Feedback Friday :: Paint Me A Lake and I’ll Drown In It

hours on bike :: 12
hours of Wii Fit :: 7
pictures of Jackson :: 2
photographs taken :: 106
decent photographs taken :: maybe 10
festivals attended :: 0
days remaining till return to London :: 23

A little over a week ago I found myself at the very excellent Draw Serge, where illustrator Jonathan Edwards invites artists the internet over to send in their visual interpretations of ‘louche, turtle-eyed genius’ Serge Gainsbourg. I thought this was a wonderful idea, but I didn’t really understand why Serge Gainsbourg was the inspiration. Apart from his song about ladybirds fucking, the only thing I really know him for is his hilarious harassment of a pre-crack-ravaged Whitney Houston on French TV. So, spurred on by my gargantuan ignorance, I thought I’d like to do something similar but with a subject I could more readily relate to. Ideally it would be someone renowned for their many different looks. Hmmm. I thought for a while. Then it hit me. Ow!

And so Draw Jackson was born.

Not being an artist myself, I turned to my friend NotKeith to help me get started, and over the last week, we both knocked up a couple of efforts. Obviously, Keith's are somewhat better than mine...



Now I’m going to try and get the internet involved.

Being realistic, I know that like so many others, this project will probably fall flat on its bleached face at the first hurdle, but you know what? I do not care. It’s a bit of fun, innit? And a fitting tribute to a fascinating man.

So whether you have bags of artistic talent or you can barely draw breath; whether you adored Michael Jackson and agreed with Uri Geller that he was basically Jesus, but whiter, or you despised him and considered him the concentrated OJ of child abuse, do the internet a favour and make a pictorial tribute to the troubled king of moonwalking and Jesus Juice. Your work will be briefly critiqued and your blog, if you have one, linked.

In other visual news, the sun was out yesterday in the North for pretty much the first time this year, so I went to the sea and took some photos. I’d like if I may, to share them with you. And I know I may.

This says it all really…



This is the reason I cycled for four hours yesterday and the reason I’m having another crack at fasting over the next few days. I refuse to end up like one of these pregnant old men…



And this is a windmill…



And this has nothing whatsoever to do with Michael Jackson – just one letter out though…



There are lots more here, should you be of a mind to peruse them.

Now I must return to the saddle, before the clouds crack.

Have a good weekend.

Doing anything nice?

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.

The Wind Beneath My Bingo Wings

I had another warm and fuzzy internet moment this week when a reader of this blog – let’s call him Frank – got in contact, observing that my fitness regime seems to be falling by the wayside and offering to help me out. ‘I’d be happy to take you out running,’ he wrote. Obviously, I was a little hesitant. When a strange man writes to you out of the blue offering to get breathless and sweaty with you, you do well to be a little circumspect. So first of all, on Tuesday evening, we met for a drink.

Tall like a tower block and bald like a blade, turns out Frank is actually a rather splendid chap. A splendid chap who happens to have the body of a Greek god. Now I’m not what you'd call a gay man, but I do know a top-notch piece of masculine ass when I see it, and Frank just happens to have a bod to die for. Happily, he didn’t get that bod by chance – that would just be annoying. No, Frank works hard to keep himself in shape, playing football and squash, and going to the gym three times a week without fail.

But there’s more to Frank than just his height, pecs and glabrousness. Here, let me break it down for you.

10 Frank Facts

1. Frank drives a mint condition Lancia Fulvia.

2. Frank wears very expensive suit, but no tie.

3. Frank looks a little like Neil Strauss of The Game fame, but unlike Neil Strauss, he is not a complete tool.

4. Frank gets up at every morning at 6am, meditates for 20 minutes and then prepares breakfast for himself, his wife Emily (beautiful) and his little girl, Abbey (precocious), before driving to work, where before he does anything, he spends an hour pumping his body into a state of masculine perfection in the office gym.

5. Frank has run 12 marathons, including the London marathon last month, which he finished in exactly three and a half hours.

6. When he was 15, Frank became a Satanist and frightened his friends by speaking in tongues and etching an inverted crucifix into his forehead. He is now half-Buddhist, half-Zoroastrian.

7. Frank rarely watches films or reads books because ‘Life’s too short. I could be wind-surfing!’ (Actually, I’m tempted to take back Frank Fact #3.)

8. Frank has six hearts.

9. Frank was born in Bermuda.

10. Frank has a minuscule penis.


OK, this last fact is not literally a fact. It’s actually more idle conjecture, inspired by ugly, ugly envy. (Oh, the heart thing isn’t true either.)

....

So we met again yesterday in Brockwell Park, and we went running together. Now I usually run for just 12 minutes before collapsing. I have a little circuit around the park worked out and I’ve been running that same route for three months now and nothing has changed. It hasn’t got any easier and I haven’t got any quicker. Frank said, ‘It never gets any easier. But you have to push yourself. It’ll still hurt – it’ll hurt more in fact, but the more you do, the further you’ll get, the quicker you’ll recover and the fitter you’ll get.’ We were already running at this point. I had started wheezing, which is customary around the three-minute mark. ‘Today you push yourself,’ he said. And he sped up.

I was in quite a bit of pain by the time we finished, and it took me a little while to recover. I’d definitely run a lot faster than I do on my own. I felt well pushed.

Frank said,’ OK, let’s go.’

I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’, genuinely curious to know what he could possibly mean.

‘One more time around,’ he said. ‘That was just the warm-up. Now you need to start burning some calories.’

I laughed in his face. ‘Ha ha ha.’ Like that.

‘Come on,’ he said, unimpressed, and off he went. I suppose it was a lot to do with pride, which is apparently not a good thing, but I couldn’t just give up. I had to give it a go. So there I was, running again.

Probably around halfway through the second lap, the rain came, hard and cold. It mingled with my sweat and stung my eyes. As I half-ran, half-stumbled along, I found myself grabbing at my sides in an attempt to hold off the stitches which were coming now in gangs, like a girdle of pain. I stopped, bent double, gasping, ‘Stitch. Stitch.’

Frank stopped and said, ‘Catch your breath. Then we’ll carry on.’ He said, ‘Breathe into the stitch. Deep breaths. As deep as you can, and guide that breath to where the stitch is.’

Then I was running again. A minute later, desperate to slump to the wet earth and die, I began to wonder how anyone could possibly run non-stop for three hours. ‘They push themselves,’ said Frank. Whoa, that was odd. Had I said that or just thought it? I looked up at him as we ran. He was looking straight ahead. Did that actually just happen? I thought. Or did I merely imagine it? ‘You merely imagined it,’ said Frank. ‘Keep going. Sprint the last stretch.’

I did as I was told, to the best of my ability.

Lying on my back in the mud, I felt a strange sense of achievement. If I survive this, I thought, I’ll probably end up feeling better for it.

I survived it. And today I can barely walk. My calves are bleating like Christians.

But it feels good. It’s a healthy pain.

....

So as may be obvious by now, Frank is my new hero. He is also my adopted Life Coach. I’ve never had a Life Coach before, as the whole idea is anathema to me, but what the hell. Frank is perfect Life Coach material because he says things like, ‘You can do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be’, and he really seems to mean it.

He means it because he's one of those self-made swine. He was a bank manager in his 20s, but then he got bored, so he changed direction. ‘When I first started out in banks, it was different. Banks were banks in those days and customers were terrified of them. Then it all went soft and people realised they had rights and dignity.’ He spat the last word out like a fishbone that had been trying to choke him.

Frank is either deliberately outrageously amusing, or he really is a ginormous arse. At the moment my money's on the former. But we'll see.

‘Today, technology is the new religion. Still fresh enough, and powerful enough to be feared by the ignorant. So I learned technology. Now I’m a member of the digerati.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m a digital strategist,’ he said, ‘and I’m one of the best.’

He explained what he actually did. It sounded like marketing to me. And we all know what Bill Hicks said about marketing. ‘No, Stan,’ said Frank. ‘It isn’t marketing. I’m a digital guru.’ He said it like he meant it too, which I really admired, and he even pronounced ‘guru’ so that it chimed not with ‘voodoo’, but with ‘Baloo’. The man has balls of reinforced concrete.

So I asked him, ‘Why did you get in touch with me, Frank?’ And he told me, ‘Because you’re putting yourself out there, you’re trying to make a difference to your life, and I like that. Plus I like what you write. And I think I can help you. And that’s that. Isn’t that what life’s all about?’

I just stared into his steely blue eyes and nodded, like a big breathless simpering gay freak.

(I'm not gay.)

....

Now I find myself seriously considering joining a gym. I’ve always hated the idea, and instinctively loathe the kind of people that go there, considering them horrible, vain, vacuous vermin. Ab rats. I’ve always thought that they have their priorities in life all wrong. But look at Frank. He might not watch as many films as I do, or read as many books, he might work longer hours on the whole and spend 10 hours a week stuck in traffic, but just look at his biceps.

I want biceps like that.

I’m going to look into it.

(Ugh. Tip: never do an image search for 'weightlifter'. Unless of course the sight of giant hernias is what you're into.)

Now I must lie down and eat chocolate. Adios.

To Blog Or Not To Blog

It’s difficult to know sometimes, what to say, in life. Some things, no matter how difficult, should definitely be aired; others, not. But often it’s not that clear which way to go. Myself, I’ve always been of the ‘when in doubt, blurt it out’ school. Hence yesterday’s post. But as commenter Dan said last night, ‘…I'm not convinced that your blog was the most appropriate way of saying this. You may have decided to put your life out there on the net, but maybe [Keith] hasn't….’ Yes. I agree. I really do. But I also disagree, kind of, and for three important reasons:

a) I didn’t break any confidences. It would have been different if Patricia didn’t know that her boyfriend had cheated on her and there was a chance of her finding out through this blog. But there was no chance of that, because she already knew.

b) All of the people mentioned in this blog are disguised. So Keith isn’t really called Keith, Ange isn’t really called Ange, and Patricia, who isn’t really called Patricia, doesn’t really play the cello. She’s actually called Pam and she plays the viola. I jest, but I must concede, it’s not the most sophisticated of encryption techniques. I’m not Graham Greene after all. But on a tiny little blog that only one of my friends reads, I’m certain it’s enough.

Or it least it was. Till yesterday. Now – I’m not entirely sure why, but I guess it’s for slightly misguided reasons of damage limitation - he’s told Patricia about the blog.



I’m guessing he’s probably mentioned it to Ange too. (I don’t think I’m doing him any massive disservice to presume that breaking a small confidence is beneath him.)

c) …I’ve forgotten what the third thing was. Damn. I think that may have been the clincher too.

But still, I agree that really the point is that people have the right not to have their private lives discussed on a public forum. But for Christ’s sake, this isn’t Perez Hilton or Matt Drudge. I only have - at most - a dozen regular readers.

Sorry. I keep trying to justify myself, and I shouldn’t. The fact is, even if he is a smiling damned villain, even if he is a treacherous, conniving, back-stabbing, adulterous dog, Keith is my friend – my best friend – and he wasn’t best pleased with my virtual washing of his dirty, stinking, love-rat laundry.



So I’m sorry. Genuinely.

And from now on, there shall be no more discussing my friends’ private lives. Which is a shame because there is news. But no…. From now on it’s just me and my sordid forays into weight loss and sexual satisfaction.

Speaking of which, two things:

a) This morning I lay on my back and attempted to lift my legs up in the air – just keeping them straight and raising them, like we used to do at school in the gym. And I could manage five seconds, at most. I felt ashamed. Really ashamed. I have to do more to get rid of this sickening blancmange I have the temerity to call a stomach. I think it might be time to invest in an ab roller. Or even better, a 6 second abs system. Complete with DVD. I love DVDs! Wave goodbye to the aberration of your abs in just six seconds! Six seconds! I can’t get over that. What kind of moron would I have to be to miss this opportunity?

Yeah, well. I love the way it has ‘As seen on TV’ splashed over the packet too, like that’s supposed to give some kind of guarantee of quality. Hey, it's been on TV! It must be good!

More swimming I think, is called for.

b) I feel terribly, terribly libidinous. I think it’s a combination of losing a little weight and starting to feel healthier in general, not filling my body with bad chemicals, nascent spring filling up my nostrils when I go for a run, and - not forgetting - my recent discovery of YouPorn. JesusGod. If this had existed when I was 15, I would NEVER HAVE LEFT THE HOUSE!

Ever.

Oh, and I’m playing tennis again later with Pip. You remember Pip, fitness freak, good-for-nothing and potential dog-murderer. Shit, am I even allowed to say that anymore? Or have I betrayed another confidence?

Jesus.

A guy can’t say nothin’ round here.



Supercool war posters from here.


Afterthought: Do you blog? Course you do. So what's your take on the whole 'tell it like it is' thing? Do you tell it like it is? Or is it just not worth the bother? Do tell.

Warming Up

It makes sense – in a kind of superstitious nonsensical way – to wait till January 1st 2008 to start my new life-changing fitness and health regime, as it’s only just over a week away. But I know from attempting to do similar things in the past that what’s likely to happen is that I’ll get all worked up about it, then I’ll start, throw myself into it and be laid up in bed for three weeks with a hernia. Then I’ll forget all about it and console myself with 12 giant pork pies.

So this time, as a way of avoiding this, I’m trying to bleed into it gradually. Which is why about an hour ago I squeezed into a rather repugnantly tight track suit and nipped across the road to Brockwell Park. On my back was a small rucksack. In the rucksack was 20 kilos worth of loose weights, from one of the other times I decided I was going to get fit and bought a weightlifting set from eBay. (I used it twice, then after a few months of feeling extremely guilty every time I saw it gathering dust, I put it in a cupboard.)

The thinking behind the bag of weights was this: once when I was about 17 I went on a walking holiday in the North West Highlands (in Scotland) with my friend Keith and his dad and uncle. We walked for ten days, camping as we went. It was one of the best times of my life. Keith’s dad was worried I wouldn’t be able to do it, physically, that I wouldn’t be able to keep up, as I was overweight and frankly, out of shape. But I really wanted to go, so he let me. And it nearly killed me. But I did it. And when I got back to London, I noticed that not only had I lost at least a stone and a half in weight, but my posture was massively improved. It was the lugging around of a heavy rucksack that had done it. Having that thing constantly pulling back my shoulders for over a week. And so today I thought I would try and replicate that experience. With loose weights in a bag in Brockwell Park for twenty minutes. More like ten if I’m honest. It was really cold.

I’m such a tool sometimes.

Tomorrow I’m going to buy a football and a skipping rope. And maybe a couple of pork pies. I love pork pies.