Faith

When I first blogged about getting the book deal, I swore I wouldn’t turn into one of those whingeing bloggers who type swift, miffed posts about deadlines and agent lunches and oh my God, you just don’t understand the pressure! If they even exist. And I have no intention of starting now. But something is going on...

I’m tense today. Unusually so. Maybe. This is the first proper day back and I’ve been tense all day.

This morning, for example, I was quick to rankle in the doctor’s surgery when they kept me waiting for a full 20 minutes in an otherwise empty room with the telly on full blast - I turned it off - and then asked me where my urine was. I had no urine. This was the first mention of urine. I was handed a tube and pointed towards a disabled toilet. Sullenly, peeved and wretched, I tried. But I had none. Goddammit! It’s the pressure! No one understands the pressure! So then I had to make another trip to the surgery this afternoon, armed with a small warm tube of angry yellow urine. I know, I know. Walk away from the gag.

Then, an hour or so later, Gchatting to a friend, I was tetchy. Unnecessarily so. If In fact, if I’m being perfectly honest, I was probably petulant to boot.

Then, around teatime, I became positively livid because I couldn’t buy rail tickets to London - my destination this Thursday - from Sunderland - my point of departure - without first going to Newcastle or Durham to pick up my ‘fast tickets’. Oh, the irony. Of course, had I been made aware of this, National Express, you sloppy motherfuckers, before I embarked upon the online booking process, I would have gone to the train station in person and accomplished everything in one fell swoop.

So I have to waste at least two hours of my precious, angry life, if not more, piddling about in search of a system that makes fucking sense.

It is galling, but I overreacted, sighing and stomping my feet, on the telephone, whining to the call centre lady, ‘But it’s a hideous, ridiculous world, isn’t it?’ ‘M-hm.’ ‘Isn’t it though? Say it is.’

Jesus. Leave it.

But it’s not just the National Health and National Express. (Oh, I also went to Vision Express this afternoon because I AM GOING BLIND! But they were quite nice, so I can’t really be churlish about them.) No. It’s more than quotidian awfulness. I’m feeling tense because… I’ve been trying to pinpoint it for a few hours now and I think it comes down to this: I’m afraid.

As always. It really never ends, does it? You get what you want and there’s barely time to pat yourself on the back before you’re plagued by fear of failure.

I’ve got so little faith in myself, even after having achieved a fair bit in the last 18 months. I’m afraid of everything falling apart and fading away. Not with a bang, but a feeble whine. I’m terrified of the book ebbing tepidly into total obscurity, not even bold enough to prompt proper enmity. And I’m afraid of the shame of whoring myself to give the book every chance of being read. But I know I have to. Even so, begging people to review your book is grody to the max. If they want to review it, they’ll review it. Must I send them Spamazon? Ohhh, I don’t know.

And more than all of that, I’m terrified of becoming boring, of having nothing to blog about but all this clunking bunkum and self-regarding bum gravy. And it is. It is bum gravy.

Hopefully though, this is me getting it out of my system.

Actually, I think I've just realised the solution. If faith is difficult to come by, probably the best solution is to just fake it.

So, tomorrow, I shall be blogging pictures from the final leg of the European Book Tour. Then we’ll work out the best way to sign books for those of you who’d like them signed, without me cringeing in on myself like a vampire trapped in a shaft of sun. Oh, come on, now that is embarrassing.

Now I must away and answer some questions for a Sky journalist. I know! First Harper Collins, now Sky. I’m so far up the scat-pipe of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire that I can practically tickle the Dirty Digger’s semi-colon with the tip of my tongue!

Thanks to Swineshead, the grumpy bastard who often takes issue with me for no reason, for the light relief.

FAQ Narcissus

If I had fifty thousand pounds for every time someone has asked me, Where the hell are your Frequently Asked Questions?, I’d still be in the poor house frankly, because no one has ever asked me that. And why would they? Frequently Asked Questions are ghastly. They may make a little sense on sites which provide services, particularly techy services where things are apt to go wrong, but on personal blogs they’re really horribly self-important.

As if keeping a blog wasn’t self-important enough, to then go and claim that there are yet more details about you that people are simply aching to know is tantamount to galloping narcissism.

So here goes.

(Actually, the real reason I’m doing this is because someone asked me to put a photo of myself online. And that was the second time I’d been asked that. Does two times count as frequently? Of course it does.)

Why do you write about your life on the internet, you big freak?

Principally, in order that I may have one. This blog came out of a need to start living properly. It allowed me to make promises to myself in public. This brought with it a sense of responsibility, which in turn proved a huge incentive. So essentially, it’s a way of taking responsibility for my life.

Still seems a bit iffy to me. All those personal details. Have you no shame?

God, yes. I have bags of shame. Mostly however, I’m ashamed that I was living such a hideously half-baked life for so long. Thankfully that’s changed. And that’s mostly down to this blog.

So what did you do before you started blogging?

I sat around watching films and eating peanut butter sandwiches. And I enjoyed it too. But there comes a time in a man’s life when that man has to take some stock of himself, and say to himself, ‘So - what am I?’ And if the answer comes back, ‘I am what I am, and what I am is a Man’, maybe accompanied by a little chest-beating and muttering something about Sparta, then that man should probably be tied to a rock and tranquilised. Equally however, if the answer is ‘I’m nothing but a big old blob, and I’m sitting here wasting my whole fucking life’, then again, it’s probably time for drastic action of one form or another.

So are you really as ugly as you say you are?

Well, no one’s ever actually vomited on me yet. I am however, differently-featured enough for people to stop in the street, raise their eyebrows and blow out their cheeks. Once someone spat at me and once someone punched me in the face for no reason, although that may have been wholly random and not connected to my appearance at all.

Also, my whole life I’ve been told that I’m ugly. That’s how ugly I am.

As a result of writing about my life however, I’m definitely getting less and less hung up about the whole ugly thing. And this pleases me greatly.

Incidentally, I am not – in my opinion – as ugly as Pete Burns. But it's all subjective. I can see how some people might find him quite striking. Weirdoes.

Why don’t you publish a photo of yourself and have done with it?

Have done with what, for heaven’s sake? I don’t publish a photo because this blog is not about what I look like. Rather, it’s about what I do. Or at least what I say I do.

Like I’ve said before, I don’t want to be a freak show. I don’t want people commenting on how I look. I don’t want to hear, ‘Oh, you’re not that bad’. And I especially don’t want to hear, ‘Yeah, actually, I see what you mean’. I don’t want any of that. I’ve had people making comments about how I look my whole life. This blog is the one place where that won’t happen.

Who was the last person you’ve been told you look like?

The last person was just the other day actually, and it was Tracey Emin. Unfortunately this isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. I do look a little like Tracey Emin. Like Tracey Emin crossed with a bag of elbows.

And Hellboy. I get that quite a bit too. Oh, my aching sides.

Oh, your aching face, more like.

Shut up.

Touché. So on the one hand you say it’s not about looks, yet on the other hand you quite clearly use your appearance to bring in readers.

No, I don’t. If I posted photographs of myself, you could say I used my appearance to bring in readers. On the contrary, I use my words to bring in readers. And nothing more.

Did you really do that thing with the kitten? And that thing about being filmed having sex… is that true?

Is the Pope a Nazi? Do Catholics glow in the dark? Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. If I’ve written about it, then it’s true.

More or less.

Cor. I like the way you write. Will you go to bed with me?

Hold on a sec. Is that really a frequently asked question?

Never you mind. I’m the one asking the frequently asked questions round here.

No, sorry. Surely I can’t possibly follow up a question about telling the truth by pretending that I’m frequently asked if I will go to bed with my readers.

Why not?

I just can’t. It's not ethical. Anyhow, I’ve had enough. This fake conversation is over.

Hey, would you like a six-figure advance for the story of your life?

Oh, shush.

OK, OK. Finally, are you Irvine Welsh?

No, ahm noat. Cunt.