[Real Life] Spring!

I’ve just spent four days writing and as far as this blog is concerned I have absolutely nothing to show for it. It’s almost as if I really don’t care anymore. But that's not the case, honest. It’s just other stuff. And it’s just a phase, I swear.

People have sent me lots of stuff to review as well. Lollipops that combat autism, AIDS and cancer. A vibrator that synchs with your iPod (not sure what I’m supposed to do with that exactly – I could shove it up my bottom but… well, we'll see). Plus a book about kissing and a book about men having very little imagination.

If you sent me any of those things, fear not, I’ll almost certainly get round to writing something about them sooner or later, but for the moment, reviewing things is really just slightly nauseating. And reading books takes ages, especially when you’re working 40-hour weeks and trying to write something you care about in what little free time you have.

I’ve been trying to write a novel, since you ask. It’s about families and secrets and lies. I've been working on it for quite some time now, on and off, and I’m about 200 pages in. I think it might be crap.

Did you have a nice Easter though? I do hope so. I hope you did something excellent like build a large Christ out of cheese. I had a nice Easter but I spent it in absolute isolation, writing and drinking Bloody Marys and writing and eating pizza and writing and smoking cigarettes and writing and eating sardines. Lots of writing then, which is good, I’m sure, unless it all comes to nothing, but even then, it’s better than spending money on drugs. (I tried to spend some money on drugs on Sunday in a moment of weakness, but everyone was away. It’s been about six weeks now. I’m not sure I approve.)

I've really got back into smoking cigarettes again though, sometimes whilst simultaneously wearing a nicotine patch for extra Stupid Points. It's utterly shameful. And the last pack of tobacco I bought featured this delicious health warning:



Whoa! How many cigarettes do you have to smoke to get a scarf made of meat? And if that doesn't stop me, what will? Maybe the moustache.

Anyway, I’m joining a gym tomorrow – again! Will I never learn? No, it’s good. It’s spring! Fresh start! I’ve actually got into a bit of a routine over the past three weeks. I get up at 6, make sandwiches and cycle to work in the West End. I get there by 7.15, just in time for the office to open, then I get changed, put talc on my bum and mess around with my own stuff till I have to start work on other people’s stuff around 9.30. Then I cycle home and have a bath. It’s a 25-mile round trip approximately. I reckon once I throw in regular gym visits, I’ll be buff as a bastard by the time the paperback comes out.

Speaking of which, what do you reckon to the cover? Oh, and the new dumbed-down title?



Don’t tell me the cover’s pants, please. Resist.

By the way, while I have your ear, anyone have any idea where I might hold this gathering on June 4th? I want somewhere a) free (or at least with a not outrageous minimum spend) b) for anywhere between 10 and 100 people (I'm guessing) c) preferably in Soho or at least somewhere central. Any thoughts, you people who know London better than I?

Right, on I get. Speak your thoughts in the comments...

Feedback Friday :: Happy Birthday, Keith!

bulk :: 17st 10 (what’s really annoying is that I weighed myself when I got home after my run this morning and I was 17st 9. Then half an hour later I voided my bowels and thought I’d weigh myself again. Sometimes I drop a couple of pounds after a good void. Today however, I managed to actually put on weight by passing a motion. If anyone has any idea how that’s possible, I’d love to know.)
cigarettes smoked :: 10 (it’s been a queer old week all in all, and Keith had to buy himself a bag of grass to get through it. I, in turn, had to swallow my reservations and help him through his bag of grass. Ten is an estimate. Probably more if I’m honest. Over three nights. I wanted to get a pipe to avoid the tobacco factor, but Keith wouldn’t let me. He said if I was going to smoke his drugs, then I would do it like a man. He was in a bad way. One minute he was screaming and spitting, the very anus of antagonism. The next he was gibbering and shaking, juddering with grief, tears popping from his eyes like chip fat. He has had a very tough week though. More of which in a moment.)
units of alcohol imbibed :: 36 (see above)
runs run :: 3
friends honoured :: 1
Bulgarians befriended :: 0
Hungarians befriended :: 0

So. As I was saying, Keith’s had a very bad week. Apart from the stuff we’re never mentioning again, it was his birthday, the big three oh. And although he admits he thoroughly deserved it, he still couldn’t help feel a little down being dumped in the same week he turned 30. He feels ‘existentially constipated’ apparently. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I know it’s bad. Then there is Something Else. To spell it out, here is the text I received on Wednesday:

‘Bad back. Dumped. MS.

Happy fucking birthday.

Joint?’

He’d been keeping it pretty much to himself, but he opened up this week. The first doctor he saw was apparently ‘about as much use as a soft cock’. Then he saw a specialist just a couple of weeks ago, who told him that the regular spasming in his hand shows every sign of being MS. He’s 90% sure that that’s what it is. Keith has to go for a series of tests which will confirm that. A lumbar puncture, some blood tests and some steroid injections apparently. He’s got a date in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, the spasming continues. It doesn’t hurt, but he did drop a joint the other night, which I picked up and smoked. This made him cry. I rolled him another one, but it wasn't really the joint, it was the whole thing. He’s scared. And it’s heart-breaking.

Speaking of which, I feel bad about the amount of ugly feeling directed towards Keith around here recently. I feel bad because it’s my fault and because he really isn’t such a bad egg. Alright, so he betrayed a wonderful woman by putting his todger in someone else’s body; OK, so he got angry on New Year’s Eve, punched a bus shelter and made Patricia cry; and yes, yes, OK, he once stole candy from a baby with learning difficulties, but he’s also a very good friend, so I’m going to take this opportunity to rack my brain and come up with Five Great Things That Keith Has Done. And if I stop at three, I don’t want you to think any less of him.

1) Keith and I became neighbours when we were little kids. We became fast friends and grew up together. Because I was a hideous little eczematic freak, I was often picked on and bullied by clear-skinned Nazi kids, and I have lost count of the amount of times that Keith stepped in and stopped it. He even got beat up a couple of times himself, in the process of protecting me. I will never forget that, and never stop loving him for it.

2) When we were about 12 or 13, we were down Southend beach with Kevin Hodgson and Dean Curtis. Hodge found a giant flatfish washed up on the sand, dead. He picked it up and threatened me with it. I ran. Hodge ran after me. I was faster than him though and so I got away, but out of desperation, he threw the fish after me and, through utter fluke, it landed with a slap on my bare back. It was funny. I can see now that it was funny, but at the time it was a) humiliating as my friends fell about laughing, and b) somehow terrifying. I started screaming and flapping about a bit trying to get it off my back, but it seemed to be stuck there. I guess I was having a bit of a panic attack with this bloody great fish on my back. Hodge and Curty found it increasingly hilarious, but Keith, seeing that I was genuinely upset, came up to me and peeled the fish off my back and calmed me down. I was embarrassed and I had to go off to be alone, but I was touched too, and I’ve never forgotten it.

3) When I was 15, my family life became untenable and there was the possibility that I was going to be taken into care. Keith at this point persuaded his parents to take me in and look after me, essentially to foster me. Again, it brings tears to my eyes to think how much that meant to me and what a selfless, wonderful gesture it was.

4) A year and a bit later, we got a flat together in Dartford, and for two years, Keith basically looked after me. When I was in and out of college, in and out of jobs and struggling to pay the rent, he never failed to help me out, even when it meant leaving himself short.

5) For my 30th birthday, he bought me a bunch of sex toys and condoms and various other sexual accessories. He knew I was starting this blog and embarking on a quest to find a lady. He also wrote the following words in a card: ‘You’ll notice there is no fleshlight here. That’s because you won’t be needing one. Go get ‘em, tiger.’

In these and in countless other ways, Keith has shown me that he cares for me, that he loves me, more than anyone else I have ever known. And it is with wet eyes, a raised glass and all of that love right back at you, Keith, that I wish you a happy birthday and the best year ever. Fuck the past – we all make mistakes. And fuck MS - if that's what it is, you can own it. Balls to it.

Here’s to the future, mate.

....

In other news, I have a new neighbour, a young, attractive and as far as I can tell, single, Bulgarian woman named Katinka. Wow, you’re thinking. Young, attractive, single, Bulgarian and named Katinka. You lucky dog, you’re thinking. There is however, one small problem, which is that she has absolutely no sense of humour whatsoever. Or else it's merely a case of her despising me utterly. Two problems then, potentially.

I bumped into her when she was moving her stuff in a couple of nights ago. Her stuff was all piled up in the hallway. Lots of strange electrical equipment. Silver boxes with rows and ranks of knobs and dials. She had a friend helping her. Rather than just walk past her with a nod, I stopped to say hello and introduce myself. In the tiny exchange that followed, not a single, solitary smile played upon her plump, kissable lips. In fact, throughout our exchange, she looked at me as if to say, [imagine generic Eastern European accent here] ‘In my country, you would be in cage.’

Katinka is actually Hungarian, but I have decided to deliberately get it wrong whenever I speak to her or even mention her to other people. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s out of spite. I saw her this morning rooting through the communal mail in the hall. ‘Morning!’ I chirruped. ‘Anything nice from Bulgary?’

‘I am Hungarian,’ she replied, cold like a killer.

‘Ah, yeah, Hungarian, sorry. Anything nice from Hungaria?!’

This time she totally ignored me. Quite right too. She had a bunch of letters in her hands. ‘Who are these people?’ she wanted to know. So peremptory her tone, that I find it both irritating and amusing. And slightly arousing if I’m honest. She read out a few names from envelopes like she was reading from a Sex Offenders List. I explained that some of them are other people in the house, that there are seven different flats, including the basement. I told her also that a lot of the mail that collects around the front door is junk for old residents, and that the landlord comes and picks it up every few weeks.

She scowled at me. ‘Every few weeks?’ She shook her head. ‘I must to speak with landlord.’

‘OK,’ I said, squeezing past her to the front door, ‘well good luck with that.’

And then it happened. She looked up at me, and she smiled. It was ever so faint, her smile, and as soon as it happened, she suppressed it and replaced it with a scowl, like a woman at a sombre church gathering whose breast had inadvertently popped out of her low-necked top whilst she was chatting to the priest about death. All she could do was scoop it back inside and stare at the ground, pretending it had never happened. But it had happened alright. She knew it. I knew it. The priest knew it.

‘What?’ I said, smiling myself.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘You are going for run, no?’

And then I realised that her smile was actually a mocking smile, that she was laughing at me. Granted, I do look fairly ridiculous when I go running, with my baggy grey track suit and the little purple hand towel that I hang round my neck. I need that towel though, I really do. I sweat like a claustrophobe in a fridge when I’m running. More than I used to. The more weight I lose, the more I sweat. I don’t understand it.

‘Yeah,’ I replied, slowly. ‘Is that funny?’

This time she laughed openly, then covered her mouth. ‘No, no. Sorry. I must to go now.’ Then she trotted off upstairs, leaving me feeling ridiculous, and I have to say, utterly enchanted.

It was only just now, writing this that it occurs to me that she may very well be a spy. Think about it. The way she was taking such an interest in the names of the other tenants; the lack of humour – Eastern European spies are notoriously humourless and businesslike; the silver boxes which are most probably devices for sending coded messages to other Bulgarian agents.



It all comes together now. I know it’s not 1940 or anything, but we are still at war, and Bulgaria is bound to be in the Axis of Evil.

All of which makes me think, it might be time to forget about Sebastian Horsley and concentrate on getting Katinka locked up. (I am determined to have someone jailed before the week is out.) Seriously though, I heard this advert on Xfm the other day, with a voiceover asking, ‘How can you be sure if that person over there is taking photos because they have an interest in architecture, or if they’re casing the joint for a terrorist atrocity? How can you be sure if that chap with the rucksack is carrying a picnic to his grandma’s house, or if he’s packing enough terror to take out the whole of Oxford Street? How can you be sure? You can’t. If you suspect it, report it.’

At the time I just laughed it off as a bunch of Big Brother police state terror-spreading, designed to keep everyone permanently terrified and paranoid. But now I’m thinking, well they may actually be onto something. I definitely suspect Katinka. What kind of name is Katinka anyway? It’s clearly made up.

But should I report her? She’s upstairs now. I can hear her, Katinkering with her spy machines no doubt. Maybe I’ll go up there now and ask to see her papers. Oh God, I want her. That’s the terrible truth. I don’t want to imprison her. I want to impregnate her.

Damn it all to hell and back, I’d better start brushing up on my language skills.

Have a good weekend!

Feedback Friday: The Good, The Bad and The Bag Full of Urine

bulk :: 19st 1 (excellent. Finally I seem to making real progress. That’ll be the exercise. And the bananas.)
cigarettes :: 6 (I know, I know, I know. I’m sorry. I feel bad. Will explain and give excuses in a short while.)
alcohol units :: 19
bananas :: 17
runs :: 3
minutes run without stopping for cigarette rest :: 12
bottles of wine stolen by over-zealous airport staff :: 1
new Davids :: 3

So, my friend Keith has moved to Peckham. Ten minutes’ walk from the heart of Peckham Rye. Now, I’d always thought Peckham was the armpit of London, if not the scrotum, and for most of my life I have studiously avoided it. Indeed, the time I have spent there this week has done little to disabuse me of this, but also – despite the gobby teens, the astonishing amount of rubbish in the streets and the intoxicating, god-awful stench – it does have a certain charm of which I was hitherto unaware. Lots of fruit and veg stalls, for example, a preponderance of large African men singing religious songs in the street and yesterday I saw a steel drum trio, just playing in the street seemingly for the sheer joy of it. It’s kind of like Brixton in fact, but without the rather unpleasant drug culture and concomitant sense of impending violence. Plus, no one can deny the inherent charm in this shop sign…



Anyhow, Keith’s new house is in a little disrepair. It needs a lot of work, so for the last couple of days I’ve been helping him repaint his living room. I tried to make it into a fitness thing, applying the principles of the Mr Miyagi School of Fence Painting. So that was good.

However, speaking of unpleasant drug culture, I’m disappointed to have to confess that Keith recently purchased a large bag of stinky green. For smoking. So after an hour or two of the Miyagi Dulux Workout, the last two nights have dissolved into a predominantly workless haze of sickly sweet smoke, silly talk and giggles.

This is no bad thing of course - it was actually fantastic fun - except of course it meant that I found myself smoking tobacco for the second time in a week. Yes, as I mentioned in passing the other day, I also weakened in Istanbul and allowed a couple of low-down dirty Turks to persuade me that Turkish cigarettes are actually good for you. (If ever a Turk tries that tack with you, give him short shrift – Turkish cigarettes make Benson & Hedges taste like the elixir of life.) As a consequence of all this, I woke up this morning – cue blues riff - feeling like Death - cue clues riff - a cough like a convict - cue blues riff - and tar in my chest. So that’s bad. Very bad. But don’t worry, I don’t intend to make a habit of it. Plus I have already said a dozen Hail Marys, three Apostle's Creeds and half a handful of How's Your Fathers. So I’m sorted.

And the fact is, I don’t really feel that bad about the smoking because everything else is going so well. I’ve lost 10 pounds so far this month, and without wanting to turn into a weight bore (DAMN YOU, BRIDGET JONES!!!), I’m really really pleased about that. The running is obviously the key. It seems what they always said was true: bit of exercise, bit of fruit and veg, and suddenly everything’s coming up roses.

Except one thing. Keith told me this thing last night. He told me that for a couple of weeks now he’s had this sensation in his right hand, a little like pins and needles, and when it comes he finds it difficult use the hand. It’s been getting more and more regular and is now as frequent as every half hour or so. The fact that it’s so regular and has been around for so long worries me. A lot. I am a hypochondriac however. Keith is not. So I don’t want to infect him with my paranoia. But I am very concerned. I have convinced him to go and see someone. So, that's something. I know he’s scared, more scared than he’s making out, because he hasn’t told Patricia yet. Anyhow, fingers crossed, Keith (while you can still cross them!).

In other news…

1. I’ve just finished reading The Game and am now considering becoming a chick-a-day, finger-clicking pick-up artist. A dark little Fonzie, that’s what I’ll be. Give me a month.

I jest of course. But on a serious note, as well as being rather repugnant and an enormous cringe-fest at times, it was really rather fascinating. I intend to spend some of this weekend figuring out what I really thought.

2. I’m considering buying a lottery ticket. One a week for the rest of the year. Same numbers. What have I got to lose? Apart from £50 though, what? I know it’s lowest common denominator gambling-cum-cock tax but on the plus side, I’ve been thinking of all the wonderful things I could do with a few million quid. Selfless things too. I want to help people. The poor and the needy. I really do. In many ways, I am a latter day saint. Plus, even when you lose, it is for a good cause. Oh, God, I hate myself for even considering it. But I am…

3) If I can keep up the running and the weight loss at the same rate I managed this week, I reckon I should be down to somewhere in the region of 17 stone by April, which although by no means slender, is three stone slenderer than I was three weeks ago, and by that stage I reckon I’ll be ready to go speed dating. That’s right, speed dating. I have to give myself these hideous, terrifying goals, otherwise I’ll just stop and turn into a pork pie again. And I reckon speed dating is just the kind of baptism by fire that I need. So that’s that. It’s a decision I’ve made.

4. Give blood. Keith’s hand-spazzing and a conversation we had about how a blood transfusion saved his dad’s life – I like Keith’s dad much better than I like my own, I might add - I have decided that the least I can do is hand over some of my blood. It's the saintly thing, after all. Plus, I must have at least 12 pints of the stuff pumping through this hefty frame. I reckon I can spare an arm or two. I’m going to make an appointment.

5. Last night at Keith’s I met a workmate of his, a bloke called David. In the course of a (rather stoned) conversation, David told me about two other Davids I’d never heard of, both of whom were – in many ways – even better than the first David. These Davids were a) David Sedaris, and b) David Shrigley. Excellent Davids all.

That David Sedaris clip is really lovely. And just in case you were in any doubt – as I was – it actually exists.

Ooh, and one for the ladies too.


That’s nice.

Oh, and they do other equally tasteful products.



Jesus God, look at this: ‘Since 9-11 security has become a little tighter at sporting events. No longer can you sneak in your six pack of tall boys in a gutted out boom box. “The Beerbelly” saves the day.’

Wow. No matter how fat, ugly and sexless I may be, at least I will never ever be sad enough to either a) wear a Beerbelly, or b) use a terrorist atrocity to help me market one.

Now, time for my run.

So long.

What Am I - A Man, A Mouse Or A Mouse Riding A Frog?

I’m beginning to think that stopping smoking and starting the diet at the same time was maybe asking a little too much of myself. I think I may – ironically enough – have bitten of more than I can chew. In fact, you could say that today I am finding my New Regime a little difficult to swallow. And other consumption-based metaphors.

Ordinarily by this time of day, I would have had three bacon sandwiches and two cups of coffee. Maybe a few biscuits too. And now I would be heading for more coffee and a chocolate croissant or two. Jesus, no wonder I’m such a bloater. I would also have smoked at least three cigarettes.

I’m starting to get edgy now from not smoking cigarettes. I really want one. My fingers are twitching. I’ve brought the ukulele out of its case though and I’m going to have a little fiddle now. I used to play a lot. I learned in my late teens and became super proficient. Then I let it go. Now I think is exactly the right time to bring it back. Give me something to do with my fingers… The only problem is that I can’t write and play at the same time. Smoking cigarettes was rather more versatile in that way. But it was giving me cancer. And gum disease. And horrible brown fingers.

But oh my dear sweet God in Heaven, how I want a cigarette right now. I could scream.

Balls to it though. To hell with this craving. What am I after all – a man or a mouse? That’s right, I am a man. A giant of a man, probably equivalent to 5,000 mice. And I have strength, lots of strength. I have so much strength in me you have no idea.

And to prove it, here's a picture of a mouse riding a frog.



I think I may be losing my mind by the way.

Right. I’m going to buy some fruit!