Not Dead Yet
But soon, perhaps?
Author Archive
Oh, I heard
Thanks (all of you) for telling me the Beasthouse is closing. Despite once attempting to catalogue all of Lawrences’ written output (Which I think you can find on the Internet Archive and still on Wikipedia) I won’t be bothering this time. Lawrence is doing his level best to irritate and alienate his fanbase, his readers and everyone else. Let me be clear - I am a rabid Lawrence Miles fan, but he’s infuriating!.
I don’t buy one volume in his ‘About Time’ series purely because I wanted to read the Season 25-26 Volume first (The Final one, natch) - but he pulls out thanks to arguing with Tat Wood. He kills the Beasthouse for some unknown reason, the same why he will probably kill the ‘Doctor Who’ thing and killed the ‘Top Ten Countdown’ two years ago. It’s as if the second he realises that notoriety or even the notion of an admiring Fanbase emerges, he immediatley shies away from it - despite needing those same people to continue to read his damnably good books.
Oh and I’m sure in the June entry he wrote something about not being a homophobe. He bloody well is.
Edinburgh 2007
Edinburgh, City of Gingers, Goths and Beautiful Architecture. I could die happy there, oh yes I could.
I have:
Traversed the Falkirk Wheel in a Boat, twice
Ridden a Horse (For the first time!) up and down a mountain
Been in the depths of Mary King’s Close
and the Heights of Edinburgh Castle
Stood in the centre of the debating chamber of the Scottish parliament
Sat staring at the future in a rotating planetarium
Saw ‘Knocked Up’ (It’s not very good, by the way)
Stared at some Goths
Lordy. I need some sleep. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.
Urban Scrumping
David Barrow used to be a stockbroker, but he’s given up on all that to write his great novel - something set in history, about a lost soul, something that’d make Martin Amis wet with jealousy. There’s a few problems. He knows nothing about history - for one, then there’s his wife. She’s determined to make him fail so she can go back to being the wife of a rich stockbroker, and his drug dealer’s been replaced with someone not altogether convincing…
Urban Scrumping features
Me (Sadly) as David Barrow,
the Tolerant Rachel Warnes as Serena
and the Brilliant Sam Johnson as Mike.
DOP: Matthew Long
Sound: Laura Adams (with no help from my godawful ATR 55)
Written, edited and directed rather shamefully by me*, it was rejected for the Channel 102 August 2007 screening.
* note to self, create more pseudonyms.
Breaking the Seal
Being a Size 12/13 in a shoe size means that your choice of shoe is limited to whatever charitable slave-worker in the far east makes an oversized shoe that Nike decide to sell anyway, working men’s boots, or the sort of shoe that’s advertised in a black and white advert in the back page of the Sun, on alternate days between that and the Oreck Upright Wonder-Vacuum.
That’s not the worst of it. I have rather… ‘picky’ feet. When the other kids were wearing PU-Lined school shoes, at a tenner a throw - I had to stay with a full leather upper because the plastic made my feet sweat so bad, I wandered home from Middle School with Trench Foot. So I’ve always had to wear twice as expensive, leather coated shoes with decent support.
Sole Trader in Norwich used to sell Caterpillar brand shoes, (My regular reader may care enough to know that it was the Dominator range), which happened to go up to 14. Every year, I’d dash off to Norwich and get a new pair ordered in, and that was the total extent of my shoe-buying.
Then I moved to University where the Sole Trader was staffed by drooling morons. Who charged twice the price as in the Norwich store. Suddenly my £55 shoes were going for £130. So I switched to trainers, because Canterbury has a large Sports & Soccer with a large trainer section. I have bought comfortable trainers for the last three years at £13 a throw. My problems were solved.
Except I hate trainers. Always have, worse still, my toes are beginning to show the age-old symptom of overlong trainer use – they’re turning in toward each other.
For the last three months I’ve been on a quest to find new shoes. So off to Norwich I went. Sole Trader has now become ‘Sole’ (ZOLE if you read the font as if it was English, anyway), and has moved to trendy new Shopping centre Chapelfield full of people snorting Starbucks and lounging about in jeans so tight they might as well be a Ballet outfit.
It’s designed like a maze, faux-beech panels swoop in circles, creating a rounded maze, each with a separate genre of shoe. The dirty look from the haircut I got behind the counter suggested that I probably wasn’t welcome. The screams from the footwear on the shelves confirmed it – It was a cornucopia of Velcro trainers in leather, cowboy boots which slice your ankles off and shoes that taper to such a point you look like the court fucking jester.
I didn’t go back.
Today, two months later, I steeled myself for a second (and final) go. Any failure today and I’d be consigned to wear those retarded shoes from the back of the sun, trainers and of course, going barefoot.
My brain remembered something, half dead in the annals of time, that Clarks did a foot measuring service. Bending down and checking how bad my feet were baking in the summer sun (I’d showered, but still, it was very hot today). I thought I’d go in, and if there wasn’t anything in a decent size and price, I’d demand to have my foot seen to by the greatest foot-mind in the store.
On the way in, lying teasingly on the specials rail (End of line, £30 off!) I noticed a well-made pair of brown brogues. I had seen my Cousion-in-law (and former colleague) wearing a pair of Brown shoes, and imaging them to be the new en-vogue I examined them further. Weirdly, they had similar tailoring to the old Caterpillars, and as opposed to the usual Moccasin style that Clarks make so well (and so awfully, who in their right mind would wear a pair of shoes that make you look as if you’re wearing a pair of rain bowls stitched by a 12 year old?). They were also, Size 11. I assume the sun had boiled part of my brain, the part that understands that 11 is TWO SIZES BELOW 13. So LIKE A MENTALIST I tried them on.
And they fit.
The bastards actually fit! Once you were past the threshold, they were comfortable as gloves! Oh sweet lord, they were amazing. They fit me, actual shoes that fit me, the joy of the moment is impossible to explain in prose.
But then horror. I, Me? Couldn’t certainly pull off brown shoes? I’m barely capable of communicating things in words and sentences, let alone brown shoes!
The shoes were on the specials rail, which meant that there wasn’t any chance of there being different sizes or anything else for that matter. Well, I’d not come this far without exhausting all of my options, so damnit, after perusing the handbags for a while (I’d thought there was men’s shoes in that asile too, and I couldn’t just wheel round – it’d have made me look like a fool), I stomped up to a guy and asked.
A second later he produced a pair of black shoes, same style, last pair in the store, size 11. On they went, and aside from tightness in the heel, they were wonderful. So I wore them for the rest of the day. (Yes, my heels are sore from the rubbing, No, I don’t care).
Joyfully, I have broken the shoe-seal, and I can’t say I’m anything other than happy.
And yes. I am the sort of person who would prefer to stare at a wall of handbags instead of making it look like I made a mistake.
Tuesday 2.0
and with any luck I shall be signing the contracts for my new Pimping flat. (Pimpflat v2.0). Therein I shall be enjoying extortionate rental rates, paying bills and looking for a job, all whilst studying. Either way, I’m moving to London!
Now. Someone fancy giving me a job?
52/6 #9 - #12
Extracted by my paper diary.
# 9 15 / 8 / 07 - East of Eden by John Steinbeck
I curse the name of the teachers who felt ‘Of Mice and Men’ was below me at school. I condemn those who fed me the agony of Atwood, Golding and Shakespere whilst all the time, the dyslexics and the lumpenproletariat luruxiated in the work of this great man. Today I have read a truly great novel and I am humbled by it.
# 10 18 / 8 / 07 - Animal Farm by George Orwell
For my birthday I asked for the Complete works of Orwell, I’d left it on my shelf until now, Lord can that man write. On a tangental note - has anyone noticed that people describe Facist states as ‘Orwellian’, despite Orwell’s strict stance as a Democratic socialist. It’s somewhat of a cruel irony that his name in death has come to mean what he stood against in life.
# 11 19 / 8 / 07 - Burmese Days by George Orwell
Christ, what a miserable book.
# 12 21 / 8 / 07 - The Brentford Triangle by Robert Rankin
I’d promised myself a light read after crawling through two and a half Orwell novels. It was like a cool breeze during a heatwave. If I’m not very well behaved, I might take a sojurn through all of Rankin’s work. I had promised myself that whilst I wouldn’t discount re-reads from the challenge, I’d be a lazy person if I delved into safe territory.
Reading Meme
Purloined… Haha, Loin… from Professor Scott
# What are you reading right now?
I, Claudius by Robert Graves, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Dr Iain West’s Casebook by some nobody, Gravity’s Rainbow & The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon and Ulysees by James Joyce
# Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with all that?
I’ll probably want to die, if not, then I’ll find something easy, like a Robert Rankin to melt away my brain over my holiday in Edinburgh.
# What magazines do you have in your bathroom right now?
The last two months of SFX (The Bumblebee Cover and the Star Trek cover, or ‘The one in which I was horribly misquoted and still haven’t been contacted about my free bloody book). This month’s Sky magazine and one of the Evening Standard Saturday supplements with Kate Nash on the cover, sent to me by one of Rachel’s best friends, despite the one time I met her, I managed to make a bloody awful impression.
# What’s the worst thing you were ever forced to read?
Everything at school was an unbelievable chore, but I’ll single out The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood as the worst novel I’ve ever read, which has probably irrevocably damaged my perception of feminist literature from that batty, wizened old hag.
# What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone?
Snuff Fiction by Robert Rankin is the man’s magnum opus.
# Admit it, the librarians at your library know you on a first name basis, don’t they?
Sadly Lowestoft library has been turned into a wretched place where they try to encourages proles to read. As a consequence, it has a ‘Chillout’ zone, a ‘Chat Zone’, a ‘Teen Zone’ - various painted areas of the gloriously 60’s brutal open space, which means that I can choose to park my bum on any number of multicoloured sofas, flick through a meagre CD and DVD rack, or sod all else really, because there’s not one sodding book left in the place.
Not even excepting the time I found the fat mentalist wanking himself to death in the erotic section of Ottakars’ Norwich (Why are they always sandwiched inbetween the Sci-Fi and the Chick-Lit?), I have always enjoyed the visceral, audible experience of buying a book, clutching it as I go home and reading it, owning it and buying and constructing shelves to house them.
# Is there a book you absolutely love, but for some reason, people never think it sounds interesting, or maybe they read it and don’t like it at all?
I spent the bulk of my childhood failing to convince people to read Snuff Fiction by Robert Rankin, my adult life will probably be occupied with me trying to do the same with East of Eden by John Steinbeck
# Do you read books while you eat? While you bathe? While you watch movies or TV? While you listen to music? While you’re on the computer? While you’re having sex? While you’re driving?
No. I read on the throne.
# When you were little, did other children tease you about your reading habits?
Mercilessly. Either I was reading Robert Rankin novels, which I laughed so loud at that I was known as a weirdo, and obviously any Sci-fi in my hand banned me from polite society.
# What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down?
Probably ‘East of Eden’. But I was reading it during a night shift. I couldn’t go home and sleep at the time.
Jokes You Should Never tell at a Wedding
(1 of an infinite series).
At the dinner table, during a quiz, during which there are stick-packets of both white and brown sugar on the table, should you pick two of each up, mingle them, and by grasping the brown in one hand and the white in the other, say ‘For ten points, which socio-political movement from the 80’s is *this*
Urban Scrumping
went into the postbox today. It got me to thinking about something Siobhan Curran discusses a few times, about the dichotomy between those who feel that before they can create, they should have knowledge of what to do - she expresses it thus “I wish I could do X artwork, but I don’t know how to work Photoshop’. The opinion being that without this mental barrier in their head, more people would just do stuff.
See, I don’t agree. I can’t find a decent way to express it thus, but I’ll do my hamfisted best. I wanted to push myself by writing a show outside of my comfort zone with material that I knew wouldn’t appall other people into not being. Statutory died on it’s arse, thrice, because of various actor-based drop outs, and as a consequence the show that I put body & soul into writing remains a series of word documents sat on my hard-drive. Consequently I wrote a show about middle-class angst without a necessarily ’strong’ TV show format (It’s a serial, the journey of our central character during his writers’ journey, of which Part one is merely the beginning) and in my head, the show looks amazing, sounds amazing and has a crisp and sharp colour pallette.
Now, following the ‘just do it’ method, I threw myself into it, blundering about like an idiot and making life three or four times more difficult with the result that the show does not look how it is in my mind. I’d like to rebut Curran’s theory another way - imagine as a child I was obsessed with drawing tables. Now I drew the world’s greatest table using pencil and paper. It looks something like this:
___________
| |
| |
| |
——————
Yeah, so whilst in my mind’s eye, I’ve drawn the world’s greatest table, the imagination / expression dicohtomy has meant that whilst all you see is a rectangle, I see my magnum opus. How the hell do I convey that to you, unless I’ve been taught how to express what I see in my head properly?
The same thing happened during the shoot. I had the magnificent help of a crew (real bloody people!) for the ‘Drug Dealer’ scene, which is why it looks a million times better then the ‘house’ stuff, credit going to Matt Long and Laura Adams for coming out on the sunniest day of the year and spending it indoors with me giving orders. But the video came out grainy and uncoloured, thanks to the way that I had unknowingly set the camera up, and the following day, my precious, shiny shotgun microphone (An Audio-Technica ATR55, Fact fans) broke after only one other shoot. I was heartbroken, having my iSight camera poking out of shot for the ‘desk’ scenes paled in comparison to that beauty, who I shall be replacing (probably upgrading, since the ATR55 seems to have shoddy build quality) soon, but not after I’ve submitted U.S. to New York with Godawful sound.
My whinge has trailed off a little, but in general, what I’m saying is that there are some things in this world which have to be taught, learned and understood, and you can’t simply (I should rephrase. I can’t simply) throw myself into it with all the expectation in the world and expect miracles.
Oh, and don’t buy an Audio-Technica ATR55. They’re shit.
