precisely, learning to tell the time. This was in the years just before every child had a Casio digital watch and when, tragedy of tragedies, calculators weren’t allowed to be used in school, even if you were showing all the signs of your head exploding and your trousers going sodden from numeracy-induced-fear). Thing is, just picking one thing which I had trouble with as a child feels a bit unfair on all the other things. So, to be completely fair to all the things I was terrible at while growing up, here is a short but comprehensive list of all the ones I can remember (yes, my memory was about as good as my adding up…):
1) Anything to do with numbers, which, when you’re anywhere between 2 and 12 years old feels like just about everything (and, really thinking about it, probably is).
2) Lots of things to do with logic. I won’t list them here; just think of all the things the average dog struggles with and you should be on about the right track.
3) The dreaded times-tables. Yes, I know I’ve already mentioned numbers, but my attempts at learning the times-tables were so utterly disastrous — thank you Mrs Brown for making it even harder by being nine feet tall and a smorgasbord of pure evil — that it’s only right I make it a point on its own.
4) Understanding why the hell the entire world needs to revolve around numbers. (something I am still highly uncertain about; if/when I procreate, I hope to pass this natural healthy skepticism onto my off-spring, so as to ensure that they do not become that most dreaded of things: du-du-duuuuu…an academic! Only messing! Nothing against academics, it’s just that it really wouldn’t be fair to give an academic severe problems with maths, would it?)
Now, you’d think that as someone with such a hideous mis-grasp of numbers – something that has, if anything, evolved into an ever-worse black-hole of inescapable un-knowledge, thanks to my Dyscalculia – there would be no chance in HELL that I would ever be in a position to dispense any kind of financial advice.
BUT YOU WOULD BE WRONG! For today was the day that I did that very thing. Such is the life of a freelance writer. What could I do? Turn it down by saying “sorry, I’m abysmal at maths, I had better not”? I don’t think so. Part of being a successful freelance writer is also being able to lie as well as a con-man, don’t you know.
Note: seriously, don’t worry! There’s no need to tell everyone you know that there’s a totally inept freelance writer on the loose! I wasn’t allowed to roam free and use my own brain to compute the information for the article. All I had to do was re-write something someone else who has a clue had already written. And seriously, I am pleased about that…
Villagers lose legal-battle over tree with penis-shaped branch
February 18th, 2009 Last updated 19:24
Villagers lose legal-battle over tree with penis-shaped branch
Villagers in Ecton, Northamptonshire, today lost their battle to have an offending tree branch removed. The decision to leave the eye-height branch untouched, which had been the subject of debate and controversy for some time, was made after Northampton Crown and County Court cited the case as “a dubious waste of Northampton’s legal resources.” The case, led by a committee who don’t wish to be named, is said to have cost in excess of £55,000 so far.
Northamptonshire County Council were first made aware of the so-called “perverted tree” in 2001 when a petition by villagers surfaced with over 1500 signatures.
The spokesowoman for the group said: “we won’t be satisfied until the offending branch has been removed and destroyed. We intend to pursue this case for as long as it takes and an appeal has already been made.” Northamptonshire County Council declined to comment.
You can always trust the BBC News to come up with compelling headlines, can’t you?
Now here’s a test: which of these headlines from past and present do you think genuinely come from the BBC?
Can Donkeys breakdance?
Wiltshire cash machine attacked by woman wielding shoe
Meet the man who eats broken glass with his cereal
New research on whales may hold clue to erectile dysfunction
Could being mugged actually be good for you?
If you’re screaming But Donkeys can breakdance! I saw one once on Blackppol beach! then what can I say? I’m jealous! Note: seriously, Donkeys cannot breakdance. Unless there is some bizarre urban-inspired mating ritual which I am unaware of, which is quite possible (but probably not in Blackpool, to be honest) — I’ve never been anywhere near mating Donkeys and I hope that never changes…
If you said Wiltshire cash machine attacked by woman wielding shoe, you would be 100% right – and I think you’ll agree that you have to admire the dedication of any villain capable of such a thing. And no, you definitely shouldn’t eat broken glass in the morning. Also, if you see a beached whale, it’s probably pretty pissed off and embarrassed; please leave it alone or you may end up as the one with erectile dysfunction.
And if you were wondering if being mugged is good for you, I can tell you for a fact it isn’t! (Unless your name is Bernie Ecclestone. In which case it might shut your money-grabbing mouth up for five minutes — maybe — and wake you up to the genuine problems encountered by real human-beings every single day.)
To see a story very similar to the one described above, click here.
New short story: Armed and quite LITERALLY dangerous
Really, I’d like to be able to get on the train just ONCE without things turning weird…
———-
In my last post I said something like I was going to try not to get into any fights on the Bank Holiday Weekend…
Fraccing (Hydraulic Fracturing): get out and STAY out
Hydraulic fracturing — or ‘fraccing’, as it’s more commonly referred to — is the process of obtaining natural gases from deep within the Earth; high-pressure water, sand and chemicals are pumped in, rock splits, tiny explosions happen, and gas — massive volumes of gas, the likes of which is hard to comprehend or put across in words — is immediately released, rising to the surface where it is captured. Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that, but going into much more detail would seem needless, what with the immense amount of information already out there about it. Really, though, all you need to know is that it is an extremely efficient and new-school approach to harvesting natural gas. An approach which, according to today’s East Anglian News is already in its infancy here in the UK.
And you should be worried. Very worried. Because while fraccing is ultra-efficient and a template for what could potentially be a supreme long-term natural gas solution, right now it is dangerous, ramshackle and flawed — a combination of grave warnings which, when rolled into one, create a horrific prospect at a time when we ought to be heading in a better direction than where we have come from. And that’s not just my opinion: it’s an irrefutable fact. For further proof of the highly dubious nature of fraccing, one need only type the phrase into any search engine and click on any number of the troubling articles that the search has brought up. That’s not to say that everything about fraccing is bad news, of course, it’s just that what bad news there is has a habit — constant and unwavering, no matter what the aspect — of dwarfing the limited positive attributes which are known to exist.
Click the picture to read the article at The Ecologist
Personally, the idea that fraccing may become frequent practice in the UK more than just worries me: it genuinely disturbs me, for a number of reasons. Some of which are as follows:
1) At fraccing sites across the United States, ground-water networks have become repeatedly contaminated. Contaminated may be too kind a word, actually. On countless occasions wildlife drinking and swimming in the affected water have been poisoned. Alongside this, and no less unsettling, people have experienced a wide range of health worries — we’re talking everything from brain lesions to skin complaints and anything in-between. Fraccing and people simply do not mix.
2) None of the aforementioned occurrences have been deemed noteworthy enough to stop hydraulic fracturing from happening in new locations. While public concern has slowed down the process and petitions have proved somewhat effective, fraccing will not be stopped. This machine is much too determined and greedy to be stopped by a few hot and bothered citizens.
3) The short history of fraccing tells us that once fraccing is here, it’s here to stay. Natural gas is extremely valuable. Once a site is found, there is virtually nothing on Earth which can stop it being mined.
Fraccing should and will leave a bad taste in your mouth. Remember that taste. It’s not going to go away any time soon. Do not stand for it.
The mysterious secrets that women keep (and men, well, me at least, will never understand…)
Sadly, when I typed 'average looking woman' into Google, this image came up. This doesn't look very average to me. But then, when the majority of the internet is plastered with too-thin women, maybe this is average.
I’m not going to get into a religious or evolutionary debate here – and besides, everyone knows that you need at least two people to debate something, which is fortunate for me – but I will say that however it was that man and woman came to be, and whatever some disillusioned people may still think, woman came out on top. All things considered, the fact that we live in a male-dominated world stupefies me, really — I just find it hard to believe that things are still that one-sided. I often lie awake at night wondering how the trains would be running if women had been in charge since the start (not to mention whisks; if women had been in charge of them since day one then I highly doubt we’d have had to endure the tedious annoyance that is hand-whisking things for over a hundred years). So, let’s quickly examine several traits generally associated with both sexes (and please don’t email me in a rage stating how I have generalized. I will simply agree with you wholeheartedly while not bothering to reply to you. Thanks. Also don’t email me to say I hate men. I am one, or at least I was last time I checked. Yep, still am).
Men:
1) Will not ever ask strangers for directions (if they do — and I am talking from experience — they like to dress it up as a friendly conversation, dropping the question in nonchalantly, so as to drive on with a degree of male pride intact. Which does not work, ever).
2) Will not ever look at instructions. Instructions are THE ENEMY.
3) Will not ever accept help from strangers or friends when trying to build something. In this case, EVERYONE IS THE ENEMY, including and not limited to the Sky, inanimate objects both near and imagined, and even ones pathetic, constructually-impotent self (I do believe it is the first and last time I will ever use that expression, but I may be wrong).
Women:
1) Are better than they should be at multi-tasking. Let’s just leave it at that…
2) Possess the universally, language-transcending, irritating ability to always have the last word.
3) Are attracted to human-beings such as Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart. And the thing is, you just can’t blame ten million women fancying Rod Stewart on ten million brain injuries, either — although it would explain a lot — which suggests that something much more sinister has to be going on. But then I would think that…I’m a man, with a deep and entrenched obsession with not being able to work out Rod Stewart’s unbelievable face.
Delving deeper into the murky quagmire of enormous differences that exists between the sexes is the fact that male body’s resemble some kind of ultra-elaborate joke where body parts have been randomly slapped on willy-nilly, pun-intended – an ugly wrinkled dangly thing here, a pair of ancient-looking hanging round things there. It doesn’t matter which angle you approach it from: women are streamlined, gorgeous creatures which can dance badly all they like and still, somehow, come off with a degree of integrity and sexual allure, while men on the other hand…
…but still, at least we look at Rod Stewart and go “Oh, bloody hell…”
But it’s in the secrets that women keep that things get really interesting. For, since the dawn of time – or at least since fish grew breasts and discovered they really liked winding fish-with-dangly-bits up – they have had their own unique code of practice which men find impossible to understand. Which, surely, is the point?
Forget the point for a while. Some of which are as follows:
1) Leaving wisps of black, ambiguous hair clinging to the toilet bowl after some odd, unthinkable ritual. These strange ritualistic happenings can also be found in bathroom bins, adding even more so to the mystery.
2) Farting — modern-day equality demands that I use the term most commonly used by men, as opposed to the far less abrasive one passing wind — with just as much raging stinkage as any man, but somehow always avoiding suspicion as the perpetrator (it’s almost as if they can throw their farts like a ventriloquist expertly throws his or her voice).
3) Being not hungry in the slightest one minute, then absolutely starving the next (which always happens after you have just asked them, several times, if they wanted to change their mind, and they said “stop asking me if I want to change my mind!”).
Or maybe it’s just me.
The horror of people who can’t be bothered to shake hands
Shaking hands can be awkward enough without you both being naked as well!
I’m not sure who sat back one day and said to him or herself “Say, I know what a great way of greeting people would be…I’ll take their hand in mine and move it up and down firmly when we first meet!” but it certainly did the trick (and I for one am glad that they weren’t inebriated or high at the time, otherwise we might have been doing things like politely cupping each others testicles for the rest of all-time – not something you’d ever want to do. Especially if you’re meeting someone who’s just run The London Marathon…anyway, let us swiftly move on). Ever since that fateful day in whenever-the-hell-it-was, arms and hands have been moving up and down across the world, and people have felt a particular satisfaction with meeting one another, which surely must have made greeting dastardly mother-in-laws much easier than it otherwise might have been. It may be one of the less interesting greeting gestures around – I think you’ll agree it’s not a patch on the dramatic greetings of the Wolof, from the Gambia Senegal, who love nothing more than to spit in each others faces with sheer exquisite glee – but it’s definitely a lot safer than catching AIDS. And that’s not a joke. Thanks to many lesser-known ethnic groups both greeting with spitting and also rubbing saliva into manky old wounds, AIDS has been known — according to my limited research — to spread like wild-fire, along with a number of other nasty diseases such as Tonsilitis, Swine Flu and many more than I have time to name-check here. Again, that’s not a vicious rumour, or me singling anyone out for the sake of it — the sad fact is that ancient customs have been known to kill people.
(Note: Those who are feeling even more adventurous may wish to hire an elderly woman to spit in the face of an infant once it is born, as is also a particularly loved past-time for the Wolof of West Africa. But Cpink wouldn’t advise it, and if you do decide to hire her, make sure that that she’s fit enough she can run away at speed. Preferably without shattering her hip.)
And shaking hands really isn’t hard. In the western world, and providing you don’t wander into some odd part of say, Hull or Bedford, you meet someone, put your hand out, and instinct and natural conditioning takes care of the rest (hopefully without one of you being either limp-wristed or overly aggressive). It’s simple, no fuss, easy-to-do greeting stuff which even the thickest of people have managed to learn to perfection. You’d really think It can’t go wrong.
But then again, don’t forget this is human beings we are talking about…we’re ingenious at taking something brilliant like the world and completely screwing it up.
Why, then, do some people deliberately, or so it would seem, opt out of what is really a non-opt-outable part of every-day culture? And nobody email me to say that not shaking hands is the right of an individual. If you feel like that, why don’t you dig a hole in the ground or start wearing a sign on your chest which says I DON’T AGREE WITH SHAKING HANDS, SORRY? That would at least make it fair, so that everyone knows where they stand.
There are exceptions, of course. Some of which are as follows:
1) You have just done a massive great slimy poo. Oh, it’s hideous. It’s come out of some slippery sixth dimension and is not fit for this world. And you have not washed your hands, you filthy muck-hound you! Whether that’s because the taps weren’t working or you did such a big poo that it quite literally made you forget your good senses, it’s irrelevant: shaking someone’s hand in this scenario is not a good idea, and if you do it you should be ashamed! The only problem with that being that muck-hounds aren’t generally ashamed. Really, they ought to be locked up.
2) For whatever reason, you really hate the person you are meeting (they had an affair with your girlfriend or they once broke your pelvis in five places when they drove a shopping trolley into you at the supermarket, the worst part being that it wasn’t even half full, for example). What better way to demonstrate this hatred with perfect clarity than to make them feel exceedingly awkward by not shaking hands? Excellent.
3) You don’t own a right hand, or right arm. As in they are not attached to your body, rather than you forgot to buy one last time you went to The Arm & Hand Shop. In this case, only the cruellest other person would put their right hand out and you would be absolutely within your rights to punch them in the face if they did so.
Otherwise, shake the damn hand, please. It’s really not that hard. Let’s try and keep it simple!
Chris’s new experiment…
Where to begin…so much to say…
That was my attempt at doing tension. I hope you liked it.
I’ll keep it biref. It’s 12:30am and I am KNACKERED. Can you tell?
How about this: I have a brand-new blog up.
What’s it about? Well…hold on to your hat. Hold on to anything near you. But make sure it’s fastened down.
It’s about football.
That’s right, FOOTBALL. That thing which I have never been able to understand.
And it’s serious. Over the course of the next few months — up until May 2012, to be precise — I’m going to be recording my journey as I learn about football. The blog will be, and is, a blog for anyone. Even if you don’t like football I hope you’ll still take something from it.
Really, it’s about facing something you’re scared off and just going for it. And believe me when I say I am SCARED.
Right now there are three posts up, and you can read the intriductory one by clicking here.
I’ll still be blogging here, of course, you don’t get rid of me that easily!
Chris
Independent author interview: a man called Roger Knowles
Click the pic, go to Amazon.
You probably haven’t heard the name Roger Knowles, but that’s not to say his is not a name worth knowing. Like thousands of people taking advantage of the groundbreaking, easily accessible technology now available to writers world-wide, Derby-based Roger is part of an independent movement far bigger and ultimately more astonishing than anything dreamt about as little as 20 years ago. Using portals like Amazon, he’s getting his work into the hands of anyone owning a Kindle. It may be doing the publishers’ heads in, but who cares, right? All’s fair in e-books and war.
Get Naked! Sorry Roger...I couldn't resist it...
Roger and I became acquainted through an online forum and, while I haven’t met the man in person – who is certainly a character – I have read one of his recent works – Broken Cats and Cowboy Hats – and enjoyed it; largely because I don’t write thrillers, and always enjoy reading books which approach things a bit differently to the way I do. With that in mind, and always one to jump at the opportunity of doing a blog post with minimal effort – can you really blame me? – I asked the man if he’d like to answer a few questions on this blog. He said yes. The result is as follows…
One: Your novels contain technical shifts in POV (point of view) which many authors find less than easy. What do you enjoy about jumping between time frames and what draws you to writing from the perspective of multiple characters instead of just one?
I’ve never liked the POV rule, feeling that as long as the reader can understand what’s going on, the rule’s irrelevant. Yes, I know – try telling an agent, publisher or editor that! But as I have no interest in conventional mainstream publishing, I can do what I like [Roger put a smiley face here, but you'll just have to imagine that, as WordPress seems to harbour a serious dislike of smiley faces]. I don’t especially enjoy jumping between time frames, but I wanted to try different approaches with different books, and I thought that approach best suited ‘Broken Cats…’
Two: Broken Cats and Cowboy Hats is an unconventional thriller to say the least. What are your influences (literary and other)?
I must have some buried in my subconscious, but, consciously, I honestly don’t know of any. Having said that, I have the attention span of a young child on E numbers, so I like short chapters. For that reason I’ll happily read early James Patterson. And for his ability to tell a good if improbable story, I enjoy Lee Child and his Jack Reacher books – yes, I’m a bit lowbrow. Non-fiction wise, I’m a fan of Bill Bryson and the PC incorrect Jeremy Clarkson. I know admitting to liking the latter is like saying you’re a Jeffery Archer fan, but I can’t help that – he makes me laugh. Non-literary – my mother was a house-mother in a children’s home when I was in my teens, so I lived with severely disadvantaged kids for a few years and saw that even the basically good ones could easily go wrong.
Three: Could you give us some insight into what you did before writing novels and how that helped when you decided this is what you want to do?
My previous life involved writing long and complex investment reports for discerning clients along with pieces for the financial Press. I guess this taught me brevity, which I hope is reflected in my novels – I dislike long descriptive passages – sorry Mr Dickens.
Four: Although your work is obviously fictional, do you draw inspiration from any real locations?
Not really, though I have used one or two locations from my home town, Derby. One of my books, ‘The Association’, actually uses Derby as the location in one section – pure laziness, requiring no research.
Five: Some people are under the impression that books always take years to create. In reality those who write know that that isn’t always the case. How long do you spend working on a first draft and what do you think the advantages and disadvantages of writing at speed are?
On the first draft, probably about a week, but I’d stress that the end result is always extremely poor quality. The main advantage, I think, is the opportunity to get ‘the bones’ down as they emerge from the brain, and to quickly reveal aspects that don’t make sense in one way or another, which can then easily be dealt with in later drafts. Disadvantages? For me, none, but I know many writers have everything carefully planned before they put pen to paper, and for them, that’s the right way.
Six: ‘Write a thriller’ seems to be something on a lot of people’s to-do lists. What advice would you give to someone who has always harboured a secret desire to write one but has never quite got round to it?
Pick up a pen or switch on your computer and write/type ‘once upon a time’ then keep writing/typing until ‘the end’ appears on the page.
Seven: I like to wear stone masonry ear-defenders while I write. Do you have any strange or surprising tactics for shutting the outside world out and getting on with what you need to accomplish?
I use headphones with my MP3 player, using alpha-wave producing classical tracks.
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Roger has another book out — this time romantically inclined — which is called To Be A Man. You can buy it or read the reviews by clicking here.
September 11th, Twin Towers &Time To Reflect
There are already enough stories of what happened 10 years to this day that writing this, in many ways, I feel like I’m pointlessly re-treading old ground, digging up unwilling ghosts of the past which are already tired and fed-up and wanting to be left in peace. Ones which are already today the intense focus of the world’s media, struggling to break free of the hyperbole surrounding the (presumable) death of Osama Bin Laden and whatever conclusion that apparently comes to; stories of watching — yet not really seeing — the first plane hit, then being unable to properly comprehend what happened just moments after with another. What felt like seconds. Seconds the world changed forever, yet stayed the same in what can only be described as an appalling lack of learning. In minutes, death, terrorism and vengeance were the new words on the street, and instead of really considering what it must have been like for those who lost relatives and friends on that terrible New York day — something which would come after, with a spate of TV documentaries that came worryingly late and only after a great deal of angry propaganda — the media went on a rampage with religion in its sights. Find the enemy, snuff it out.
That was how I felt before I opened Facebook. Concerned, as I mentioned, that a celebration of the recent Osama Bin Laden death-documentary might potentially eclipse that of the events of 10 years ago, I was in no rush to look at Facebook. Yet when I did I found a brilliance of strength and mass of positive messages that swamped anything referring to the man they say who started it all. I’m sure that won’t be the complete picture, after all, my Facebook isn’t your Facebook and yours is like nobody else’s. Each and every one of us have a slightly different group of friends with a slightly different political persuasion. Thanks to this, there is no universal forum which contains an equal measure of opinion and insight; much less one we could all agree was a measure of that fact. Everything we all see is either one way or the other, which means that some will have woken up to a barrage of positive messages, and others will have found themselves confronted by conspiracy theories and less than tasteful attitudes to the event of this day.
Whatever you think, today isn’t the time to rant on about it: please keep it to yourself. Instead, think of those who died, and think of those who lost others — for which today is a tragic reminder of never-ending despair. Let’s be as ONE today, and let’s try and open our minds up to love, instead. Yeah, I sound like a hippy, but you know it makes sense.
There has already been enough blame and enough tragedy and enough finger-pointing. Save it for another day, if you must, and let us remember those who passed away with the honour they deserve.
You don’t have to pray or kneel or be religious in any way. All you need to do is close your eyes for a second and use your head.
Autumnal love
Sometimes it's good just to look straight up
Before I started writing this post I had a precise idea of what I wanted to say — an assembly of images, sights and natural textures to pick and choose from, and navigate around. And now I sound like Dawson, from hit emotional overload Dawson’s Creek; what can I say, that’s just the way it was. It was, now I think about it, that kind of burning-with-desire intensity of thoughts that makes you arrogantly and honestly believe that you can capture any thought, feeling or emotion and put it neatly into words so that the whole entire world can visualise it as perfectly as if they were right there, as if they had lived it many times and were as familiar with it as anything else in their life. I’d dribbled my brand-spanking-new Adidas football all the way to the shop in the next village — by no means an impressive feat by the average rambler’s standards, or a fit-old-lady’s either, but not bad for me — for my new project over at Learning To Love The Beautiful Game and then I’d come home, turned my computer on and thought Right, where was I?
This was when the floundering around started. Now, in a magic twist of annoyance, all I had were a slew of epic, indecisive, jumbled up perceptions — each of which seemed to skirt around the real meaning of what this beautiful time of the year really means.
To begin with I had wanted to write about the way that many people think the Summer is the best time of year. I wanted to say how Summer may be hot and exotic and novel — sometimes, although I’m not sure we quite reached the throws of exotic this year — but it lacks depth somehow…or maybe character. Then I wanted to write about that bit before Autumn really begins. The bit you can easily miss if you don’t sleep with your windows open. The turning of the seasons which happens literally over-night and marks the atmosphere with an almost sacred touch. Then — told you I kept changing my mind — I wanted to write about the smells of Autumn in all their unique indecipherable measures. The ones which make Summer look quite dull and lifeless. You know the ones. Those which smell of the Earth and the sky and the rain — all the elements combined, almost like a time-travelling experience from the ground to the clouds and then back again like the cycle of precipitation which happens minutely in every second. Especially if you live in Scotland.
In the end I just decided to reminisce. But I think you probably guessed that by now.
If you liked this, you may like my debut adventure/comedy novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book, available on Amazon (for Kindle and ipad etc) now, and paperback very soon…
The Number 3 Mystery Book — buy your paperback now
Black and white ex-racing greyhound Jojo loves The Number 3 Mystery Book so much, she'll frequently spend hours in her doggy-den, mulling over the captivating storyline. In this photo, her morose expression conveys her sheer inability to fathom why anyone else wouldn't want to read it too. (In their doggy-den or otherwise.)
Last week, finally, it happened: a very disgruntled post-man — complete with small red van, like the demonic real-life becoming of postman Pat — turned up at the door holding a massive box; the kind of box which surely must be urban legend in the post-office, and which post-men and women alike no doubt spend their whole lives fearing they might ond day get lumbered with. I quickly recovered from the shock of this event FINALLY happening and learned why he was so disgruntled: the box weighed an absolute ton — in it, 100 paperbacks of my debut novel (which is 14.5cm x 20.5cm and a perfect-bound laminated paperback, just like you see in the shops). If you haven’t already, read the synopsis and see reviews here, where you can also buy the digital version.
The paperback cover has smaller title writing, as seen in the photo above with Jojo posing
And it’s about time this self-publishing venture of mine really kicked in. 3 months ago I made the very brave statement that “in 3 weeks my books should be available in paperback.” A total impossibility as it turned out; first there was the formatting to do, and then there were graphics to sort out. Aside from that, a human-being must also sleep…still, let’s not dwell on that point, it’s a time for being smug and it won’t come again for a while, that much is certain. Instead, let me tell you how you can get your hands on a copy and other important details. Then you can be smug, too. Don’t say I never give you anything.
INDEX
* Why you should buy this first-run, limited-edition book
* OK Chris, you’ve broken me. I live in the UK, how do I pay?
* Oh dear…but Chris, I am a luddite…does that mean I have to wait until either someone
leaves it on the train or it ends up in a library or a bin?
* But Chris, my problem is I don’t live in the UK. It’s the end of the world!
And just when I thought everything in my life was going right…
* …Is there a web-site for the book? I’m intrigued and would like to know more
* Links to more about the book
Why you should buy this first-run, limited-edition book
Because if you don’t you are making the biggest mistake of your life, of course. But aside from that, and the fact that if you don’t buy it your children won’t ever discover it in the book-shelf — which would mean them missing out on a vital part of English culture, which would be all your fault! — this first edition might one day be worth something. I know, I’m getting carried away here, but let’s say I make the big-time, or the semi-big-time, or just the semi-semi big-time, right? Or I get involved in a road-rage incident with the Pope or something and that gets me on This Morning. Well, in that case these might become valuable. Or at least sought after. It’s all very good and well not buying one now, but don’t come crying to me when you need to pay that last thirty grand on your mortgage in twenty years’ time!
Yes! And that’s not me saying that out of vanity. Lots of people have already asked for this — without me even mentioning it — and although my right hand is now almost perpetually spasmed from all the signing, I’m sure I can make an exception for you.
OK Chris, you’ve broken me. I live in the UK, how do I pay?
Here’s how you do it: if you have a Paypal account then it couldn’t be simpler. Simply sign in and click the Send Money button as depicted below:
Once you’ve done that, you get this:
As you can see, now you are here. From this point on it’s very simple: enter the amount of £9.50 (£2.50 of that is for UK postage and packaging — the book on its own cosst £7.50) and the email address chrispink49@googlemail.com and hit Continue.
And I repeat, £9.50 includes postage and packaging, so you’re not going to get stung for anymore, I assure you.
On the next screen you’ll have the option of adding a message in the box provided. If you would like me to write something in the front of the book, no matter how ridiculous or formal — excluding death-threats or malicious notes like “Here’s a book for you. YOUR DUMPED!” — write the exact words in this box and I will get it done. It is a promise.
AND I DO NEED YOUR ADDRESS! so if your Paypal account doesn’t automatically send this, be sure to include this in the message box as well.
Oh dear…but Chris, I am a luddite…does that mean I have to wait until either someone
leaves it on the train or it ends up in a library or a bin?
Sorry, yes.
Only messing! Of course not, as long as you never ever again suggest it might end up in the bin — that really wasn’t very nice. So yes, I also accept cheques too. Please email me if you would like my address, and I will tell you and only you it. You have to be careful, you know. That bloke Dom off of Cowboy Builders is always going on about it.
But Chris, my problem is I don’t live in the UK. It’s the end of the world!
And just when I thought everything in my life was going right…
Seriously…calm down. It’ll be OK. If you don’t live in the UK, you need to email me and tell me where you live. Then I can calculate the postage costs and we can go from there. There, isn’t that better? (And don’t panic, the postage costs are reasonable. Examples below.)
US: £5.40 / $8.40
Germany: £3.40 / Euro 3.90
France: £3.40 / Euro 3.90
It is. Just one last thing…
Isn’t there always…
…Is there a web-site for the book? I’m intrigued and would like to know more
Ah, in that case I forgive you. There IS a web-site for the book, actually — it’ll be taking all the money, which will be nice — but sadly, seeing as I lack any technical computer skills whatsoever, I am still trying my best to work out how to upload the damn bloody thing. As soon as it is up, I will post an update here.
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All Number 3 related book things are on this blog here
Feature here on Fiction Fierce
One last thing: thanks again to the many amazing people who helped make my first novel a reality. It wasn’t an easy journey, but people like Phil Thomas, Robin Bright, Jack McCourt and Yasmin Selena — whose brand-new blog about writing and short stories is up here and you really ought to read it — made it a hell of a lot easier than it might have been otherwise. I couldn’t have done it without any of these people, not to mention the many great friends who are showing support on Facebook and Twitter right now. You’re all most excellent.
Lastly, as you know, there are only 100 copies of this first edition in existence. I’m reserving copies for quite a few people, but they can’t be held forever, so the sooner they are paid for the sooner they can be despatched.
Thanks for reading and hope to hear from you soon,
If you have any other pressing questions, feel free to contact me at: chrispink49@googlemail.com
Chris
The kindness of strangers
Two of the kindest Hippos you could ever hope to meet. Do some research and you'll find that's really saying something: next to human beings who don't know how to control their umbrellas and bankers, Hippos are officially the most dangerous animals in the world. More dangerous, even, than an army full of machine-gun wielding Meerkats. Imagine that!
Think about it: when was the last time a total stranger did something kind for you for absolutely no reason? For me, it’s happened maybe three or four times. Each remains in some way special, and none will be forgotten.
One of those times sticks in my memory just because of the agonising pain. I was riding the ramp in the next village from me – you may or may not know by now that I rode a BMX for about fifteen years – when I fell awkwardly, put my left arm out and separated my shoulder. And now, I think it’s necessary to explain what, exactly, the difference between a regular dislocated shoulder and a total separation is, because with the former it’s not so bad; at least most of the time. Usually occurring from a sudden impact, the arm vulnerable to harm due to the sudden stunning force transferring directly through the rigid limb, a dislocated shoulder can usually be put back in fairly quickly and is acutely painful only for as long as it remains out of place. A separated shoulder, on the other hand, although occurring in the same way, is ten times worse by comparison. First the bone is wrenched, very abruptly, far out of the socket – so far it sticks out from under your skin like a dull knife trying to break the surface – and then the arm and everything surrounding the bone swells up instantly, preventing the bone from going back in. All the while the pain is exacerbated horrendously with the barest of movements. After ten minutes in this condition, you’re going to hospital, straight into the so-called Pulling Room (named by the nurses) where you will meet your maker. And lots of Gas & Air.
It’s true that nurses really do have some of the best senses of humour going.
The second I’d fallen I knew straight away, without even looking at my arm, what I’d done. Knew because this was probably the sixth time I’d done this very familiar thing, and although I’d only ended up in A & E three of those times, each one was awful in its own unique way. But this time…this was the worst by a long shot. The last time I’d done this same thing, the doctor had looked at my arm and told me that if I did this again, I’d need surgery.
So the last thing on my mind, sitting there mangled up with my bike, was anyone helping me. In that state of mind, I always instantly hated the world and everything in it. It just didn’t occur to me to try and get anyone’s help. I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I didn’t particularly care. The pain was taking over, and I suppose I was resigned to just sitting there and swearing until I passed out and there was at last some relief.
What made it worse – if there was a worse at that point – was not being able to stand up. With my left arm completely disabled and only feeling more painful with every passing second, there was no way I’d be able to move on my own out of a sitting position. More than anything I just wanted to stand up and vent my anger somehow, but that was impossible.
The family had clearly been watching me for sometime. A woman in her late thirties and man of similar age, standing there to the side of the ramp with their boy in front of them, looking at me. I couldn’t hear them but I guessed from their body language that they were discussing very quietly what they ought to do next. Absurdly, what I wanted more than anything was to tell them to piss off and leave me alone. But my anger soon vanished when the woman approached, bending down and reaching out towards my bad arm.
“Don’t,” I said, and she didn’t. Instead, the husband stepped forward, eased my bike away from me, and asked me what I thought I had done. I told them, they called for an ambulance, and I think I remember it alarming them all much more than it did me.
The ambulance men arrived fairly swiftly, although at the time I remember it felt like it took absolutely forever. Their professionalism was both a curse and a blessing. A curse because it meant they dealt with getting me onto my feet a little too efficiently, elevating the pain, and a blessing because nobody with a shoulder that separated is going to want to move anywhere fast.
When it came time to think about what to do with my beloved bike — a bike which although didn’t work as well as many, owing to my complete inability to be good at bicycle maintenance — I was mortified to discover that it wasn’t allowed to come with me. Ambulance policy dictated that all personal possessions too big to fit in the vehicle were simply left behind. I was in the process of mentally envisioning exactly how I was going to kick up one hell of a fuss – one handed, no less – when the family stepped in, offering to get my bike back home and take full responsibility of it, even though they were without a car.
After I arrived home some hours later, my arm firmly back where it belonged and a faint memory of four people wrestling it back in with a bone-crunching click…like a jagged pebble being dragged across glass…the bike was there, in the passage-way beside our house, just like they’d said. There was no note, no way for me to thank them, and I never did get to express how grateful I was for what they did that day.
2 things to do if you feel like…
1) Take a chocolate bar to bed with you — and you can wipe that smug smile off your face, you: by that I definitely do not mean in the seedy way (is there a seedy way?! I don’t know…), I just mean carry it with you up the stairs, or to the back of your bungalow, and into your room with you to enjoy. By eating, of course.
When in bed, just before sleeps, eat just half the bar (or less if it’s a massive one, you greedy pig you!). I know this goes against everything your parents and the world ever told you about how to treat your teeth, but don’t worry. It’s not going to do too much damage, providing you don’t make a habit of it. Use your own discretion.
Now HERE’S the best bit: before bed, put the chocolate bar on the bed-side table. Or on the floor. Anywhere but the pillow or the bed. That would be a mistake. Then, upon awakening, you will be greeted by one of your most favourite things, and for a second or two it’ll fill you with warmth and be an amazing new surprise. Already your day is off to a brilliant start!
2) Watch comedy classic Zoolander. For some reason, I’ve heard a few people call Zoolander childish and rubbish, when, in fact, it is a magnificent piece of work (as a friend recently reminded me. Thank you friend). Well, what can you do? You can’t please everyone all the time, even with genius. But trust me, if you haven’t seen it, do. It’s something your sense of humour can’t afford to miss.
What happened to old-school human bravery?
The beginnings of bravery: the Midwife
According to generations of historic films, it goes like this: in the ancient times of battle and uprising – an aspect of life now largely replaced by IKEA furniture and panicking about your broadband connection’s speed, unless you happen to be a paramedic or a fire-man/woman, in which case you panic desperately about your 3G coverage – bravery wasn’t just an option, it was a way of life; as ingrained as the notion that all witch’s should be burned, or that when night falls, evil spirits lurk and the bras must come off buxom maidens (Knight: “If you remove thy bra, it will protect the village from evilest spirits! Plus I suspect it will also feel quite good.” Damsel: “I’ve heard that one before…). So, when you weren’t trying your damnedest to forge the softest, thinnest make-shift condom you could from the wood of a tree – please…spare a thought for the whores of those first few hundred agonising experiments… – you were eating food which you almost certainly knew would kill you as it had killed many of your relatives and friends, or dabbling in things which magic (now science) said might curse you if you got your toad’s legs confused with your lizard’s entrails. Basically, the moment you opened your eyes, you were locked in a fierce battle not only with your senses, but with everything you could touch or see or hear. About the only time – and this is me purely hypothesizing here – you got any real rest from being brave was when you dreamed about nice things like fields of golden corn and maidens running all smiley through it, the dream climaxing in you both simultaneously defending the maiden from a dragon while making love heroically. Though of course you didn’t ever tell anyone about those particular dreams in such detail…well, apart from the heroic climactic part. That bit you really rammed home. For one they’d think you delusional – have you ever seen someone run through corn smiling, maiden or otherwise? It’s really painful – and for another they’d consider your intellectual interpretations so grotesquely advanced and modern that the friendship would end abruptly. A savage blow to the head, presumably, brains spilling out. Nothing personal of course, that was just the way it was.
Today it’s fine to dream about anything. Dream it, do it, everyone else is, why should you be any different? In fact, dreams now play second-fiddle to CGI — as well as philosophical apes and films so realistic that there really isn’t any point in getting excited about eating chocolate anymore – it’s far easier and less taxing to just watch a sultry Galaxy commercial. That’s not to say that bravery isn’t still an integral part of every-day life, it’s just that things have changed. There is no going back. I really can’t see the average supermarket trolley boy dying with the same amazing dignity that William Wallace exhibited on that stone when his number was up (unless he or she works at Morrisons or Londis or a Poundstretcher with a particularly spacious car-park. Bred into a constant struggle to do better and work harder than almost anyone else on Earth, these down-trodden, resented-by-society workers are, from a very early age, made to contend with things like run-away trolleys and impossible to live-up-to sell-by-dates, not to mention the whole country constantly saying how they will never be as good as Waitrose etc, which would be enough to fuel the fire of even the slackest career-minded person. Which tends to explain why the previous supermarkets have both a much higher suicide and success rate – you tend to go one way or the other).
Try and be brave, go on, I dare you. Take a walk down the shops. Deliberately get in the way of those mums who always gang up together and block the entire width of the pavement. See what happens. I’ll tell you what’ll happen: one of them, or two of them, or all of them, if you’re really unfortunate, will tell you to Piss Right Off – right in front of their children, who are all more than capable of displaying their hatred for you with their small fingers. There will then be a moment when you think I’m not having this! I have every right to this pavement as well as you do. But you won’t do anything about it. You’ll then suddenly think of Google. Or Bing if you prefer to champion the underdog. The point is, without the internet you don’t know what to do. Really, without the internet what do any of us know what the hell to do? Think about a skinny black child growing up in the worst drought of our time in Somalia right now. He never thinks of Google. He’s more brave and daring every time he breathes than any of us out here and you know it.
Aside from all that, it’s probably true that for most of us, being brave has just got boring. As a people we are over it. A few thousand years of bravery is enough to break the backbone of any civilisation, and we’ve just had enough. Really, what’s the point if you don’t actually have to? We don’t need to be brave anymore, for the most part. Usually there’s a way to prevent us having to experience this daft archaic emotion, a way to get around the problem with technology. Being brave is what we used to do before the age of the internet; now we sing “I’ll catch a grenade for ya,” without really thinking the idea through properly (are modern boy-bands – sorry, ‘male groups’ – actually aware of what a grenade’s purpose is?). Unless you want to try and actually get out of your comfort-zone without the internet, of course. But why would you want to bother? It’s much easier just to talk about it – that’s what Facebook is for, after all.
Despite my ranting, we all know I’m missing a lot of modern-bravery out here: the mid-wives, the Policemen, those that risk their lives so we can continue to live our lives – all of these people exhibit incredible bravery which is hard to comprehend by engaging body and soul in Loose Women (the TV show…you’d probably know true bravery if you engaged in enough loose women…). Next time you hear about someone doing something brave, planning something brave, even if it’s dangerous, especially if it’s dangerous, spur them on. Make it clear that they have to do it (unless it might actually kill them, in which case back off a bit). It’d be nice if bravery continued to exist in a thousand years’ time, I think. And we are not going to get there by watching The Only Way Is Essex, that much is certain…
Note: I watched The Only Way Is Essex for the first time the other night. It was better than I expected. Some of the stuff they come out with…
Why I will not say “bollocks to Gumtree”, even though as a sporadic job hunter I probably should
Optimism at its finest
This is definitely one of those articles where the writer in question — me — has something to get off his chest; something potentially big and angry — the text equivalent of that evil Vigo the Carpathian demon in the oil painting from Ghostbusters. And that’s why I need to be careful. Because although I’ve experienced the negative side of Gumtree on more than one occasion — the side which honestly makes you wish the Internet and Nigeria had never been invented — I’ve also made valuable connections and had a fair bit of luck using the site; I’ve got writing gigs through it which I’d never have acquired any other way, and some of them have led to long-term regular gigs which, wait for it, actually turned into MONEY. The problem is, it’s impossible to predict the outcome of using Gumtree, especially when it comes to looking for a job. Not only are you competing with hundreds — or thousands — of desperate others, but Gumtree possesses no vetting protocol that I am aware of. Such is the case that when you reply to an ad you could be replying to someone with the best of intentions who’d love to give you a chance, or you could be writing into a void, a trap, or just a cleverly worded scam designed to waste your time and steal your money. Great!
Gumtree’s main problem, it seems to me, is something they can control: their image. Unlike the more official job sites, which are frequented almost entirely by straight-down-the-line, bona-fide marketing and PR companies seeking a reputable work-force, Gumtree — much like its stylistically-challenged and infinitely more dodgy cousin Craig’s List — offers a space for those with quirky or slightly different jobs to reach out into the World. With its fun and user-friendly identity, there’s no denying that Gumtree can be a great way to find a potential employer, and vice versa. If only there was some way to avoid wasting hours of your time…
It’s happened to me about fifty times: I find what looks like an interesting job offer — spelt properly, and seemingly written by someone who realises the importance of taking longer than two minutes writing their ad — spend half an hour or so tailoring my cover letter accordingly, and then spell-check it to make sure everything’s perfect and there’s no reason for me to be rejected at the first hurdle. Then I do what I always do, and what I really should have learnt to avoid by now: I traipse through my computer files, trying to locate the appropriate version of Writer’s CV.
Then I hit send and wait. In the early days, before the ludicrous replies directing me to send funds to the ancestors of the lost city of Atlantis — they presumably still need a lot of help pumping the place dry — and before the requests for me to work for 4 hours for nothing, with the promise that I would be ‘significantly high rewared’ I was full of optimism and hope. I was sure a reply was on its way, or at the very least my reply would actually be read. These days I’m not so sure if they even go anywhere. Writing a Gumtree reply is now in the same box, for me, as finding £500 on the street or my National Insurance Payment invoice getting lost in the post. Fat chance of that.
Call me stupid, call me silly, but even with it all the way it is, I’m going to keep on traipsing through the job boards anyway. The most important thing is to never expect anything to come of it. After all, it’s usually with that kind of positive-negative attitude in mind that Gumtree surprises me and gives something back.
I’ve bought some cowboy boots and I’m not a cowboy and I don’t care what anyone else thinks. So there!!!
Wear them with pride and be a maverick trailblazer! Source: Wild Wild Western Wear
A few key facts:
1) in my daily life, I have absolutely no need for cowboy boots of any description – especially the quality-stitched, calf-length Mexican leather beauties that I recently ordered from UK cowboy boot specialist Wild Wild Western Wear. I’m a freelance writer, so technically I could probably go a few days without even using shoes, or even needing to use my feet (I frequently spend afternoons sliding about my home office on my small-wheeled chair of frictionless excellence, oh yes). Slippers would probably do me, to be honest if and when I was forced to enter the outside world (for example, I could customise them if need be, and make them a bit more industrial for the odd outdoor expedition). And everyone knows that slippers are the comfiest things around.
2) Adding to the irony, I am scared of horses and not too fond of cows either – slightly less than I am terrified of spiders, but it’s still a very real fear which haunts me every time I walk round the village and pass the field with the two sinister-looking behemoths which are always, always staring at me. Not all horses and cows, though (I don’t want you to get the wrong idea: it’s not like I’m one of these irrational people who harbours a complete distrust of all horses and cows, no matter what kind of look they have in their eyes) but some, and in particular ones who stare just like those children from the Christopher Reeve film Village of the Damned. Personally, I feel that’s a natural fear. Horses and cows are far bigger and more powerful than me, than any human, and I once saw a day-time TV show where a horse kicked a woman and its hoof sliced straight through her leg and almost cut it in two. This is why I especially fear the sporadic wrath of horses. It’s not their demeanour that worries me or even the way they look – I’ve stroked two or three in my time, hand shaking…never again – it’s just the way you never know what in the world they are thinking. And they have a LOT of time to think out there in their fields…some might say too much…Also, now I think about it in-depth, they adore carrots and I absolutely bloody hate them. I’ve never been able to trust people or things which are able to eat a raw carrot, and I doubt that’ll ever change.
3) By now, with all this talk of unconventional things – if you’re reading this anywhere but Texas or South America, at least – you have formed a strong positive or negative opinion about me. Either you’re a bit of a maverick, and you’re coming around to the idea of cowboy boots for the sake of it — congratulations! — or the unease you felt at the start of this post has now manifested into something borderline underlying hostile and you’re laughing at the thought of me slipping those puppies on and clonking my way down the street. Either way, I don’t blame you. As much as I love my new Justin cowboy boots and think that anyone who doesn’t like them is foolish and sad and not worthy of this world, I can see how you’ve come to that conclusion.
And let me tell you: actually doing it — committing and buying the boots — didn’t happen overnight. It took me months to come to my decision. Months, and a great deal of pondering…
It started out as a bit of a joke. I told my brother Matthew — we call him Maff — I liked the idea of cowboy boots, and he didn’t take me seriously. I don’t particularly blame him for this. I often make sweeping statements, and am not immune to making bold claims about what I would and would not like to do (not because I am arrogant, I don’t think, but because things tend to come into my mind and he’s often at the receiving end as they work their way out). Except this time it was different: over the next few weeks the idea of the cowboy boots returned again and again…and I started to wonder: should I actually just do it? Buy some of those ones like what you see in the old black and white and colour films which really would have been better off staying black and white, as the colour was so crap? So I started looking. My first quest saw me head into Cambridge town to peruse the shops in the city centre. In at the deep end…
But the city centre was utterly hopeless. A total let-down. While Cambridge can hardly be considered the most cutting-edge of shopping districts, all the shops were the typical UK fashion-conscious kind that moved with the times, bringing in the latest trend as soon as it was hot and then dropping it the second the new season started. No offense to the people who shop in them either, but the price range of most of their shoes was too cheap to include quality leather cowboy boots. So it was a sad affair, that day — that day which should have been exciting and full of anticipation. Without even walking into more than two of these shops — mainly I just stood outside feeling full of woe at the sight of the dreaded futuristic male Ugg boot — I knew pursuing cowboy boots in real life would be a futile task. OK, so all hope was not lost, some shops did sell boots that, if you had really bad eye-sight and absolutely no nerves in your hands, could sort of look like they were a similar style. But none of the boots I saw had the look and feel (or what I imagined to be feel…I hadn’t yet actually seen or felt cowboy boots in real life) of the boots I had seen in pictures. And it was with that that I returned home, to continue my mission by way of everything online…
Arriving home, my hopes for finding cowboy boots online were not high, and in many ways I didn’t like the thought of buying boots I couldn’t see and try on first. Call me old-school, but I’ve always believed in the try-before-you-buy concept. But once I’d started, I was away and completely consumed with the search for greatness. Soon, I had stumbled across a site called Wild Wild Western Wear, and was excitedly clicking on the Men’s cowboy boots section with a growing feeling of having found my calling after all.
Where great cowboy boots come from!
My God it felt good!
My God, it felt amazing…
Down to business. My first obstacle was colour: black and shiny or brown and more traditional? Stitching or no stitching? Traditional or modern? Numerous styles were on offer, from just £70 to a more serious £200 — there were ankle boots, full-length boots, and boots with outrageous designs all up the side, straight out of the wild wild west! Except this turned out to be the least of my worries, compared to my next lesson in frustration: working out what flippin’ size I needed…
This was turning out to be more dastardly than I thought…
I won’t bore you with the details, as chances are you’ll be right there with me on this one. All I need to say is that I have a pair of trainers that are size 12 and fit me snugly, a pair of shoes that are size 10 and are a bit loose, and another pair of shoes which feel like flippers and are a size 11. Obviously there could be various explanations for this anomaly. The first could be that the shoe manufacturers all have their own irritating take on sizes — loving nothing more than to sit back and watch the world of shoes shuffle about in a big chaotic, painful mess, much like the way aliens are said to experiment on the anus’s of some unfortunate backwoods people — and the second could be that my feet are just plain freakish, changing shape from one day and hour to the next. My only choice to move beyond this point, therefore, was to take a serious gamble with my cowboy boot future. To order some on a whim and hope they fitted me right (although the gamble was slightly reduced by the site’s conversion chart, which helped you work out the correlation between US and UK sizes).
Which is exactly what I did. Then, using the website’s online order-form, I made my purchase of size 11 Justin Boot 1560′s — “Chesnut Marbled Deerlite leather upper with medium rounded toe”, no less — and hoped for the best. Then I waited for a few days, wondering if I had just wasted £175 — plus postage and packaging. But still, what a way to waste it if I had, right?
They arrived a few days later, as promised by an email. And they didn’t fit. They did not FIT! After the excitement of unwrapping the spectacularly made boots and taking out the flush cardboard inserts, I slipped my feet in to discover that they were a size too big…it was no good, it was just no sodding good! A cowboy couldn’t wander about with too big boots, otherwise they’d become “sloppy”. I had done my research and didn’t want to end up as one of those laughed-out-of-town cowboy’s with the sad sloppy boots (sloppy means loose fitting, if you didn’t know). My quest had taken a detour and it wasn’t over yet.
I won’t lie to you, sending them back hurt me. Financially, I mean — as well as the emotional turmoil of having to box them up again when they should have been on my feet. Thanks to them needing to be signed for at the other end, and the customary insurance in case a gang of cowboy boot thieves descended, it cost £13 to get them off my hands and safely back to the company. Still, it was one step closer to my ultimate goal, and it had to be done. Bye bye, baby.
Five days later, and after corresponding with the ever-helpful staff at Wild Wild Western Wear, it happened, and once again the dream was alive and well: a package arrived, again, and this time it was guaranteed success all round, yeeeeee-ha! Instead of being easily able to slide the boots on, much like a too-big pair of wellies, a slight push was needed to get my feet in, and the fit was more or less perfect. I was a very happy man. Wild Wild Western Wear had done me proud.
And now I shall give you my top list of Things I have learned from my first few days in cowboy boots:
1) Don’t buy cowboy boots and expect to be able to turn corners straight away, because you won’t be able to. Cowboy boots take a bit of wearing in, and while in this somewhat precarious straight-line-only phase you may wish to walk about holding someone’s hand — unless you live in New York or the desert of Milton Keynes, where corners don’t exist.
2) Walking in heels is very strange, it turns your world upside down for a brief moment in time — at least it was like that for me: with a one-inch heel, it’s hardly like wearing a pair of stilettos, but still, it’s enough of a change that it’ll take some getting used to.
3) If you’re worried about getting mugged, you don’t need to anymore: because if you happen to get mugged while cowboy boots are on your feet, you can be sure that putting those boots into (or up) the intruder — particularly where the Sun don’t shine — will make for a swift get-away and howls of pain like you have never heard. Not all cowboy boots are pointed, but many are pointed enough that crowds will feel compelled to part as you make your way across ground.
4) Cowboy boots make a satisfying clinking-clunking sound. There’s nothing quite like it, and it’s a lot more stylish to walk in cowboy boots than strap bricks to the back of your shoes, trust me.
5) You’re going to get blisters while that leather breaks in. No wonder John Wayne walked a bit bow-legged…
6) You will be mocked, and lauded, in equal measure, but take no notice. Just like Mummy used to say when you were 10, “they are just jealous”.
7) You should feel free to wear cowboy boots on the outside of your jeans if you so wish — why not show off the incredible stitching? — but bear in mind that traditionally, men cowboys wear their jeans over the top. Not to mention wearing your jeans tucked in will make whole groups of strangers yelp with amusement. Not that you should care: after all, you look cooler than they do, that much is certain!
Wild Wild Western Wear are open on Thursday’s and Friday’s between 10am and 5pm. Saturday opening is 9am to 5pm.
They can be contacted on 01252 545521.
Note: the fact my cowboy boots were the wrong size to begin with was my fault and not Wild Wild Western Wear’s! Or it was the fault of the global shoe conspiracy I mentioned before. Either way the staff at the company are very helpful and should be able to help you out if you give them a ring before you order your first pair — which is what I didn’t do…
AND…if you enjoyed this, you’ll probably enjoy my debut novel. The Number 3 Mystery Book has received great feedback so far and is available on paperback (from me direct through the official web-site) and from Amazon UK and Amazon US as a digital copy for Kindle, ipad and all them other devices.
The Battle Down Under
No, this isn’t a blog post about the woman’s long and tiresome battle with stubborn tarantula-like pubic hairs. Nor is it an Anne-Robinson-style expose on the shocking lives of lice which live in the nether regions. I should probably delete that sentence but I’m feeling daring, so I’m going to leave it in. Also, if the first paragraph of this blog post can help motivate just one sufferer of pubic lice to go and do something about it, then it was worth writing (not that I have any experience with that…it was a friend…OK, going to shut up now).
What this is, actually, is a blog post about something far less menacing but equally serious: the two greatest Australian soaps of all-time – Neighbours and Home & Away. A debate which I remember raging through our house-hold during all of the 1990s…which one is better? How do you even begin to decide?
There was no doubt about it, though, in the beginning Neighbours was always slightly ahead. I’m not sure if it was thanks to Mrs Mangle’s ruthless streak, Charlene’s frizzy hair or Paul Robinson’s ability to make an evil conclusion out of even the most innocent episode, but it just always had a little extra something. That was, until Home & Away attacked with a vengeance. And once that had happened Neighbours and Home & Away fans all over the world were locked in intense rivalry over what to watch between the hours of 5 and 6pm…
Originally I was going to write an essay about this subject – it was the only way I could see myself getting anywhere near the bottom of this: the truth. But then a better idea occurred to me, and the following match-off was born.
For the sake of consistency and fairness, I have made comparisons between cast members of roughly the same age and constitution. Otherwise it’d be ridiculously unfair, like pitching Mrs Mangle’s earthquake-shaken, testicularly-wrinkled face against the blissful, youthful exuberance of some large-chested Home & Away filly like Marilyn (And by the way, there will be no breast-only face-offs or ‘her bum’s better than her bum!’ talking here. I wouldn’t abuse my favourite characters in that way. Instead it will be an intellectually fuelled combination of the two, with as much info as I can remember).
Alf: moments away from going off
- The most worried man alive
Harold Bishop (N) versus Adolf Hitler, sorry, Alf Stewart (H&A):
Believe it or not but it’s a known fact that there is a dark cult of people – shadow movers, those who do not speaketh in daylight – who are secretly plotting to somehow resurrect the power of soap main-stays Alf Stewart and Harold Bishop, and have them fight it to the death. Role-play geeks like the ones that hang out in Games Workshop and are obsessed with computer games, you know the sort, there’s probably one within ten feet of your house. And I have to agree, it’s awful that these two never got to cross paths in soap-land, like the bad guys so often do in horror movies (Jason Versus Freddy, etc). What would Harold have made of Alf Stewart’s incessant chant of “Stone the flamin’ crows!”? What would Alf Stewart have made of Harold resurfacing in the soap years later with several hot babes in tow? Probably he’d have said Stone the flamin’ crows! but you get the idea. The point is that both Harold and Alf inhabited roles which nobody else could have. Nobody could have been called Jelly Belly in the same way as Harold Bishop. And nobody, not nobody, could have thrown youngsters out of the Surf Club with the kind of forceful rugged excellence that always-angry Alf possessed. One of the longest serving soap stars ever, Alf – played by Ray Meagher – went ape-shit at least once an episode, and the best times were undoubtedly when he didn’t. If there was a run of two or three episodes before he went berserk, you knew it would be good, leading to a shocking climax, but if you were lucky enough to go five or six or seven episodes without one, well, then you really knew things were about to go off. When they did, it was usually in the Surf Club or about the Surf Club, and it was always a moment to behold – something you could cherish forever. No wonder Ailsa had so many problems…imagine waking up to Alf’s angry face every morning!
Winner: Alf Stewart.
Steph Scully (N) versus Sally Fletcher (H&A):
Battle of the babes! Hmm…Steph Scully was a hard one to work out all right, and kept viewers guessing right from the very beginning in 1999 until her unforgivable departure in 2010. Conforming to many of the popular She just has to be a masssssssive lesbian! stereotypes — was a mechanic, a tomboy, and drove a motorcyle — Steff had all the boys hot under the swimming shorts, while also simultaneously getting all the girls to hate her – a sure-fire sign that they all secretly loved her after all. And Steph was pretty, wasn’t she? Not that she could compete with Home & Away’s Sally Fletcher in the looks department. Or that may just be my eyes. After all, Kate Richie’s breasts are renowned worldwide for being so large that looking at them too much causes the lens of your eyes to warp and buckle. It’s a miracle any Home & Away viewer can still see. Think yourself lucky that I have had the good gentlemanly taste to not include them here.
Going back to Steph, one thing any fan will know is that Steph had all the bad luck. A grand-scale of bad luck. Seriously, you’ve never seen or heard anything like it. In fact, Steph Scully was to relationships what a kick in the bollocks is to any man alive – usually with the kicking foot wearing the sharpest pointy shoes imaginable.
To say that Steph purely had bad luck is not doing her frequent mishaps – or fantastically debauched script-writing – justice. The kind of ultimate crash-test dummy for sick TV producers to experiment their darkest most disturbing fantasises on, Steph was subjected to everything bad about the world – and that was before making the ominous mistake of marrying vile nut-job Max Hoyland. In her time, Steph bravely battled breast cancer, was the victim of multiple cheating bastard partners, and managed to cheat on a few people herself. All this and she got pregnant. Not that pregnancy is a bad thing of course, it’s wonderful, but making Steph Scully pregnant was bound to end in disaster at some point. The only surprise was that Freddy Krueger himself wasn’t the father.
No stranger to the mistress of debacle herself, Sally Fletcher saw her fair share of misfortune – growing up from the age of eight on the show, into a woman who would become more known for her sex-tapes than her acting.
Winner: Steph Scully.
Susan Kennedy (N) versus Irene Roberts (H&A):
Ah…now we’re really talking. These two female heavy-weights were – and are – nothing if not staples of the soap. Blessed with morals, dignity, and enough female pride to make a man seriously question what the point in ever arguing against a woman might be, Susan Kennedy – wife of doctor Karl – has long been known as the street’s golden girl and put-righter of all things uneven…shortly before things spiral wildly out of control, thanks to her meddling. Played by real life Jackie Woodburne, her soap CV is handed out to people at counselling sessions, who are then instructed to do exactly the opposite of everything she ever does – a process which is bound to lead to eternal happiness. See, sadly for Susan, she couldn’t seem to take one step forward or even blink without bringing political, family or just good-old general chaos tumbling down all around her. In 2009 a shocking storyline saw Susan boldly offer to be a surrogate mother for her daughter Libby, while earlier story-lines had her suffer from every ailment under the sun, have multiple flings with many men – including a priest, which rocked the boat a bit – and split from her husband Karl so many times that any future partner would vomit at the thought of getting together with her, for fear that the smallest decisions would cause a seismic rift to tear all the way through Lou’s Coffee Shop.
And what she lacked in misfortune – which was unsurprisingly little – Home & Away’s Irene Roberts made up for with terrible mentoring skills and an aggravating ability to say “Luv” about fourteen times a minute. Seriously, it was as if someone could see the future, could see exactly how to mess it up, and gave Irene the privilege of doing so to every single person in the whole of Summer Bay. Time after time, people went like lambs to the slaughter to Irene for “good advice”. At the beginning it was great – the advice worked a treat, a lot like when Susan Kennedy got on her high horse of moral riches. But before long grim circumstances would surround the person, before they would either be killed, horribly maimed or forced to leave Australia.
Winner: it has to be Irene Roberts.
Drew, as played by Dan Paris: the team behind Neighbours out to be ashamed of themselves, and I blame them for this pathetically small and insignificant photo. Only a few online photos exist of this clumsy legend!
Drew (N…Libby’s husband…can’t remember his second name and in the interests of being completely inconsistent I am not going to Google it) versus any of the flaccid hunks that Home & Away could possibly ever produce.
This post might seem a bit biased towards Neighbours, but take a look through the history books yourself and you will see for yourself that flaccid is the only way to describe any of the Home & Away genetically modified hunks. Yes they are muscle-bound and blonde and good-looking, but charisma and charm? Not something found in the waters of Summer Bay. The husband of Libby, Drew was a star and a much-loved character on the show until he made the mistake of falling off his horse and dying an instant soap-ruining death (if anyone could fall off a horse with lethal accuracy, though, it was Drew. No doubt about it).
While Drew – ah, Kirk was his name – wasn’t around for too long before his sudden demise, he left a lasting gap in the hunk market that I doubt has been filled since. His funeral will always be remember for being the shortest funeral ever conceived, and Libby will always remain the most loyal soap star. At least, until she started having sex with everyone else on the street (but not before she sang at Drew’s funeral, probably making everyone slightly suspicious as she had never ever sung before…hmm…).
Winner: Drew Kirk.
A photo crying out for a bit of obscene photoshopping if ever there was one. Paul Robinson, doing his best to double as an alien from Mars Attacks. I'm not going to post a picture of flaccid hunks here. mainly because you should never type 'flaccid' into a search engine...
Paul Robinson (N) versus…anything Home & Away could chuck at them:
See what I did there? Yep. I couldn’t think of one person who has ever appeared in Home & Away who was even on the same planet of dastardly maliciousness as Paul Robinson – the twisted financially-minded megalomaniac who has made the demon smile his calling card. Never one to miss an opportunity to accidentally-on-purpose push someone down a flight of stairs, or by chance wander past a cauldron of burning hot oil while a small puppy walks unknowingly beneath, for the endless time that Paul – played by Stefan Dennis – has been in Neighbours, ever since the beginning, he has been pure soft-core evil at its very best. Among his list of terrible deeds are the aforementioned opportunistic murders – OK, we never saw the puppy incident but I’m sure the producers at least considered it – as well as numerous scams and plenty of absurd bouts of bad luck, followed by a bouncing back that Alan Partridge couldn’t even begin to fathom. My theory is that the makers of Home & Away simply didn’t know where the hell to begin with constructing a monster of equal measure, and who can blame them? So instead they made a valiant attempt to mask their ineptitude by having as many as a dozen bikini-clad babes in the surf club in any one shot. And by all accounts, it worked.
Winner: a dozen bikini-clad babes in the Surf Club in any one shot. That versus Paul Robinson’s face really is no competition.
Mrs M: destroyer of good moods
Helen Daniels (N) versus Mrs Mangle (N):
The battle to end all battles…the legends of all legends. In soap-land, it’s a well-known fact that the mere mention of Helen Daniels and Mrs Mangle still makes countless children and adults alike instantly wet the bed. Both carved out of wood and hell-bent on taking complete control of the world in their own unique ways (Helen by pure niceness, Mrs Mangle by her very nature).
Of course, this comparison is completely unfair on Home & Away, seeing as both members featured in Neighbours. I don’t care about this. So be it if fans of Home & Away come after me.
While doing a quick Google search for this one – I know that’s unfair too, but I really wanted to find out if Mrs Mangle was born with a real name like other human beings – I ran into a number of difficulties. Firstly, the internet suddenly stopped working, and secondly, Google point-blank refused to search for Mrs Mangle’s full name. It was then, only by chance and while sweating with a feeling of doom descending all around me, that I discovered the truth was far less sinister. Rather than the ghost of Mrs Mangle looking over anyone who dared speak or type her name, like some Bloody Mary kind of character, I found she was actually called Mrs Nell Mangel. Although I still insist that just then as I typed her name again the lights flickered…as if to warn…
Superstition aside, Vivean Gray was the actress charged with commanding this villainous and highly iconic role – a role which saw her frequently threaten and harass Madge Bishop in that loveable way that family’s found really enthralling while eating their dinner.
Going back to Helen for a second, don’t think that just because she was mostly nice she was always nice. That is simply not true, and demonstrated by her slew of epic mistakes – the blue-print that Susan Kennedy lived by, perhaps. The best of these hideous foul-ups was a rampant sex-romp with her daughter’s fiancé – quite a feat considering her nun-like nature that was the complete and utter opposite visual manifestation of the words sex appeal.
Winner: Mrs Mangel.
Jogging: a total paradox of crap and brilliant (and Mel Gibson)
Well I hope she's proud of herself
I started jogging when I lived in Cologne, Germany. I don’t know the exact date, but I know it was sometime after my first major illness in 2006 – so probably mid 2007 or thereabouts; amongst all the visits to the doctors and the clinics were a few months when I somehow got strength from somewhere and decided to try and use it. Once I thought I could handle it I’d jog once a week just lightly, barely more than a walk. A kind of celebration, I suppose. I had never jogged or run before this point – as is preferable when the wounds of youth still rear their ugly heads frequently, telling you that if you do everyone will laugh at you, just like in P.E. at school – so I was anxious and actually quite scared about the idea of me running around a park when anyone else was in the same park, even if it was a really big park (we are all born with the innate ability to zone-in on a jogger who looks a bit weird, aren’t we?). Somehow though I managed to get through the trauma of starting — as with anything, with jogging, the hardest bit is the strangeness of actually getting off your arse and making it happen.
Although I don’t jog anymore, and most of the harsh memories of learning how to not be flat-footed have vanished – now there’s something I never thought I’d ever believe at the age of 14! – what I can say is this: jogging on its own can get pretty boring, however good it eventually feels (much stress on the word eventually). The concept is flawed from the outset and that’s all there is to it: 1) do it alone (you have to do it alone at first, as the shame of feeling deeply flawed at jogging outweighs any desire to do so with other people, even if they are equally as laughable as you). 2) run in a straight line. Has running in a straight line ever been interesting? Probably only if you’re Usain Bolt or a Greyhound knowing the second that it stops it will receive some of its favourite treats. 3) Do it in places where other people – thin and fat and with absolutely no right to cast any form of opinion – are and keep doing it until you don’t feel like an idiot. Not exactly a tempting offer. 4) pretend you are enjoying it. Nobody likes a grumpy jogger, and if you are going to get laughed or looked at, the least you can do is try and give the onlookers a taste of their own gloating medicine. 5) buy expensive shoes which hurt so much that you seriously wonder, just on the first attempt, if you will ever wear them again. You can’t wear them to do anything else either, unless you have a bedroom-related fetish involving Paula Radcliffe, a starting line and doing a poo where you’re not supposed to 6) run on pavement. All reputable joggers are made of the same stern stuff: they’d much rather suffer with crippling arthritis later on as a result of relentlessly battering their knees than run on grass or something soft. Goes without saying!
All this and jogging involves going outside, where, in the UK, it often pisses it down the moment you think Strange it’s not raining toda—
Then there is the pressure from other people. Both to stop and to carry on. I don’t know what’s worse. Is it worse to be surrounded by organic-orange-juice-drinking health fanatics at the pub who can’t shut up about the joys of jogging and how bad smoking is for pets as well as people? Or is it worse to sit amongst jogger-haters who have spent their whole lives forming a dread-ridden argument against anyone without shin-splints, in the hope that one day their depressing attitude will spread so widely that any kind of jogging or running might one day be banned? If Harry Hill was here he’d say “Fight!” and it would be a sight to behold, I’m sure. Yes, the joggers would be fitter and stronger, but don’t forget they’d also be much lighter. I imagine a beer-swilling, lycra-hating, mid-twenties pub-dwelling yob could easily go through a few of them just by swinging one arm.
But it isn’t all bad news with jogging! The thing jogging has on its side is Mp3 players and music. Just imagine, if we’d never had shell-suits and the 1980s, we would never have evolved to making Mp3 players either — a disturbing though for anyone who has ever got on a bus. Give that consideration the next time someone talks about hunting down Mick Hucknall and his family.
An ideal candidate for a future remake of Child's Play?
If you saw my brother and I standing together, you’d think that my brother might be like me, that he’d at least give jogging a go. But no. Despite looking like a parallel universe version of myself – similar beard, similar nose, very different hair but you can’t win them all, right? – he hates jogging with a passion. Which I wouldn’t mind…were it not for the fact that the git’s build is suited perfectly to any kind of running. Honestly, it’s a joke, and that’s one of the things which winds me up about some people the most. Maff can run for about 5 miles without hardly breaking a sweat, yet he chooses not to, because he finds it too dull to bear…
And let’s not even get started on those super-mums who can jog while also taking care of another life that sits there quietly perfect and not a bit of trouble.
Of course, before Mp3 players came about there were ways to make jogging more endurable. In the Mayan-themed 2006 film Apocalypto, director and general much-hated person Mel Gibson demonstrates with some degree of finesse just how interesting and exciting jogging/running can be if you really set your mind to it. Forced to run in sheer terror across a path of barren land where prisoners go to die horrible nasty deaths, the two main characters we’ve been following since the beginning of the film are shot at with bow and arrows by master marksmen who could do with a bit of fun to liven up their day; the name of the game being to cut the men down before they reach the crops on the other side, thus giving all the other evil Mayans something to talk about that night while they eat their raw goat colons and other such delicacies. By all accounts this shoot-the-runners thing is a fun and challenging game…when you’re the one doing the shooting. But what the two characters miss out on in fun, they more than make up for in exercise, and half way across the war-zone one of them decides to start running zig-zag to try and fool the marksmen, who, up until that point didn’t even know that anything other than straight lines existed (this is obvious from the looks on their faces). Not that exercise is much good when a razor-sharp arrow is about to go skewer one of your major organs – as proven by the several people who went before you who are still lying haphazardly about – but still, the game does at least give the mind the illusion that the body is getting fitter, and that’s got to count for something, right?
Jealous of Ray Mears
Ray Mears wearing a suit with bow-tie: a situation infinitely less probable than Ann Widdecombe being photographed displaying a sexy smile
Imagine you are flying through the air; it’s something you do more or less constantly, but despite that it never gets boring. You’re a small bird with big dreams, and today you might well be feeling ‘blissful’. The tragic fact about how you feel, of course, is that you don’t really know how you feel, because your brain is much too small to afford you the luxury of such knowledge. What a shame. But what does that matter when you’re flying through the—
Something stops you and pain rushes through your wings, your beak, those small things you use to grip onto twigs with. You sqwuark, and you try and escape but it’s hopeless, and the more you wriggle the more trapped you feel. Somehow the air has become a kind of trap, and now you’ve really done it…you’ve wriggled so much that your head has got strangled and there is pressure all around it! Your wings aren’t doing much better either. Basically you’re a mess! Your poor little feet are stuck and mangled with a kind of black stuff, too. If birds knew swear words, right now you’d be saying “I’m fucked! I’m done for!” Instead, you are just struck with the frustration of being still when you could be hurtling through the air. That in itself is more than a bit of a bummer.
This was the horrific scenario thrust upon me when I turned over to ITV yesterday and found myself watching Wild Britain with the infamous outdoors-man known as Ray Mears. “The netting is designed to hold the bird firmly in place and doesn’t harm them at all,” said the remarkably un-feminine looking woman who was the warden of this nature reserve where all these horrendous traps were placed. “Sort of like a hammock, then,” said Ray, actually believing this utter nonsense. Yes Ray, if a nice relaxing afternoon in a hammock is spent after being fired from a cannon into it, where for hours afterwards you are forced to spend your time wriggling and writhing, convinced that as this feels pretty awful, probably only much worse things are to come…(the only good thing about being completely ignorant about your fate, of course, is that you don’t know how bad it might get).
But enough about the allegedly painless bird traps which Ray and nature reserve wardens all over the UK thoroughly endorse – people do much worse things I suppose, and just one of John Barrowman’s 360 degree spins on Tonight The Night is much more sinister. Really, I’m just jealous, very jealous, of Ray’s highly developed ability to enjoy the simple things in life. So will you be by the end of this blog post.
For example, another part of the programme featured Ray wandering through English rivers. How much was he loving this? Words cannot describe, but for the sake of cutting this short right here, right now, what the hell, I’m going to try. Probably the best way to demonstrate just how much pleasure Ray got from marauding through the river – in his tall wellies, quietly destroying thousands of years worth of marine life while paradoxically explaining how the rivers were under threat from the terrible world we live in – is to say how he went about creeping up on fish for the sake of pure enjoyment. That’s right, creeping up on fish. Why would anyone creep up on a fish, I hear you cry? Well, apparently fish are very good at keeping a look out through the clear water, just in case a predator approaches. When that predator is a six-foot-tall, slightly overweight nature enthusiast, I’m fairly sure that even the dimmest brown trout can detect that, so what Ray does is get down on his front and wriggle his way to the water’s edge. Following that he lies there smiling like a goon for a very, very long time — probably while his wife sobs at home, wondering if she will ever be made love to with the same kind of passion that her husband shows for limpets and toads.
Let's not even go there, OK?
And that’s what I mean by jealous: most people need to spend money to enjoy themselves, or at least spend time in the company of like-minded, alcohol swilling humans. But not Ray — alcohol can go to hell as far as Ray is concerned! Give him a small river, some wellies and the potential lure of some cherished memories and that’s enough for him.
Thinking about Ray Mears, and how long he’s been doing his thing on TV, how old is Ray, actually? Seriously, I only ever seem to see him on all the second-rate channels, where he looks about 35 — and has done for the last ten years — so I suppose it’s fair to assume he could be in his 60s by now and instead spends his time drinking the nights away in some fish-themed Las Vegas strip bar. What a terrible thought. Think I’d much rather imagine him smiling like a goon by the river bank instead.
It’s war against leaves
This photo of a lonely leaf is testament to how brutal the war against leaves has become. I typed Leaf covered path into Google and couldn't find one suitable photo. There were many of half-covered paths, but none that portrayed the rare sight I'd seen this morning. Unless I imagined it, which right now is looking more likely.
Rejoice, for Autumn is here once again! A majestic time…a time of golden leaves tumbling in the wind, a time of magic, prosperity, and simple pleasures like walking over rustling leaves (and if you’re really daring, taking a proper run-up and kicking a carefully collected pile of said leaves all over the place just for the sheer hell of it – something which has to be timed properly if you live in a village like me, less a nosy old lady sees you and starts a rumour that there is a 30 year-old bearded hooligan on the prowl…).
Actually don’t rejoice. And don’t even ponder walking over rustling leaves, even less kicking them in a moment of childish pleasure. How can you when everywhere you go, the unfair victimization of leaves is taking place and there are no leaves to be found in any great number, like back in the good old days? At one time, for a period of many hundreds of thousands of years, leaves were allowed to fall wherever nature intended, bringing happiness and colour to the lives of people all over the place. But not so now — at least, apart from a few isolated and untouched path-ways, like the one I trod this morning on the way back from the Post Office. Now, leaves are seen by many bone-headed spoilsports as a natural enemy: a menacing force of nature that must be kept in check through whatever means are necessary.
And please don’t give me any of the following excuses for why leaves need to be kept in check, because they won’t wash with me or any of my pro-leaf posse.
1) Leaves become slippery when wet, causing a health & safety hazard to people with dodgy legs or dodgy eyes, or even people who don’t always look where they are going: ancient hepatitis-carrying 2 pence pieces are also very much a health & safety hazard, don’t you think? It goes without saying you can’t easily trip up on them, of course – unless you happen to be wading across an oil spill where a lorry transporting tons of lethal pennies has recently crashed – but hepatitis, which causes swelling and inflammation of the Liver, is still awful, just look at Mick Hucknall’s face, where his Liver is located. Actually I just made that up. There’s nothing medically wrong with Mick Hucknall’s face, and as far as I know it his Liver is ginger but fine. Aside from that, people with dodgy legs and dodgy eyes should avoid leaves or face the consequences. Or at the very least tell the people they are with to steer them away from them. As for people who don’t look where they are going, if I was a meaner person I might say something here about hepatitis and who deserves to get it, but I won’t, because I’m nicer than that.
2) I own a business and every single Autumn, the leaves fall on the pavement outside it and make it troublesome for customers to make it to the front door without falling over and breaking a leg or an arm and suing us: grow up! How old are you, five? Actually forget I said that — I know five-year-olds who would kick you in the shins if you even suggested that you were like them. The point, if you still need telling, is that the leaves were there long before you. Just go and find a premise’s where there are no trees around for miles, will you? It’s a good job trees don’t get the hump with people and say “I tell you what, we’re sick of all our leaves being stolen, we’re not going to be the lungs of the planet anymore!”
3) Leaves make driving difficult: so does the rising price of oil, suicidal squirrels and the Great British phenomenon of suspension-killing pot-holes.
4) Only dull-coloured leaves fall where I live. If they were a brighter and more Autumnal colour like in the movies I might smile and feel happy when Autumn arrives. I might never have become the leaf-averted person I am to this day. Things would have been different, I’m sure of it: I suggest you take this up with the people responsible for planting trees in your area many generations ago. Except they will be long dead, so you’re better off writing a letter to their descendants, who will no doubt be so used to receiving such letters that they already have a letter ready to send back to you. Failing that, a psychologist might come in handy. Or just a lot of LSD.
And now we’re on the subject of people who have an aversion to leaves and feel the need to blast them away with those ridiculous blowing-machine-things – or even worse, those who hire small armies of organized, like-minded buffoons who callously spend their days staring at the ground like it might at any moment rise up and spit on them – another thing has occurred to me: the name leaves, as in leaves us alone, or leaf me be! You’d have thought, really, that with this word and these messages now being embedded in the consciousness of society, the last thing anybody would want to do is remove our amazing autumnal gift.
For me, and maybe it is just me, if you take leaves away that’s like pretending that Autumn doesn’t really exist. Why not just stick with picking on Winter instead? We all know that’s the real culprit.
The Birthday post
If you want to, cry on your Birthday. If you're completely confused, it means you are really very young and set to grow up with more debt than your parents. Good for you!
31 years ago today, and thanks to my Dad’s rather eager sperm, my poor Mother – one big haired, blonde, Shirley Rita Pink of Harston, Cambridgeshire – was enduring one of the five most painful experiences of her life (three of those other occasions were giving birth to my brother and sister and I, the fourth was learning to drive – something which I am brutally reminded of whenever I get in the car on a day when she has decided to wear shoes which she wouldn’t usually wear for driving, and ideally shouldn’t. Only joking Mum, you’re a great driver! As long as you wear the right shoes…). Mum has never talked much about giving birth and how it was for her, other than to say that everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Spectacularly. And my Mum is a woman who does not mince her words, I can assure you (she always says exactly what she thinks about run-away success Strictly Come Dancing, and she should know — she used to be a ballet dancer).
While a lot of people actually have annoyingly hassle-free pregnancies, where everything falls into place and the pain and the stress is minimal, Mum really suffered with all her births, especially my older sister Natalie – so much so that it’s remarkable this version of me even exists. Just imagine, or don’t, as I prefer…had I been born a few months earlier or later I might have never ended up as a freelance writer who is frequently able to choose his waking hour. I might have become a banker, I might have become anything else. And I’ve always despised early mornings, so I am grateful.
See, not only was Natalie the world’s most miniature premature baby, but with that came all kinds of terrible complications; Natalie had breathing difficulties and heart problems galore, and the stress of it all did its fair share to kick my my Mum in good and proper, too.
So one thing I have never quite understood about Birthdays, is why the Mums get so little recognition. OK, so I did my bit and somehow naturally got myself in the right position so that the delivery wasn’t too much of a nightmare — at least, compared to my sister’s exotic escape — but I had no idea I was doing that, did I? It was pure chance. I was probably just fed-up of being in that position for too long and fancied a change, as babies do. It was Mum who bore the strain. Mum who had to carry me for many months, and Mum who had to get through the agonising pain of having to look at my Dad who was getting off completely scott-free, not me. That’s why I often feel a bit weird about celebrating my birthday — the day when Mum had a horrendous C-section, and forever after her body was never quite the same. Although clearly I don’t feel that weird about it, nor have I ever protested along with many other like-minded individuals about how there ought to be a special day for Mum’s everywhere, something more personal than just a collective and commercially lurid Mother’s Day. Because this morning I gratefully accepted a number of gifts, and not once did I turn to dearest Mum and say, “Here, I feel bad accepting all these nice things, why don’t you have them all? Why don’t you take that £50 note? Would you like some 85% dark chocolate?” What I will say is that it’s probably good that I didn’t offer her the Alan Partridge book to be honest. I really don’t think she’d appreciate it as much as I will, and she’s never been much of a fan of dark chocolate (she says it’s too bitter).
Putting all the giving birth stuff to one side for a moment – watch where you put that hypothetical Placenta, please… – one of the things I really like about modern birthdays is the Facebook thing. So what if most of the people on your friends list probably wouldn’t remember your birthday were it not for the fact that Facebook automatically makes all your friends aware of it, whether they like it or not. Does it really matter that the Birthday is spoon-fed to them? Not to me. I’m bloody awful at remembering birthdays so I appreciate any help I can get. While it’s true that Facebook certainly does an excellent job of guilt-tripping all your mates into writing something on your Wall, even if some of them rarely speak to you – who, really, can resist writing on the wall when every time they log in they see that little reminder in the corner of the screen? – the act of writing on someone’s FB Wall is still something special. Sacred, in a certain kind of way that transcends the seemingly too-easy simplicity of it all. At least to me. What makes it even better, I think, is when people take it upon themselves to invent an ingenious way to say Happy Birthday. I don’t want to single any one particular person(s) out here, but it’s definitely something which helps to make the world go round. On Birthdays, you should always forgive bad grammar and spelling mistakes. You should always thank everyone for bothering: thank you all for bothering!
Lastly, Birthdays are, to some degree, all about the cards and the presents and the feeling that today is something to be remembered — for example, today will be remembered as the day I got a great jumper from my girlfriend, and the day that Nana Pink rang up to actually sing the entire long version of Happy Birthday to you… down the phone at me, without stopping once to feel besieged by embarrassment — a fine attribute which I fear only comes with age. I don’t care what anyone says about being materialistic, or how militant you are about giving and receiving gifts: it just feels good to know that someone has taken it upon themselves to give you something from the bottom of their heart. For me it’s never been about the size or cost of the item, and it’s certainly never been about asking for something specific. For me it’s just nice to know that someone cares you did exit the womb on this day.
Update: It’s been pointed out to me that this post could be perceived as inaccurate and unfair, and that it makes out that many women have easy pregnancies when this is in fact not the case at all. It’s difficult for me to say any more, without having a comprehensive understanding of it all. What I will say is that this post is based purely on my own limited experiences and I am in no way suggesting that these are the same as everyone elses.
Chris’s bi-decade-ly visit to the dentist: before and after
There would usually be a dentistry-related photo above this caption, but really, who wants to look inside someone’s mouth? Instead here is an angry Badger, perhaps moments after a Set invasion.
Today it’s finally happening, again…the day has arrived and I am going to the dentist; there’s no way out of it (unless I bottle it at the last minute, which will incur a £60 fine. And you can be sure that I am still using this as a backup! Paying £60 to avoid a miserable thing is definitely worth it). It’s something each and every one of us has to deal with, and an experience which I absolutely despise — always have, always will. So, to chart this one, I’ve decided to do a before and after blog post about the experience. Yes, I’m going to drag you down with me — if you like. Do you really blame me?
See…I’ve had this very dull, barely noticeable, nagging tooth-ache for a while now. It’s not my fault, honest it isn’t. I really did register with a new surgery in July and it really has taken this long to get an appointment. I’ll hold my hands up and say that it took me about a year to actually pick up the phone and book that appointment — I am well aware I’m my own worst enemy — but at the same time, we’re all allowed a few rational fears, aren’t we? Because going to the dentist is never a nice experience. Especially when they start calling out the letters and numbers…
Here are my Predictions:
1) Someone in the Waiting Room is going to annoy me or frustrate me or irritate me. It probably won’t even be their fault, but at that moment I simply won’t care. The faces of the fellow waiters will probably annoy me to be honest; if they’re as worried as I am then they’re bound to get on my nerves even more, what with their expressions-of-woe. I can only hope that I am seated amongst waiters who are confident and unbothered by going to see the dentist. Although thinking about it, if that is the case that’s bound to annoy me mildly as well. Actually I may just have to wait outside. Failing that, I’ll crouch in the corner of the room and stare at the wall. Yes.
2) The dentist will act like he or she is pleased to see me, swiftly followed by them jokingly — or not — acting like actually they are not pleased to see me.
3) I will attempt small-talk as a poor and feeble attempt at distracting them from my teeth. Especially the one on the left — a molar? — which has half fallen out. I know this is not in my interest, but I can assure you right now that as this happens I won’t particularly care.
4) The nurse will be a trainee and, although it’s not his / her fault — though I am saying now that I think it’ll likely be a girlish woman — they will write something down wrong and this will mean the dentist has to stop looking in my mouth and help him / her sort it out. All the time I will be left there trying desperately to hold my mouth wide open.
5) The second I shut my mouth the dentist, who is not even looking at me at the time, will say “please open your mouth as wide as you can”.
6) The walk up to the room of terror will be long and drawn out. I anticipate obstacles in the way so as to increase the tension. I also fully expect to bump into a pregnant woman on her way down, and, as the stair-way is so narrow I will have to walk backwards down the stairs and wait for her to pass. Before going up, again.
7) I will be told off needlessly. I say needlessly because you know and I know that the dentist is not doing this for free. Yet, nonetheless, they will feel it is a good idea to bollock me for not having visited them when half my tooth fell out (6 months before I booked my appointment…I think).
8) I will call the dentist a bad name under my breath once going back down the narrow stairs. This time I will take full advantage of my right-of-way and make the life of the person coming the other way a right proper misery by being all slow and holding my face. I am not usually like this, honest.
Ways I’m going to deal with it:
1) I’m going to pretend that the dentist is just a really nice, really friendly hairdresser who, on this particular day, has decided — on a whim — to have the entire salon completely gutted and replaced with lots of stainless-steel equipment. A hairdresser who just likes to casually look in mouths every so often. Nothing to worry about then, nothing to fear.
2) When he or she starts calling out the letters and the names — I expect F to feature heavily, as usual — I’m going to cancel them out by saying, just in my head, the names of funny sounding pets. F8 might become Susan McSpoosan the Hamster, for example. Or maybe Bernard Nobanobazing the ferret. I anticipate this will make me at least smile and maybe even laugh. Obviously I don’t want to push this too far, because he or she might tell me to stop laughing and keep my mouth open. Worse, he or she might ask me what I am laughing at, which will only extend the period of time spent in that bloody chair. Yes, I definitely need to tread carefully here.
3) I’m going to tell myself that, at any moment in time, I can just say “Alright bollocks, that’s enough! I’m leaving! take my £60 or the clothes off my back and my arse if you like, just let me go right now.” Worse things do happen. This probably won’t have been the first time someone has stripped off and chucked their personal possessions at them and bolted out the door.
It is 13:42…it’s time for me to face my demons and go.
Chris’s bi-decade-ly visit to the dentist: after…
I'm as happy as these four jumping shadows about leaving the dentist. Although it has to be said that the guy second-from-right looks like he's just been shot after walking on his knees -- not a happy pose. I remember doing the second-from-left pose a few times to scare my brother when we were younger. I'd hide in the dark behind the wall outside the bathroom and then scare him half to death when he stepped outside. Happy days!
It is now after, and amazingly, after doesn’t hurt any more than before! And no, I’m not writing this through the haze of an alcoholic stupor – they just didn’t do anything yet apart from have a look. You may be aware that in my first post, written just minutes before I left the house, I made a few predictions about how the experience was going to transpire, and more or less let slip my howling fear of dentists and all things dentists are into (something I prefer not to ponder very often, but if forced to guess what music most dentists are into I’d hazard a guess and say either Elton John or, just maybe, Meatloaf. And who knows, perhaps a bit of Prince?).
Well, the thing is, that makes me feel a bit stupid, because now I sit here and tell you that all my predictions were wrong. In a bizarre twist of logic, not only were they all wrong, but none were even remotely close. There was no awkward long walk up some very narrow stairs – it was on the ground floor of a bungalow located in a car-park where you’d expect to see a vets, perhaps – and there weren’t even any other people in the Waiting Room to annoy me. Not one person. This fact was made stranger still – disturbing, even – by the receptionist lady insisting to me that they were fully booked up and “really very busy”; even adding to the gravity of the illusion by having a simultaneous slightly hot flush. Inexplicably, she was also wearing one of those black V-neck shirts like the bad Karate guys wore in Karate Kid (the chief sensei, or leader of which, was an ex-Special Forces Vietnam veteran, no less!). I resisted the urge to make a passing comment about this, one of my favourite films growing up – I had in mind something along the lines of “me and Mr Miagi will fight you all the way! Nothing will break us!” an invented quote which would have addedyet more drama to the film I feel – and went along with her highly developed fantasy; I even looked around the room as she had, pretending to glance at my fellow waiters, and even standing back a bit to let an imaginary person pass. I’m sure that it must get boring being a receptionist in an empty dentist’s practice, so inventing a virtual reality has got to help. I know it helped me when I worked as a picture framer a few years ago in a remote location in the fields of Cambridgeshire. I often imagined that hoards of zombies roamed the countryside and the place where I worked was a fortress where no zombie could penetrate, thus I had no choice but to stay inside and work for what I now know to be a pittance. It really makes it easier to enjoy your job when, at the same time, you feel genuinely lucky to be alive and not one of them.
A lion celebrates his happiness in true original style
Then came the form – a flaccid good-for-nothing series of black lines on poor quality paper. I was a new patient and so, predictably, protocol designated that I must fill out a pointless low-quality form which nobody would ever bother to read (of course, in the true spirit of pointless things, I only found out it was truly pointless well after I’d filled it out and I was in the dentist’s chair where she told me this very thing. This meant that I filled it out in good-boy style, like my first day of school – even going as far as to cross out a couple of words and rewrite them above in very neat capital letters, so as to avoid a detention. A tragic sign of what I prefer to call maturity rather than age). It pleased me that although I had suffered from a serious illness just a few years before, not one of the questions invited me to discuss this further. I enjoyed saying how I wasn’t on any medication and was petrified of going to the dentist’s (Are you scared of going to the dentist’s? Yes I am petrified). Actually I didn’t enjoy it, not once I had written it. Seeing the word petrified on paper really rammed the point home.
I haven’t done a very good job of setting the scene, have I? How selfish. So far I have given the impression that I had entered a building which may have been a vets, only to enter into discourse with a delusional receptionist who doesn’t know the difference between high and low quality paper. Well, allow me to try again: you are standing in a room which is very sparse – a large white room divided by a flimsy MDF wall (covered in a cheap veneer that makes it look like mahogany, sadly; it would seem like the man or woman who designed the forms was let loose on the interior decorating as well…). On the left wall there’s a door which is open invitingly. Straight ahead, but also in the corner of the room, is a closed door with no sign on it, but the voices coming from it tell me that this is where it all happens. As you relax, seated on an actually quite comfy red padded chair — it reminded me of Antiques Roadshow actually, and I didn’t thank it for that because then I was thinking of Bargain Hunt and I have always hated that show — you begin to get more at ease. The lack of signage on the doors is a welcome treat in this hellish place, you now realise; it screams “we’re casual!” and although it’s probably a lie, you embrace it. Then the door opens suddenly and a woman walks out. You immediately think she’s a secretary or a patient – she couldn’t be a dentist. She doesn’t have that grim look on her face that you remember from the braces of your childhood, and besides that she is smiling and having fun with the delusional receptionist.
It happens quickly: by the time the short-but-sweet exchange between the two has ended – the woman walking back to the open door-way – you realise that actually, this is the dentist. It must be. She’s turning her head to you and saying “would you like to come in, Mr…(insert your name here)”.
I was going to continue with that style of writing: let you go and sit in her chair and live it out yourself, suffer the hideousness of it all – I’d have got mean with you, I can tell you – but then I changed my mind. How could I do put you in that situation? If you’re anything like me, sooner or later you’d have started to laugh and be amused at being involuntarily thrust into this scenario, and then you’d maybe have started imagining a different scenario than the one I had put you in (and I know that some of you readers have a very vivid imagination…it would have lost all seriousness if you’d have done something naughty with it, and besides that, this is the dentist’s – no naughty scenario’s allowed. Seriously, this isn’t the time or the place).
Upon entering the room, I found myself bewildered. As bewildered – if not more – as the time, in the last year of Primary School, when I walked into the assembly hall for the yearly School Disco and discovered that the girls and the boys were no longer on opposing sides of the hall but actually all eerily together. The dentist lady, a tall Indian woman who looked way too young to be a dentist – I’d temporarily completely forgotten I was 31 during my short walk to the room – asked me to take a seat and didn’t even look at me menacingly. In the corner of the room sat the up-until-now mystery assistant nurse girl, looking like she didn’t hate her job in that compulsory manner I pointed out in the first blog post, and before me sat a small arm-chair. This was perhaps the most surprising / shocking / unconvincing thing about the room. I’d been expecting this monstrous chair with all kinds of unwelcoming apparatus jutting from it, but this chair lacked all of that. It was small and grey and benevolent, and behind it was a stool for the dentist to perch on. Above it all was one of those special round light’s which didn’t even hurt my eyes as I sat in the chair and commented on how this was all very different to when I grew up as a boy. The nerves talking. And that wasn’t even a pun, I promise.
As the chair made its electronic groan and eased me back into a disarmed lying position, I was alarmed that I was not alarmed. This alarmed me just a bit, but not enough to make me concerned or think about stripping all my clothes off and storming out the room while throwing a £60 note over my shoulder (see previous blog post. For efficiency’s sake, a £60 note worked best in this imaginary invention. It was only afterwards that I realised they didn’t actually exist).
“So, is there anything you’re worried about?” said the dentist. She even smiled and I even found myself believing it to be real. “You’d better tell me, we don’t ever have time to look at the forms!”
Told you they were pointless.
“There is actually…there very much is…” I said, and laughed. It was a full and real laugh, much like the one I’d made months before when disaster struck and landed in the sink, causing instant panic. I quickly concocted an elaborate lie about how none of what I was about to say was really my fault, then remembered I was a grown man and there was nowhere to hide and who was I kidding? “…I’m a bit worried about the half a tooth that fell out a while ago.”
“Oh.” It looks like a serious Oh but it wasn’t. Not compared to when they fitted head-gear on me when I was fourteen and I told my then-dentist that everyone in the school had mocked me one by one. “So how long ago was that? Three months ago, would you say, or more?”
I sighed. “Um…I’d say more…something like eight months.” It was a lie of course, it was more like a year.
She said “let’s have a look and see what we find then.”
I said I knew what she’d find and it’d be awful and both the nurse and the dentist agreed that was likely the case – there was no getting away from the truth. I quite liked their honesty and braced myself for when it wore off and they realised I was ONE OF THOSE PATIENTS. Actually I wished I hadn’t thought of bracing myself at the time. It brought back some crude and callous memories from way down deep…
And it was awful, what she found — I’m not making that up. In my hope and optimism, every time I’d looked at my reflection in the months previous I’d convinced myself that some of the tooth was still there and so really it wasn’t that bad. At least half, so I was safe. I’d even managed to forget that just the week previous to my appointment a rather large chunk of tooth had fallen out. I have the best excuse ever for being terrible at Maths – I’ve got Dyscalculia, woo! – but even I knew that if one half fell out, then followed by another quarter falling out, what was left was no longer a half in any way. Don’t think about that sentence too much, it might well remind you of those horrible GCSE questions which were devised only to damage people who are sympathetic with my inability to do numbers.
Did I say I can be a bit of a chocolate and cake fiend? Well, I certainly can. It’s something I have under control, honest, but also something that is inevitable when you’re put on a very restricted diet by your doctor. For a whole year I wasn’t allowed to eat anything with refined sugar in – including some fruits and natural products – and so when I started eating chocolate again I really enjoyed it and really took advantage. The enjoyment came back to me in one big haunting wave, now, as the dentist said: “it’ll need to be removed of course, but you knew that I’m sure.”
I nodded. “It had crossed my mind. So what’s next?”
“Next we yank your tooth out, right here right now.”
My face did a spasm. “…Yank?”
She laughed, and it was no wonder she got on so well with the delusional receptionist. “That was an attempt at humour, sorry.”
“Awesome. Well done.”
This seemed to please her.
“No, next we do X-rays,” she said, and in a flash she was shoving strange square metal things in my mouth and pointing a big white gun thing at me, before leaving the room in a hurry. Too much of a hurry.
It was over soon after that. First I got to look at the X-rays on the screen and learn a little bit about black shadows – the only kind of proper shadows, and ones that mark the presence of plaque if you’re at all interested – and second I got to choose either to wait for months for an appointment to have the remains of my tooth out and have my teeth professionally cleaned, or to pay £15 more and have it done before pain exploded and ripped through my body. I chose the latter — to pay more, I mean — I left, and I felt like a new man. A seasoned dentist-visiting-pro who could hopefully help to put others at ease in the future. Next time I knew I’d be able to wait with the best of them, whether they were invisible waiters or terrified real waiters like the man I had once been.
Chris’s day at the cinema and movie review of Chronicle (12A): I really couldn’t give a monkey’s if it gets 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. Personally I hated almost every second of it, so there
A film which uses the word Chronicle in a much better way. The BBC's adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia
If you’re a regular reader of this blog then you will know that I rarely do movie or music reviews. There is a good reason for this – it’s because of my brother Matthew and his flat-mates. Some time ago, I made the mistake – the very severe mistake, it soon transpired – of telling them all about how I’d walked into HMV a few days before and found myself holding in my hands and subsequently buying a DVD box-set. Not just any DVD box-set but The Descent and The Descent 2 in one affordable package that was just crying out to be bought (the conversation then continued, where I revealed, foolishly, that I had also once bought the Jaws DVD box-set, which contained Jaws 2, 3 and 4 but no original Jaws. A very bad move on my part which frequently returns to haunt me, even though Jaws is on IT4 practically every single week right now). It was then that they all pounced upon me at once, mocking me for being such a stupid fool, and not listening to my very valid reasons for buying the box-set (I loved The Descent, so the sequel was worth taking a chance on). Everyone knows The Descent 2 is bloody awful and a total waste of money, was the general consensus of the day. And from that day on I vowed never to do a movie or music review again (which wasn’t difficult to be honest, as by then I’d been on a four-year or so long roll of doing exactly that), just in case they might read it and make it their mission to harass me about it.
Now I am being a big brave boy and breaking that silence. Join me as I attack the latest Hollywood moc-documentary “masterpiece,” entitled Chronicle. Come on people, if you hate overly enthusiastic CGI and irritating, stereotypical American college life as depicted on the big screen, let us together rip it limb from limb!
I’ve always been one to go against the grain, so I’m not going to pretend I’m not enjoying this. I’m not just saying it either, now I shall prove it. A fine example of this proof can be found in my childhood. Firstly, when I was 9 I would only spread St. Ivel Gold margarine on my bread (which meant Mum had to buy this every week as well as the “normal” margarine), and secondly, when I was at secondary school I went against the grain by never buying chips in the canteen, even though not buying them broadcasted to the masses that you had no intention of becoming one of the crowd. That’s right, everyone bought chips, and there I was not buying them. Sometimes, though, I liked to mix it up. So this would often mean that on Tuesday’s I wouldn’t buy chips and on Thursdays I wouldn’t buy, say, spicy potato wedges (I would vary the days of course, but that wasn’t important, it was more the moral that counted). All this low-key anarchy went under the radar of those outside my immediate posse, of course – we all agreed we were in a posse, not a gang – but we didn’t care; that’s what it’s like when you blaze a trail against all the odds. The point was that we were standing up for what was right and un-cool. Also, most days I had a packed lunch, so buying additional potato-based snacks wasn’t really necessary. As you can see I was very much the lady magnet back then.
Going into this showing of Chronicle, I had that unsettling and slightly doomed feeling going on – that classic timeless one that says “what I am about to experience is both not going to satisfy me, and make me wish I hadn’t spent £8.95”. However, this feeling was quickly quashed. Before handing over my ticket I’d been to Burger King and purchased £6.95s worth of XL Bacon Double Cheeseburger meal, which was actually really good. Good or not, the burger was obviously abysmal quality. I’d already wasted that much, so why not continue with the risk of spending more?
I’m not silly, of course. After the quagmire of controversy that was the DVD box-sets debacle I had learnt one important lesson: always get the opinion of someone with worthy film knowledge before going to buy a DVD box-set or pay for a cinema ticket. In this case, my brother Maff – official name Matthew – had given me the go-ahead to see Chronicle. It wasn’t much, just a sentence – “I’ve heard it’s good” – but it was enough to inspire me with confidence. Maff never says a film is good unless he is certain, and anyone who knows my brother will tell you that he has a generally impeccable taste when it comes to film and cinema. I did say generally.
Sitting down and getting comfortable, I obviously wasn’t comfortable – I am 6 feet of man and this always means sitting sideways with my legs spread out, which probably gives me the appearance of a man who is either a) settling down to pleasure himself or b) come into the cinema to have a good sleep rather than watch the film – but I was most definitely ready. I was mildly interested about what was about to happen. You might say I was off my guard.
And this was just the problem, because it was now that a trailer for new, bloody awful romantic comedy This Means War infected the big screen. The main problem being that as I watched the trailer, I found myself about to have a panic attack, as it very much seemed like this was not a trailer but actually the entire film. For five minutes or so – but what felt like half an hour – the ten or so people around me who were either freelance or had jobs that allowed them the privilege of sitting in the cinema at 5pm in the afternoon, were subjected to cinema at its most unappealing, and likely left panicking, like me, if they had wandered into the wrong screen. Reese Witherspoon made the trailer just about sit-through-able, prancing about with little on to R ‘n’ B, but the premise of the movie – two secret agents go to war against each other in pursuit of their mutual love affection – shone out like a neon turd in a very dark, grim swimming-pool. If you haven’t seen the trailers for this hideous excuse of a film yet, please see one, if only for protection. That way, if you ever accidentally turn the channel over in five years time and find yourself watching this tripe, you will know it immediately and be able to take evasive action. Thanks to my sage advice, you will save yourself lots of time. Time which I will not get back. Let’s move on.
Chronicle should be amazing, and the fact that it isn’t makes me want to smash things up (second to smashing the ticket machine up so I can retrieve that wasted £8.95). It should be fantastic. With a fairly original concept – college teens discover a source of otherworldly power deep within the ground – and a budget that most countries badly afflicted with AIDS are absolutely crying out for, it’s got all the ingredients for a quality film. There are many reasons it is not fantastic or amazing, but I will begin with the first one: it’s just too much.
Just too much isn’t always bad. For example, there’s a pub in our village – can’t tell you which as I don’t want to ruin this best-kept secret – that sells fish and chips to takeaway for just 5 pounds! Providing you don’t get the stingy chef – I still haven’t worked out how to completely avoid the days he is working – you are basically guaranteed an impressive meal of too-much-food. Either there are two pieces of fish and loads of chips, or just a massive piece of fish that will dwarf most standard dinner plates. Watching Chronicle, then, is a bit like ordering a massive piece of fish and then discovering that on the way to putting it in the box, the chef must have dropped it in loads of crushed-up Ecstasy or other well-known hallucinogen (Class A drugs obviously have no business being in a kitchen, but if you’ve ever worked in a really stressful one then you could almost forgive a chef for this mistake, I think).
Explosions. Buses flying through the air. Angry teenagers. A feeble American teenager who goes on a journey where he becomes precisely what you knew he would all along (I won’t tell you what, at the slim risk that after reading this ‘review’ you miraculously decide to go and see the film). Chronicle has all this and more, including no good explanation about how any of this came to be, and a slew of comic moments which attempt to distract the viewer from the slew of enormous plot-holes. Worst of all, though, it leaves the possibility of a sequel ringing in your ears within the first 30 minutes.
What I find impressive, reading this post through, is that I have got this far without even remotely telling you the basic plot. If an editor-type had me by the leash, I’d have received a smack on the bum for being so vague, but seeing as this is my blog I can get away with that kind of thing. Trust me, when you spend all your time dealing with people who constantly want you to change your work to suit their taste, you’d take every chance you get as well.
For the sake of it though, here’s the basic premise: 3 college guys who can’t help mentioning Schopenhauer and Jung in daily conversation – dialogue which has nothing to do with the film’s so-called clever message, of course… – enter a hole in the ground and find a strange glowing…thing. You don’t see much of it, other than getting the distinct impression that whatever it is is organic and alive and potentially dangerous. Events rapidly progress after this, and via the progressively more tedious moc-documentary style film-making technique which is quickly running out of original options, we get to witness the 3 guys — who I can’t be bothered to describe here — growing ever-stronger in their powers. These powers take the form of picking stuff up and chucking it about, basically, and all that kind of stuff. All of this means that watching Chronicle is a bit like watching two old filthy-rich men talk about the olden days: being them, following a life-time of experiences and outrageous fun, would no doubt be a brilliant time. But watching them – did I mention one of them is wearing shorts and keeps…falling out? – gets quickly tiresome.
If there’s one thing Chronicle does get right it’s the special effects and mind-blowing visuals. If you’re pissed-off with life and wondering what it would be like to pick up your boss’s car and throw it through several skyscrapers, then surround your living-room with plasma TVs and leave Chronicle on repeat. Otherwise, do yourself a favour and go and see The Grey with Liam Neeson. Maff says it is good. But then…
Exploding volcanoes and spelling badly!
Because there just aren't enough photos of volcanoes around. Source: mother nature of course
As a child, it took me absolutely ages to learn how to tell the time on a clock with hands (or what I like to call an “analogue clock”. A phrase which hasn’t caught on, but really should have). Did this matter? Well yes it did actually, it mattered quite a lot, because when I was nine years-old digital clocks weren’t everywhere and analogue clocks were, the bloody things. If you couldn’t tell the time on one then life was completely miserable. For this reason, I told the time by being shouted at. When someone shouted at me I knew I was late and what the time had to be. It was a simple system that never failed to work.
Not being any good at telling the time wasn’t such a big thing though, because at the age of eight or nine I started to produce paintings that were annoyingly good for a child of my age (looking back they don’t seem all that special now, but I’m not going to go into that. I don’t want to ruin the mystique). The best part was that they were also better than most of the teachers could do – something which was brilliant ammunition when you were utterly useless with all the other subjects. Painting was the one thing I could do, so I embraced it. Things took a particularly bad turn, however, when I entered an art competition at the end of one year.
I had chosen to do a painting of a farmyard. Let’s be honest, for most of the population, when you’re seven or eight, you don’t give a shit about the details, you just want to paint whatever comes into your mind at that one particular moment. Me, on the other hand, I loved the details. I spent a good few hours drawing the chickens and the pigs, and spent a similar number of hours doing the actual painting.
But here’s the thing…when I entered the painting into the competition, there was that very distinct feeling of having trodden in dog muck and being the odd one out in a very big way. Dog muck of the bright orange, especially foul-smelling variety, no less. A rumour had started going about, you see: I hadn’t painted the chickens and the pigs…my parents or some other devious accomplice adult had. Something which amused my parents, seeing as they’d always been hopeless at art. If I was them I’d have taken the accolade, but there you go, we are all different.
Conveying how hopeless they were to the Headmaster didn’t help. The school authorities — a complex mix of bearded and non-bearded evil individuals who seemed strangely genderless to my young self — were convinced that the painting was a fraud and that was that, I was outlawed from collecting a prize (there was no prize, I later found out, but it still cut me deeply). It seemed my non-existent art career was to remain that way, until a stroke of luck fell upon me…I was asked to paint a teacher’s portrait, which would be given to him as a leaving present! (I still have no idea who was responsible for setting my career back on track.)
As you can imagine I was thrilled. My reputation restored, things were looking up. Yes!
If you like exploding volcanoes, I bet you're going "corrrrrrr" right now
The problem is, ever since that day, and don’t laugh, and don’t think I’m being arrogant please, I have been plagued with the curse of being half decent at creative things. I call it a curse because a) it’s hardly brilliant for earning money and b) it seems to be a lot more common to be crap at drawing and painting than it does to be skilled. This means that people often say to me “Oh Chris, I wish I could paint like you or write like you, but alas I am stuck with my between 35 and 75 grand per-year boring job — I’d really much rather be creative”. What they forget – or what possibly doesn’t always cross their mind – is that they likely possess many more skills than I when it comes to many things in life which are favourable. Things which make everyday life a hell of a lot easier, for that matter.
Here are a few things which I find exceedingly difficult (mainly because of my Dyscalculia – the numerical equivalent of Dyslexia):
1) Reading maps. Just ask anyone who has ever been in a car with me. I am infuriating on so many levels. It really is quite hard to fathom.
2) Doing directions. Both giving them and following them. I forget the number of people who have fallen under my spacially-challenged sword after winding down their window. Actually, come to think of it, when I walk down the street in a place I don’t know, I usually have to keep checking behind me so I see the street in the way I will later when I make the return journey. If I fail to do this I will often not believe it is the same street. This surely gives me the shifty appearance of someone who is fearing for their life.
3) Still reading analogue clocks. Sometimes. I can’t even blame it on the drink as I can no longer drink.
4) Still doing any form of multiplication. The beauty of Dyscalculia is that you don’t ever improve at Maths. Thus, there is little point attempting to learn to do multiplication. It’s a thing of wonder in many ways. If I was just simply crap at Maths then I might be compelled to keep trying to get better.
Another thing is that some people seem to more and more fear writing emails to me – I know this because several people have told me they feel they need to try hard when doing so; harder than when they write to people who don’t do much work with words. You can see it in their writing…the concentration on the words, all formed much more neatly and with more thought than they might usually put into it. And to this I say: “please make spelling mistakes and please don’t worry about writing well or properly or neatly. I really don’t care. In fact I like it. I look forward to seeing typos. All I do is spend every day writing neatly and as well as I can. I want to see the writing of normal everyday people so please let me have it!”
Note: I should say that I have many friends who are creative and who can write really well. And can also do Maths. And who hold down good jobs too. And who can read analogue clocks well — even those evil ones which fashionably don’t have numbers on them. You can definitely say I am jealous of them…
Chris’s (horrific!) new shoes dilemma
Good enough for Mick Dundee, good enough for me (note: not the cowboy boots I bought. I prefer the simplistic variety).
Ever since I was a young lad, I’ve always worn and loved just one pair of shoes; that pair took me everywhere, and together myself and them endured all kinds of fun and disastrous times together (like the time my sister Natalie fell through a wooden fence into a muddy algae-ridden pond when she was 8 and I was 6 — a disaster for her, but still truly hilarious if you are 6!). It’s not because my parents couldn’t afford to buy me more, or because I have a shoe-shop-related anxiety problem — I’ve never been in one long enough to develop one — it’s simply because whenever I have more than one pair of shoes on the go, things get complicated. My feet just don’t get along with more than one variety, is the problem. Years of wearing one pair have made them extremely picky, and the result of me challenging this theory is never a good thing.
Last year, though, I started to think that maybe I could do it…maybe I could be like everyone else on this planet and have more than one pair. It took me a while to fully commit to the idea, but once I was ready that was it. I confronted my mission with determination and a real desire to succeed.
It began with my socially confrontational cowboy boots — man boots with heels…boots which went against the grain of everything almost everyone I know stands for (not looking like a cowboy, not wearing heels). My theory was if I’m going to buy new shoes, why not be daring and outlandish with it? I’ll confess, owning genuine cowboy boots had been on my mind for a while, but actually putting down £200 to buy a pair took considerably more bravery than I’d ever imagined. Still, I knew I had it in me, and before long there I was, strutting down the street feeling extremely awkward and self-conscious. It took another couple of weeks to master turning corners while walking, but once I had the technique down there was absolutely no stopping me.
Little did I know that at this time of great endurance and agonising pain — wearing the cowboy boots in was a treacherous blend of blister-inducing-hell, combined with excruciating shooting pains up and down my shins, combined with feeling weird because of the heels, combined with wondering if I had made a terrible mistake — my parents were deviously concocting their very own plan to buy me yet more shoes…
I was presented with my 2nd pair of new shoes on the morning of my 31st birthday, and I didn’t say much when I opened the box and saw that they were shoes. I mean, your mum and dad buy you shoes you actually would have bought for yourself — it’s slightly eerie that they know your tastes so specifically, isn’t it? For me it is, at least. At first, my parents’ decision to buy me a pair of new shoes struck me as deeply unorthodox — crazy on a whole new level I didn’t dare think about. Disturbing, even. Then I smiled and realised that potentially, this was a life-changing moment, all because of them. The moment I became a real person. A person who could choose from a small number of shoes. What an eventful day! I was a grown-up!
But this feeling of elation and parental awe and wonder — lots of wonder, not to mention smugness — was not to last long. Because no sooner had I donned the comfy brown leather VANS and gone for my virgin walk around the village that I developed two of the most comically large and alarming blisters ever to grace Pink family feet. Something to do with the spongy soles and going from hard-sole cowboy boots to soft shoes, I was later to work out.
My problem with blisters is that I am a fighter. Some people sense the arrival of a blister and think now that really does hurt a lot, I’m going to slow down a hell of a lot and walk home carefully. That should help me avoid it. I have never been of this school of thought. Instead, my theory has always been to drive straight through the pain and teach it a lesson. Instead of slowing down, I speed up and walk aggressively, with the kind of purpose only men late for football games really understand. Where most people would fear the arrival of dreaded doom under their feet, I say Let the chips fall where they may, I say be imperfect! (Note: I don’t always say this. It varies depending on the last time I saw Fight Club.)
Months on and I’m still fighting my right to wear more than one pair of shoes, and wondering if going back to my one-pair-only rule is more favourable than a life-time of discomfort and pain. The blisters still appear every now and again, but that’s not going to stop me, i don’t think. I am a grown-up. Chris will fight on!
The Curse Of Wilbur
When times are good, Wilbur likes nothing more than to murder majestic beasts which are simply minding their own business. I don't know about you, but I'd hate to see what might happen if his books ever stop selling...
In the eyes of certain members of my immediate family, now-elderly super-best-selling author Wilbur Smith has long reigned surpreme. The author of a great-great-GREAT number of books — many the thickness of a good-sized brick that could easily smash through double-glazing — there really isn’t much Wilbur doesn’t know about South Africa, elephants, and writing the kind of fiction that weaves between history, action, more bloody elephants and the timeless kind of traditional adventure that has fascinated all ages for as long as books have existed. Not that I know any of this from experience, I should say — I’ve never read a Wilbur Smith book, and until recently — when grandad gave me his copy of When The Lion Feeds, Wilbur’s debut novel — I had no intention of reading them. And I don’t mean that in a negative way; I’m sure they’re great books, and I’m certain Wilbur Smith deserves the accolades so often bestowed upon him by elephant fanatics…it’s just that my dad and grandad have read every book he’s ever written and told me about every single one at least several times (all subtly different versions of the same basic premise, as far as I can tell, nearly always involving poaching, elephants or South Africa). It’s a curse, you see: without even having read more than a page, I feel I know the work intimately already — I don’t of course, that’s ridiculous, but the illusion remains and illusions are strong. Besides that, alarm bills ring immediately whenever my dad advises me to read any fiction. We’ve always had different tastes, and while he’s a fan of John-Grisham-style thrillers, I prefer books with a humorous theme rather than ones which follow the same generic formula as so many others.
Try telling my dad or grandad that other books exist outside of the realm of Wilbur Smith, and you are instantly put in your place. “I’ll tell you something,” says grandad. “He’s the master of storytelling. The way he writes about South Africa is really very good, very descriptive.” What hope have I got of grandad reading my debut novel? It isn’t set in South Afirca, doesn’t contain any elephant-themed content, and is about as far away from serious in some places that it’s hard to believe I am not actually about twelve years old.
Naturally though, I don’t doubt Wilbur’s descriptive ability. After having written probably in the region of 100 books, the man damn well should be able to describe an elephant by now.
My point is, there are thousands of authors out there as well as Wilbur Smith. Hear that dad? How about you Grandad? (He actually would hear it, he has exceptional hearing for a man of his age, as well as killer Bryll-creme hair that would woo any older ladies on the dance-floor — sorry nana.) I’m not saying my dad or grandad has to give up their mission to read every single book three times cover to cover, I’m just suggesting that they see what else is out there. Surely that’s reasonable, isn’t it?
It’s a futile effort, of course — one which is now relegated to jokey digs from my side (I mean them) and what appear to be serious attempts to coerce me from the mens’ side (they definitely mean them. The mind boggles why they think these would ever have any kind of effect). These men have succumbed to the curse of Wilbur and the evidence suggests that nothing will be able to reverse it now or soon. Tragic? I think so, I genuinely do. If we only ever read the work of one author, the world is flat and words become a form of conditioning that excludes the hunger for anything else that’s different.
Also, I am sick of elephants!
March the 10th, 2012: National Film Overload Day
Today may seem to be a day much like any other — unless you’re getting married today, or you’re having your first baby, in which case your motives for reading this blog on what is supposed to be the happiest day of your life, or the most painful but happiest, are questionable, if you don’t mind me saying — but it most definitely isn’t. In fact, today is National Film Overload Day.
Haven’t heard of it? That’s because I just made it up, and for good reason.
Cast your eyes down today’s film listings guide and you will notice just why I have taken it upon myself to give today’s date such an accolade. For today, my friends, is one of those rare occasions when doing anything else other than watching TV all evening could be considered almost criminal. Not convinced? Allow me to demonstrate the crazy state of affairs that today coincidentally is (or not. With every taste and variety of film being played today bar-none, it’s not unreasonable to think that dark — or light — forces are at work, conspiring to keep us inside while aliens skavenge about England, cutting the tops of peoples’ skulls off and replacing the insides with some kind of special covert-listening equipment, right?).
The madness began — if I can be so bold as to put a precise time to it — several hours ago at 4.50pm on ITV 2 with Batteries Not Included.
A delightfully ambiguous elderly person -- draw your own conclusions about gender -- who is approximately a billion years ahead of all the others on Earth
A film which is about slightly kinder aliens than I mentioned above; actually a lot kinder. It then takes a savage comedic twist, as child-freak McCauley Culkin — probably the wrong spelling — takes to the screen at 7pm on ITV 2 to be both somehow simultaneously witty and annoying (but aren;t all child actors? I dare you to name one who isn’t). And immediately you’ll have already found yourself running into a problem of some gravity, because also starting at 4.55pm on ITV 1 + 1 was Evan Almighty! The film all about God and Noah’s ark which manages to be mildly amusing in places — a feat which would have been impossible to achieve had Steve Carell (probably wrong spelling) not been cast as the lead.
No comment
On any normal day, all this film action would have been stretched over the whole night, more or less. But not on National Film Overload day, because at the hour of 7.40pm on 5* + 1, Hitch makes an appearance, with Will Smith playing the spectacularly irritating role of a man who is supposedly good at matching people up as life partners, but shocking when it comes to managing the same for himself.
But wait! There’s a problem! If you’re a man with a teenage girl inside him, just waiting to get out, you’ll notice that on Film 4 at 5.25pm was Freaky Friday — the quite ridiculous and silly, generic formula-fest which involves all kinds of daftness (none of which I have any first-hand knowledge of, but I do know it involves a woman becoming a girl and a girl becoming a woman, or something. And I mean instantly, of course. Everyone knows that girls become women — that’s common knowledge).
Lindsay Lohan may look just mildly irritated/shocked/confused in this picture, but pictures can lie. In fact, she's devastated -- this is the moment in the film where the older woman on the left realises (now she's in the yonger body on the right) that she has to go through menstruation all over again. It's a cruel world.
You’d think that it might all start to slow down after that, but alas, that is not the case! Straight after that sillyness is over, on we go with yet more straight-up, timeless, class A stupidity, this time in the form of Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.
Then things just get turbo-boosted: Sylvester Stallone bursts onto Film 4 at 9pm, swiftly followed by The Black Windmill at 11.40pm (never heard of it but it looks not half bad). By this point, any usually mild-mannered and capable crap-to-average film lover might just be holding themselves together by the weakest of strands, until the horrific truth is learned: The Matrix Reloaded also starts at 9pm on Sky 1, and at 10.10pm Deep Impact only bloody well starts on BBC 3, at the same time as highly addictive thriller-let-down Daylight begins its mission to by turns please and disappoint us on ITV 2 (what is it with ITV 2? Do they own National Film Overload Day or something?!).
The "Special Edition," because the first wasn't special enough...
By this point, you’ll probably be in a right state. But things take a sinister twist when you notice that at 11.15pm, The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift is on ITV 1 plus 1…which wouldn’t be so bad…if you hadn’t also just noticed that bizarre thriller Orphan began at 10.30pm on Channel 4 and it’s actually quite good…
A film which will put you off a) the colour red b) child actors c) overly serious-looking child actors d) period dramas with child actors. All this and it also manages to completely destroy the rebuilt, once old-fashioned image of orphans that has taken about a hundred years to be altered in the minds of the people, replacing it with the notion that all orphans are better off left in orphanages because they are bound to be evil. Well done you.
When 10pm has been and gone, you’ll be cursing yourself about a number of things. One will be your pathetic attempt to plan the evening, and the second will probably be how you never read all the way down the film guide, which inevitably screws you over completely just when you thought you were safe. Why? Because The Big Lebowski started at 9pm on Dave, and The Wedding date also started at 9pm on E4. Add to this the lunacy that was Reservoir Dogs starting at 10pm on 5USA — not to mention Robert Redford winner Indecent Proposal also starting at 10.05pm on More — and the colossal crushing embarassment is complete.
If you don't like this film, seek assistance fast
At least you thought it was…until it hits you right between the eyes: you’ve done the unthinkable! You’ve both forgotten to record or watch Big Fat Gypsy Weddings on Channel 4 + 1 at 9pm!
By the time you’ve picked yourself up of the floor, you won’t even care anymore that you missed Battle of Los Angeles on Syfy at 8pm, or that Dawn of the Dead (the original and still the best) followed it at 10pm. And when you notice that you’ve missed (500) Days of Summer at 9pm on Film 4, which was also followed by Carriers at 10.50pm, you really won’t give a shit anymore.
Save yourself, do not search out the bottom half of this image
But still, if you can somehow survive all that then you might appreciate that Stepford Wives is on BBC 2 at midnight, or that Spider follows it at 1am…or that The Jacket is on ITV 2 (?????) at 12.50am…or that…
Finite
Two days ago, my uncle passed away — natural causes: his time had come, and I believe he was at peace when the moment came, as it had to, as he had anticipated, as was inevitable. I could say how much I miss him now he has gone; how his passing has affected me. The truth is a tangle of contradictions, though, and much less simple to interpret, let alone explain. I hadn’t seen him in 6, maybe 7 years. If time was the only measure of emotion then you might think that I am so far removed from those last memories now so as not to feel a single thing. But that isn’t true — far from it. When I start thinking about my uncle and standing in his kitchen as a 10 year old — being the same height as him briefly, before passing him in the time it took to visit once more — I miss him tremendously. I want all that time back and for things to stay that way forever. What was dull and far away suddenly seems so close I can touch it. It reminds me that every moment lived today was unique. A mundane day spent at work, but a special combination of tiny events all the same, played out in a way that is now lost forever: un-retrievable. Don’t ever think that every day is the same, because they can’t be, can they? At the risk of talking down to you, the reader, treasure the mistakes and embrace the moments when you feel so free and easy — or so bored, so totally without purpose or reason or desire — that you need something right now to fix it all; something better that somebody else has. One day there will be less time, less possibilities, less desire to experience new things; too much history behind you and not enough new things ahead of you. It’s your time, isn’t it? Smile, make things happen.
Just don’t throw it all away.
Here’s another post which is similar, this time from signedviolet. Check it out, it’s a good and poignant read. Thanks for sharing my post on your blog, SV.
All. Over. The. World
Up until recently, I had very little idea of who was reading my blog and where they were located in the world; the stats only showed basic site visits, and sometimes, if the figures were low, it was hard to imagine that anyone other than a few close friends were bothering. Then, just the other day, WordPress unveiled a fascinating, brand-new feature on their WordPress.com site — one which all bloggers using the system could take advatage of. That system was Views by Country, and from where I’m sitting, it’s been an amazing success and a piece of ingenious thinking.
I should say that I would continue to post my musings here even if nobody visited this blog — visitors isn’t necessarily what it’s about (although I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about people dropping by. It does feel good to know that people take interest in the work, and find something here that’s worth spending precious time on).
And here’s what my Views by Country stats reveal: according to the figures, aside from my UK visitors, people in Indonesia, Macedonia, Algeria and the United States like to see what’s here (or accidentally stumble by — but to be honest, either way I win). Equally, those in India, Norway, Sweden, Philippines, Australia, Pakistan, and the Czech Republic come by frequently. Oh, and not to forget the UAE and those in Ghana, too.
Which just makes me nervous, actually, because now, instead of just worrying about offending people in the UK, I have to concern myself with not offending people in many other countries as well…
But anyway, thank you, dear international and european readers. Good of you to show your support. Thank you The World; thank you WordPress!
Why doesn’t it feel right when some girls high-five/low-five?
No ordinary high-five! Check the enthusiasm...the energy and the downright passion of it all...check the extension of these guys' legs!
You’d never know it, but I spent a good twenty minutes changing the title of this blog post. It began life as “why can’t girls high five/low-five?” But then I realised that this was sexism at its best — or worst — and would no doubt lead to me having to explain myself to numerous girls, for very good reason. I then changed it to “are girls capable of high-fiving/low-fiving as well as men?” and quickly decided against that as well, because clearly they are. After a hard week’s freelance writing about how to survive a hurricane, not to mention the best kind of thrush treatment — yes, it’s varied — did I really need a gaggle of emails arguing the case for great women high-fivers? No, I did not; but if anyone wants to put me right on great women high-fivers then please, be my guest. (And don’t read anything into my usage of gaggle. I am not saying female high-fivers resemble geese in any way.) Finally, I settled on what you see now, but even that doesn’t feel quite right; who knows, there may well be a ladies high-five/low-five club out there entirely devoted to this excellent ritual.
I’d be lying if I said I could recall when I started high and low-fiving, or how my first attempts felt. My first experience with the fives may have been at the same time as Saved By The Bell and Sweet Valley High were regular fixtures in my high-octane hormonal life, or it may have been later, when I decided on switching from mountain bikes — if you can call the poor excuse of a bike I rode a mountain bike — to BMX. A session spent riding BMX was never without a damn good high/low-five. And for good reason: we frequently got freakishly radical. To the point that sometimes, if you did a trick too well, you feared what would happen if you put your hand out and let someone slap it.
Now, let’s look at this a bit more closely: what makes up a good high-five/low-five? And what makes for a sub-standard one which should have those involved feeling utterly ashamed to have hands at all? This list is by far not definitive — I think all high-five/low-five lovers will agree that it’d take weeks to completely cover every important aspect — but I’d say it is accurate and a good generalisation nonetheless.
Now that's what I'm talking about!
1) A good approach: a quality high or low-five begins well before the physical act itself. Like most things, it’s all about the preparation. Both the fives are almost always second to a good joke or laugh, and everyone knows a high or low-five only takes place when…
2) …something of significance has been achieved, or two people are greeting for the first time in a while. There is no law I am aware of over how significant the thing achieved must be, but back in my BMX days it was a trick supremely well-done or something which someone did that you didn’t expect. Equally, I’m not aware of any strict criteria regarding how long a time must exist between two people seeing one another and high or low-fiving again being OK. It’s a crazy world. I have seen two men low-five after only seeing each other the day before.
3) A good high or low-five MUST be accompanied by a loud slapping sound. In a stellar lo-five, this sound is created by the downward hand making full contact — the entire surface area of the hands meeting perfectly at the same time, kind of like a sonic-boom (note: it’s nothing to do with a sonic-boom. Without googling it, I couldn’t even tell you what one is, but I did think it sounded good).
4) As stated previously, a sub-standard high-five/low-five will almost always be the result of poor preparation. But like all things, there are many more factors which I don’t have time to go into here, such as in a low-five: a) speed of downward hand, b) lack of concentration, c) the person receiving the low-five bottling out and dropping their hand away as the other hand slaps down and d) the culmination of two people low-fiving while distracted and not putting 100% effort in. Shameful.
5) In the case of the high-five, to complete the cycle properly, once you have done someone, they must do you.
After reading all that, it might seem, now, that I consider myself the law of the urban jungle when it comes to all this. What right do I have, some might say, perhaps likening this blog post to the writings of a high-five-low-five-obsessed-dictator, to tell the entire world how it should be done? Well, the answer is I have done many, many high-fives, and a good deal of sensational low-fives too. And like anyone who has done much of something — be it parenting children, making cakes or cooking the best in crispy bacon — I feel the need to say these things, so as to try and do my bit to make the world go round a bit better. If that makes me a dangerous force in the world of high-five/low-five politics, then so be it.
And now we move onto the subject of girls and their place in all this, and why, sometimes, it just doesn’t feel right when you witness them performing these prestigious moves. Here are the conclusions I have come to, and I wish to let it be known right here and right now that I certainly don’t believe women can’t high-five well. It’s just that I have seen a few girls who have really ruined this beloved art. That’s all there is to it.
1) Girls, women, females, and some men too, the worst high-five/low-five offenders all have one specific thing in common: straight after doing a high-five which should never have been let out in the open — limp-wristed, without the merest hint of a slapping sound, and with the speed all wrong on both parts — they follow it up with a girly hug. And the horror does not end there, there is usually also giggling, too, which really tips me over the edge. To my mind, this kind of behaviour is as inappropriate as two men getting into a brutal bar fight and then telling one another “ah, but I love you really.”
2) It isn’t really the girls’ fault: in many cases they came to high-fiving much later than men did, and so it’s bound to show in their general lack of technique and less than serious attitude.
3) By its very nature, some might say — and I think I would have Nietzsche on my side here, if he’d been born later, and hadn’t succumbed to Syphilis and died well before our time — it’s a very male pursuit. The act of slapping one another’s hands is, on the surface, daft, yet I and millions more men believe that it holds a great existential significance which cannot be underestimated. The fact that we are clueless to what that is is irrelevant.
4) Girls don’t always follow up a high-five with the other person instigating a return high-five, or low-five. This is a bit like asking someone how their day has been, only for them to turn around and moon you after having not properly wiped their bottom (and they had diarrhea…). No, there are no strict rules which say a high-five must be returned, but if you don’t, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing it all wrong.
5) Because the women in question haven’t been high-fiving as long as men, they lack the ability to know when they should high-five, which leads them to talking about it. “Should we high-five?” I have heard one particularly awful offending pair of women say. I have never seen two men ask each other if they should high-five. The men simply know through intuition that it is the right time, and with that it is done.
Ah, high-fiving: such a beautiful phenomenon. The best extreme high-fivers out there take it to the next level, combining power, sound and style with mesmerizing results. Boy or girl, man or woman, I tell you what: I do salute you.
NOTE: I seriously don’t know more than about three girls who can do a killer high/low-five. If you are one and want to speak out and put us men in our place, here is your chance!
Will you be watching The Undateables tomorrow night? (9pm, Channel 4, UK) Yes, of course you bloody will
You can't cage a tiger. You can politely ask it to hold a sign though
Come on. Everyone loves to snigger about the horrors of dating; as long as it’s not them (alright, that’s partly a lie, I have a few friends who love nothing more than to humiliate themselves in this way on a regular basis — I have absolutely no idea why). As a form of emotional therapy, I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that 99% of us absolutely love hearing about the mess that happened when two people who are utterly unsuitable for one another were forced to sit in awkward silence for all too long, taking it in turns to pointlessly ask and answer questions, all in the name of wasting time (unless it’s a close friend of yours and they are crying their eyes out after their fifteenth awful date with a man who lied about his height and looks and weight, again, in which case I suggest waiting until they’ve left to explode with laughter).
Well, if you’re in the 1% of people bracket — and I applaud you, you are better than almost everyone you know — there’s nothing for you here. But…if you’re in the 99% bracket, then, my friend, you have struck TV gold, because tomorrow, a brand new series devoted to the extreme awkwardness of serial dating begins with full-force (as if you didn’t bloody know). Yes, those gypsy-loving, innovation-obsessed people at Channel4 are the ones behind this latest controversy, and if anyone on TV can make the most of such potential, it’s them.
And no, I’m not worried, and yes, I’m well aware that when word of this show got out a while back, lots of people flipped out and started shouting about how exploitative it was, and how even the name was horrific. But wake up: if you’re cringing and complaining, it’s only at yourself. These are people like you and me, albeit a little different and with added social complications, so why shouldn’t they get their own show? It’s about bloody time.
Far as I’m concerned, anything that spreads awareness about disability and disadvantaged people has to be a good thing, and providing they’re game enough to do it and are 100% aware of what they’re doing, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with anyone watching.
The Undateables, Channel 4, Episode 1: awkard, interesting, thought-provoking TV
Luke -- all images Copyright of Channel 4
No, this blog is not becoming a TV-only-deal. Don’t worry, keep coming back and you won’t find me discussing a conspiracy storyline surrounding the tragic death of Heather in Eastenders (Hev! And actually she was murdered and it was terrible, so don’t say Eastenders is crap and it’s a waste of time), or a terrorist-transexual plot which threatens to blow Coronation Street’s already hopelessly volatile world apart (these are things you’re probably not familiar with if you live outside the UK, I guess. And if you are, surely there are better uses for illegal technology capable of stealing hundreds of channels? Just a thought).
It’s just that usually, TV shows are a let-down, and when it came to epidsode 1 of The Undateables — a show which, as suggested in the previous blog post to this, had caused lots of controversy in the media — it certainly wasn’t; at least, in my opinion. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it was and is essential viewing. Ah, the beauty of having your own blog where you can say whatever you like, un-edited…
Usually, before I post a review of a TV show, film or whatever, I’ll check out a few other reviews first and see what the general consensus is. I imagine you’re probably now thinking this is so I can cheat and gather some much needed information, shame on you, or so that I don’t need to take the precious time to form my own opinion; why not just steal someone else’s instead? And you’d be right, although not about the not-forming-my-own-opinion part, which I find is one of the best things about being a human being. The point is, I usually check out other reviews because I forget names and things quickly, and besides that, it’s always worth checking out the general consensus. Firstly, it throws more ideas in my face which I can then mull over along with my initial thoughts, and secondly, it really helps if I fell asleep while watching the show and failed to get any idea of what the hell it was actually about. As I’m sure readers who have a fond memory of stealing the answers from fellow students’ exams papers at school will know, you can never have too much information (note: even if it very much sounds like it, Cpink.wordpress.com does not condone stealing, even though Chris once saw a documentary on pick-pocketing and it genuinely is a fine art).
Penny
This time, however, things are different: I haven’t looked at any reviews yet; no websites, no other opinions. Which means this could go one of three ways: 1) I’ll be wildly out-of-tune with the rest of the world’s thoughts, not that I give a monkey’s 2) I’ll be in-tune and this review will contain the same boring crap as every other, or 3) The Undateables never really existed and is actually an ingenious figment of my imagination, formed from a powerful intake of TV over the years and a want for more shows which tackle issues like this. Let’s hope it’s one of the first two.
Onto this episode 1, then, which followed the perils and delights — yes, there were a few — of the dating experience for three unique individuals: Luke is a 23-year-old stand-up comedian from Merseyside — he has Tourettes and an involuntary tick which makes him uncontrollably shout things like “filthy slag!” or “Dirty whore!” Always with exclamation marks, that’s not just me adding them. And then we move swiftly on to Penny, 23, whos brittle-bones disease — it’s a genetic disorder — and penchant for dangerous, high-flying trapeze antics must have threatened to bring the entire building at Channel 4 to simultaneous viewing-figures climax. Lastly, the show’s rich diversity was finished off nicely with Richard, a 37-year-old Aspergers sufferer and self-professed amateur radio enthusiast who you’d have to have the patience of a genuine saint to eat an entire dinner with. And by amateur radio enthusiast I do mean massive geek with CB Radio obsession. As far as I’m aware, you’re still allowed to have a disability and be a geek, right? Maybe that’s just me.
With such a collection of individuals on one show — each in the series will follow 3 people — it’s not surprising that a few hundred-thousand people were up in arms about exploitation, ranting and raving like a collective imagining of Harry Enfield’s Kevin The Teenager (if you’re too young or foreign, Google it) . The name really didn’t help; many said it only added further weight to the (alleged) belief of many that disabled people are un-date-able. I say what a load of old bollocks. If all the episodes continue in the same vein as this one, then all that Channel 4 are guilty of is a bit of sensationalism.
Aspergers answer to James Bond: Richard
I haven’t yet mentioned what happened with any of the dates. Now is probably a good time, after all I’d like to keep you here and stop you wandering off to someone else’s review.
Well, Richard was first up, and it was 100% obvious from the moment he started spraying himself in what I suspect was the cheapest of the cheap deodorant — a ritual of his which went on for about 30 seconds, until the cameraman started to choke — that he had his work cut out in enormous ways. Aspergers might be amusing to some, but in reality — and I say this because I have known a few people with it, not because I spray that much cheap deodorant on myself (not that all Aspergers sufferers do…OK, stopping now) — it’s a bloody nightmare. Upon joining the dating agency — as they all had — he had a strict criteria which he couldn’t move on; an unshakeable hall-mark of the condition, it meant that he’d only travel 5 miles to meet a potential life-partner, and would only do so providing the computer could give him a comprehensive route, and his mum could advise on every detail.
That was another issue Richard faced, and one which I imagine most women don’t find appealing: the woman had to be older than him and with familiar traits. Essentially, Richard admitted he wanted to date someone very much like his mum (the sad thing was how creepy it sounded and how essential this was). Characterised by a different way of thinking which goes against the grain of pretty much everyone else on planet earth, having Aspergers really is no laughing matter, yet watching Richard go about arranging a date wasn’t in the least difficult to view. I didn’t even hate myself for watching.
Luke, the Tourettes-suffering-stand-up from Merseyside, couldn’t have been more different. Funny, sociable and with a beard and moustache — come on, everyone should love a beard and moustache — now, here was a man you could eat your dinner with. Providing you could ignore the shits and fucks and BOLLOCKS! that was. What was so great about Luke was his honesty, and this was a theme which ran throughout. None of these people appeared to be after attention, or looking to get a TV deal out of this show. All any of them wanted was to find someone who could love them for who they were and what they are.
Of the 3, Penny was, I think, the most surprising. Never one to play up to a stereotype, her ideal man was literally twice the height and a policeman. What she got, however, was a 5 foot 11″ Cerebral Palsy sufferer with that cool, naturally-spikey blonde hair which would have saved me a lot of time and money — so much gel — back when I was growing up. They didn’t particularly click, but at least Luke got on great with his date, did some ice-skating — mostly on his arse, but still — and Richard had a successful second date (the first didn’t go too well. It began smoothly, but went downhill fast when he decided to eat his date’s dinner without asking her first).
Not that Richard’s date was to lead to another. In a tragic turn of events which must have had at least several million people screaming blue bloody murder at their television sets, he decided against a follow-up with the lovely French lady who had expressed interest to the camera. I nearly cried.
And, with that, here were my top-three favourite bits:
1) When Richard started swearing uncontrollably because his mum’s car had broken down and they needed to call a taxi. It just made me laugh. 1) b) when Richard made a serious show out of flexing his muscles at the French lady in classic old-school strong-man manner. While seated in the restaurant.
2) Luke’s date. She was kind, sweet and understanding. Yes, Luke, YES!
3) Penny deciding she didn’t want to date someone with a disability because she wanted “someone who was a bit more lively.” It made me smile.
Got to watch the rest of them. Head on over to the Episode 2 review here.
Oh Easter, how I love you!
I'd love to be able to say that this is the kind of rabbwoman I bought. It isn't. The kind I bought doesn't seem to exist ANYWHERE on the entire internet. This leads me to believe that the one I bought was actually planted there as a late April Fool's joke ("Let's see which customer tosser buys this crap!") Also, the more you stare at these rabbits, the more disturbing and Cheeky-Girl-esque they become...or maybe that's just me? In my world, rabbits, chocolate or otherwise should not be allowed to wear make-up...the sexualisation is just plain wrong.
Just the one. You may think you can handle two, but you are wrong. Image Copyright some very poor or desperate freelance photographer, probably
The day before yesterday, Wednesday, was a particularly good day in the world of me and my personal growth: I congratulated myself for having not eaten loads of chocolate in the past few months — well done Chris, I thought, now it’s time to reward yourself with the exact thing you’ve done so well to avoid. The people on the train around me didn’t know it, but they were sitting close to a one-time chocolate-time-bomb fiend who used to think nothing of downing 3 Cadbury’s creme eggs in a row (no joke). Someone who, coupled with a high-octane fast-food habit, genuinely thought this wasn’t too bad a diet. My problem — and there will probably be hatred towards me about this, even though it’s not my fault — is that it doesn’t matter what I eat, I just don’t put on weight. There, I said it, now please remember what I said about it not being my fault. If it’s any consolation, my nose is larger than average and I will watch Titanic if it’s on ITV 4.
Some people find steering clear of chocolate a simple thing to do — hate them hate them flippin’ hate them — but most of the time, the people I meet who manage this feat only manage it because they don’t really like the taste. So really, when you think about it, it’s not a challenge for them, is it? It’d be like someone hugging me and saying “really proud of you my friend, you haven’t worn a mini-skirt in ages!” I’d have to look the other way, ask them to move out of my personal space, and then ask them to seriously consider who they have been talking to about my clothes habits. Unlike a few dubious friends who I shall not mention, I have never worn any kind of skirt.
So we’ve established that I had decided to treat myself; and why not? I was a hard-working man with every damn right to walk into town and spend an extortionate amount of money on chocolate. And not just any chocolate either. Now I was ready for chocolate, I had to do it right. I deserved the very best.
I may have been deluded enough to think I deserved the best, but when I arrived in the shop of my choice, I was shown very quickly that I couldn’t afford the best. Actually that’s a lie. I could afford to spend £50 on a massive chocolate egg, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I love chocolate as much as the next one-time-chocolate-fiend, but every love has its limitations. As it turned out, mine was £8.95.
Of course, I didn’t know this when I walked in; at that point I’d have predicted I’d have been able to part with maybe as much as £15. I was much too busy trying to work my way around the shop to be concerned straight away with any of the chocolate wonders inside it (so–many–wonders). Like many of the shops on this section of the street, it was a small, boutique kind of a place. There were 3 shop assistant women, and their job descriptions were long and varied. One minute they had to pour hot chocolate for a fancy-pants customer who wanted only the continental best, the next they were on the till, the next they were apologising for being in my way (this happened not once but 3 times). In the end it got absurd, so, just in case this lady was living in a parallel universe where the shop was enormous, I felt obliged to point out to the woman — she seemed to be the one who was in charge — that it was actually a very small shop and inevitable, what with every customer bumping into a shop assistant more or less with every step. It was then, once I’d worked out how to avoid which assistant in what way, that I began to finally check out what was on sale.
To begin with, I had to stand still to do this — there were so many different things that when I moved around it all became just one big blur; standing still was my only strategy against the masses of stuff and it allowed me to just move my eyes about and check things out in a way that didn’t overload my brain. Soon I had decided that, no, I wasn’t buying one of the massive eggs with smarties (£150!), and that a chocolate hedgehog also wasn’t for me (after seeing gypsies eating hedgehogs willy-nilly on My Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, eating a spikey traveller’s delicacy just didn’t sit right with me).
Whilst moving around the shop and looking at every single item, I noticed a number of things, such as: 1) these assistants hadn’t been trained to traditionally grab a bemused customer and baffle them to the point of desperation, thus parting with the maximum amount of money, which was bizarre, and 2) I was the only man in the shop. Far as I know, there was no reason for this. I took advantage of the lack of testosterone competition and paced about without a care in the world, other than to dodge assistants (and when I say I took advantage, I don’t mean I tried to proposition any of the assistants or customers. That’s not the right behaviour in this kind of shop — it might be in the newsagents, while perusing Wispa’s, Double Decker’s and Crunchie’s, but in the world of boutique chocolate, be warned that manners are everything: you just don’t get up to that kind of thing; everyone knows it’s offensive to the powers that chocolate be).
Of course, you can’t win them all, so there were disadvantages to the lack of assistance from professional chocolate knowers. One was that I couldn’t for the life of me work out what anything was actually made out of — other than the percentage everything was in Dutch, it was clear they were all chocolate — and another was that, left to my own devices, I was an indecisive mess of this-one-that-one. Before long, I made an executive decision: I would leave this place, get me some fresh air and return a short while later once I’d had a chance to ponder things to my liking.
When I returned it was worse. Now I had all the ideas I’d had before, and, after looking in a badly positioned mirror, I had seen a number of other chocolates that I had somehow managed to miss before! Soon, I was in serious jeopardy of just walking out and doing an obscene Cadbury’s creme egg session as I mentioned earlier. But I managed to hang on in there, and that was when I came across the rabbits…
The person who ate this was obviously an amateur, or just someone trying to piss off hardcore Creme Egg lovers: 1) check the insultingly dim exterior -- a dead-give-away that this poor egg was left neglected outside in a warm environment. 2) who leaves a Creme Egg like that so its contents can just fall out?
…The rabbits were not of the refined Lindt golden bunny variety. No free bell, no golden foil wrapping. Instead, they were like the demented post twelve-neat-Vodka visions of Hans Christian Anderson, combined with the colouring of someone who liked red a bit too much. And blue. And gold. And giant rabbit ears. Also notable about the rabbits was the sinister expression of each. The male rabbit looked like he’d just killed someone in a nursery rhyme and the female rabbit (I coined her the rabbwoman) had her paws, or clawed hands (the designer did not do his or her anatomical homework) very close together, almost like a Meerkat that couldn’t be arsed to stand up straight. It was at this point that I started checking the prices: nobody wants to get too attached to a demented chocolate rabbit only to discover, all too late, that it is actually well out of his price league.
But I was in luck: each demented rabbit was a reasonable £8.95 — what could be considered a bargain when compared to some of the other similarly weird looking chocolate animals. With just two on show and a very interested woman with glasses hovering nearby in an unsavoury manner that wasn’t pleasant to be around, I made my selection. One demented female chocolate rabbit it was to be (I had compared them from all angles and decided that because the rabbwoman had a large dress, this one was much better value for money).
Armed with my chocolate, I left the shop and went round my brother’s, feeling chuffed that I had both treated myself and finally broken the curse of not having an Easter egg for years (it all stopped as soon as I was 21, and here I am at 31 — a ten-year-chocolate drought that definitely needed obliterating in style).
Sadly, at my brother’s, I pulled my rabbwoman out of my bag and was brought down to earth. First my brother’s housemate looked awkwardly at my purchase, making no effort to hide what he thought. Then my brother’s other housemate also looked at my purchase, replicating this same horrified look, but mixing it up with a bit of a disgusted frown and a direct comment designed only to hurt my deepest chocolate feelings: “mate, that looks hideous,” he said. “You actually paid money for that?”
It was then that I began to see the rabbwoman in a new and less savoury light. Now outside of the chocolate enviroment and in an atmosphere where there was nothing else weird to soften its impact, I was forced to admit that it was a bit strange..it transpired that I had bought a freakish, odd and thoroughly unique piece of confectionary that was not of the mainstream liking. Still, I didn’t give two shits what it looked like and what the mainstream thought. As long as it tastes good, I thought, I’ll be fine with that.
It’s Easter, so what if I’m working?
Often, for the last few years, when Easter has come around — and not just Easter, sometimes even Christmas — I have found myself sat for hours writing while nearly everyone I know is spending time with friends, or away on holiday, or with a partner, or doing something most people consider traditionally fun (I suddenly feel about thirty years older for using the word partner; never have liked that word; it just seems so ambiguous and impersonal, insulting, almost). In these early days, there was certainly an element of shame about my relatively abstract writerly activities. Like most people I had grown-up to believe that holidays were holidays, and work was work, yet here I was, often on my own, getting my thoughts down and losing track of time while everyone else did things which seemed to make much more sense.
The first thing people usually say to me when I tell them I’m writing instead of having fun is “But don’t you have any friends to hang out with?”
Yes, I tell them, I do. But I like writing just as much as friends — If I didn’t I would not do it. And I’ll tell you something; writing has been a pretty good friend to me over the last few years, even if it says nothing most of the time apart from “try harder!” or “Chris, that is utter crap.” Obviously it can’t compete with a hug from a human-being-friend or some sage advice from a good friend who has been divorced twice (was not his fault either of these times, of course) and is now making it his life’s work to stop others from making the same torrid mistakes — with these people you have to take the logical advice and politely ignore the raging bitterness — but it comes a close second. Until your computer crashes and you lose 100 pages of a novel you’ve been slaving over for the last few months; at that point it’s a total bastard. At that point, we tend to fall out.
The second thing people usually say to me is either “You must have a lot of work on” or “Well at least it isn’t hard work, what you do.”
Where do I begin.
In a way they’re 100% right: sometimes I do have a lot of work on, although to assume that’s what I am doing on these occasions would be wrong, as writing, to me, can be as much like work as almost any other activity. Often, it’s at these times — when the emails are less and my clients are largely out of the office — that I can get my head down with my own personal work: the stuff I need to put on the back-burner until my paid work has been completed. The point is that through all this, something has to give, and I really don’t mind.
As for the hard work comment, I’m not about to sit here and pretend that writing is the same as being a fireman, or slogging out a 12-hour-shift down the mines. But similarly, it’s not always fun and games either; there can be massive frustration at the fact that I cannot listen to music and write (the lyrics, if there are lyrics, interrupt my thoughts and this means it takes me three times as long to get stuff done), and headaches from staring at the screen for hours doesn’t really help. Sitting for hours on your own also isn’t something which you ever get completely used to — nor should you, I don’t think — but the pay-offs can be extraordinary. No, make that extraordinary. While I’m writing, it can feel like a total pain in the arse — as it did when I started writing this blog post with nowhere to go and no real objective to meet — but when I’m done, the sense of having achieved something can be enormous. It’s not about showing-off or proving anything to anyone. It’s just about getting my thoughts down, and the more I write, the more seamless the connection between brain and words on a computer screen — or paper — becomes. Although I hope they never invent a way to make it completely seamless — you need the struggle, you need the sense of doom that nothing will ever be good enough. There must be a kind of barrier so that, every so often, I say “balls to this!” and go outside and feel the sun.
The greedy side of me wants to believe that this egg you could live in is twenty-feet high, but who knows? The world is full of sick practical jokers who make it their life's work to let us chocolate lovers down. Shame on them for not making a man or an elephant stand next to this beauty!
Besides all that, Writer’s Arse is a terrible thing. It happens once you’ve been sitting for about ten hours straight, and there is no known medical cure. My goodness do our arses suffer…
And don’t take that out of context.
That said, I’m obviously not always working. I don’t go entire national holidays without seeing a single soul, locked inside my office, living life inside my head; I do go away, I do live life, I am away from the office, I am speaking to people and being harassed by tramps for money (not all tramps, but one seriously has my number). Once I’ve put in a few hours I’ll go for a walk, visit friends, go to the cinema, even…drink a J20! (Alcohol is still off-limits and this is one of the few options that can actually coerce me into a pub. And no, if you’re visiting this blog for the first time, I’m not a recovering alcoholic — I just have a body which cannot process or tolerate any amount of alcohol anymore. Due to illness, not over-drinking).
I’m well aware that my situation is unique — I choose my own hours (work never really stops, clients email at 2am asking the question Dun my wrk yt?), and I do actually love what I do with a passion; the drive is in-built and, save the times when I am asked to write 100 articles in 3 days about thrush and what a nightmare it can be, always there. For a few reasons, if you work for someone else, national holidays become something to always look forward to, and I know I have been the same in the past; I may well be one day in the future. And I’ve had jobs I hated, too, of course. Back when I worked on the chicken counter at Waitrose — my hours were 2.5 per day, Monday to Thursday, and my God did every full-time member of staff despise me — there wasn’t a day when I turned up at work when I really wanted to be there.
Happy Easter everyone, have fun, get religious if you do, eat chocolate, enjoy life. I’m getting off the computer soon, I’m going to go outside…
NOTE: CONGRATULATIONS ROSE MCCLELLAND! Her debut novel, The Break-Up Test, went on sale throughout the internet yesterday and is currently sitting at (I believe, on last count) number 36 in the women’s fiction chart. Well done Rose, well done.
You can buy the book on Amazon.co.uk here.
7 reasons why The Undateables episode 2 (9pm, April 10th 2012, Channel 4) will be essential viewing
Justin. Picture Copyright Channel 4.
1) You can never be too educated or informed about important issues like disability and the disadvantages of living with a difficult condition that very few people truly understand. No, you might not have one of these conditions, and it’s a fact that many people rarely come across individuals who do in day-to-day life, but who knows, if you’re planning a family in the future — or even if you’re not — you may be affected at some point. It’s always a possibility. That’s bound to be a worrying thought, but information is the best weapon against anything, isn’t it? The more you know, the less you fear; the less you fear, the better the world goes around. That sounds good to me.
2) The less ignorance and misinformation in the world, the better. Fact. If anything, watch the show to dispel a few misconceptions you — or someone you know — might have towards the intelligence and intellect of disabled/disadvantaged people. Not accusing anyone, just saying…
3) Among others, tonight’s episode will feature Justin, a man suffering from neurofibromatosis – a condition where tumors grow on the face and all over the body. According to The Undateables website home on Channel 4, he’s never been out with a girl before, so imagine how bloody brave he’s had to be to appear on national TV doing so? BIIIIIIIIG fat bollocks in my book. If you’ve ever found yourself on a date and struggling like hell, spare a thought for this man. But don’t pity him. I’ve just read a few comments he left on The Undateables Channel 4 home page and he’s entirely capable of a laugh and a joke — this (and others like him) is a man who needs your empathy, not pity and woes.
4) Variety really is the spice of life, people. I love films like The Bourne Identity, but, just the other day I watched 27 Dresses for the third time. Actually, I probably shouldn’t have admitted that…
5) It’s bound to be entertaining — without wishing to sound condescending, disabled people have a sense of humour too.
6) If you were thinking of excusing yourself with that reliable old line “But I haven’t seen the first one yet, I’ll watch that and come back to this later,” then think again: this episode is a stand-alone one, as they all are, so it doesn’t matter what order you watch them in.
7) It just will be good, I know it. I watched the first episode and I am basing this seventh point on that.
If you like, head over to my Episode 2 review here.
Did you enjoy this post? Well, if you did that pleases me! My disability-related novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book is available in paperback here and from Amazon UK. If you live in the US, you can get it from Amazon US here. Thanks for reading and goodbye.
The Undateables Episode 2: addicted to poetry, first impressions count and being very brave
Shaine, I told you to stay away from Damian Hurst! Image Copyright Channel 4
Imagine, if you can, waking up one morning with excruciating chest pain and finding out, not long after, that you’re almost certainly going to be paralysed from the waist down for the rest of your life; caused by a burst blood-vessel in the spine, it’s a horror situation which nobody wants to think about, yet this happened to Carolyne, and contributed to the end of her 10-year relationship. Or, consider for a moment that you were born with a rare genetic condition that causes tumors to grow all over your face and body (type 1 neurofibromatosis, if you were wondering). Or, if you’d rather, think about what it’s like to see the world through a different pair of eyes; you write poetry for women and they look at you funny, and when you detect the slightest sign of affection you fall truly, madly, deeply in love (although you don’t start listening to Savage Garden all the time, so it could be worse you suppose).
Episode 2 of The Undateables was just as fascinating as the first installment, and what I really liked about this show in particular was the honesty and determination of all 3 individuals. Confronted with a hell of a lot to deal with, Carolyne, Justin and Shaine gave real insight into their particular issues, with Carolyne admitting that she thought a lot of men might only be interested in her as a “fascination fuck”. Personally, I think Channel 4 should be commended — the editing was sensitive, the narration wasn’t condescending in the least and, overall, I felt everything that needed to be addressed was. It began with Shaine: a 31-year-old man from B0urnemouth…
Shaine looks like he should be a magician, like he was born to be a magician. That was my first impression of this sweet, innocent man who was looking for love. And I don’t mean looking for love in a vague, non-specific if-there’s-nothing-else-on-telly-I-might-sign-up-to-plenty-of-fish kind of a way, oh no. Because here was a man who would stop at nothing to find his soul mate. Honestly, throughout the film, Shaine’s belief in love astounded me. Not only that but I was jealous of just how well he was able to iron (next to him it’s debatable I can iron anything at all. If anyone asks me from now on, I’m just going to say I have an Ironing Difficulty and hope they don’t Google it).
Then we moved onto Justin. 39-years-old and a stock assitant from Rugby, my first impression of Justin was I wonder if his body aches all the time? I say this because his condition has, over the years, caused his body to grow larger on one side, making his head sit more to the right than in the middle. I thought about people I know who moan about a bit of back-ache, and I thought about how I had moaned just the other day because I banged my head on the stupid bloody panel that you have to pull out above our hot-plates to allow the fan to kick in. It’s poorly designed with horrible sharp edges just perfect for making a 6-foot-man’s head bleed, yes, but it’s just a snap-shot in time that barely counts (past the initial “fuck me that really hurt!” bit which usually lasts a good ten minutes). Forget ten minutes: Justin had been putting up with his condition ever since he’d been born. More to the point, Justin had never had a date, or had any kind of relationship. Listening to him talk about wanting to find someone, I couldn’t help but feel rather pathetic and really very lucky. And that’s not something I usually say in conjunction with that stupid fan-door things, I can tell you.
Lastly, enter Carolyne, a pretty 29-year-old woman from Manchester. And it was this part of the show which got to me for several reasons: 1) I could empathise with what had happened to her (as many people who have read this blog will know, between 2006 and 2009 I was very ill with a rare virus which wasn’t detected until the damage had been done; I too woke up one day, and within several hours had completely lost the use of my legs — something which, unlike Carolyne, I fortunately later got back and recovered from). And 2) Carolyne spoke about men asking, very callously, “Can you still have sex?” As if that matters more than anything else in the world. I could also understand where Carolyne was coming from in terms of losing everything she’d had; when I became ill, it all started to fade quickly once the house of cards came tumbling down, and, like me, the illness was also the kiss of death for her relationship (although I don’t blame my girlfriend at the time; I’m certain I was a massive pain in the arse).
It will come as no surprise to know, then, that the over-riding feeling I got from this week’s episode was one of major unfairness. I mean, let’s face it, if everything is going right for you the world is pretty much filled with unfairness anyway, isn’t it? You only have to read the paper or find yourself scared into a corner by a spider that, you swear, is “easily this big!” (Make your hands far apart enough that you can hold a decent-sized fish). Yet for these 3, the word unfairness just didn’t seem to cut it. Like last week’s 3, in the end it all came down to society and how we perceive people with disabilities. How closed we all are to things which aren’t completely ideal or perfect.
Of course, when you get realistic about it, the fact that it took Justin much longer to find a date than it might most other people isn’t really surprising: all of us wander around and decide there and then — whether we’re really aware we’re doing it or not — that we don’t like a certain person because their hair looks a bit shit, or there’s just something odd about the way they walk or talk. Most of us proclaim to be open-minded, yet up until tonight we largely won’t have seen anyone like Justin, let alone considered going out with them.
Then there are the more fundamental questions which most of us would never admit to even thinking, less it make us look bad: can the girl in the wheelchair have children? What will people think? Will my friends call me a twat if I decide to date someone who isn’t quite the norm?
And I am not immune to these things, of course (although I do know a bit about disability and facial disfigurement, as featured in my comedy adventure novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book on Kindle and paperback (see a review here). Nobody is. And that includes Justin, Carolyne and Shaine, all of whom had requirements which they were specifically looking for. Things that had to be right for them, otherwise they wouldn’t be happy.
Top 10 good and less good moments from this week’s episode:
1) Good: when Shaine said that a man should “Always be a gentleman.” Fair point Shaine, I’m sure a lot of blokes would do well to learn from you. Now all we need is a time-machine to take you and all the other gentleman back to the 1920s!
2) Less good: when Shaine asked his date Jackie if they were girlfriend and boyfriend now and she said “just friends.” Actually it wasn’t less good, it was horrific. Poor Shaine.
3) Good: Justin not giving a shit what people think.
4) Less good: when Justin said that he’d had in excess of 100 operations on his body to remove the tumors. Made my heart sink…
5) Good: Carolyne’s remarkable, inspiring recovery from what must have been a very dark place indeed — yes that girl has just had to cope with it, and I’m sure many people would have managed similarly, but it’s still very impressive, I think. Getting dumped is hard enough, but when it happens because of a serious life-disaster, you can multiply that by about…who knows. A number doesn’t seem to cut it, somehow.
6) Less good: the fact that a lovely girl like Carolyne needs to resort to a dating agency for men to notice her. Wake up, people, she’s in a wheelchair, but she’s still lovely.
7) Good: Shaine doing a serious Alan-Partridge and bouncing back from his date with Jackie to find someone else to ask out on a date!
8) Less good: Shaine being born 90 years too late.
9) Good: Justin’s ability to keep optimistic when faced with the kind of gut-wrenching obstacles which I couldn’t even begin to fathom, let alone imagine.
10) Less good: the way that Justin seemed to me to be a sweet, caring kind of a bloke, yet so many people will never know this, as they just can’t get past the face.
Did you enjoy this post? Well, if you did that pleases me! My disability-related comedy novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book is available in paperback here and from Amazon UK. If you live in the US, you can get it from Amazon US here. Thanks for reading and goodbye.
Is it really so surprising that disabled/disadvantaged people are human beings just like everyone else?
One cool wheelchair. Photo Copyright of WheelchairDriver.com
According to my blog stats, there’s an awful lot of interest in Channel 4s new eye-opening series, The Undateables. Episode 1 aired last week, and the second installment appeared on our screens last night, provoking massive debate on Facebook, Twitter and across the web. As I wrote late yesterday, shortly after the show finished, this most recent Episode was just as TV worthy and interesting. But that’s not what’s been surprising me. What’s been interesting, for me, is the amount of media coverage out there which has suddenly changed its tune. Before the series started to air, nearly every journalist, blogger and writer across the world was either saying A) they didn’t want to judge the show yet because they felt that wouldn’t be fair (they were scared of upsetting people, which made a refreshing change for the media, I thought) or B) saying that the show, however it turned out, would come across as insulting to disabled/disadvantaged people. Thereby covering their arses nicely, seeing as no matter how the series turned out, someone, out there, would deem it as unnaceptable and morally wrong.
How very neat and tidy.
Well, guess what, if you haven’t seen The Undateables yet, it really doesn’t insult anyone; if you find it funny in a way which makes people around you stare and look concerned about what might be running through your head, then that only means the issue lies with you (although I have to admit that on any level the show is entertaining on a basic level — purely because it is so different to what we’re used to seeing on TV). What’s 100% more insulting is the way so many hundreds of thousands of people appear to be suddenly waking up and noticing that these people have desires, plans for the future and needs which they long to be met. I mean…I know that these people are somewhat unusual, and those in wheelchairs are hard to relate to if you’ve never been immobile — the same goes for all the other conditions covered — but surely it’s possible to understand that another human being thinks, feels and wants? or maybe it’s just me.
It’s a real shame that it’s taken a TV series to turn so many people onto this subject, but, now they are, I’m hoping that the trend for having a slightly more open mind will continue well into the future. There are plenty more issues which need to be raised — they’re not always pleasant and as fun as the latest hilarious Youtube video, no, but that’s irrelevant (and yeah, I know I’m going on a bit now and that we all have the right to choose what we inform ourselves about).
A great film. If you haven't, you should check it out here
So what’s next for the future of TV and its new-found love of those who are different?
Here are my predictions. And don’t moan at me and say I’m taking the piss. I’m not, I’m just saying what might be on the way soon…
1) A TV show similar to Britain’s Got Talent/The Voice for disabled/disadvantaged people (who knows, maybe Shaine, Carolyne and Luke from The Undateables can be the judges? Luke shouting “filthy whore!” repeatedly would be bound to bring in a few million more viewers, I’m sure). I’m actually starting to find myself condescending after having written those terms so many times (disabled/disadvantaged people). Someone really needs to come up with a new way of referring to those in this position. I have no doubt that when they do it’ll immeditely trend on Twitter.
2) A US crime drama about someone with a disability who…wait…turns out to be the killer! Pat on the back for being daring, US.
3) Some kind of debatable MTV show which uses the classic Pimp My Ride formula on wheelchairs, making them super-powered cool-machines which are much more pleasing to the General Public and thus infinitely more wasy on the eye.
4) A rock super-group put together by Simon Cowell and his cronies; one which has a varied range of D/D people wowing the audience. Or a Westlife-style group of similar ilk. Or,yes, a One Direction-style group. And on, and on, and on…
5) A new Channel 5 show coming soon: Gays In Wheelchairs — and that’s not me thinking that would make a good name, that’s me thinking in the mind-set of a ratings-hungry on-his-or-her-last-legs TV executive (or maybe even Big Gays In Small Wheelchairs?). That’s definitely a subject that hasn’t been tackled yet. And, no, I’m not talking about Glee – I’ve seen it and the wheelchair lad is just a normal teen who loves music — I’m talking about a series devoted to clashing disability and homosexuality together culminating in the most explosive drama result possible. Let’s just hope no TV exec reads this post and steals my ideas. It’d put me in a really tricky moral position as to whether I ought to accept royalties or not.
6) New-style wheelchair celebrities. It’s a matter of time until the media swoops on this exciting trend.
7) A wheelchair stuntman for the mainstream. Simon Cowell will probably be behind this too, no doubt.
8) An advertising campaign coming to a billboard/bus-shelter near you which features, wait for it, D/D people, thus challenging and daring the General Public to imagine that different can be beautiful as well!
Want to read a novel about these issues? My novel — which I may as well say has been receiving great reviews, since I’m here — The Number 3 Mystery Book is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US. To get your paperback copy — new non-limited edition on the way — you can visit the website here.
Things Which Make Me Want To Scream
A few years ago, while I was living in Cologne, West Germany, and doing my service to the dishwashing industry — an almost compulsory step for any aspiring writer who is years away from anyone reading his work — I said to my friend Rob, “Just wondering Rob, how many pet hates do you have?”
I was in that kind of a mood. It was the greenfly that had caused it. The lettuce I’d been washing in the sink was infested with many thousands of them — very much alive — and there was the boss, telling me that “the customers won’t even notice once the dressing is on it.”
Rob said: “Good question, loads I should think. It’s not something I think about too often.”
And that was how it started; within minutes we’d decided it’d be a fine idea to record as many of these pet hates as humanely possible. I went home feeling decidedly inspired. I was full of hate and annoyance for numerous things in Germany and across the world, and was really looking forward to getting it all down.
A week later, I appeared at Rob’s door propelled by a hell of a lot of pet hates. I didn’t have the list with me — it was too long and the local internet cafe didn’t have a working printer…come to think of it you could barely get online if you were able to fight your way through all the smoke — but I had a number, and a number was all I needed. So we compared how many we both had. Rob looked understandably apprehensive.
Rob: 35
Me: Approximately 5,000, with more coming all the time.
Quite a win on my part, I think you’ll agree. Rob stood no chance. He really needed to get a life, and soon.
At first, Rob was skeptical that anyone could hate the world and the things in it that much — especially such a massive optimist as me — but after darting home to grab my trusty floppy-disk — I was using this ancient Apple Mac computer which was the size of one of those massive eighties TV sets — I soon proved him wrong. I won’t go into many of the pet hates here, but I will say that they were legitimate; things everyone finds annoying, more or less. Things like that moment when you meet a stranger in the street and you both move the same way repeatedly, embarrasing you both, and the annoying way in which, when you wake up in the morning from a dream, you believe that you’re a giant stag in a forest who can run 500 miles per hour. Just unfair stuff like that, really.
Sadly, I haven’t got the list anymore — it died when the computer did. But don’t let that dampen your spirits if you’re thinking of doing a list of your own any time soon. There’s nothing like a good pet hates list to put a smile on your face.
Did you enjoy this post? Well, if you did that pleases me! My disability-related comedy novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book is available in paperback here and from Amazon UK. If you live in the US, you can get it from Amazon US here. Thanks for reading and goodbye.
The Apprentice, Episode 4: “I could do it much better than any of those tossers!”
I was going to start this post with “As a youngster, I reckon I had a bit of Alan Sugar about me”. Then I realised that was a load of arrogant bollocks; I did used to wash cars for an elderly neighbour for £10 a-time — quite a feat considering I was only 11 and was punching well above my weight asking for a note that I hadn’t even seen in real-life more than twice — but that’s hardly the same as laying the foundations of a global business empire (even if that empire did produce one of the most non-sensical diabolical email-meets-telephone machines ever created…). I also realised, thankfully before it was too late, that if I was bold enough to say that, a number of my most callous friends — if you’re swearing at the screen, that’s you — would bring that comment up every bloody time I saw them for the next few months. Cue endless terrible Alan Sugar impressions — with other friends doing Nick’s stern classic face, and the girls having to make do with either grimacing like Margaret or doing a Karen Brady scowl — and endless debates about how my unorthodox handling of numbers (er…I don’t handle them, except badly) would fit into The Apprentice business model. Which, of course, it wouldn’t. Sugar would literally DESTROY ME. I’d be the new Stuart “The Brand” Baggs, and that’s no position anyone wants to be in.
This week’s episode saw the teams going head-to-head in a task which everyone can relate to: selling junk for much more than it’s worth, with as little integrity as possible, please. Each team were given £1000 and had 2 days to shift as much stuff as they could — otherwise known as up-scaling. Apparently. By the time 20 minutes had elapsed, I was thoroughly pissed-off with hearing that word, and I’m certain I wasn’t alone there. I’m still not entirely sure what it means, but by the looks of Laura’s team (if you’re not sure who she is, she’s the exceedingly self-assured female Scottish one who you can never imagine saying “I tell you what, I didn’t do that very well, did I?”) it means selling stuff only once you’ve either a) stuck legs on it, preferably with the weakest glue you can find or b) defaced it with a seriously dodgy Union Jack logo — the brainchild of Gabriel.
Oh, Gabriel…
In the end, Tom’s team were victorious, and all without him having to resort to dressing up like Will Young and doing an impromptu desperado gig outside to pull in the money (how did they manage to get through the entire episode without anyone noticing that?). In the other team, who’s name escapes me, Jane was then fired for being outrageously bossy and aggressive when it came to selling, and the fact that she also didn’t sell more than £10 worth of stuff didn’t help (at one point you could literally see her ego shrinking and curling up in a ball…).
My favourite bits of this week’s episode were:
1) When Adam — the blonde one on Ricky Martin’s team, headed by Laura — fleeced a child of 2 cameras for just £1. I don’t know how he sleeps at night (or maybe he doesn’t? With so much time on his hands, it’s not surprising he’s got such a handle on that school-boy look).
2) Laura’s megalomaniacal confidence. Stuart Baggs versus Laura? I wouldn’t like to call it…
3) Stephen Brady and co of Tom’s team at the junk shop, rifling through all kinds of assorted crapola and then boasting about how they’d so easily acquired all the best stuff, and how they almost felt sorry for the owner for being so duped…then the owner of the antiques shop saying that “…they picked absolute rubbish and left all the good stuff.” Priceless television. Poor, poor Stephen…but then, sometimes it’s Alan I feel sorry for…
Half a knob
4) Gabriel fighting back for a change. In previous week’s she’s been pushed to one side and set-upon, but not this time, oh no. Today, in the board-room, she was a bloody Rottweiler. DO NOT MESS WITH THE GABRIEL. Even if she can’t paint a Union Jack to save her life.
5) Laura pleading with Lord Sugar at the end, but her sultry Scottish looks didn’t work on the grizzled old entrepreneur one little but. That’ll teach her!
We’re all so far away from JK Rowling it’s LAUGHABLE!
The woman, the myth, the lady
JK Rowling has shifted somewhere in the region of 450 million books — give or take the few thousand which have been sold since I typed the title to this blog post…oh, and the few thousand which have been sold since I typed this sentence (and obviously that’s not even mentioning the Harry Potter phenomenon of films and Harry Potter Studio Tour…). A fairly serious number which makes Stephen King look just about mildly successful by comparison.
Then there’s me, and authors/artists/poets/hopefuls like me who are just starting out on this very rocky road (it used to be lonely, but now it’s crowded with people saying God I’m lonely, are you lonely? I am). Actually, that list includes 90% of all authors, as nobody in the history of everything is anywhere near as successful as JK Rowling.
I wonder what it’s like to wake up knowing that. Being her, I mean.
I like to remind myself that JK Rowling also misses a step in the dark from time to time and feels, just for the tiniest fraction of a second, like she’s going to die and money doesn’t matter.
So, JKs done a staggering 450 million. I, on the other hand, have sold 100 paperback books of my debut novel (who knows, it may even be two more by the time you go to bed!) and a load of ebooks. Selling books on your own, as an indie author, without anyone to vouch for you in a professional capacity, is bloody hard work I can tell you. First you spend ages writing the thing, then you have to spend an equal measure of time marketing it and, more importantly, convincing people that your writing is at least reasonably good and not total crap.
After all that, what you earned in book sales in one month is spent in a single afternoon and you have nothing to really show for it.
So I won’t deny it, it’s slightly disconcerting to think that, potentially, by the time I have written this post, JK Rowling will have sold more books in this time than I will ever sell in my entire lifetime. It hurts a bit to think that even if they invent the cryogenic chamber tomorrow and manage to freeze me when I die — I’d say it’s unlikely — I will still definitely wake up in four-million years and find out that I’ve sold less than JK Rowling. Still, unlike JK Rowling, at least I’d have eternity on my side and I wouldn’t have aged, ha! Also, I’d be living in the future, which would mean I’d get to visit Mars and other planets, and romp about with sexy aliens. I don’t think you can put a price on that.
Yet with being an unknown author comes a certain freedom — one that JK once had, back before she was discovered and her books unleashed upon the world; unlike JK now, who has a universe of expectation on her shoulders — today more than ever, with the official news that she’s set to release her first adult novel soon — nobody bar my gran is expecting me to produce books which are wildly successful in any way (in fact, I have a few friends who make a point of telling me that this is a hopeless game. Fortunately I have an unhealthy amount of optimism which banishes most negative thoughts about my work, or at least a lot of the time. I do sometimes spend ages writing total crap. I’ve written 6 novels which I seriously hope never see the light of day, for example…). Right now, I own all the rights to The Number 3 Mystery Book, and I’m happy like that. I might not be selling thousands or millions of copies, but at least the fate of my novel is in my hands and my hands only, and the feedback so far has been wonderful. There’s something pretty cool about that. About knowing that I designed the cover and wrote the book and published it myself. It’s not all about monetary gain. It’s more about keeping on producing, after all, if you don’t create it, failure will be a certainty.
Still, for now at least, while I work on new writing, I can smile and be smug and know that I have written more blog posts than JK ever has or will. The number now stands at 4,000. Howdyalikethemapples, hu?
And nobody knows what the future will hold for any of us, do they? Words are organic; authors are not superstars, they’re people, miracles can and do happen frequently and the longer you hold on, the more your chances improve. I say to hell with success and wanting it all; I’m happy to just have whatever comes my way.
Did you enjoy this post? Well, if you did that pleases me! My disability-related comedy novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book is available in paperback here and from Amazon UK. If you live in the US, you can get it from Amazon US here. Thanks for reading and goodbye.
Meeting Derek (Derek, Episode 1, Channel 4, April 12th 2012)
Ouch, writing this blog post hurts. I’m enjoying being 31. The great thing about being an adult, of coiurse, is that you don’t need to think about all the awkward things which happened in your past as you grew into your body and worked out what the world was about and how you fitted into it; with an ever-expanding life, you have all the control — OK, some of the control, or at least the illusion of it, which is usually enough — and that means life feels approximately 1000% better than being a youth and completely confused.
Unfortunately, being a writer/author — at least in my case — more or less revolves around re-thinking past events and present machinations, many of mine which are throughly awkward. And as everyone knows, one of the best sources of awkward material — like the time I threw-up down three girls tops in a row (it was food-poisoning, whatever anyone else says) on a trip to Paris — is secondary school. Not only was I one of those poor, lanky children who puberty had decided to make wait forever — group showers were terrifying when you didn’t possess a legitimate pubic bush — but I also had Dyscalculia; a form of numerical Dyslexia which means numbers were a bloody nightmare and telling the time on an analogue clock was…impossible? Yes, impossible. Unless you spent a good fifteen minutes analysing the time (a tricky thing to do when the time didn’t stop…and this was back when only a few people at school could afford digital watches, remember). Even better, I had a massive eagle nose exacerbated severely short hair. Which was covered in gel. I probably also had dandruff.
I tell you what: watch out girls, I’m coming to get you!
Arriving at secondary school, I instantly found myself somewhere I didn’t want to be: in with the thickos. The thickos — that was what everyone knew them as, including the teachers — were a ramshackle mix of individuals who existed in that grim nowhere land where nobody expected anything of you…ever; we weren’t considered special needs, but, in a way, I often thought it would be better if we were. At least that way we’d have been located miles away from the other students who hated us for being different, rather than just down the corridor…oh, and we’d have got free computers and calculators. Not that we really knew how to use them…
Speaking of all things awkward, Derek, the new show written by Ricki Gervais — also starring acting virgin Karl Pilkington from the An Idiot Abroad series — has been pissing people off left, right and centre. First Gervais annoyed a slew of people campaigning for special needs individuals and those with disabilities, then the general public started putting the boot in. Again. You’d have thought by now that people would know that Gervais doesn’t give a monkey’s what other people think; more to the point, follow anything the man does and you’ll also know that he doesn’t think mocking special needs people is either funny or clever. Hence, where Derek was concerned I was willing to reserve judgement.
But then…even for a veteran people-pisser-off-er, it has to be said that Derek looked slightly dubious. Mainly because the concept — the life and times of a man on the fringes of society working in an old people’s home — looked tricky to pull off. I mean…how, really, do you do a comedy/drama about a man with unspecified learning disabilities (Gervais said he didn’t consider the character to have learning difficulties) and not make it in any way offensive?
Well, I think Ricki found a way.
I haven’t bothered to look at any other reviews yet — still a bit early for that — but I’m going to say it: I liked Derek. I don’t think it’s genius or groundbreaking, but, at the same time, you can’t say it’s not innovative. And that’s what I like, because no matter what you think, innovation always leads the way, even if it goes off the rails from time-to-time.
Unless it’s innovation concerning a famous dwarf called Warwick Davis…I didn’t like Life’s Too Short in any way (actually I hated it, and one good scene with Liam Neeson is not enough to carry an entire series) but I thought Derek, on the other hand, was interesting. It reminded me of what happened a while ago when my friend and I were walking down the street and this woman in a car went up on the pavement and reversed into a lamppost. Freaked out by the impact, she put the car in gear and lunged forward, turning the wheel and jamming her vehicle between a road sign and the lamppost behind the car. Nice work! It was hilarious to begin with, watching her go back, then forward, then back, then forward, but after a while the laughter wore off — after a long while…it was summer and the streets were crowded with people who thought this was brilliant, which it was — but then it just became sad. After another ten minutes, we decided to go over to her and try and see if we could help, put her out of her misery, so to say. The woman was mortified, completely in tears, and this was an experience that she wasn’t going to forget any time soon.
Thanks, Youtube.
For me, this was exactly what it was like watching Derek. I knew his awkwardness intimately, and the way everyone else seemed to be in on the joke except him. First you had Karl Pilkington, basically being himself, and then you had Gervais (I mean Derek) with his rambling monologue and jutting lower jaw — a mannerism he has used in the past when making jokes in interviews — at the heart of the action. If you can call it action. Derek isn’t about action, obviously, but actually I found that refreshing. For once, and unlike Life’s Too Short, it wasn’t about piling cheap jokes one on top of the other for mass effect. instead, iit was all about context, relationships and the slowly-building realisation that Derek was really just a lovely bloke who didn’t have a bad bone in him. A man who was so unusually nice that the world as it stands would struggle to accomodate him.
I don’t know where Derek will go, or what people are saying about future — if any — episodes. But if Gervais and co continue in the same way, I’m looking forward to some interesting television. Derek isn’t about insulting the differences, it’s about the magic and optimism that some people possess — just because they’re not as clever as you, that doesn’t mean they’re not decent human beings who shouldn’t be represented by good TV.
Did you enjoy this post? Well, if you did that pleases me! My disability-related comedy novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book is available in paperback here and from Amazon UK. If you live in the US, you can get it from Amazon US here. Thanks for reading and goodbye.
Diary Of A Twitter Convert (And It’s My Blog So If I Want To Be Grammatically Incorrect And Put Everything In Capitals Then I Will, So There)
Google, when I said Salamandermutantdogthing, this salamander dog toy wasn't quite what I was thinking...
From now on, when people ask me what I think of Twitter, I’m going to say I think it’s amazing, I mean really genuinely amazing. But it wasn’t always like this. In fact, once, I was anything but like this. As anyone who knows me personally will be well aware, I used to be one of those people with an unjustifiably strong aversion to all things Twitter-related; sitting around like some post-apocalyptic grumpy person, moaning that we don’t call each other enough (actually I do think these kind of people have a point). And it definitely wasn’t that I understood what it was all about (I didn’t). To be honest, as recently as a few months ago, I just didn’t get Twitter, and even when people tried to talk me round, I found it hard to believe that I could gain anything much from it.
Twitter, I thought, give me fish chips any day (don’t try and draw any parallels between battered fish and potato — there aren’t any, I just really love fish and chips).
Pictures of these containers without fish and chips in should be banned. It's criminal, I tell you!
I know, that’s a great attitude from an indie author who relies on word-of-mouth and social networking to sell paperbacks and ebooks (UK, US) of his debut novel (it’s called The Number 3 Mystery book. It’s more or less one big long running joke).
But there it is. Just like I mostly refuse to eat a chocolate bar upside down — it always tastes weird and wrong when you do that, getting the flavours all back-to-front, although from time to time it makes a nice change, especially with the taste sensation that is the legendary, the sumptuous Double Decker — I can be exceedingly stubborn when it comes to networking, too.
(And my fish and chips being the right size portion, too, but that’s enough about fish and chips. It’s not like I’m hopeleselly addicted or anything.)
And now I must prepare myself for the backlash, because as much as I have gained hundreds of new followers recently, I also possess a staunch army of grizzled old-school friends (and school friends) who will stop at nothing — Rambo-style — to spread evil nonsense gossip about Twitter and those who use it.
“It’s a load of crap,” one particular person whose name rhymes with slur might say. “I’ll skin a cat before I go on Twitter.”
I hope he doesn’t have my epiphany.
Another: “I’ll never follow anyone, following is for dummies.”
And another: “Chris, do you actually ever do any work? You always seem to be blogging.”
Actually that one does have a point: I am always blogging (at least right now, it may slow down soon, we’ll see). Especially recently. A lot seems to be going on in the world and what can I say? I like discussing it. Even if only with myself.
More to the point, what these narrow-minded — cue a second backlash, both on and offline — people are missing is so great that the very act of distilling it into this one blog post gives me that annoying feeling you get when you open up a tin of fish and the fish flicks everywhere all over you (will anyone ever sort out that problem?! Seriously, how come I’ve never seen anyone with an invention for that on Dragon’s Den?!).
Steve Carell has (allegedly, if this is the right account), 380,406 followers and is following 13 people. Brilliant. It doesn't matter how many terrible films this man makes, I'll still love him. How desperate, exactly, does he make us all look? Very
Here, then, if you’re still reading, are my all time top-10 reasons why Twitter is amazing, splendid, wonderful (even if it makes me nauseating). And if you still want to have a go at me or send me messages pretending to be someone I don’t know with enormous breasts and an alarming fixation with Double Decker’s — you’re hilarious, Steve, really — then please, feel free.
(And if you are Steve then I really do know where you live.)
1) People who use Twitter are often bored. I am often bored and over-worked. This means that often, while I try and get away from work and take advantage of my self-employed status, I’ll look at Tweets. Because many bored people have written them, they often make me laugh.
2) People you don’t know follow you — good, kind, decent people — and send you direct messages and it makes you think I tell you what, that’s the kind of person who, if I had to, if I absolutely had to, I might (maybe) share my chocolate with. But probably not.
3) Enthusiasm: Twitterers, or whatever the hell we are, are raging-hot-missiles of enthusiasm and desire and loves and hates. I think that’s brilliant. Also, when a total stranger on the other side of the earth wishes you well, purely because they have a keyboard and eyes and you have a keyboard and eyes, snap!, there’s something really fantastic about that. This is wonderful when you have just watched Eden Lake and the world seems nothing more than a demented sphere of gone-wrong politics and hoody scum.
4) A different perspective: you may have woken up after a dream where you were wrestling a giant dog which had been cross-bred with a salamander, bright pink like a prawn and vicious as hell (a trait salamanders lack, I think, but bear with me, this is a dream), but then you sign in to Twitter and realise that other people have also had weird dreams! For example, Teddy in New York dreamed of nightmarish utopian visions where everyone looked like Sarah Jessica Parker and could fire lasers from their breasts, no!, and Lisa from London dreamed about Hawaii and how it was actually a dream — you see where this is going… — and all that sand and glorious sunshine? Sorry, it was just a very big practical joke. It makes you feel good to know that yes, other people are also weird as well. And I thought my salamanderdogthing was bizarre…
5) Twitter keeps you up-to-date with the latest goings on in the outside world. Essential when you never actually see it.
6) The world is full of lovely people, kind people, people who do care if you get hit by a bus (they just wouldn’t know it). Don’t you think it’s a shame to never interact with anyone?
7) When people re-tweet you it makes you go Ahhhhhh.
8) When people direct message you to say Thank you for following, and now I promise you eighteen steps to enlightenment and £50,000 by next week! you think: I’m so glad I’m not the only optimist out there.
9) Smiling faces make you smile.
10) When you do eventually go outside, you know more than your friends and, for some people, I tell you, that makes a nice change.
Did you enjoy this post? Well, if you did that pleases me! My disability-related comedy novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book is available in paperback here and from Amazon UK. If you live in the US, you can get it from Amazon US here. Thanks for reading and goodbye.
Want to read another post about this Twitter phenomenon? Then click here to go to Leigh’s blog!
Mike Tag, You Will NEVER Be Forgotten
Today I woke up and checked my phone and there it was all over Facebook, the news that Mike Tag Tagliavento had passed away after a longhard battle with Cancer (Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma); something those outside of his close circle of friends was made aware of little over a year ago, and news which came at a time in BMX which was already littered with bad stories about riders I have long respected – mainly concerning external factors but sometimes, as was the case with Stephen Murray, the direct result of BMX.
For a few seconds, I don’t think I felt anything, and then it hit me; the combination of tiredness and tragedy – overwhelming for a split-second. Suddenly, all around my eyes was wet. I started to think about how, every day after school, I’d ride the lonely straight path to meet my friend Ben Foakes and ride at the secondary school – an ideal place to practice our skills on flat ground, and somewhere that, strangely, only an hour or so previous had been a place I couldn’t wait to see the back of. Yet when we arrived on our BMX bikes, every aspect of this landscape was reinvented: made brand-new. This place of concrete and benches and classrooms full of people we didn’t understand or sit neatly with as students was transformed and we were happy there, left alone; often we rode and did exactly the same things as we always did, but the repetition never felt like repetition. There was always something new to do, some other area to explore or thing to be bettered. Mike Tag was a rider who meant a lot to us back then; his way of riding influenced our way of riding, and in the magazines, Tag was always the man to watch.
And nothing stopped us from riding. It was everything to us – what gave our lives shape and meaning and potential. If it was raining, I’d still make the trip – not doing so was unthinkable, and if I had to, I’d walk there, even if I had to walk back in pitch black darkness because there were no lights at any point and often, you rode straight into the bushes on the left at least several times. On those many days when it did rain hard, instead of riding we’d contend with watching BMX videos in Ben’s parents’ lounge, obsessing over every detail and rewinding them until we’d worked out exactly how these impossible stunts appeared to be done. Sometimes it was just the one video, but usually the sessions took over the house and forced his parents out of the room, and we’d watch them until they became grainy and died. Now I look back, I don’t hear Ben’s parents complaining as you’d think they would have, and I don’t see anything else but good times spent discussing the contents of the magazines and the latest tricks; things which were so new and fresh back then that we had to do this, just to memorise the dazzling array of names. It was during this time that our lifelong fixation with BMX was embedded with such pressure and force that even now, as a non-rider, I still follow the latest goings on and feel like I can never be too far from BMX. Some days, I wake up thinking that nothing has really changed, even though I haven’t touched my BMX since I came back from Germany in 2009, even though BMX is far from my life now in so many ways. I still often think about Mike’s incredible bike control. It feels very strange to know that we will never see him ride again.
Regular raders of this blog will know that several weeks ago, I lost a dear uncle. As I said in that post , we were never that close; I had not see him for years and yet the learning of his death brought with it waves of curious emotion, as can be expected when we stop to isolate our thoughts and focus only on what has made us who we are, on what once mattered so much. Like the news of Mike Tag’s passing, I found myself ruminating on ghosts of the past – inevitable. Speaking to my brother, we both shared memories of going to my uncle’s house, and quickly I was remembering things which, up until that point, I had completely forgotten about for many, many years. Amazing that as a boy, the keys in the wall were what I looked forward to seeing every week (my uncle collected keys and pressed them into concrete on the bricks for no apparent reason other than to amuse himself, and us). Yet as a man, this thread of my youth had almost been lost all together, as if I had never really gone to the house after all. I was glad to have those memories back.
It didn’t surprise me to discover that learning of Mike Tag’s passing affected me more than I was first willing to admit (BMX and ex-BMX riders aren’t known for their ability to cry, if you hadn’t guessed). I wasn’t a mess, I didn’t cry for hours, but I did find myself in that bleak foreboding place where nothing else touches you and there is just pure, plain numbness that refuses to make sense or let anything else matter. I know exactly why this is; the mystery is not lost on me – it’s because Mike was a true legend to all whose lives he touched, someone who felt like a brother to us all back when BMX was going through its golden regeneration era, back in the 1990s. Mike was, quite simply, someone who had done more – and achieved more – with his life than most people will ever know (and that includes many BMX riders today who, through no real fault of their own, are unaware of what Mike and his friends have done for them).
When I first heard of Mike Tag, when I could barely bunnyhop over a stick balanced on two bricks outside my house, he was already well on his way to influencing an entire generation of BMX riders in a number of ways – riding for Fat Bald Men, a company who he rode for right up until the end, Mike continued to fight his Cancer with the same determination that had made his talent so special. Using words alone, it’s hard to put a finger on what made his style on a BMX so unique and special, yet watching any video where Tag appears is still as exciting, wild and staggering as it ever was. If you only had a few words to sum-up the man’s awesome riding in a post, I think solid, unexpected and alwayshavingfun would be a good place to start. You never knew what the hell he was going to do next, other than it was going to be astounding and really fucking dangerous! He may not have been rich or known to the general public, but at one point in time, it’s no exaggeration to say that there wasn’t a BMX rider anywhere in the world who didn’t understand the awesomeness of his riding. Bottom line: Tag was a force to be reckoned with, and a guy who loved having fun on his bike. He didn’t give a shit what other people were doing, and I’m sure he never set out to lead, but lead was what he did. For a while, every single video with Tag in blew minds and if his time was now, there’s no way in hell his riding would ever go unrecognized.
The FBM posse (Tag on the right). Steve Crandall, Tag and co were among the originators of modern DIY BMX
I know that most people reading this blog won’t have heard of Mike Tagliavento. The reality is that many of you will go on with your day after reading this post, and you won’t carry Tag’s legacy with you. But for many others of us around the world, Mike Tag will never be forgotten. It doesn’t matter how far BMX progresses or what the next trend is, this man will always live on as someone who counted. Without his riding and influence, I have no doubt that BMX would have been completely different. Whether you know it or not, Mike Tag helped make things possible on a BMX bike that are now commonplace, so, if you can, take some time to head on over to his sponsor at FBM Bikes and see what Mike stood for.
Dear Basil Plant, I’m So Sorry…
Not my Basil plant. A Basil plant
Please take my word for it: the Basil plant on my window-sill is amazing. A minor miracle, even. 1) It stands at around eight inches high — an impressive two inches taller than the average human male penis, according to statistics — and 2) every time I look at it I get that same feeling of awe and wonder and WOW! (now it’s time to ditch the penis comparison because it’s not appropriate…) that the kids in Jurassic Park had when they first saw the dinosaurs (and Sam Neill’s character too, now I come to think of it. I remember he was flabbergasted, and with that one look he restored my faith in adults that they weren’t all really annoying gits). I can’t keep plants – and did not inherit my grandmother’s ability to allow plants and flowers to flourish – but this Basil plant is…there are no words for its luscious green leaves. No words. OK, there are, but if I tell you them they will just seem OK, and that’s insulting to a man who has achieved greatness which he never thought possible — not to mention insulting to my Basil plant. Because actually, these words signify more than something just OK…they signify a great life-force which I have, by means of dedication, committment and love, carefully cultivated. One which, had I not existed, would not have been here today. Ah, it makes me feel all special just thinking it.
Mum ruins it all. Every single time she sees it we have the same bloody conversation. It crushes me. It’s always when my defenses are down and I am least expecting it, such as just after eating a Crunchie and thinking The world is too amazing to be true, there can be nothing bad about it!
“It’s dying, I tell you,” she says, arms usually crossed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s dead by the next time I see it.”
A lie: it’s NEVER the same conversation. Mum has endless variations which she attacks me with. Sometimes she goes for the jugular with a comment about how the leaves seem to be dying lower down – “yes mum, it can sense your presence!” I don’t say and hope she never knows by suddenly getting hip with technology and reading this post – and sometimes she’s more refined. The conversation starts off pleasantly, and then, when I least expect it, plunges into a horrible cruelty regarding my Basil plant’s ability to grow leaves quickly. I don’t think this is at all intentional, but how do I communicate that to my Basil plant?
I was going to put a picture of my mum here. Then I realised that this was a terrible idea; she might one day see it and disown me, and who could blame her after this blog post? I then searhed for a picture that could be her; one where she is happy and younger looking, even. So don't say I don't go to some serious effort!
Mum is not happy unless every time she sees it, there are new, enormous leaves for us to use. I try telling her that this is not a cooking programme or alternative dimension where time does not exist and Basil plants grow big overnight. I try telling her that where the Basil plant started life, things were different and a careful combination of nature and nurture allowed this plant to grow rapidly into a wondrous specimen; that a constant supply of rich light allowed photosynthesis to occur, giving the plant an almost super…plantlike (?) ability to regenerate overnight, and that here, on this poxy window-sill, it doesn’t get nearly enough light, seeing as we live in England and have just the sun to do the job (just the sun. Anyone would think the sun was feeble and on its way out). Mum doesn’t care though; she has this in her head and that is that.
“Well if it doesn’t start growing better soon then I’ll throw it out,” she says. “I just can’t bear to look at it!”
I hold my head in my hands, but only mentally, imagining myself doing this. I cannot show weakness. I must protect me and the plant by being strong for us both and saying what it would say if it was able (“Bloody well leave me alone, would you? I’m trying so hard here on this window-sill and yet nobody sees it…I didn’t f-ing ask to be planted and grown in a freakish artificial environment, you know!”).
Sometimes, just sometimes, Mum looks like she is starting to understand the Basil plant. We are on the same page, if only for a tiny moment. She gets it: Its slow way of reliable growing that has made Goat’s cheese sandwiches so enjoyable, and pasta taste great.
Then it comes: “Maybe it’ll recover. But I’m skeptical.”
No shit.
“But I don’t think it will. I knew it was hopeless the second I saw it.”
I walk away. Be strong, be brave.
Then I snap.
“No Mum,” I said. “And I don’t blame it with all this negativity!”
NOTE: this blog post is an isolated record of events that features my Mum ONLY during conversations about MY Basil plant. It in no way casts aspersions about her mothering skills, and I will say here that she is the downright best mother in the whole entire world. I could not ask for more. There, that should stop her from disowning me. It’s all about damage limitation, people!
Did you enjoy this post? Well, if you do that pleases me! My novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book, is available in paperback here and from Amazon UK here. If you live in the US, you can get it from Amazon US here. Thanks for reading and goodbye.
Seeing things that may not be really there: The Coma, Alex Garland
Morning comes and you walk downstairs — you’re neither content nor down; this is a very average day, yet something, somewhere is missing. You ignore that fact. It’s bright outside and the feeling of being watched as you slept — you had almost forgotten this — has now faded. Just a silly thing: you were lying on your side in bed, dozing, and could just about sense this giant frog over your left shoulder. The frog had two big eyes and was white — an unusual colour for a frog, but you worked out that this was actually just a clever trick. The frog was just trying to be covert and blend in with the ceiling above it. Really though, it wasn’t a giant sinister frog at all; just the lights in your room, your brain re-arranging the shadows and shapes to create something for no real reason, really. Funny that a dream, or whatever it was, had you scared for a second, wondering what you were going to do: how does one kill a giant white frog?
Or maybe a reason, but there is always maybe a reason.
The first thing you do when you open the door to the living room is say Hi to your dog.
“How did you sleep?” you say.
Your dog is a Greyhound, black and white. She lies there horizontally, squeezed into her bed, one trumpet ear standing erect.
“How did you sleep?” you say again, and then smile and start to walk into the kitchen. You need to stop expecting an answer.
Sudden: “How do you think I slept?”
You turn around to find your Greyhound staring at you with beady eyes. Black and too-round like swans; friendly but a bit strange all at the same time. That feeling of weirdness lingers for a moment, before you decide that you’re the owner here: a dog shouldn’t talk to its owner like that.
You say: “Well, I assume you slept well, I could hear your tail banging on the carpet from upstairs.”
Your dog doesn’t have much in the way of facial expressions. You’re just guessing, but you’re still reasonably sure of a slight tenseness in her face.
“You assume.”
“Yes.” You fold your arms. “Is that not a fair assumption? Usually your tail bangs when you’re happy. Your eyes move too. Then you wake up a few seconds later and stretch and look at me and I always think you look bewildered. It happens most days and you never seem to learn.”
Your Greyhound kind of shrugs her shoulders, except dogs don’t have shoulders. But still, a shrug.
“You seem to think you know an awful lot about what goes on inside my head.”
She’s not looking at you now. You deserved that.
“Yes,” you say. “I suppose I do. Sorry.”
And as you turn away again, you hear her say: “look, any chance of some different food this morning? I’ve been eating that dried crap for 5 years, I’m really getting sick of it…”
Are you awake, or are you dreaming? (Clue: if you’re certain you’re awake then you will identify with the rest of this blog post very much…)
Carl has been beaten up. He has seen this event from outside of his body and he recalls what happened in the moments before it happened, and in the moment after…and then he gets signs. or, perhaps, he’s been getting signs for a while — it’s all part of the confusion. Signs that actually, his perception may or may not be the way things really are. Soon, Carl learns that he should question everything. But there’s a problem: every answer brings another question…to say this is an endless circle is innacurate, though, as, at least ith an endless circle, you would know what to expect…
I found The Coma fascinating. I’d read a few reviews of the book when it came out in 2004, and had been trying to track down a copy ever since. I finally received the book in the post the other day and read it quickly; I could have tried harder to find it in the last few years I suppose, but every time I tried to order it it wasn’t available — all out of stock.
Whichever way you look at it, The Coma is a very disturbing book. The tone of the novel — a short novel, but still a novel — is embedded, almost to a colossal degree, with a sense of doom and too-many-things-unknown, and this, combined with Garland’s naturally unsettling ability to convey despair and dread makes for a read that is very difficult to review by way of comparing to other novels — even of a similar ilke. I thought that the best way was to begin this post with a sample of something you might experience if you were dreaming, but when you awoke you felt like you had been there, and really couldn’t separate out the truth from the fiction. These are things we can all understand the complexity of, and complexity drives this novel. The oddity being that the writing is fascinatingly simple and taught; not hard to read yet loaded and loaded and loaded…
But to say that The Coma is depressing — an assumption you may or may not have made, based on the above paragraph and the words dread and unsettling — is to ignore the greater meaning and gravity of the story. This is another bizarre aspect that Garland handles with what appears to be ease: one second you’ll be laughing, the next you’ll be questioning the metaphysical meaning behind the singing of a bird, or feel compelled to re-enter some long-lost vision you had, once; one that now seems real but you know maybe wasn’t after all. Who knows? We cannot go back.
Accompanied by black and white wood-cuts by Garland’s father, The Coma is not a long book, and its explorations are largely confined to the one-dimensional ruminations of one man searching for purpose, meaning and depth. Yet I would urge anyone put off by the ambiguous nature of the book — as with reviews which ask why there are so many questions left hanging — to consider buying, or at least borrowing this title. There’s no doubt that this is a million miles away from The Beach, but does that have to be a bad thing? I do believe a writer should have the power to explore and navigate without limitations, and that is precisely what The Coma does so well.
If you’re interested, my debut novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book, is available at Amazon UK here and Amazon US here. A review of the book can be found here. Thanks!
Weird, odd and vegetarian-meat-mimicking
I often find myself looking at a certain object, or item, or band – or something that people do, we’ve all seen people do – wondering how it was that it or they or that were allowed to come into existence in the first place. Like with Mr Blobby (he definitely falls into the THAT category), as featured below (click and you will be magically transported straight into Mr Blobby’s outlandish messed-up universe; I’m not sure if I can recommend that or not, but there it is…). In the case of the Blobby-thing, why didn’t someone intervene and say “Hey, actually this…well…what is this? Whatever he or it is, it’s an absolutely terrible idea…seriously…whoever dreamt this freak up really needs to get some help. Fast.”?
Oh, and I probably should have mentioned, if you weren’t aware, that Mr Blobby was supposed to be a children’s entertainer...
Big, pink, fucked-up and wildly out of control: the definition of DEMENTED
And sometimes it’s good things, things which make me smile. One day it might be Kriss Kross (this dynamic duo came into existence because in the 1990s, someone realised that the word JUMP sounded really good when you shouted it twice quickly in a high voice and then said “it’s wiggadywiggadywack!”) and the next it might be something more worrying, although not quite as worrying as Mr Blobby…actually let’s just do a list, that’ll make it easier:
Seriously? Yes, seriously
- POINTLESS: Fish knife and forks: I don’t know if this is a typically English thing, but here in England we have these ridiculous fancy forks designed specifically for eating fish with; yes, you can’t eat anything else with them, only fish. As I’m sure I’ve already written before, these forks are perfect examples of what happens when progression goes a step too far and all kinds of extra things are added to what is, on its own, a perfectly practical design that doesn’t need changing. I mean, you can eat with your hands, right? So this is just silly. Now, where to begin with my dislike of this stupid cutlery…Firstly, they’re a downright strange shape like something the Queen might use, and secondly, they’re awkward to eat with and make eating fish far less enjoyable. The really crazy thing about fish forks, of course — and you’ll need to have an open mind to consider this possibility — is that there will be alternate dimensions out there in the universe where they exist in even more ridiculous forms. Think yourself lucky you exist in this one!
- Post-it notes which aren’t adhesive. It’s like breeding eagles without wings. You just don’t do it.
- Those strips they put on train platforms in Europe so that blind people can tell more easily where the edge of the platform is, saving them from certain doom. A fine idea…had they been done by someone who actually understood the implications of being blind. You have to feel sorry for those people who are newly blind, I think. If at all possible, imagine how difficult it already is to navigate yourself around with only a stick – you’re still waiting for your dog, which if you’re in the UK will be stuck in the post for months, the poor furry thing – and then imagine being terrified every time you go near a railway track, just in case you take too big a step. That is, if you make it past the first attempt…and don’t even think about what that German Shepherd looks like after 3 months in a cardboard box.
Don't torture yourself, only think of him before the box
- People who ask how you are but actually they’re not asking how you are, they’re thinking about how there’s a strong chance they’re going to have sex that evening (fair enough), or why you never see baby pigeons (you do actually, it’s just that their parents feed them stupid amounts of food, making them quickly fat like the adults. Don’t ask me how I know that). They may as well say “how’s the angry elephants, Steve?” or “Fancy a space fart cowboy hat, Sarah?” when they meet you. You’d be freaked out, but at least you’d know where you stand.
- Shower-gel, soap and shampoo which smells so good you want to eat it; that if you do NOT eat it, you are missing out in a big way and life simply will not be the same. Not good when it’s first thing in the morning and your consciousness is still floating in that bizarre lucid void where you’re not really concentrating and at the same time feeling very hungry. Honestly, the sick, sick people of soap and shower-gel land…
- Vegetarian food which tries very hard, too hard, some might say (me), to mimic meat. Why not have a vegetarian tofu starfish or a vegetarian bean curd spider monkey instead? (It’d make food shopping a lot more interesting if vegetarian products were in the shape of wild animals, don’t you think? “Excuse me,” you might say, “I’m just looking for the Tofu Orangutan burger aisle, you do have an aisle for apes, don’t you?” Food and education together. I really ought to get myself on that Dragon’s Den.)
- People who say “I probably shouldn’t tell you this…” and then go on to tell you this. And that.
- And then we have the Captcha…
Oh, the dreaded Captcha that haunts my dreams…
Good luck...
Today was ridiculous. Once again, I found myself confronted with a Captcha that seemingly had absolutely no intention of allowing me to send an email. Unbeknownst to me, this thing had been waiting for me for seconds, months, years maybe, all the time getting closer to ruining my day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely against Captcha’s – I know they are a vital weapon in the war against Spam and crucial if you own a website which gets any amount of hits. But THIS Captcha I had come across was one of those evil genius ones which toys with you for as long as you have the patience, and carefully breaks down your mental barriers, slowly pushing you to go and eat that doughnut you 100% promised yourself you wouldn’t eat until tomorrow (yeah, right) or that chocolate which should really last the entire week (ha!). And the people behind these little pieces of fortified horror aren’t exactly stupid, are they? They’ve made it so if you don’t like the mish-mash of symbols on the screen you can keep on pressing the Refresh button for HOURS if you so wish, convinced that, sometime in the near future, a configuration will appear that makes sense; who knows, there may be some poor guy or girl in a room somewhere who’s been trying to send an email for years. And this one today, I swear, it came close to breaking me. I managed ten minutes — I must have hit that bloody Refresh button at least 40 times — and then finally had to give in and admit that I would never come across a selection of words/numbers that I could actually understand. I simply gave up, and felt like a failure.
Those fucking Captcha’s!
The really sad thing, of course, is that if you do just keep going for ages and ages and ages like a mad man, you usually are eventually rewarded with a Captcha that just about makes some kind of sense. Then, nervously, you enter the number/symbols and wait patiently to see if your email has been accepted. And when it has you smile and feel really good about yourself as if you’ve beaten something that really hated you. Yes, you’ve beaten it, and you should feel PROUD.
But you haven’t, is the thing…because there are MILLIONS MORE TO COME!
Own an iphone/Kindle or other E-reader and feel like wasting £3 or $4 on a book instead of some condoms/beer/a vital taxi ride home after getting hopelessly smashed out of your mind? The Number 3 Mystery Book can do that for you nicely on Amazon UK or Amazon US. It won’t even leave you with a hangover! Blame my dad for my jokes…
Challenging Attitudes: The Undateables Episode 3 (Channel 4, Tue 17th April 2012, 9pm)
Wake up, they're just people. Picture Copyright not me but whoever took this for Channel 4 etc
If you’re on Facebook or Twitter I am going to hazard a guess and say (maybe) you couldn’t help but have noticed my stream of recent blogs, a number of which concerned Channel 4s controversial new hit-show The Undateables. Don’t panic, I haven’t lost my mind and gone on a Michael-Douglas-in-FallingDown-style blogging rampage. This blog has just been getting a fair amount of hits, that’s all, and besides that, I’m enjoying writing about it. So far it’s been a refreshing and often surreal journey into things which most of us — and judging by the comments left on the Channel 4 Undateables website I think I can vouch for a fair few of us here — rarely think about.
As I have gone on about relentlessly in my last posts pertaining to Episodes 1 and 2 – as well as this post here about attitudes to disability — it’s been, I feel, one of the most enlightening series that Channel 4 have ever come up with. While many were predicting a show akin to some kind of Victorian freakfest — not helped much by the name and lack of explanation about the choice of it, it has to be said — it’s actually been the polar opposite: real people talking mainly not about their issues, but the perils of dating which are universal to us all. It doesn’t matter if you have no arms and no legs or perfect abs, or if you’re an internet sensation with no arms and no legs and perfect abs; dating via an agency is, I can see, a tricky affair, wherever you are on the abs scale — or even if you’re not — which has to involve a few stumbling blocks (and please no emails from anonymous perfectly-abbed people moaning about how it’s actually too easy for them to get dates. If you must, at least leave it in the comments section so we can all hate everything you stand for, rather than just me).
Episode 3, then, will feature a 24-year-old skater called Haydn (a certain boy called Barney has a lot in common with him) who has the little-known Crouzon Syndrome — a condition which has left him half-deaf and in need of a slew of operations over the years. Aided by his twin brother, tonight’s revealing programme will show Haydn trying his hardest to get over his lack of confidence and find himself a girlfriend.
Next up is Kali. Never heard of William’s Syndrome? (I’m going to assume you haven’t, so if you have feel smug, very smug. In fact, it’s really OK to go and boast about it to someone.) No doubt you and I won’t be the only ones out there. 20-year-old Kali’s party-loving screen-time should prove no less interesting, as she enters the dating world and we get to see how this uncommon genetic disorder affects her attempts at finding a boyfriend. I was going to end this paragraph with Go girl! but then I realised I never say Go Girl! and it’d just sound condescending, which it does. Instead I’ll just say good luck Kali (I know it’s not going to be airing live by the way, but for the purpose of adding tension and stuff, that’s how I am writing this blog).
Lastly, we have Sam, and, aside from the ads on TV where he draws his perfect girlfriend — Down’s Syndrome in this case hasn’t affected Sam’s ideal girl having big old breasts, that’s for sure! — you’ll probably recognise him but may not know where from. I shall spare you the annoyance of having to even Google it: he’s been in The Inbetweeners and also Eastenders. My cousin has Down’s Syndrome, so I’m especially interested to see how this part plays out. I’m no expert on Down’s but I do know that many of these people have a much lower mental age — something that doesn’t increase with age and maturity, as far as I’m aware (but I may well be wrong, feel free to let me know in the comments section below if you like). Will this fact — if it is one at all, — have affected his understanding of the documentary he is taking part in? This was the first thing that came into my mind when I saw the advert where he draws his perfect girlfriend. I am going to assume that this is just my massive ignorance speaking, and that Sam has been guided by his family to perfectly understand fully what it’s all about. I really need to go and read up on Down’s Syndrome and shall make that my first priority after work (well, I might make a cup of tea first).
If you’ve been loving The Undateables then you may like my debut novel — I know, will he ever shut up about his bloody debut novel?! — The Number 3 Mystery Book. Inspired by my experiences with disability and illness over the last six years, the lead character has Cherubism; a genetic disorder that affects the skull, making the lower jaw (mandible) and face grow disproportionately larger (those with Cherubism, as with many of these conditions, are not mentally impaired just because they look a bit unusual compared to the average person on the street). It’s a black comedy, and Barney’s side-kick is a girl in a wheelchair who takes absolutely NO SHIT. You can buy it if you like at Amazon US here or Amazon UK here and I feel confident enough to say that it will be a better investment than yet more fancy caffeine with a funny name. Want to see a review? (The book, not caffeine.) I can’t blame you, it could be total crap after all.
The Undateables will air tonight at 9pm on Channel 4.
Did you enjoy this post? Well, if you did that pleases me! My disability-related novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book is available in paperback here and from Amazon UK. If you live in the US, you can get it from Amazon US here. Thanks for reading and goodbye.
The Undateables Episode 3: A Solid End To An Enlightening Series
By now, having already written a comprehensive review of the last two episodes — you can find episodes 1 and 2 here if you have an entire day off work anytime soon — I’m not convinced I need to write another one; that’s mainly because this last episode had a lot in common with the previous ones, but also down to me not wanting to bore people with too much more of the same (and besides that, there will be dozens of other reports up by now containing very similar content. And besides that too, it’s late and I’ve been writing all day and I’ve run out of chocolate). That said, there were a few things about this last programme which were definitely noteworthy. Here’s my round-up of this episode’s events:
1) Kali’s kindness: born with the little-known Williams Syndrome, I thought Kali was amazing — yes she has a learning difficulty, but she is also eloquent, attractive and entirely capable of holding down a decent conversation (and she loves a good boogie, which is cool in my book). More to the point, I felt, strongly, that Kali exhibited attributes that many people without learning difficulties would do well to acquire if they can, such as a) really good posture which doesn’t wreck your back and b) a great sense of humour and the ability to laugh at yourself. My favourite part was when she said “I like your eyes…they’re misty blue!” Also blessed with a great voice, I really hope someone notices her and gets her doing some voice-over work soon. Whatever happens, Kali can be content with knowing that she has her head screwed on good and proper when it comes to romance and stuff: her attitude to dating was great. Instead of getting pissed-off that her date with Jimmy didn’t go to plan — not helped I suspect by Jimmy suggesting they consider moving in within the near future — she concluded that she’d just wait for a companion instead and not get too stressed about it. Amen!
Oops, wrong post...but now we're here, 5 weeks, 5 months, it's all the same. Love you really Russell! Just using your face to shamelessly draw traffic here, that's all
2)For me, Sam’s part on the show was the most anticipated of the three for one reason: I know someone with Down’s Syndrome and was interested in seeing how the dating game would play out for someone who might have a lower mental age than the people they might date. In Sam’s case, though, for the most part I found it hard to detect if he really did have a lower mental age; guided by his dad for this, his very first date ever, Sam asked some good questions concerning what might or might not happen. More to the point, many of these questions were ones which we all might find ourselves asking when we start metaphorically shitting our pants minutes before a date with someone we’ve never met. Sam’s date played out at the zoo, and at the end of the episode he finally managed to get the guts up to ask Jolene if she would like to be his girlfriend. Upon watching this part of the show I was filled with a combination of shame and joy: I had definitely taken about ten times longer than Sam to do the same a few years ago…and she said yes, by the way.
3) Of the three stars in this episode, it was Crouzen sufferer Haydn who made me feel the most contemplative. Born with the rare genetic condition — which affects 1 in 25,000 people — Haydn is also a twin and has been watching his brother Ashley go on dates for years. Unsurprisingly, this constant barrage of emotional stirring had dealt a pretty low-blow to Haydn’s confidence when it came to where he fits in to all this. As a result, the idea of dating was about ten times more unnerving than for most people, and although we all like to believe those kind individuals who say idealistic things like “It doesn’t matter what you look like, it’s what’s on the inside that counts,” we all know it’s thinly veiled bullshit that’s teetering on the knife-edge between well-meaning and completely and utterly insulting. Just as one of the employees from the dating agency said in a previous episode (I think), “The very first thing that people see is how you look, and that affects how we think of everyone well before we begin to get to know them”.
Favourite bits:
1) When Sam’s large, bear-like friend advised him very seriously to “never give the woman your remote control, because she’ll control you.” No comment.
2) Charlotte travelling from bloody miles away to come and meet Haydn and go on a ride on the London Eye. Such a kind thing to do. Sadly — and this bit wasn’t my favourite bit and it definitely wasn’t Haydn’s — things got tricky when Charlotte kept asking him if he was looking forward to the snow falling and, due to the partial deafness of his condition, he didn’t hear a thing.
3) The bit right at the end when it said that Sam and Jolene had been going out together for five weeks. Congratulations. And also no comment.
Did you enjoy this post? Well, if you did that pleases me! My disability-related novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book is available in paperback here and from Amazon UK. If you live in the US, you can get it from Amazon US here. Thanks for reading and goodbye.
The Number 3 Mystery Book: Read the first two chapters and make sure you don’t think it’s total crap. Yes, I’m not JUST a bearded face!
It’s been 9 months or so since I self-published my first novel, and what a journey so far. I won’t lie, it was slow in the beginning, but as the book has picked up support and love and I printed paperbacks, a small but cult following has begun to emerge — along with amazing reviews and mad-crazy-following support on Twitter. Just today Disability Cornwall sent me their new issue, which features the book on an entire page (click the link to subscribe and read online if you like). God I must sound like such a bighead, but still, it’s exciting to know that my novel, inspired greatly by Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time wasn’t a total waste of my writing time. Scroll down to read the sample chapters or read this next bit. AND please excuse the stupid formatting for the chapter titles below…this is NOT how it looks in the book, it’s just WordPress being childish.
BUT
I HATE HATE HATE Amazon’s Look Inside feature. Just thinking about it makes me feel a little bit sick. Look inside what, exactly? A bag in the summer filled with smelly old skid-marked pants? OOOooooOOOOh, YES PLEASE AMAZON! Really…for such an enormous company, Amazon really haven’t got the first bloody clue about how to show potential readers a sample of what they might expect. You spend a year-and-a-half slaving over your debut novel, then you upload it and find that the first impression of it looks completely crap…the text running into the next paragraph at every opportunity, the whole thing thrown together to form nothing less than a monstrosity…
Which is why I have invented, as of fifteen-minutes ago, Chris’s LOOK AT THIS, YOU CAN ACTUALLY READ IT. Revolutionary, right? It’s basically a sample of The Number 3 Mystery Book as it actually appears (although the paperback version is formatted so the chapter headings begin on new pages) because I realised tonight that although I do have some novel samples elsewhere on this blog, I had never made a sample accessible on the front page. Well done Chris, you’re a little bit thick.
At least I didn’t include a picture of the book. I mean, it isn’t as if you could really miss it…
NEW Paperbacks are back in stock and Amazon UK and US are where you need to go for the digital copy. If you’re one of those really nose people then you can even find a 5 star review here. Want to see how the book cover art evolved into the end result? Then you can go here. Just please don’t Look Inside…
Chapter 1: Full-On Mega Disbelief
I was waiting in the dark for the door to open and it was very late. Imagine a really hungry, really frustrated short-necked Giraffe that has finally spotted a gang of leaves low enough for him to eat and this is precisely how excited I was. So much had just happened and all I kept thinking was I don’t believe it I don’t believe it I don’t believe it but wait…I DO believe it! and it needed to be told to someone quickly before the amazingness of the moment wore off, which would be a tragedy for humankind and the world as we know it. That someone was Mr Grundy. Since the place where my fantastic discovery had happened was owned by him, it was only right that he was that very lucky person.
“Mr Grundy!” I said, soon as I sensed motion and a bitter old man’s face appearing in the door-way. “You’ve got to hear my amazing stor-”
He put his hand up and a sort of Grundy-grunt came out of his mouth: wild boar with his snout out in the forest, I thought. Farmers had their very own code of unique snouty grunts.
“But Mr Grundy,” I said again, but whispering it this time to make me sound like listening was the only option for the old man to take. “Seriously, you don’t understa-”
He put his other hand up and clapped them together hard, his head all a-shaking. I honestly think that if he could have levitated on his big old bum in the air, he’d have put both his feet up to silence me too.
Mr Grundy then began a typical Grundy speech and no matter how hard I tried to interrupt him to talk about my discovery, I failed. The main thing he was saying was that he was not amused by me knocking on his door late at night. He is a farmer and Mrs Grundy is a farmer’s wife, so being not amused is often the case for both him and her, seeing as it’s always raining and he spends so much time outside working very hard for not very much money while everyone else sits at computers and earns loads of money without barely even needing to do more than just hit three buttons and lean back with eyes half closed and a coffee on the desk. Mr Grundy says that it is “a sick joke on all the hard-working farmers of the world that life is like this.” Also, they are both ages and ages old, which only make them even worse. You could say Mr Grundy is an expert-professional at being not amused. He is even better at being grumpy.
The second thing he said to me after opening the door in his tractor-pattern slippers was “Look Barney, it’s bloody late, it’s past midnight, what the hell do you think you are playing at?” To display his not-amusement so I could absolutely not miss it he put a lot of effort into making a big wrinkly face, or what Wonky my best friend once called “looks like an actual scrotum.”
I had been rehearsing this next bit since leaving the pond a few minutes before, so I said: “I’m sorry but I had to come right now Mr Grundy, I simply had no choice. I am also not amused, but that’s the way things go at the cutting-edge. It’s really not my fault, I am but a slave to the cutting edge and that’s just the way it has to be.”
He was still just staring straight at me. “The cutting edge again,” he said, “I’m up again at 5am tomorrow. Get to the point fast, boy.”
I continued: “well the point is this, Mr Grundy. I am still half terrified out of my wits from what I saw lurking in your pond earlier today, after I got home from school.”
“Lurking? Earlier today?” As Mr Grundy’s eyes focussed his eyebrows became like a big black bird diving straight at me. “You weren’t there at the pond just now were you? Because you’d better bloody well not have been,” he said, crossing his leathery hairy arms. “If I’ve told you once then I’ve told you a hundred flippin’ times boy…”
I was prepared for him saying this, I couldn’t very well not be the amount he’d warned me never to go to the pond at night, and so I said, “of course not Mr Grundy, what do you think I am? This was earlier today like I told you before.”
“I think I had better not answer that first part,” he replied, shaking his head.
I continued with my routine like I had cunningly worked it out. “Oh, I know the perils of the anti-heron fence, Mr Grundy,” I said. “And I know how forbidden going to the pond late at night is. I can assure you I did not do it and will never do it, not as long as I have hairs on my head, and I reckon that should be for at least twenty more years yet.”
Under his moustache I thought I could see Mr Grundy making a half smile. He followed this up with a deadly serious sigh what made his crops probably fear for their lives when they saw Mr Grundy and his scary tractor coming. “Good, good. And very glad to hear it. Just remember that the pond is no place to be at night Barney, not for anyone, especially not a thirteen year-old boy.”
“No way Mr Grundy, definitely not. I’ll never forget it for as long as I live. And I’m like an especially clever Elephant in the memorising respect.”
Inside my head where it was safe I did a big jump in the air and congratulated myself for lying really well and appearing totally believable.
Mr Grundy pointed his finger at me and I thought that dressing gown is ten generations of farmers old and you really should get a new one. “I bet if your dad knew you were out now he’d serve you a damn good hiding. I know I would if you were my son. Mark my words on that one, Barney.”
“Probably he would, but he’s not here as per usual,” I said. “Anyway Mr Grundy, few people,” I said with pride, “are as lucky as you are, and that makes you extremely privileged, you know.”
“Well, I should be thankful then,” said Mr Grundy. “Silly me…”
“Exactly. This is the real thing what I’m talking about. This is the big-time. I’m sure you understand what I’m saying Mr Grundy. We have things to discuss. Like what exactly I saw in your pond much earlier today.”
“I think I get the picture, Barney.”
I could see on the clock in the hall that the time now was just before one am. It was very late, yes, but lateness was a small price to pay for knowing such classified information. I could see Mr Grundy was beginning to realise this too, and it was about flippin’ time. “Now look here,” he said, “much as I love being woken up in the dead of night to hear all about the cutting-edge, please just go home Barney.” And his moustache did a funny farmer’s wiggle. “Come and tell me about all this once I’ve had some sodding sleep, and let’s not be making this kind of thing a habit, right? Some of us have got fields to harvest and weather to curse.”
I said, “sorry and yes. Yes I most certainly will do that. You have my absolute word. And I may be only thirteen years old Mr Grundy but-”
“You’re a boy of your word.”
“Precisely.”
He sighed. “Yes lad, I thought you might be.”
I was about to leave, but before he could close the door and I could step away, Mrs Grundy and her big old massive ankles shuffled up behind Mr Grundy asking about what The Devil is going on here and such like. I don’t like it when people mention the Antichrist and look directly at me as though I might have seen him in the last few days and might be able to answer on his behalf. I already get teased at school with enough names for having such a strange-looking-massive-face and so I have a habit of “taking these things to heart.” Mum tells me this is perfectly understandable considering how things are for me but that I shouldn’t let it worry me because I am normal like everyone else even if I am affected by an unfortunate disease like the Elephant Man had (it isn’t actually Elephantiasis though, it’s called Cherubism. Cherubism makes you look strange, hurts your eyes and it really isn’t what you want when you’re a boy or anyone, because it messes up your teeth quite bad).
Mr Grundy whispered “he’s just going, love,” to Mrs Grundy. He looked at me with one stare-ey eye. “Aren’t you now, Barney.”
But she always did ignore him.
“Well hello Barney, it’s just gone one in the morning,” said Mrs Grundy, all dressing-gowned up, eyes much more open now. She shot Mr Grundy a look of womanly doom that I’m sure has killed many a weaker man in similar circumstances and then she crossed her arms across her big wobbly mountain-range of a chest. “Dear-dear, when our lad was your age…how old are you now Barney?”
“Thirteen Mrs Grundy,” I told her. “But getting older all the time.”
She leaned forward and spoke quietly just to me, which seemed to annoy the bitter old farmer even more. “…You don’t say…well, I used to put mine over my knee and spank his bottom for lesser crimes than this. What’s going on here at one a clock in the morning? You know damn well it’s much too late to be knocking on our door Barney Delaney. Whatever would your dad say if he knew you were here?”
I didn’t want to think about dad again so soon, so instead I thought of something else: I had always wondered why Mrs Grundy’s arms had so much flappy skin on the under-sides. Here was the answer at last: she had done way too much bottom spanking and it had made the flesh go all stretchy and elastic. Obvious really.
I said “I do know damn well Mrs Grundy, but I was acting out of fascination and extreme desperation and those two things when you put them together are greater than the most powerful under-sea dynamite, Mrs Grundy. What can I say, that’s what it’s like on the cutting-edge sometimes. You just have to deal with these things when they happen.”
They looked at one another and back at me and Mrs Grundy said, “If you say so, dear.”
“And I do,” I said, thinking again about the potential of my discovery. “And if anyone would know then I would.”
There was a small pause where new creases appeared on their faces and they had a kind of conversation which I was too young to join in with.
“Well sod this, I’m going to bed,” Mr Grundy said. “This is all very good and well but bugger off with you Barney. Go home before you get in any more trouble. And never go near the pond at night. Are we clear as muck on that?”
“Language,” said Mrs Grundy, and she poked him hard with her elbow.
Mr Grundy gave her a right old dirty look and I thought marriage, forget it!
“He doesn’t mean it Barney-”
“Don’t I? I think you’ll find I bloomin’-”
Mrs Grundy put her hand on his cheek and pulled the skin and it was like old bubble-gum. “He’s just a bitter old farmer from a long line of bitter farmers, is all. But of course he’s right, you’re never to go to the pond at night. You can’t see what you’re doing around there and besides that, it’s not safe.”
“Consider me gone,” I said, “Consider I was never here at all.”
“I should be so lucky.”
For that, Mr Grundy got a look of razor-sharp-woman’s-daggers, and I wondered how much more an old bitter man could take.
“Do excuse his swearing,” Mrs Grundy said, slowly shutting the door. “And mind you don’t pick any of it up, won’t you?”
I said he was excused and I had barely even heard it, and as the door finally closed I said, just to myself, that I would banish the swearing from my mind like I did whenever Wonky opened her big mouth and had her way with her wicked opinions.
So I buggered off with me like I was told: what you need to know about Mr Grundy is that once he got his thumb caught in some farming machinery and it got ripped off quicker than quick and so when he says don’t do something he really does mean business and you should not mess with him. You should do as he says, always, no exceptions.
Unless it is very important, like it was with my discovery. In which case it’s for the good of Science that you ignore the rules and make your own up.
Chapter 2: That Thing
I Could Never Forget
“I am Barney and I am a thirteen year-old Cryptozoologist. Later you shall meet ‘Wonky’ whose real name is actually Jenny. She is my best friend and also the second most major character in this book. This what you hold in your hands here is a tale of epic discovery and excitement where things can and do go wrong and life is never the same again as me and my friend Wonky know it. And I’ll tell you for why, but you will need to buy this book to find out more, so there!”
When all these many words become a book then this is what I shall write in the ‘blurb’ on the back cover to ‘draw people in’ and make it a ‘page turner.’ They will be powerless to resist! I should also warn you now that you need to be a bit tough to read my book, because like in all good books, it’s a ‘rollercoaster of emotions’ and it isn’t always a time for smiling. As my dad would say when he’s in one of his massive great stinkers: “I’m being deadly serious. No mucking about!”
But now I realise that it is only Chapter 2 and I have already made a really big mistake of novel writing. One which would have Mr Novel (or whoever invented novels) banging on his coffin and screaming If I turn in my grave anymore I’m going to be sick!
In my excitement, you see, I totally forgot to tell you what my discovery was and why I was in such a rush to see Mr and Mrs Grundy so late at night. Woops. I am correcting this now otherwise it will not be a good book, it will be a very confusing book.
What happened before I knocked on the Grundy’s front door…
I won’t ever forget it. Like I said before, it was night-time, and I was at the big pond at the end of my road doing two things what Mr Grundy had told me many times not to do. I was 1) at the pond at night-time which was completely criminally forbidden and I was 2) standing dangerously close to the electric anti-heron fence what I had never seen kill any heron but I knew was highly ferocious (Mrs Grundy said that one time, a very unfortunate pigeon had landed backside-first on it, and probably his pigeony friends wouldn’t ever let him forget for as long as he flew, because pigeons had quite a good memory actually). That was when the incredible event which would change my life forever happened: a flash of silver rose up out of the water in the middle of the pond…and disappeared again quick as a flash, leaving only a few bubbles, making a proper Plop! as it went (like what you’d get if you had massive sky-scraper arms and held an elephant over the water and it did one almighty poo). I couldn’t even speak I was so stunned. In all the times I had secretly and illegally been to the Grundy’s pond at night I had never seen anything like this. It was the kind of thing to make even the wildest of dreams jealous and say: “I wish I’d have thought of that!”
Instantly and without needing to think about it anymore than you do walking along in a straight line or picking a bogey and flicking it at the back of someone’s head in class I knew that here was a creature that I had not seen and nobody in the world had ever laid their eyes upon either. What’s more, I knew that I had not imagined it and it was concrete fact and really had happened because a) it takes nearly ten minutes to walk around the pond and the entire thing was affected by ripples and b) If Mr Grundy or somebody in the world had seen this incredible creature then Mr Grundy’s pond would not be the peaceful place it always is, oh no. Why not? Well, because there would be reporters from National Geographic and people with cameras and crowds of screaming people, lots of them. My dad would call something like that a Media Circus. And I’ll tell you something for free: Media Circus’s do not happen in places like where we live, in this sleepy village outside of the university city of Cambridge where all the posh professors do their boring academic studying and live to be one-thousand years old. There once was a minor Media Circus a few years back when people first noticed there was something odd about the way my face looks compared to other people, but since then it has been very quiet on the Media Circus’s front and nowadays people mostly leave me alone to get on with my fascinating Cryptozoology business. This is lucky for me because large unidentified animals are often scared off by more than a couple of human beings (which is a fact: read any Cryptozoology book if you don’t believe me).
And this event? This was it for me. What I had been waiting for my whole thirteen years of life: an unidentified animal which I could identify. One which I could name! My whole life I’d been thinking I’d have to trek out to the Amazon rainforests or the Congo to find my mysterious creature, and here it was, at the end of my road in the pond I’d walked past every day!
I knew at that moment, as I stood there in the dark all rigid, that my dreams would now be full of Plop! and silvery-pinkish flash and probably not much else for a long time to come.
If you’re not sweating and feeling a bit sick with anticipation reading my account then you really should go and see a Doctor.
Once I had got my nerves back I punched myself hard enough in the face to wake myself up, just in case this was all a dream (everyone knows that pinching alone won’t do it). It was no dream. I was still standing in the darkness and I had not woken up and I was mega rigid.
Before I continue with what happened next, after the ripples had finally vanished, I should really tell you about precisely how terrified I was when the monster silvery fish-thing appeared. It’s very important to capture that, I think. I call it a fish-thing because it looked like a fish but was much too big to be any kind of normal live-in-a-pond kind of fish. It was the size of something much bigger, at least as big as Mr Grundy’s one-man boat, and the kind of thing you see on TV and say: “well that can’t be real, I bet that’s all computer graphics.”
I do not want to ‘go silly’ with describing my fear of the fish-thing, as my mum might say, so I am going to assume that most everyone who reads this book understand what big-fear is like and just how awful it can be when it strikes you down quick and hard without warning. After all, you’re a reader, so there’s a good chance you’re not thick. But for everyone who doesn’t know what big-fear is like, or who is a bit thick – because statistics say there has to be some, and you can always trust in them statistics – I have devised a way for you to understand it perfectly. The following demonstrates big-fear.
Still big fear…
Big fear not even close to being shown how scary it is…
Here I am. Now, imagine that all the masses of white space between the last paragraph and the start of this paragraph symbolises big-fear, and that the space between each of these words here is normal everyday fear that just makes you jump a bit (a small spider creeping out from under the bin, for example). Now I think you get a much better idea of the terror of what happened inside me at that precise moment when I saw the fish-thing. Now we can move on.
And before you ask, Yes, I was certain that Mr Grundy knew nothing of the mysterious fish-thing, which meant that Mrs Grundy couldn’t know either, of course, because she never came out to the pond, and she did not like fish. Mr Grundy is a farmer and very straightforward and he does not and never has had a habit of lying or keeping things of this massiveness a secret.
So, I was still standing there with what felt like concrete in my veins. I know that the best way to begin a good book is not imagining a thirteen year-old boy standing in one place staring out at a pond in the night with concrete in his veins, but I can’t change the facts, can I? This was how it was.
I tried to move. It did not work well, mainly because my eyes were being selfish and wanted only to stare out without being made to look at other things. Once the big-fear had worn off a bit I decided to stand still three feet to the right of where I had been and do my thinking calmly like that, with my arms crossed tight, as I find is best for the utmost concentration to happen smoothly. There was another reason for standing still too, and if you’re a Cryptozoologist then you’ll have already worked this out ages ago and be feeling really smug. It was to become part of the pond, like a tree or a bush or something like that. If the fish-thing decided it wanted to make another appearance then it would have no idea there was one of them odd pink creatures watching.
So I waited a bit more.
Disappointingly, but as often happens to you when you are at the cutting edge of rebel science, the fish-thing did not make another appearance in the minutes after that. The pond was calm again like there had never been the Plop! and I checked over every bit of it but there were only small bubbles from small fish and the occasional Riiiiibet! from a frog that must have known much more than me. I waited for a full ten minutes to give the fish-thing time to make its enormous mind up and then I left to tell Mr Grundy about this most spectacular happening, reminding myself that I was absolutely forbidden at the pond after dark. Wait a moment, actually, that what I just said was a bit of a white lie: I didn’t leave immediately, because that would have been really unprofessional Cryptozoological madness. What really happened was I started to walk away and then I remembered myself: I hid behind a bush and then I came back to exactly where I had been, very slowly, creeping on the dry grass on all fours like an animal would do if it wanted to surprise its pray and rip its throat out. The fish-thing was still not there, but it could have been, why not? The fish-thing might be a sneak and of course it would want to remain a secret because it had this long and to not be a secret any more when you had been such a huge success of one would not be good at all for the self-esteem. It could be very depressing for any creature of any size, with or without fins, couldn’t it?
Once I had got almost to Mr and Mrs Grundy’s house, which is located bang smack next to the pond behind a hedge, I crept back all the way again for a second time, but I was still all alone in the dark. And that was when I said enough is enough and properly went to Mr and Mrs Grundy’s.
AND once again I am going to make it easy for you! Paperbacks here and Amazon UK here, Amazon US here. Fancy reading a review? You’ll find it here.
To see my guest blog on Penelope Fletcher’s blog, you only need click here…or head on over to Disability Cornwall to see their feature on the book (you’ll need to subscribe first).
Lady Gaga Vs The Undateables: what’s your opinion?
The subject of the one, the only, Lady Gaga, has often come up when in the company of my parents — they’re not hip or cool; it’s the TV that does it, beaming the Gaga into their living room: both are perfect examples of their generation. Both grew-up during a time when love was as bountiful as Spam email is today, yet both stare at the screen with immense confusion, gazing into Gaga’s trailblazing eyes and saying things like “Well, Chris, I tell you, if you ever brought that home then there’d be trouble,” and “what is she, actually? She looks like she was made in some laboratory,” (this from dad) “Come to think of it…well, I don’t know Chris, she reminds me of that girl from that film, er, what’s it called?”
“Well…she’s just a woman, dad,” I tell him, even though it’s pointless and clearly doesn’t sink in. I don’t look at mum, as she is now trapped in the tractor-beam stare that is Gaga’s insane fashion-sense and clearly just as perplexed as the time she tried to change the SIM card in her phone on her own — this time super-skimpy shorts and a top which makes her (Lady Gaga, not my mum) look like barely more than a blonde babe in a light-gold dust-storm (again, get any thoughts of my mum out of your head!).
“What’s that film then, what is it Chris?” Dad says once again, and he starts to lean forward in his chair with his eyes getting ever wider, his hands firmly planted on the rests either side. “Blimey, would you look at the–”
“Yes, thankyou,” says mum, shutting him up. And then we sit in awkward silence as Gaga begins to talk about how we should all be equal, every one of us the same…
I put dad out of his misery and make a wild guess about this film: actually it’s only marginally wild. Actually it’s bloody obvious. “The Fifth Element?” I say. It’s in the walnut-brown TV cabinet behind the glass doors, along with a few other on-sale-at-the-supermarket-DVDs mainly yet to be unwrapped (things like Step Up, some crap straight-to-DVD film with Antonio Banderas in and Brokeback Mountain — mum’s choice, and I will make a point of being as far as possible away when dad gets inquisitive about this one…).
Finally, now, Gaga is walking away from camera and my mum is looking slightly less suspicious. Slightly: her razor-sharp woman’s skills are still ready to flicker back to red-alert should the testosterone pick up. Dad continues to read the book he’d had on his lap — one eye open, just in case. At this point I think I may as well accept it, when or if I ever get a wife and kids, the day will surely come when ogling a strange nubile legendary woman’s breasts will be completely irresistable…actually it’ll be downright favourable to washing the car and all the other styff…
And this appearance by Lady Gaga, it stirs up my thinking, diverts me onto the Channel 4 show-of-the-moment (now over, but available to watch on 4OD): The Undateables. Remarkable and a serious turn-around from what many predicted of the show, as anyone who saw it will likely agree, the theme was a far cry from the mocking Victorian-freak-show image that the media had portrayed. And, more importantly, it became clear from the very first episode that this had less to do with the stars’ disabilities and much more to do with their universal quest for love.
Ga-ga-ga-ga-gaaaaaaa
Unsurprisingly, dropping by on the show’s Twitter feed after each episode, the theme was much more varied. This might, ordinarily be a good thing — opinion is free after all, and we all have the right to express it within reason in this country– were it not for some of the hateful and ignorant comments that many found so amusing, and many found anything but (though the majority was in good jest and many comments were fair enough — we’re bound to react with a mixture of humour and curiosity when confronted by something totally new; that’s just human nature). And don’t get me wrong, I love a good joke, it’s just…well, these people we’re talking about are disabled. If you fell and banged your head, would you like it if everyone you saw gave you half a glance and proceeded to take the piss? OK, so the fact of the matter is that you might not get it (it’s true that much humour on The Undateables was derived from the morally dubious standpoint that the jokes were sometimes on the stars rather than shared with them) what with the brain-damage or whatever, but is that a good enough reason to bother? Personally, I don’t think so. I just don’t see the point, really. It’s not that I think these people — maybe you, if you’re reading this — are particularly bad human beings, either. I don’t, and it’s a fact that we have all made mistakes and said things while behind our computers which we’d likely not dare say to someone’s face (for example, when I was ten I told a black girl in the queue for lunch that she had hair that looked like it had come out of a vacuum cleaner; a truly despicable comment without any malice and born out of pure innocence which I then regretted for…wait, let me see, the rest of my entire life off and on?). So this isn’t about judging anyone, is my point, like I said, this is just my opinion and opinion is free, do with it what you will.
And this is where we come back to Gaga once again: when we are so very accepting and tolerant of a global superstar and her frequently strange behaviours — a living legend, if you will — then how can we be so totally against the behaviour of an element of society which shares similar foibles? Perhaps it’s something to do with Gaga’s intensely-held vision and how designed it is; an attitude which modern free-thinking has made a kind of philosophy for all in this age of we are all unique. Be different. Look different. Say different. Or perhaps it’s purely a fashion thing: the fact that Gaga merges style, iconography and innovation with the romantic cinematic dreams of every girl (or boy) who wants to be herself. So, OK, it’s true that The Undateables and other disabled/disadvantaged people lack this design of Gaga’s, this pre-emptied vionary status, but what about what they give? In the last episode of the series — see the review here but be warned of spoilers — Kali, who suffers from Williams Syndrome, was one of the standout stars. Kind and abundant with manners, for me, she stole the show and proved that there is one huge, gaping difference between many able-bodied and disabled people: by default, many of the latter simply haven’t learned how to be mean, as is the mark of disabilities (behaviour that has never been learned, rather than behaviour that was once there and later lost). Or, if they have, their skills at implementing this ancient art are considerably lacking when compared directly to the harshness of some others. Quite simply, it may be fair to say that a lot of disabled people — if it’s possible to generalise about such a thing in broad terms — are more in-tune than most when it comes to being kinder.
I’m not a huge Gaga fan, but I’m sure that if she did see this show — who knows, maybe she did and it’s all over the web and wouldn’t I look like a right wally – she’d have wanted to be educated and become more informed (if she wasn’t already). Somehow, I can’t imagine Lady Gaga taking the piss or making some flippant statement sheerly for her own amusement. Maybe we should all try and learn a thing from that, is what I’m saying. I won’t deny it: when Gaga first appeared I was dubious about her everlasting attitude of niceness, but as time moves on, I find myself coming to a more firm conclusion: Gaga is just a person like you and I, and she’s someone who can see the differences, no matter how many millions of dollars she might make.
If you’ve looked to the left or right of the screen then you will have noticed — I mean, it’s impossible not to! — my debut novel standing firm in the background. And this is another reason why I found The Undateables so completely compelling: having written the book to smash stereotypes about disability, depression and facial disfiguration — as well as entertain the kind of readers who fell so head-over-heels in love with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – I felt close to the idea of these people finding their way in the world of love and all the struggles that came with it; not to mention I had also suffered a serious illness, leading to total loss of my legs and a long road to recovery which involved learning to walk completely from scratch. As with the TV series, my book, although very different, also contains a love-interest (and that’s about where the similarites stop to be honest…oh, aside from the lead protagonist having Cherubism and his sidekick Wonky being THE FIESTIEST GIRL IN A WHEELCHAIR AROUND!). Which leads me to ask this final question: why can’t disability and entertainment go hand-in-hand without there being an unsavoury undercurrent?
So let’s try and move forward, people, no? Yes? Maybe? I’d settle for a maybe. All of us do quirky things from time to time — and besides, I’m pretty sure I can name a few people who Sam and Jolene from the series have made jealous with their 5-week-relationship…
(Un)true romance: a tale of supermarket misunderstanding
Real men love Kate Bush so don't listen to your dad, what the hell does he know?
I am one of those people who, every so often, misses out on massive cultural successes, only to discover much later on that…well, that they were successes. In 2003 my reason for considerable shame was the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time — a big inspiration for my novel here which I’m not just trying to shamelessly plug, honest — and many years before that, at secondary school, it was when the big-bad-bully Jason Simons (head the size of a cow) got punched in the face by this really short boy (much smaller head) who everyone said was a virgin (this new word had appeared a few days earlier and nobody knew what the hell it meant; sadly, I was at home faking an illness that didn’t exist and pondering the what seemed to be werewolf-like transformation of the girls at school, I think, and so I missed it all). When I look back, I regret missing the punching success the most — everyone had been saying that the short boy was so weak that the wind could cut him badly, so this revelation that he was capable of horrific violence against people of considerable evil stature meant a tidal wave of excitement for all of us who were pre-pubescent under-dogs. And terrified of the bigger boys with massive heads.
The other one, the book by Mark Haddon, well, that wasn’t my fault at all. Blame my girlfriend at the time. She dumped me six months after she told me about the book, and so the very last thing I was thinking about was returning to her house to go over her reading list. Was it a cleverly orchestrated plan to ruin my life? I find that unlikely. I have seen her in the street since then — we talked just like an episode of Sex and the City — and it was fine. Being the gent that I am, I of course didn’t bring up any of this. Instead, if I remember rightly, we talked about how unfair the world can be, a popular topic with everyone, I think you’ll agree.
Another cultural success I missed out on was Brokeback Mountain, which hit the screens two years later in 2005. I’d like nothing more than to blame my ex-girlfriend for making me miss this as well, but I don’t feel that would be a wise move. Firstly because a) I don’t want her to think that she hurt me as much as she knows she did, and b) I don’t want to hurt the feelings of the girlfriend I had in 2005 by making her think that I was only thinking about my previous girlfriend and her reading list and not my present girlfriend in 2005 (not to mention they both might be reading this, come to think of it, which could spell double-trouble!…Although I don’t have a girlfriend right now, so at least I can’t piss her off, which is nice). As you can see, there was just no way I could have seen Brokeback Mountain when it came out (excuse the pun), nor, to be honest, was I that bothered (weird considering I’m a massive advocate of cowboy boots) about it, as films which attract mass attention often make me run the other way, or at least sit down and drink tea and watch something else. I hoped that the short boy who’d punched the bully was having more luck than me. That he was some kind of mover and shaker or something and had maybe even punched others in the face since the massive-headed bully.
Why is Brokeback Mountain (it’s actually quite good I think) relevant to this post? You might not have been thinking that but I couldn’t be bothered with creating a fascinating intro to this paragraph, so it was much better to just blurt it outright, as with all good writing. The point is that something happened last night which was just like something out of a Brokeback Mountain inspired movie (and not a seedy one, before you start your demented sniggering; I’m talking more a modern indie film). So definitely not such a gay film — it’d be hard to be gayer than BM — but definitely a film which was along those lines. Only infinitely less successful as I was one character and my friend was the other and we are both 100% straight and in no way experienced actors.
How it happened:
Me and my friend had some catching up to do, and so, despite the weather not being warm and it raining very lightly — I refuse to use the word drizzle until I am 50 — we ventured forth into the great outdoors. Not so much Canadian wilderness as a river which ran through a stretch of countryside which was just plain nice by English standards (and without shopping trolleys in the water). It was then, on the way to said river, that we decided to buy a disposable barbecue and have ourselves an early evening feast down by the river, just the two of us. And now I read that back I look at it and think Oh dear, that does sound quite gay doesn’t it? Yet the truth couldn’t be more different. Like I said, we’re both straight — just two straight guys down at the river — and my friend even has a wife and everything. I’m told they are always at the Intercourse and even though my friend has an unhealthy fascination with Kate Bush — I love Kate too — we all know that modern men of the world can like such things and be of the straight disposition.
I just wouldn’t tell some of my other friends in other parts of the UK, is all. I think I’d rather admit to liking The Vengaboys. As long s I’d remembered to bring my sick bucket with me.
So what happened was this: once we had located the disposable BBQ sets, my friend — who I won’t name because he will genuinely kill me if he reads his name on this blog and so will his wife even more so — grabbed 3 because they were on offer: 3 for £9. Sounds like a stupendous deal, right? Consider that just one was £4. But wake up. I quickly stepped in and, being the voice of BBQ reason, said this was bad news, and, rather than being a good deal for us, was actually a carefully-honed technique that the supermarkets used to deviously con money out of us. My friend then put the 3 down and we took just one, he really had no choice. I patted him on the back — in the way that long-time mates can and it doesn’t feel weird at all — and we made our way to the till at the end where you could buy lighters and alcohol.
Jojo LOVES The Number 3 Mystery Book (but she loves her rabbit toy even more)
It was at this point that the friendly debating began, because no sooner had we placed our goods on the counter than my friend and I had entered into a discourse concerning the purchase of a lighter or matches. My friend wanted matches, as he is of the old-school attitude, and I wanted a lighter, because I’m not stupid and don’t generally like wasting my bloody time with ancient technology that doesn’t work as well as lighters. Once I had convinced him that he would be wise to shut up about buying matches, because I would be relentless in my pursuit of the lighter, the lady shop assistant smiled and asked me what colour.
This was when I started to think there was something slightly strange…
The woman — Liz — was only speaking to me, yet she was looking at my friend in a slightly different way… It was almost as if I was an old man who she had to be more formal with, wearing a suit and tie, and my friend was a small bridesmaid in a pretty dress holding a rare orchid which the shop assistant had always wanted to see close-up. I wish I hadn’t thought up that vision, but at least I am grateful I didn’t think of it at the time.
“So which is it to be, then?” said Liz. “The red or the white? We have yellow too. Lots of colours for you two.”
Yes thanks Liz, I thought, I’m not seven years old.
There was then a brief debate about how much the lighters cost, as my friend will debate the price of anything because he’s just a bloody nuisance like that. Once I had told Liz that we would throw caution to the wind and spend a whole 69p, I looked at my friend, and, just at the exact moment when I was about to say “It doesn’t bloody matter just gimme one” he put his right arm around me, leant in and said, “go on, I’ll let you decide this time,” in a highly camp, 100% gay fashion.
Liz winked at me and said: “No problem, I tell you what, how about one that’s nice and bright?”
My friend had by now backed-off. I had shifted slightly to the right to make it clear that this invasion of my private space was bang out of order. Back the hell off”
“Alright then,” I said. I may have done a grunt. Thrust-forth my raw unbridled manliness and all that. “That’s fine.”
“Something you can see in the dark,” Liz said, turning around to get the lighter, and I said, “brilliant.”
Walking back to the car, the worrying thing was that no awkward silence descended between us. So I forged one for necessities sake, and then I told my friend to never do that ever again (this was followed by a brief discussion about how two male friends can no longer buy a disposable BBQ together whilst simultaneously enjoying banter, as it will make said pair look like one of those new-school gay couples who don’t like to be labelled and who do odd things like go and have a BBQ when it’s not the time of the season as deemed by most people). It was all gone in a few moments though and I forgave him with a friendly pat on the back.
You MATTER!
A nice surprise
As of my last post, I’ve written and published 156 unique pieces of content on my ever-growing homepage, and a further 50 or so more — I guess — around the rest of this site; every one has been a joy to create, and even the posts I decided not to publish (sometimes I write things but decide they’re not good enough, and that includes novels too…I have about 5 just sitting around which are more or less total crap) have been a crucial part of it, this learning process which will never stop and slowly unravel to reveal more and more. 156 posts shouldn’t be a landmark, really — it’s definitely an unorthodox number to celebrate on, not that I have ever let that affect me — but the 100th post passed me by and it wasn’t until today, when the above notification showed up in my comment feed, that I realised how much I like blogging and how big a part it is of what I do, of who I am, of what I want to achieve, of where I want to go and what I have experienced (and yes, I know 50 likes isn’t actually that much over a number of years, but unlike on Facebook, my blog doesn’t actively ask you to like it I don’t think, which means these likes are more meaningful, I think, than the casual I’ll-just-press-it likes that can occur on Facebook. It’s easy to lose track of blog posts, I suppose — but then this doesn’t surprise me, and if you know me on a personal level then it will not surprise you either! Every so often I find a 5 or 10-pound-note in a jeans or jacket pocket and am just as amazed as a boy who is seeing his own erection for the very first time, so it makes sense that this ineptitude towards organisation should also seep into my writing life.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the story you will find when you click the image, but it's a cool photo, right? That is one cool dog.
Here’s a list of why you, the reader, matter and why every click on my blog is important:
1) It spurs me on to produce more and do better: don’t get me wrong, I would write no matter what. Back when I first started seriously writing around 8 years ago, nobody read my work and I didn’t care (and when they did eventiually read my work they didn’t care, and I couldn’t blame them). I can remember thinking that the first frantic pages I had written were something akin to good; how laughable…paragraphs running together, sentences a garbled mix of wrong tense and incorrect grammar with terrible word usage that simply made no sense. Now it is no different (the feeling of creation, I mean. I’d like to think my grammar and paragraph structuring and word usage has improved somewhat noticeably, even if you don’t notice it, which, in fact, is the point, right?). Knowing that people are coming back to the blog to read my work makes me smile; it’s not because I need to know people like the work, though, and this is something that is very hard to explain to people who don’t create things themselves. It’s because writing doesn’t really finish its journey until it is consumed, I believe; until it is pulled apart and acknowledged on some level — as good, bad or heinous. Until that point it is merely a sketch of your thoughts inside your head. It is only once it escapes that it turns into a number of other things: inspiration, influence and a powerful tool which can shift and change the way we all perceive the world. Or some such bollocks.
2) Stats help me decipher what I am doing right and wrong: you could argue that statistics are meaningless, just numbers showing a random pattern — if it is a pattern, which is debatable, as stats fluctuate wildly from one day to the next, often making for more confusion than arguable evidence of anything — yet somewhere within them is an honest reflection of what parts of your writing offer greater insight, and what parts fall on deaf ears. I try not to pay too much attention to the stats and write what I want to write — what I enjoy — yet I still find myself analysing what people read the most and where the comments fall. Which is incredibly useful for the following reason…
Sonic: this image is a gate-way to cool ideas, you'll see!
3) …Your comments, likes and clicks tell me where I need to improve, where my thought-processes have taken a tangent too far — I know I am prone to this, but I believe it is the necessity of an iniquisitive mind, which can only ever be a good thing — and where an idea works and doesn’t work. This can then be applied to my novels. When people read my debut novel, The Number 3 Mystery Book, they may not know it but they are reading a giant science-experiment born of the seeds of the ideas conceived on this blog. Without this blog, I highly doubt the book would have evolved into what it is today. I am proud of that novel. Writing it made me smile and laugh as much as writing some of the best of my blog posts, and when I read it back I am reminded, numorously, of the kindness of people. Friends and strangers who have played a part in the writing process of that piece of fiction and others, and kind words which made me continue with the book when often I found myself thinking Does anyone else care about this but me?
4) Writing is an inherently lonely, somewhat tragic — if allowed to be — and ultimately belligerent activity: first there is the feeling that, while writing, I could be doing something else — anything else, preferably with friends, far away from computers and internet connections — and then there is the feeling, while out and about and not writing, that I am missing out on something great and impossible to ignore. That I simply must start writing as soon as possible, less the ideas in my head run out never to return again and the life I have grown to love and cherish be taken away in one fell swoop. It is a race, a battle, a deep and never less than committed attempt to produce something perfect and release it into the world; to leave something behind and make an impact, however tiny. And you, dear reader, you make it all so much easier just by being there. Your support truly does matter and always will, regardless of the shape of the journey ahead. If you like, follow my blog and get a new post in your Inbox every time I write one. And now I think that’s enough of that.
5) You give me ideas: I read all the comments left on my blog and do my best to reply to them all in a timely manner. Comments are by no means critical to a blog’s long-term survival — in fact, they can be downright intimidating sometimes, especially when someone tells you that you are a terrible writer and your blog is utter shit — yet they can be and often are the seed of a chain of thought that turn into a point of interest at a later date. Writing may be a solitary activity, but the influence of writing is reading and prelimarily reading; the intake of ideas, thoughts, smells and sounds. The ideas and concepts of anyone but yourself, in other words: people who see the world you don’t see and allow you a precious insight into things which are, once learned, impossible to ignore. External influence is vital.
6) With every click, the Google ranking of this blog — as with all blogs — climbs gradually up the scale. On a personal level, I couldn’t give a shit, but on a more pragmatic level — and thanks to my freelance copywriter side which is constantly hunting for new business — this ranking is critical. It determines who sees my blog, who reads my work, and will ultimately dictate the size and shape and variety of my readership — of whether I live or die as a career-writer rather than someone who has to write about thrush just to make ends meet. The ranking, which is calculated by a top-secret Google formula, currently stands at 4 out of a possible 10; above average, and I’m happy with that right now. 8, 9 and 10 are more or less impossible to achieve, so a 4 is not too bad at all, it has to be said.
7) The last 6 years have been very, very hard at times (no need to read on if you know all about this already — it’s just more of the same and I would hate to bore you). First there was the pneumonia, blood-poisoning, acute dehydration and sleep paralysis that occurred in 2006 (as some will know, I went into hospital with suspected Meningitis and then found myself experiencing sleep paralysis; a state in which you can sense everything around you as you drift off into near-unconsciousness, but are paralysed and left sinking deeper and deeper into a state not unlike a coma) and then came the second episode in 2009 which almost lost me my legs for good, for a second time in several years, leading to years more of struggle which included various bouts of ME/CFS and all kinds of associated problems (no money, no work, zero motivation — distinctly unlike me). Blogging and writing, it saved me, it breathed the life back into my insular world. It got me through this time of despair and depression, and you, dear reader, you were a valuable part of that oh-so-crucial therapy. Without writing and the kind support of so many fantastic people, I honestly don’t know what I’d have done, so thank you! Thank you and goodbye for now.
The Voice: every-day desperation on a whole new level
Kiefer Sutherland as a vampire from The Lost Boys or a contestant from The Voice. It's hard to tell.
Cinematic history (and books) are rife with shows of desperation we all know and love: there was that bit in Deliverance which I won’t go into here, all the Rocky films whenever Adrian looked at Rocky in that all-too-pathetic yet somehow completely endearing way — especially whenever Rocky opened the door to the pet shop or made a dumb but sweet remark that is still, to this day, timelessely non-sensical — and then there was the entirety of Dirty Dancing, a film I will champion to the day I die even if that’s completely unfashionable for a man to say and possibly the world’s worst idea after recently writing this post (although unlikely, as when that day comes I hope to have other things on my mind other than sweat grimey dancing). Watch closely and you’ll see that there were times when, if Patrick Swayze, had moved just one inch closer to Baby, he’d have set that woman on fire from the crotch straight up…
And now we have The Voice UK – a show which follows the exact same concept of The Voice US (the judges sit with their backs to the contestants and only spin around if they want them for their team, I think) and proclaims to be all about the voice, yet a show where every single contestant, more or less, is really-really-good-looking. A coincidence? Bullshit, my friend! Really, it should be called The Arse, The Legs, or — and this is my favourite – The Really Really Shouty Show. You could also call it The Shafted and Discarded, I suppose — a really good slightly sinister ring to that one, I think — as that’s precisely what happens each and every week, as two desperados battle it out in a kind of boxing ring for children or circus goats and one is accepted and one is sent home to feel misery and despair for probably a lifetime. On second thoughts, maybe The Shafted and Discarded wouldn’t be such an appropriate name for a family TV show. But then, spare a thought for Jessie J’s doing her Manta Ray impersonation…
Sorry Jessie but it's true
If you’ve managed to somehow miss this brand-new british desperation-sensation, then from this point on you can think of The Voice as the place bar-none for really desperate yet really talented people to beg some of the biggest names in pop for a chance to be the next one, maybe two-song wonder (I am feeling generous today). As I remember saying the other day on Twitter – call me a grandad but I refuse to say Tweeted — the contestants on this show are easily on a level of desperation akin to the mutant-cannibals from any number of the remakes of The Hills Have Eyes.
But, much as many people are loving this show, if you’ve been a long-time Britain’s Got Talent and Simon-seriously-square-head-Cowell fan then you’re probably finding The Voice hard to get used to. And who could blame you? The Voice lacks any of the deranged freaky madness of BGT. Here you will find no old men who can juggle Kryptonite with a dolphin over one shoulder and a Meer Kat balancing on the other. Instead, every week you’re subjected to only quality singing and arguments between will.i.am and big-mouthed Essex starlet Jessie J (they are many, and usually consist of Jessie J making some strange facial expression while will.i.am says, for the thousandth time, something about “The Peas,” being influential to world music). The sad fact is, if you’re a fan of every-day people making a total fool of themselves then The Voice will no doubt come as a shocking disappointment. But then, the pay-off is great if you’re looking for quality TV, as every episode of The Voice usually sees at least a few impressive talents discovered.
Here, then, if anyone out there actually cares, are my favourite things about The Voice:
1) How much Tom Jones loves himself. It’s remarkable for a man with hair that’s fuzzy-white just like a manky dog’s.
2) The way the big red chairs swivel round in dramatic fashion. Ooh, gets me every time.
3) The way the camera loves to zoom-in on the judges’ — sorry, coaches’ — hands as they decide whether or not to spin around (usually not if you’re Jessie J, and usually every bloody time if you’re the guy from The Script whose name I can’t remember).
4) The way, when I go round anyone’s house on a Saturday night, they’re always in a mad frenzy to get prepared for when The Voice comes on. Only the other day me and a friend had a brief but tense argument because I had said The Voice was on at 7:30pm and it was actually on at 7pm. The horror! Our plan had been to go and get a cheeseburger and chips before the show so we could settle down with it — on separate sofas, to save any elbow wars at a time when we needed to concentrate to understand what the hell Jessie J was talking about — yet when 7pm struck I found myself being verbally attacked for my ineptitude and the show about to start. No! Still, it didn’t matter. Had this been 1998 we’d have been forced to forego the fast food and sit in silence and stagnating-man-anger, but seeing as it was 2012, we just pressed record and then watched the show when we got back from the chip shop where the scary man works, the man who, if you dare ask him how much something is again, gives you the stare of death and speaks with undisguised disgust. Ah, the beauty of technology, everyone wins…
14 novel writing lessons you simply cannot ignore
It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting down to write your very first novel, or your tenth. Here are a few things I always tell myself — purely my opinion, so I’ll let you decide if they are relevant or not. Who knows, maybe they will come in handy for you:
1) If you think there are no real rules for writing novels and forming structure, you’re wrong: there are hundreds of right ways and wrong ways to do things, but you don’t need to know them all — all you need to know is what works for you. Read a lot, read as much as you can, because if you’re not reading what’s been created before you, you’re not going to increase your knowledge to the level at which you can explode that knowledge, expand on it and produce something genuinely worthwhile that the world really needs.
2) Words are organic. They are just words. Stop getting attached to words, it’s ridiculous. Losing 100 pages of your debut novel may be the best thing that can ever happen to you. You’ll fight to get it back, and if you make it past that then you can do anything. N-E-THING.
3) Write novels, spend months slaving, then never, ever look at them again. It’s not a waste. Not every single book you write, at least in the very beginning, will be worthwhile. Just because you wrote something doesn’t mean that you should publish it. Publish a novel that you know in your heart isn’t good enough, and you’re only making the already tough journey harder than it needs to be. Above all, trust yourself.
4) Don’t just read what you love to write. Reading different genres allows you to understand the methods and madness intrinsic to every type of writing. Romance books will teach you how to tackle emotion, while thrillers will teach you speed, pacing and tight sentences. Read literary fiction and you’ll soon learn what you can and cannot get away with, experimentally speaking. Read non-fiction: it is essential, and once you’ve absorbed enough of it you’ll be able to merge the boundaries between what’s real and what’s not in a way that would have been impossible before. Your words won’t just jump off the page, they’ll grab your reader round the throat and make their heart bloody race.
5) Stop reading over your first draft over and over again. It is nothing less than a waste and, worse, mental torture that will dog you of inspiration and threaten to destroy the entire process. Once you have written your novel, leave it and don’t touch it, don’t even look at it for at least 2 months. Maybe more. Zadie Smith — author of the wildly successful White Teeth and absolutely stunning On Beauty — once said that you should leave your novel years before you look at it again. I tend to agree, although I may get run over tomorrow, so I prefer to leave it a minimum of 2 months.
6) Be prepared for people to despise your work. Be prepared for reason-less hate and constant criticism about everything you’re trying to convey. Polarizing opinion can be great. Fuck it, it doesn’t matter anyway. Every single new idea that was ever produced began life as something which someone, somewhere, despised. New ideas are always hated: they are the uncomfortable notions of progress and should be championed. Without them, you’re just following others. Think about it: what’s more disgusting, refusing to move your bag so someone else can sit next to you on the train, or writing a novel which makes people really think and consider?
7) People will tell you You can’t write a novel in a few weeks, it takes years. That’s nonsense born out of total ignorance, pure and simple. Providing you have a concept, or the seed of an idea, you can write a book as fast as you can put words down. Even if you don’t: remember, there are no rules.
8) It’s OK to keep changing your mind and going from one idea to the other and back again. This IS healthy. It may not feel like it, and your creative writing teacher may find it unnatural, but your mind is turning the idea over and over, round and round, and that is natural. Waiting and considering many ideas allows the most important ones to rise to the top. Don’t fight this process, and if you’re too set on an idea then maybe it’s too easy. If you’re not challenged when writing, what will your readership think?
9) Swearing is OK, as long as the words hold purpose. Swear words have been part of literature since whenever that start was. A good writer will use them correctly, lending each one the attribute the power it deserves. A good writer will also use them incorrectly and somehow make it work.
10) Tense, rules about grammar, and everything you read in some generic internet article can be ignored — if you know why you are ignoring them.
11) If you want to write a book, you must begin sometime. If you enjoy writing, do it. If you don’t, then go and do something else instead.
12) Tackle big, scary, frightening ideas. Don’t ever not write something because you think that someone might be offended.
13) You must allow others to read your work.
14) Keep calm. The words will come, just get the ideas in your head straight first: what are you trying to say?
Chris, you’re such a mantraitor!
Woes of an old-fashioned mantraitor
It’s happened a few times over the years: I’ve started out innocently making a point about something completely fair and normal — usually after being set-upon by my male friends and backed into a corner and forced to swear my way out — and ended up being called a traitor to the entire male race; just because I said women were better at some things than men. A mantraitor, if you like. A penis-hating, woman-loving-mantraitor! (And before anyone goes and takes that sentence out of context, I love my own penis, and women — and not at all in that weird way that some men seem to be both gay and man-hating but yet also man-loving, if you get what I mean. My God this has got so confusing…I am now feeling paranoid and sure I’ve made a technical mistake somewhere…I just re-read these last few lines and am almost certain that one of my male friends is going to turn it around, mention this post and make me look and feel ridiculous in a crowded public place.) And I suppose you can’t blame my male friends for saying this. I do very often find myself defending the sensibilities of women in a way which may come across as if I am possessed by the spirit of an early, adamant hardcore burn-the-bra feminist (even though I’ve never read Jane Austen or read anything much by Germaine Greer, and once, as a twelve-year-old who was just discovering that girls were really quite attractive, rudely slammed a door in front of an approaching pram-wielding mother and didn’t even look back or anything, so there). Why do I defend women like this? You shouldn’t need to ask why. Women are, quite simply, generally better at doing a number of things, such as:
1) Listening and offering constructive advice. I mean really listening to you. Even if what they say after this advice — the advice usually being words of wisdom with meaning and truth so deep that you feel all naked as if your emotions have been spilling out of you for the last several days — hurts like a harpoon straight through the heart. But the pain doesn’t last for long, of course, because many millions of women have the naturally fantastic ability to follow this up with a beautiful smile that makes it all seem alright. Some of these smiles have even been known to make me a) eat food I usually detest and would never normally consider consuming or buying and b) buy and wear daft-looking clothes which I later regret (but cannot take back to the shop because the woman in question has cunningly kept the receipt…oh, they play their games).
Germaine, just hanging out
2) Wearing skirts, dresses and things. They’re amazing at doing this and I don’t see any man arguing with me here. And don’t question this point: I do not and have never spent any amount of time looking at men wearing these garments. Sorry, wearing these garments!
3) Lending you money if you really need it: ever needed five pounds really badly? Or twenty-five pounds? Maybe the desire to have a cheeseburger has overwhelmed you, or you’ve left your wallet at home and your Taxi driver is staring at you with big Eastern European — or any other country’s, it’s not as if I’m generalizing here after watching Hostel parts 1 and 2… — eyes that say, quite clearly, it’s the money or your fucking legs. In either situation, you do NOT want to be surrounded by shrugging selfish male friends who have absolutely zero sympathy and a sudden and total lack of funds. I wonder how many men would have diedcrawled home had not a woman been around to save the day. Who knows, you might not have even been reading this blog!
4) Being realistic, but in a way which doesn’t make you hate the world and everyone in it: OK, so as with all these things there are exceptions to the rule, but the fact is that most of my male friends are realistic in a bitterly crushing way. If I ever want to be told something with truth and honesty, I usually put this to a female friend. Not burdened with a penis that bashes around in their pants and causes them discomfort and makes for angry-man-syndrome — I know I’ve had this, we’ve all had this — they are able to deliver their opinion in a much nice way. Unless they are on their period, in which case it can be devastating. But they always say sorry after so it’s OK.
5) Watching horror films. A lot of women will claim they’re scared of horror films yet there you can sit, quietly watching Eden Lake and being comforted by your female friend that everything will be alright in the end (it won’t. It genuinely, really, won‘t. In fact, I strongly suggest you do not watch Eden Lake if you’re scared easily. And that’s another great thing about women right there. A woman might read this and take it for what it’s worth, accepting that my knowledge of horror films is enough to be a stern warning, whereas many men might read this and say “Bollocks! I ain’t scared!” and then go and watch Eden Lake and give themselves nightmares for the next 3 months).
6) Hording receipts and paper files which, if you don’t keep them safe, will one day soon come and bite you right in the arse and make you wish you hadn’t lived (hello there Inland Revenue!): hording, as you probably already know — we all know thick people are largely allergic to this blog — is a very strange and unsettling condition where you keep literally everything you come into contact with. Even oxygen. You keep oxygen in tanks and stare at it all day. Not really. And back to hording. A good demonstration of this was the Channel 4 documentary which featured a man who lived in a house made only of tunnels between stuff he had horded for many, many years. Most women aren’t anywhere near this bad, of course — not that I have been in most women’s houses…this is just an educated guess — but they are absolutely bloody brilliant with paper-work and receipts for the most part (or maybe they’re just quite good and it’s the contrast between us hopeless men that makes them look so good. Either way, they win small hands down). This is great when you are a man who is utterly hopeless, such as myself. Not a fine combination when you run a business where recording everything you do is the best way to go…
7) Planning more or less anything.
8) A million other things. Please leave a comment if you feel so inclined.
Growing-up with an unusual name!
Stranger/friend-of-a-friend I have known for a while and they really should know my name by now: “So what’s your name again?”
“I just told you what my name is.”
“I know. But tell me again.”
Big sigh, then I say: “Chris Pink.”
That irritating pause.
They shake their head: “What?”
I say nothing. They don’t really mean What? I am sick of this conversation; the apparent disbelief, the repeating it to make sure someone heard right, the repetition of it all. Like anyone out there with a slightly oscure name will be all too well aware, it’s been going on my entire life…
Then their eyes light up (but their eyes don’t really light-up, they’re not a werewolf or something; they just seem to grow bigger as their eyebrows raise slightly) and they say: “But not really. I mean, not really. Nobody’s called Pink.”
Yes — they — are. And you’re bloody looking at him!
It’s always someone with a really normal name saying this; it’s like we exist in two completely different dimensions and have just been thrown together for the day for some cruel, intergalatical game.
I usually then walk away. Unless I’m on a bus and I can’t, in which case I turn away (unless to my right are two teenagers kissing with hideous full-body-motion. Then I just stare up at the ceiling and shut my eyes until I feel able to re-open them). I’ve given up with staring at people with hatred, hoping this will register and convey my point. My face lacks expression when I do this: I know because I have given myself this face in the mirror — you need to practise when you have an odd name like I do — and it just looks like I’m a wax statue. No wonder my tormentors find it funny.
This conversation has played out since a young age (and don’t even get me started on all the nick-names…I was going to print a full list here but I decided against it in the end after I had Pinky, Stinky, Pinkywinky and Dinky…).When I was 5 or 6, I remember other children finding it funny in a good way, especially when register was called in Assembly and it meant everyone laughed and it really annoyed the adults (in those days you had to sit down with your legs crossed and only the appalingly old teachers — some as ancient and decrepit as 40 — were allowed to sit on real plastic seats behind us; hair falling off their heads, those awful long wrinkled, saggy faces of despair. Presumably because their backs were so weak that sitting on the floor would force their skeletons to cave in on themselves). My name won me a lot of friends back then and got me invited to a lot of very cool parties; parties where the birthday cake was a giant chocolate hedgehog with chocolate fingers for spikes (or a giraffe with a swiss-roll for a body and hand-made chocolate stilts for legs, my favourite!). After this came an odd time of transition; a time of indifference towards my name — from about the age of 9 or 10, when sarcasm had creeped into the playground but nobody actually knew what sarcasm was (it was like we all had a super-power but we never knew when we were using it, unless a teacher got angry, which meant we very much did know).
Then came the BIG one. As puberty approached and language like Virgin, Sex! and other ruder words became the insults of choice (if you admitted you were a Virgin nobody would speak to you for the rest of lunch-break and it was awful) my name took on a sinister new meaning and started to get tangled up with all kinds of things which made going to school an annoying thing to do: things like Pink being a girly colour, a Pinkie being a little finger which was also a bad name for a small penis — no comment — and these:
A) Pink = flowers
B) Pink = feminine
C) Pink = everything that being a teenage boy is not about. Well, at least not for me. I loved the kiss-chase with the girls, even if they hated it because I was a massive Virgin
So, from the age of about 13 to 17, I couldn’t go for more than about twenty minutes without someone reminding me that my name was either feminine, flower-like or a bit girly. Oh, and the small-penis-thing (that alone has taken about twenty years to shrug off…I dread the day that I run into a childhood friend at the supermarket).
Then came that part of childhood — actually this probably started when we were about 12 — where we all learned that people existed who liked the same sex as themselves. More than liked, LOVED! They did rude things and everything; lived in houses and all that stuff. It wasn’t like we hadn’t known this fact before (our sex education teacher had alluded to the bum being only for one thing and at the time nobody had a bloody clue what he was talking about apart from a boy called Rude Steven who was a serious skankmonger; my God how the teachers hated his skankmongerish ways…) it was just that as we were getting older, aspects of the world were becoming more crystalised and real somehow — like zombies moving out of the fog and becoming real things we all knew like walls and doors and girls who were mean and wouldn’t let you touch their bum during kiss-chase. The skirted spoilsports.
So for a few years, thanks to some bloody vikings from a thousand years ago (I am told this is where my name may originate) I had to contend with other children who thought that I had chosen my own surname; yes, I chose this name because I thought it was such a good idea and enjoyed being tormented on a daily-basis.
Children.
But it did get better one day. It got SO MUCH BETTER, pretty much over-night. Because following the horrible years of being likened to flowers and gays and small penises — usually in that order — there came that most excellent of times when girls realised that Pink was actually quite a cool name and that, if they were to marry me, they TOO could have this name! Their children could have this name! Suddenly their lives would be complete!
Ever since then it’s been bloody brilliant, frankly. Not brilliant enough to land me a stunner of a wife yet, but brilliant nonetheless, and that’ll do for me. At least until I can convince someone to buy into my legacy. Hmm…
Liked this? My debut novel is available at Amazon US and Amazon UK. Check a review out here! If you live in the UK then you can buy a paperback copy here (email me if you’d like one and you live anywhere else) and if you’d like to read the first 2 chapters, head over to here.
The meanies
A meanie, lurking in the grass...
There have been times when I haven’t blogged for months, weeks when I’ve blogged repeatedly, and days when I’ve slaved over posts for hours…only to eventually delete them. All of it has been in some way worthwhile, insightful, or poignant. My favourite part of any blog is adding comical tags at the end. See this blog for a fine example.
But it doesn’t feel like that when the meanies descend…
Who are the meanies? Well, along with sounding like the kind of devious characters who might appear in a Roald Dahl book, they are the people who lurk out there, who, every now and again, drop by my and other peoples’ blogs to write a truly malicious comment.
Here are a few reasons why I believe the meanies do this (this is just speculation: Chris Pink does not endorse hanging out with meanies, even for research purposes!):
67: If you are of a certain disposition, it feels good — wonderful, even — to tap a few keys and know that the direct effect of that act will be short-term misery for the owner of the blog. It’s the internet equivalent of stuffing a used baby’s nappy into the exhaust of someone’s brand-new car.
Sausage dogs: attention. Writing something nasty is bound to get you some of this. And it doesn’t matter if it’s negative. Attention is attention after all!
X: the meanies do not like or appreciate being confused. Confusion is a personal insult. When a writer such as myself uses 67, Sausage dogs and X to name a list — for no real reason other than it amused him — which the more conventionally minded would do as 1,2,3, they feel surging rage and need to vent it. This one I can just about understand actually, but still, do you really need to be mean? Answer: what a stupid question.
I don’t recall the exact comment which was the genesis of this blog post, but I believe it went something like You should never write a blog again. Your writing is the worst thing I have ever seen. It’s just horrible.
Meanie tip number 253: You don’t always have to swear to be a meanie. Short sentences will do the trick, along with no exclamation marks to make it sound really flat and emotionless and difficult to interpret (is this a joke or serious?).
Do I care? I couldn’t give a shit. OK, for about twenty minutes when it happened I was perplexed and slightly wounded — actually, a good 2 minutes of that were spent being more than slightly wounded, then it passed — but after that I remembered that people can and frequently do do the most hideous things. Granted, on the Hideous Things Scale the comment was harmless enough — it definitely wouldn’t rate in Zambia, or during a drought where an internet connection miraculously appeared out of nowhere — but in the land of literary insults it still made an impact.
Nowadays, I’ve developed a thick enough skin to not allow these kind of malicious comments to hurt me. Plus, it’s actually quite amusing when you think of some sad meanie sitting there all happy at the deranged thought of hurting someone else. Fancy slinging me a horrific comment? I dare you. Go on, why not see how inventive you can be?
And here’s the punchline: I will just delete it!