Night Terrors

Having cut out the wonder-weed along with the demon weed, I find that I am dreaming rather vividly at the moment. Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me. Well, desired me. But it was a friend of mine, so it was a bit odd. She came into my room and lay on top of me, on top of my duvet too, so that I couldn’t move. Then she kissed my face repeatedly and told me she’d had an erotic dream about me. I told her she’d better go because I was becoming aroused.

Then I dreamt that Tony Soprano was whipping me with a chain. I tried to crawl away but I realised that this might anger him further, so I crawled back into whipping range, and he continued to whip me, mercilessly.



Then I dreamt about kittens. Lots of dreams about kittens. One in particular about two kittens, one of which was grouchy and unplayful, the other of which was your classic frolicking kitten. I chastised the grouchy one, grabbing it roughly and shouting at it. ‘Why can’t you be like the other kitten?’ I yelled in its miserable face.

Then a fox hissed at me and another cat coolly caught a pigeon, wrapping its jaws quite savagely around its neck. The pigeon did not resist. It barely moved, just accepted its pain, blinking calmly.



What can it all mean?

In a couple of weeks, I’m going to get hold of an anti-smoking pill that apparently has vivid dreaming as a side-effect. I can’t wait. The scarier, the better.

Now I must attempt to write something amusing. In the last month, three new writing opportunities have arisen through this blog, a couple of them very interesting, one not so much. The one I’m about to embark on now is potentially extremely interesting. No money at the moment, but you never know where these things might lead. You know? You never know.

Pleasant Tuesday to you. Blessings be upon you.

Bête de Jour :: Tested On Animals

Stan :: Oy! Cedric. Here, look. It's a book.




Stan :: Psssst! Cedric! Come on, I've opened it for you. You'll like this bit. It's got a cat in it.

Paddy :: [Appearing in the room quite suddenly, like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn.] What are you doing?

Stan :: Oh. Um... nothing. I was just trying to get Cedric to review my book. I thought he might like it, but... I don’t know think he can read.

Paddy :: Of course he can read. He’s nearly 11. He just can’t read in his sleep. You can see that he’s sleeping, right?

Stan :: I know, I was trying to coax him awake with my words.

Paddy :: Don’t be silly. Wake him up. He likes books. Here, I’ll do it....




Cedric :: What the…? Get your stinkin’ hands off me! I was ‘aving a snooze!

Paddy :: Come on, Cedders. Uncle Stanley’s written a booky-wook. Settle down and have a little read.

Cedric :: A fuckin’ what? What are you, four years o--




Cedric :: Can’t breathe! Can’t breathe! Let go of me neck, you bastard!

Stan :: Just read the sodding book, Cedric, you illiterate swine! Or at least pretend to. You can do that, can't you?




Cedric :: You are going to die.

Paddy :: No, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Maybe just a shot of him admiring the cover, as if he’s just read the book and is milling it over.

Stan :: Mulling it over. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me.

Cedric :: My laser eyes are burning into your soul.

Stan :: I know! Have you got any Marmite?

Cedric :: Any what now?

Stan :: I know a trick with Marmite.

Paddy :: I think so. Let me check.

[He checks.]

Not really, but I’ve got this old jar of Vegemite. That’ll do, won’t it?

Stan :: Yeah, yeah, it’s all the same. Now, spread a bit of it on the cover and get him to lick it off. It’ll be like he’s saying, ‘Mmmmm, Bête de Jour. Good enough to eat.’ And see if you can get him to scrunch his face up like Michael Winner’s.




Paddy :: There you go, Lord Cedley. Lovely Marmite on the lovely book. Mmmm. You like Marmite.




Cedric :: Do I look like a mug to you? Or a dog maybe? Have you mistaken me for a dog? Is that it? That is not Marmite.

Stan :: Shove his nose in it!




Cedric :: NNNff!

Stan :: That’s it. Now scoot off and let me get the money shot.




Cedric :: But this is not Marmite. This is an inferior product. Is anybody listening to me?




Cedric :: Ah, bollocks to this….

Stan :: Stupid cat. Why has he got paint on his back?

Paddy :: He’s not stupid. He’s just got good taste. And that’s not paint.

Stan :: Yeah, well. Whatever.



Bête de Jour :: The Intimate Adventures of an Ugly Man (wipe-clean cover included.)

Feedback Monday :: Sick

bulk :: bulky
booze :: none
tobacco :: none
healthy food :: none
exercise :: none
teeth fixed :: none
spirits :: low
days to deadline :: 25
panic threat level :: substantial
unpleasant change threat level :: substantial

I’ve just returned from a failed attempt to trek South to get my broken tooth fixed. It took me over an hour to get to London Bridge, where I had to catch a train the rest of the way. But of course, there were no trains. Because of the snow. So I came home. Miserable. I’m sick of this winter. February sucks.

Yesterday was meant to be the beginning of another fresh start for me. I was going to join another gym and sort myself out. Get back on track. Back on the horse. All that. But for two reasons, it didn’t happen.

The first reason is that I am sick. It started last week and is currently at its zenith. It’s mostly throat-based, which means that I have a hacking, wheezing, slicing, rasping, burning, vicious bastard of a cough and am producing repugnant green phlegm at a rate of approximately four litres an hour. (I exaggerate.) The other reason is that with less than a month to finish this book, the panic is beginning to set in and I realise that I need to work every hour that the good Lord sends if I’m going to be able to do it. In fact, if I’m honest, I don’t think I’m going to be able to finish it at all.

In fact, I’m definitely not.

Nah, just kidding. I really only wrote that last bit because it gives me a tiny bit of pleasure to freak out the publisher lady. She gets jittery. Don’t worry, publisher lady, I’ll definitely finish it. But it will be shit.

Kidding! It will be magnificent.

So. Instead of the gym, what I’ve decided to do is get back to basics and make like Max Cady in his prison cell.



I’m talking press-ups and sit-ups on the kitchen floor. Max Cady had a pilates balls, didn’t he? Well, me too, and I’m not afraid to use it.

This weather though. It's really unpleasant. I wish London was just a little more robust when it comes to dealing with snow. Where are the grit trucks of yesteryear? Where is the Blitz spirit?

This morning I saw a cat stuck on a shed roof a couple of gardens away. It was stuck in about five or six inches of snow and too scared to walk along the fence it would usually walk along to get down because the fence it would usually walk along to get down had disappeared under five or six inches of snow. I don’t know what happened because I had to head South to get my tooth fixed. I hope it's OK and indoors somewhere. Cats shouldn't be out in the snow.

Rotten day.

I hope you’re having a better one.

Seconds Out :: Year Two

Someone said to me the other day, ‘How on earth are you going to follow 2008?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, 2009?’ I replied, hilariously.

‘No, but blog-wise,’ they insisted, wilfully unamused, ‘what are you going to do? You’ve found a woman, you’ve got a book deal, you lost most of the weight you were trying to lose. You stopped smoking. Mostly. It’s like, what’s left to do? What’s left to blog about? And the answer has to be – as far as I can see: nothing. What’s the point? There’s no point.’

I pooh-poohed the pointlessness. After all, most of what I blogged in 2008 was just ordinary stuff that happened to me: relationships I was having, things I was getting up to, stories from the past. And despite the fact that I won’t be speed dating or whoring myself online in ’09 – fingers crossed – I’ll still be getting up to stuff. I’ll still be having ridiculous conversations with idiots. I’ll still be doing and saying idiotic things myself. So I don’t think things round here will change so radically. Not really.

But still, something worrisome lingered like a foul smell. Maybe it was all that pooh-poohing, maybe it was the fact that in 2008, there’s no denying that this blog did have a hook. An angle. Something that made it a bit special, and gave me a raison d’etre. In 2009 however – unless I come up with something a bit special – it’ll just be another run-of-the-mill blog, and I’ll just be another navel-gazing cyber-diarist, regurgitating an unspectacular existence like a shouty old man in a train station with stuff in his beard.

So, what I’ll have to do – obviously – is come up with something a bit special.

Hmmm. That may take some time.

In the meantime, here are my general intentions, in the traditional, timely manner.

New Year’s Resolutions :: 2009

1. First and foremost I resolve to write the best book I can possibly write. It has to be good enough so that anyone looking forward to reading it is not disappointed. It also has to be good enough to afford me the possibility of writing another one. In fact, ideally, it’ll spawn a career which takes in novels and screenplays and this time in 2010, I’ll be poolside in Malibu, sipping margaritas with Charlie Kaufman and Audrey Tautou. It’ll be purely platonic between Audrey and me however, despite her best efforts and leechlike attentions.

2. Secondly, I resolve to ensure that this blog remains readable. The last thing I want to do is become one of those bloggers who get lucky and then turn their back on their blog. I’d rather jack it in altogether than let it fester and ossify, and I have no intention of doing that.

3. Thirdly, I resolve to purchase or otherwise procure for myself a kitten. I recently saw some pictures of Bengal kittens and I resolved to have one of those.



But then I thought, no. They’re too pretty. I would get one, fall in love with the little thing and then some evil swine would take it away, torture and skin it. You know what human beings are like. And I would never recover. So I resolve instead to get an ordinary moggy. This makes more sense. I’m more of a moggy man really.

4. Fourthly, I resolve to grow my own vegetables and make the healthiest soup known to man. The garden is a bald mess at the moment so the transformation I intend to visit upon it will probably make for some exciting blog posts too. No, really.

5. Fifthly, I resolve to love well and with ecstasy aforethought. (This should maybe have been further up the list.) (Oops.)

6. Sixthly, I resolve to learn a foreign language. Maybe French. Maybe Mandarin Chinese. (Probably French.)

7. Finally, I resolve to carry on in my attempts to become healthy. This means eating well, attending a new gym regularly and generally doing as much as possible to compensate for my increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Ideally I’d like to get down to around twelve or twelve and a half stone by the end of this year.

Then I’d be happy.

But as it is, I’m pretty happy anyway, and I can’t wait to get going on all of the above just as soon as I’m back from Bonnie Scotland.

So all that remains to be said is a gargantuan thank you for reading this year, all of you, even the evil stalker. It’s been a fantastic year and it genuinely would have been nothing without all of the feedback I've received from all of you. And I hope you all have a fantastic 2009.

See you next week.

x

Feel free to leave your own resolutions in the comments. I’d love to hear them.

Smudge (Updated)

Donna, first and foremost, is very attractive. She lives next door. Keith thinks she might be a nymphomaniac but I believe this is based on the fact that Keith wants her to be a nymphomaniac, or at least he used to. Now he does not concern himself with such things. Now he has Tilly.

Donna has an eight-month-old kitten, white all over, but with a black smudge on her forehead. The kitten’s name, appropriately enough, is Smudge. Donna also has an 80-year-old father, also white all over, but with a head full of Alzheimer’s. I don’t know what his name is. Last week – quite forgetting that he already had more than enough on his plate with his Alzheimer’s – Donna’s dad went and had a stroke. He died apparently, but only for a very short while. Then he came back to life. Imagine that. Donna thinks he’s hanging on to say goodbye to her and her siblings. And so, last Thursday, she drove to Devon to say goodbye to her father.

I learned all this on Wednesday evening, when Donna popped by to ask Keith if he wouldn’t mind nipping next door once a day to feed Smudge. Unfortunately, Keith wasn’t home, so I’m afraid I had to take charge. I said there was absolutely no question of either Keith or me nipping next door to feed Smudge. ‘No way,’ I said. ‘Smudge must move in here.’

And so for the past six days, I've had a house guest.

If Dudley the Landlord finds out of course, there will be blood. But thankfully (thanks in fact, to Destiny), Dudley the Landlord is on holiday till next weekend, and when the landlord’s away, the cat will stay.

So for most of the last week, when I haven’t been researching stuff for some fucker with a book deal, I’ve been playing with Smudge, and making little films of her madness to send to You’ve Been Framed. Fingers crossed.

The timing has been perfect, as Smudge’s presence has filled a bit of a gap created by Keith buggering off to help his dad move house, and Morag buggering off to have sex with lots of other people (or something like that – whatever – I really could not care less – do you hear me? Couldn’t give a fuck.)

I love Smudge though.

Here she is snoozing...

Here she is in massive close-up...



Here she is impersonating some ancient bridge keeper from some medieval romp. 'Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, 'ere the other side he see.'...



And here she is relaxing in the bath, after chasing a rolled-up crisp bag around for like, hours...



Sweet Smudge.

Donna's coming back from Devon this evening. She did get to say goodbye to her dad. He was buried on Sunday.

Of course, if she is a nymphomaniac, I'm thinking the grief might, you know, set her off. Is that wrong of me? I've bought some nice wine. I may even put on some after shave.

Am I a ghoul?

Comment query :: Have you ever taken advantage of someone's grief/sadness/nymphomania/emotional midgetry to have your evil way with them? Come on, there's no shame in it.

...

Update :: So. Donna got back around 9 last night. She came to collect Smudge. She stayed for a glass of wine.

She’s not a nymphomaniac. Or if she is, she is a fussy one; a nymphomaniac of some discernment.

She misses her dad. Turns out his name was Bernie.

I miss Smudge.

And Morag. I miss Morag too.

Post Mortem :: It’s What He Would Have Wanted

Now, some might consider this a little distasteful, but frankly speaking, they can go hang.

Tribute to Pablo is artist-in-residence Not Keith’s first paid commission. I commissioned it myself, with pizza. I said, ‘How would you like to paint me a picture of Pablo? In exchange for a large rectangular pizza?’

‘Only on the condition that I can fill it with passion and fury and spite,’ he said. ‘Only on the condition that I can have it scream with the indignity of death and shake a thousand fists in the face of God, crying “Too cruel, this world, too cruel!”’

‘OK,’ I said.

One thing about Pablo, he had a wonderful sense of humour.

Of Cats and Men

What greater gift than the love of a cat?

Charles Dickens said that, and I for one think he was onto something.

Meanwhile, William Blake saw God for the first time in 1762, His big old face pressed against the living room window. And Little Billy Blake, only four years old, screamed. Awwww. Even at that age, an absolute looney. But what a talent. Then, somewhere between eight and ten, William Blake was on Peckham Rye. He gazed upon an ordinary tree and do you know what he saw? He saw angels. Or rather, ‘a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars’.

Looney.

Peckham Rye is just down the road of course. And round here Blake’s vision is rightly revered. Here is an artist’s interpretation on the side of a local house.



Revered.

So, naturally, under the circumstances, on Thursday evening, Keith and I set out to find Blake’s angel tree. Within a matter of minutes, as if by divine providence, we found it. Or at least one very similar. Albeit sans readily visible angels.

Then we came home and, with Pablo still on his blanket on the living room floor, we became intoxicated. We looked up cat quotes online. There are a great many.

Here are a few of my favourites:

‘Dogs are dogs, but cats are people.’ – Iranian proverb

‘Way down deep, we're all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them.’ - Jim Davis

‘The little furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into.’ - Bruce Schimmel

‘Poets generally love cats because poets have no delusions about their own superiority.’ - Marion Garretty

I also told a few Pablo stories. Here are a few of my favourites:

There was the time he enraged an elderly neighbour by killing one of her rosette-winning doves. I tried to explain to this furious woman that Pablo would never do such a thing, but when I found him later, there were still giveaway white feathers all over his face. I tried to chastise him for that, but he seemed so proud, and really, it was hilarious.

Then there was the time he brought home a beautiful grey squirrel he’d caught and heartlessly murdered for his own pleasure. I love squirrels and was really quite angry with him. But again, you know, what can you do? He was a killer. He loved to kill. And deep down I couldn’t help admire him for it.

When he was a kitten he grew very attached to a straw shopping bag a friend brought round to the house. So attached did he become that the friend brought the bag back the very next day, empty, as a gift for Pablo. We then developed this game, Pablo and I, wherein Pablo would climb into the bag and I would swing him backwards and forwards, causing him to grizzle with pleasure. That low slightly-spooky cat-growl that he’d do when I gave him cat-nip. The higher I swung him, the more he would grizzle, until eventually I was swinging the bag around the room in full circles. Then when I’d stop he would stagger out of the bag, still deep-purring but unable to walk in a straight line. This hilarious pastime came to an end one day in the back garden when the bottom of the bag came loose. Pablo flew out and away, high into the air in the direction of the house. He landed just above the kitchen window, where he remained, clinging to the brick work like a terrified drunken bat.

Then there was the time he wouldn’t stop shitting everywhere, a couple of months into our relationship, and I picked him up and shouted at him and threw him onto the ground like a bow tie I couldn't fasten, hurting him quite badly in the process. He squeaked in pain and when he righted himself he was limping quite badly. Immediately disgusted by what I’d done I went to comfort him, to apologise, and he hissed at me.

I never forgave myself for that. It made me question everything I thought I knew about myself. It made me wonder who I was and what I capable of. It made me question whether I was fit to have children. It made me go into counselling.

I have still never forgiven myself for that. And I think it’s important that I never do. But Pablo forgave me. And that made me love him more than I think I have ever loved anyone.

‘Let’s buy a house,’ said Keith. ‘Then we can get another cat.’

‘That seems a bit extreme,’ I said. ‘But maybe, yeah.’

Then, when it was properly dark and properly late and only cats and drunks were out roaming the streets, two drunks armed with a dead cat, a garden fork and a spade sashayed suspiciously over to Peckham Rye, heading for Blake’s Tree of Angels.

Now, I haven’t dug a hole since I attempted – as I imagine all children do - to tunnel my way to The Bowels of Hell aged five or ten. Turns out it’s bloody hard work. Despite Keith’s manly arms, it took us over an hour to get the hole deep enough so that we had no fear of it being dug up by dogs. And that was with the bare minimum of cannabonoid breaks.

To begin with, Keith – who sings the outdoors electric, frankly, and makes Ray Mears look like Margot Leadbetter – sliced up and removed a few squares of turf a couple of inches thick and put them to one side. Then, with our grave template in place, he unfurled a large sheet of tarpaulin, or, as I rather wittily insisted on calling it, Tom Paulin, and we got to digging in earnest by the light of the moon, Pablo already stationed above us in the branches of Blake’s Tree, angel feathers stuck to his cheeky chops.

When the hole was good and deep and the Tom Paulin piled high, I took Pablo’s body, blanket and all, gave him one final hug and kiss and placed him deep down inside the soft wet earth. Then I recited my poem:

Pablo, Pablo, burning bright, Bespangling all with purrfect light. Sleeping now where angels played, Your life has left me less afraid. And though your days of play are gone, The love you made lives on and on. Bespangling still my heart with light, Forever Pablo, burning bright.

Believe me, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Then we covered him over with earth and earth and more earth and stamped down hard on top of him, which felt a bit wrong but Keith insisted it was necessary to make him safe, to seal him in there, in the heart of the planet. Then we replaced the grassy bits and stamped them down too. For minutes we stamped and stomped and chanted like weird warriors. 'His name was Pablo Cattermole,' we chanted. 'His name was Pablo Cattermole.' The leftover earth we tossed around and kicked about. Then we went home to sleep.

I checked the grave on Friday afternoon and it was fine. A damn good job in fact. You could barely notice it. I had decided that I didn’t want to mark it because, well because it isn’t necessary – I know where Pablo is; Pablo is in my heart. Also, marked graves are easily damaged. By sick, sick human beings.

Then on Saturday, in another stroke of brain-boggling coincidence, Keith and I met Fred, a 12-week old ginger tom owned by Rex and Rita, two Keith's friends. They live in Hampshire. They had invited Keith along for a barbecue. Keith invited me. I went along and met Fred.

Here, readers, meet Fred, and remember the words of Leonardo da Vinci: ‘The smallest feline is a masterpiece.’



























There were quite a few humans at the gathering too, but I paid them very little heed, spending most of my Saturday with Fred.

Lots of people have suggested to me in the last few days that I should get a new kitten, and it’s easy to see why so many bereaved pet owners do immediately get involved with new animals. In fact, the only reason I’m not going to is because I can’t, because my pseudo-Chinese landlord won’t allow it.

I don’t think the procuring of a new kitten is an attempt to replace that cat so much as finding another avenue for that love that you still have inside you but which suddenly has no place to go. I suppose in that sense it’s a little like relationship rebound. But hopefully not as temporary.

Here’s another quote:

‘Another cat? Perhaps. For love there is also a season; its seeds must be resown. But a family cat is not replaceable like a worn-out coat or a set of tires. Each new kitten becomes its own cat, and none is repeated. I am four cats old, measuring out my life in friends that have succeeded but not replaced one another.’ - Irving Townsend

It upsets me that I cannot get a new cat at the moment, without incurring the wrath of the man-ferret Dudley, but so be it. The next house will have space.

And that’s it. I think I’m done for now.

Oh, except to say that at the weekend, Rex and Rita mentioned an article which had appeared in the Guardian a few weeks ago, about the death of a cat called Wilson. I’ve just searched it out and read it. It made me cry.

Rest in peace, Pablo.

Confessions of a Kitten Fancier

If I want you to fall in love with me, and I do – no, not you, silly... you - then I feel I should be honest about all of the things I’ve done in my life. I’m not one of those people who believes that a little mystery in a relationship is a good thing and that a couple shouldn’t know everything about each other. I’m the opposite. I feel – in theory and in my extremely limited experience – that there is nothing more erotic than knowing all there is to know about your life-partner, and when we get together I will want to know every gory detail about your past. And don’t even think of asking me to leave the bathroom when you’re in there because I won’t. I want everything.

So anyway, there’s something you should know. I wasn’t going to tell you because frankly, part of me is ashamed and frightened. But then, some people feel that if something frightens you, that’s a damn good reason for doing it. I'm not sure I'm one of them, but in this case, to hell with it.

So, I hadn’t actually thought about this thing I'm about to share with you for years until I joined the Cook’d and Bomb’d talk forum recently. There was a thread there in which people were confessing to some of the vile things they’d done – lots of stories of bodily functions gone wrong, enforced emissions under unusual circumstances and so on. I was a little repulsed by these people if you want to know the truth, then I remembered when I was 13 or 14 and I became embroiled in an experiment. We’ve all been there. What happened was this…

One late afternoon I was home from school, in my room watching TV and eating marmite and cheese on toast. Inadvertently, some of the marmite found its way on to the back of my hand. Rather than wash it off, I guess I must just have rubbed if off, and not very well, for later that evening, still in my room I couldn’t help notice that my pet kitten was licking the back of my hand with an unusual attentiveness. One might even say a passion. This gave me an idea. You can probably see where this is going already. I am sorry.

Thinking about it, I’m pretty sure I was actually 15. But definitely no older.

A few days later – hours, minutes, whatever – I found myself home alone and feeling a little lonely – a little “lonely” - as teenage boys are wont to, and I decided I’d try a little experiment. So, I retired to my sleeping quarters with the tiny jar of marmite, giving Mavis a little sniff to make sure she followed – Mavis was the name of my kitten and I do take some solace from the fact that she was at least a lady cat. I then proceeded to undress myself, lay on the bed and smear a tiny trail of marmite on – at first – my nipples, which were particularly sensitive, then later, when that proved an enormous success, on the end of my burgeoning boyhood.

OK, so. You’ve got that image in your head. A strange-looking 15-year-old boy lying naked on an unmade bed in a slightly smelly room with hot summer sun trying hard to squeeze its way in through permanently closed curtains; he is lying on his side, holding himself in his right hand; a tiny black kitten is lapping at the end of his teenage Johnson with its tiny sandpapery tongue.

How does that make you feel? Do you find yourself strangely aroused? No, of course you don't. Well, believe me, it sounds as strange and perverted to me as is does to you. I have no idea what was going on in my head that convinced me it would be a good idea.

As it happens, it wasn't. And it didn’t last very long. No, not because I emptied myself all over poor Mavis’s tiny head. No. That would be sick. But because at some stage – around about the time Mavis got a little too bitey – I kind of saw what I was doing and I felt a little repulsed. So I stopped. Then I went and washed myself, took Mavis downstairs and gave her some proper food.

So, all in all, nothing really happened. Except that I cajoled an underage cat into licking my erogenous zones. And ‘cajoled’ is probably a bit much. It was consensual. She was purring.

After I’d posted this on the forum, someone from there asked me if I would mention it here. They suggested that if I did so, I may alienate some of my readers. I know that that is a possibility – a pussibility! – but it’s a risk I have to take. The fact is, I feel better having shared.

Oh, look! Pablo has just wandered into the room. He’s just eaten. He’s licking his lips. Awww. He’s so sweet. He wants to come on my lap. Come on then, Pablo. Just this once…





No kittens were harmed in the retelling of this adolescent abomination.