A Portrait of the Landlord as a Crippled Artist

I am taking a very brief break from packing and cleaning and sweating like a ragged tot up a soot-chute to kindly ask any visitors here to also pop along here and offer some encouragement to my bestest subletting friend, Keith. I promised I’d do this on Friday, but I forgot.

Sorry, Keith.

Please don’t put my rent up.

Feedback Friday :: End Of An Era

bulk :: 16st 1 (pffffffft)
alcohol units imbibed :: 10ish
cigarettes smoked :: 0
joints smoked :: 6
runs run :: 0 (pffffffft)
bookcases emptied and ready to dismantle :: 6
boxes packed :: 15
hells entered :: 1 (Excel Hell)
physical ailments :: 1 (spinal mayhem)
tantrums thrown :: 2 (don’t want to talk about it)
money worries :: lots suddenly
weird girlfriends :: 1
despicable thoughts :: plenty
stress level :: high

So, my landlady, who’s kept herself pretty much to herself for the duration of my stay in her humble home, has now decided to transform herself into a rapacious hard-nosed harridan. She tells me she’s not going to give me my deposit back because Pablo has ‘destroyed’ her flat. She used the word ‘destroyed’ to describe one patch of carpet that’s been a little scratched up and the back of one armchair. And a table. And a cracked kitchen window. Pablo didn’t actually crack the kitchen window but I blamed him for that one anyway. Actually it was kind of his fault. He was in the back garden torturing a half-dead blackbird, so I rapped on the pane to distract him, but I didn’t know my own strength. Bad cat.

I said to her: ‘You’ve got over a grand of my money. You can’t possibly be suggesting that it’s going to cost over a grand to replace a couple of pieces of – let’s face it – fairly crappy furniture, and a roll of cheap, paper-thin carpet.’

She didn’t like that.

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I added.

She liked that even less.

‘You’re just greedy.’

She glared at me. And she wouldn’t budge. So I guess there’s nothing I can do.

Cow.

Many years ago I knew someone who moved into a house which the previous tenants – having had some gripe with the estate agents – wrecked by turning on all the taps before they left. That’s a pretty horrible thing to do and I felt ashamed when it not only crossed my mind, but lingered there for a moment and tempted me.

I’m taking the light bulbs though. And the toilet roll.

Meanwhile, Sally wants to create a exhibition of photographs of my face. And I can think of nothing more hideous. And she thinks it would be good for me. And I think that really, she thinks it might be good for her. And she asks me what I’m afraid of. And I tell her I’m afraid of being made into a freak show. And she shakes her head and points her camera at me. ‘No,’ I say. She sulks.

And this afternoon, surrounded by half-packed boxes and more of a mess than I could really handle, I had a bit of a tantrum. I threw lots of things on the floor. Piles of papers. Books. A cup full of pens.

Pablo ran away from me. I shouted after him, blaming him for losing me a thousand pounds.

It was then, as I found myself calling my beloved cat a ‘dirty bastard’ that I stopped, shook my head, and took a long hard look at myself. I wondered if I was having a mini-breakdown. I decided I was just stressed with the idea of moving. And worried about money, and Sally and me, and everything else. I mean, what’s it all about? Stupid life.

Anyway, I picked up all the stuff. I found Pablo and apologised. He gave me a look like he might forgive me if I gave him some catnip. So I gave him some catnip. And I had a joint. And we were both happy.

I’m going to spend the weekend moving my stuff and myself into Keith’s house in Peckham.

It’s the end of an era. And I guess, the beginning of a new one.

Wish me luck.

Why, That's Delightful!

This - Why, That’s Delightful! - is my new favourite website. (Apologies if I’m thrusting a rather shiny glass cock under anyone’s nose with this.)

And it really is delightful! Especially delightful is this interview, which is delightful in a rather painful way, but delightful nonetheless (it gets painful around the 4-minute mark):



And this, which was just lying around in his comments and follows on from this, is simply gorgeous:



But then I am in a slightly silly mood.

Forgive me.

I wonder if I should ask Graham Linehan to do my survey. Hmmm… Why of course I should!

Joyeux Jeudi.

A Modest Milestone

Hello everybody. This is my 100th post. So I decided to have a bloody big cake.

Then I thought, no. I thought, whoa there.

Instead, I shall have a modest cake.



Fröhliche Mittwoch.

Brains

I could tell something was wrong immediately. Keith had been particularly spiky on the phone, but that was half-normal. What gave it away was the expression on his face when I answered my front door. There was something unpleasant in his eyes. Apart from the sleep-bogeys. I was pretty sure he was going to say, ‘I don’t think we should live together’, so it was – weirdly – almost something of a relief when he said: ‘I’ve got a brain tumour.’

‘Come in,’ I said.

He stomped through to the living room and sat down. ‘I’ve got a brain tumour,’ he repeated.

I just looked, waiting for the smirk. It didn’t come. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said.

‘I have,’ he said. ‘I understand you don’t want to hear it, and I appreciate that – thank you. But you hiding your head in the sand won’t make my tumour go away.’

‘Please tell me you’re joking now, Keith,’ I replied. My heart had begun to move about in my chest.

He didn’t speak. Just shook his head.

I started shaking my head too. Vigorously. Until my neck hurt. And tears actually began to form somewhere behind my eyes before Keith finally forced a supercilious smirk and said, ‘Nah, not really.’

Then, when he saw my wrecked face twist to anger in a single second, his own face fell. ‘I have got a congenital cerebral aneurysm though,’ he said, ‘if that’s any consolation.’

I smiled gratefully.

It was.

....

So Keith’s got a ballooning blood vessel up there in his brain. A medical man told him that it’s inoperable. Which I guess means that if they try to remove it, he might wake up and never walk again, never speak again, never move or even think again; or he might wake up and imagine he’s Jewish or Jamaican, or like Preston Sturges’ father, he might start laughing when he’s sad or crying when he’s happy. Or of course he might not wake up at all. The brain is a funny old stick.



The medical man also said that, if the aneurysm ruptures, as it could potentially at any moment, then Keith could be dead within seconds. But he also said it might just as easily never happen.

So in reality, having no clue how long he’s got left, he’s really no different from the rest of us. But I suppose in the Book of Grisly Demises he’s just got one more tick box than most of us to worry about. But then who’s to say that I don’t have a blueberry time bomb in my brain too? Or you. Perish the thought obviously. But you never know.

‘Do you think you should be smoking weed on top of it?’ I asked.

He grabbed the joint off me.

‘I’m just saying,’ I said. ‘The last thing you want is a psychotic aneurysm.’

‘No,’ Keith replied, his brain full of smoke, ‘the last thing I want is to start living my life like a terrified weakling, not doing the things I would ordinarily do just because something that will probably never happen is hanging vaguely over my head.’

‘Like the Blueberry of Damocles,’ I said.

‘It’s more like a raspberry,’ he said. ‘Which could of course one day be horribly appropriate.’

I tutted and shook my head. Then I put this song on for him and joined in with the chorus.

We smiled.

OK, I smiled. Keith just rolled his eyes.

‘You’re like Nate Fisher,’ I said.

He shook his head and looked at me blankly like a dirty great ignoramus. I sighed. For anyone else unfortunate enough not to know, Nate Fisher is the dirty sexy funeral director who in the second series of Six Feet Under is diagnosed with arteriovenous malformation, which he’s told could flare up and kill him at any time or else just sit there in his head, inspiring murderous, God-hating thoughts, but otherwise doing absolutely nothing at all. Just like Paris Hilton.

‘Does Nate Fisher die?’ said Keith.

‘We all die, Keith. Come on, grow up. It’s not all about you, you know.

‘But I’ve got a fucking blood clot in my brain, man!’

‘Bloodclaaaaaaaaaat!’ I said. That shut him up.

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘Bumbaclaaaaaaaaaat!

‘Please don’t,’ Keith repeated. ‘My brain could pop at any moment. One wrong word from you, and….’

‘And what, Keith? Eh? And what?’ It was time for some tough, stoned love. ‘So it goes pop. What happens then? You die, do you? Is that what happens?’

‘Probably, yeah. No one knows. It wouldn’t be pretty though. We know that much.’

‘Do we? Do we really…’ – I wiggled my apostrophe fingers – ‘…know that much. Or – and I’m just throwing this out here – maybe we should start looking on the bright side here, eh? Eh? What do you think of that? Let’s give that a go, shall we? So – with that in mind – as well as you dying a horrible death, what else might just as equally happen?’

Keith nodded his head, slowly, as if coming round to my way of thinking. He handed me the end of the first joint of the evening. ‘Well, I suppose,’ he said, ‘best case scenario, there’s just as much chance that I might actually be immortal.’

I sighed, nodded my head. ‘Thank you,’ I said, pleased that he was on my wavelength. ‘Exactly. And at least,’ I added. ‘At least it’s not a tumour.’

‘It’s not a tumour,’ repeated Keith, in his best Detective John Kimble voice.

I joined in. ‘It’s not a tumour.’

Keith had another go. ‘It’s not a tumour.’

We actually went on for some time, till I said, ‘you see, there are a number of very definite bright sides to be considered here. Fuck it. Come on, it’s all good.’

Keith nodded. ‘I’m Mr Brightside,’ he said. Then he said it again, this time as Detective John Kimble. Then via Sparticus and Life of Brian, I suddenly had a delirious Arnie yelling at me, ‘No, I am Mr Brightside and so is my wife!’

‘Come on,’ I said, trying to calm the situation down and hide my fear. ‘Group hug.’

We put our arms around one another and squeezed, then Keith pulled away suddenly and clasped at his forehead. ‘Shit,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

He looked me in the eyes.

‘I think I felt it rupture,’ he said.

And so on.

If Friday night was anything to go by, Keith is going to be dining out on this bloomin' aneurysm for the rest of his life.



Bastard.

I wish I had an aneurysm.

Feedback Friday :: No Value, No Glamour

bulk :: 16st 2 (Oops. Um… not really sure what happened here. Actually I am sure. Pizza and chocolate biscuits. That’s what happened. With extra gorgonzola. Plus at some stage I thought, ‘Well, I’ll be training for the marathon in June – surely I can afford a little blow-out before then?’ I’m just amazed how quickly it all piles back on. I reckon if I really put the effort in, I could be back to 20 stone by the end of the month. I don’t want to do that however. That would be ghastly.)
alcohol units imbibed :: 16
cigarettes smoked :: 0
runs run :: 0 (Hmm. Well, there you go. The weight gain begins to make even more sense. I am playing tennis tomorrow though, if that’s any consolation.)
status updates :: 1
value :: 0
glamour :: 0

My brain is officially dead. It has no value. It has no glamour. Finance has filled it with fog and fur. Foreign financiers have fucked it foroughly. And frankly, I’ve had enough for this week.

Sally’s out with friends tonight, which is a shame, but Keith has come out of hiding. Turns out he’d been asleep. After working stupid-long hours on a chocolate bar ad for five days, he went home and to sleep for 38 hours solid. Now he’s awake and suggests a catch-up with skunkweed and beer. As it happens, I can think of very few things I’d like more.

The only reservation I have is that Sally doesn’t like me smoking dope. She really hates it. Doesn’t like the smell of it on me; doesn’t like the taste. I told her it makes me eat more so she should be pleased. She wasn’t. She doesn’t even like me doing it when she’s not around. And I don’t want to upset or annoy her. But at the same time…



When I mentioned this on the phone to Keith not half an hour ago, he laughed. Then he said: ‘You’re such a fucking twat. You’ve gone from 30-year-old semi-virgin to treacherous love-rat to spineless pussy-whipped eunuch in the space of six months. You don’t know how ridiculous you are. And you don’t know a fucking thing about women.’ I laughed. Then I hung up.

I’m sick of people telling me I don’t know anything about women.

Part of me wants to say to Sally, ‘Listen. Shagpuss. I am what I am and that’s that. Take it or leave it.’ But of course I’m afraid that she’ll leave it.

Another part of me wants to never ever touch another cannabinoid as long as I live and to say to Sally, ‘Look! Look what I did for you! See? I’d do anything for you.’ But I’ve had an incredibly brain-frazzling week and I want nothing more than to smoke a few joints with my oldest friend because, frankly speaking, it’s one of life’s greatest pleasures.

And I keep thinking to myself, what am I? A man or a mouse?

Oh, Sally.

Please don’t leave me.

....

In other news, a few people have asked me about the results of the survey. I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a while longer though. So far, I’ve only received 243 responses, and I’m guessing maybe 10% of those are spoiled (or whatever the word is for surveys that have been opened and pooh-poohed). Apparently that’s still not a bad sample – I was chatting to Frank last night who recently did some work for an internationally renowned arts institute that I swore I would not mention by name, and they commissioned a survey which received around a hundred responses. Fuck the ICA however – no, I’m just kidding, it wasn't them. It really wasn't.

But still, I paid for a thousand respondents, so next week I’m going to try and go after the other 757. At the moment however, I haven’t a clue how to go about it. Any suggestions gratefully received.

Now my fingers are failing and my eyesight is fading fast. Time to drink till I’m drunk, and to smoke till I’m senseless.

Have a great weekend.

Toads

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Sometimes I really despise the things I have to do to make money. However, sometimes the things I have to do to make money bring me into contact with other things – things which other people have to do to make money – which actually make me feel incredibly grateful for my lot. I’ve written a lot of incredibly dull tosh for financial websites for example, and if there’s one thing that really curdles my soul, it’s finance.

I also regularly do proofreading work. Now, if the material’s any good, proofreading can be a delight, money for old rope - let's face it, it's basically reading, which obviously, is one of life’s great joys. Sometimes however, it’s an enormous, spirit-sapping trial. This week for example, I was given an emergency proofing job by an Arab financier who pays me half-decent money to make sense of this garbage:

The “value-glamour effect” makes another overreaction manifestation. Here the focus has moved away from the first past return to the accounting ratios. Considering then for instance the book-to-market ratio (B/M), i.e. relationship with companies own resources versus market capitalization. A company with an high B/M ratio (“value”) has most probably encountered the difficulties in recent past, and therefore penalized as consequence by the investors....

And so on for 300 pages. If I may borrow a phrase from the great poet, Tracy Lauren Marrow, this kind of work throws me headfirst into the very bowels of a 'capitalist migraine'.

So yes, whilst the lovely Barbara Ellen gets to turn off her mind and squat over her laptop, this is how I spend my days. I would genuinely rather lick the sweat from a dead dog’s balls. Genuinely. Find me a job doing exactly that and watch me go. I'd be all over it like a man with six mouths. But no. It's not to be. Dead dogs' balls, like Observer columns, must remain the stuff of dreams...

Speaking of the perils of work, I’m slightly concerned that Keith has been swallowed whole by his own giant toad. I know he’s doing an ad at the moment and that can mean working 16-plus hours a day, but it’s not like him to ignore voice-mails. I’m concerned for two reasons: the last conversation we had was about the possibility of me moving into his flat, and I worry that he might be having second thoughts; and also, I know he was due to get the results from his brain scan this week. I’m sure everything’s fine, but of course... I’m not.

Right. Break over. I have another 50 pages of incomprehensible guff to get through by the end of the day.

Aaaaaaah, work.

Kindling

Recently I confessed to a newfound desire to be paid money for writing more than just website copy. I understand I’m not alone in this. Therefore I’m guessing I’m also not alone in occasionally dipping into certain broadsheet weekend supplements, reading the columns therein and groaning, closing my eyes, shaking my head and uttering the words, ‘Why? Why? What kind of world do we live in where a respected publication actually pays good money to blithering imbeciles for this kind of inane, soulless garbage?’

I won’t mention any names, but frankly, pick one at random. They’re all crap. So I decided to write something and send it in to the Observer. After all, I have nothing to lose but my dignity. I decided to write something about the hot weather, as - at least until this morning - it seemed appropriate. Here it is – it’s a small piece just to show them what I’m capable of:

This hot weather is ruining my life. I'm a greasy factor-50 carping mess. Attila the Sunny. Indeed, however much people start prancing around in hideous citrus clothing, Britain is not happy in the sun. No country is - extreme sustained heat just seems to make people soporific and slow or foul-tempered and bonkers.

On the bright side, if readers want a surefire way of getting out of all the boring barbecues they're bound to be invited to, they can borrow my thoughts on sorting out the Middle East: 'They should stop looking for WMDs and start putting in air conditioning.' Imbecilic? Yes. Racist? No - it's weatherist. But the invitations will dry up before you can say 'hosepipe ban'.

What do you think? Oh. Oh dear. Really? You thought it was poorly written to the point of embarrassing? It actually made your skin crawl? You don’t really know why I wrote it and what I was trying to say? You thought it was uninsightful, reactionary, inaccurate, hackneyed and bordering on offensively pointless? You think I’ve got more chance of waking up in an Abu Ghraib-style pile of Jessica Albas than I have of getting that bilge published in the Observer?

Well, OK then, I’ll come clean. In truth, I absolutely agree with you, except of course for your last point. The words in question were actually written by Barbara Ellen and published in last Sunday’s Observer magazine.

I think they’re rotten words, and they really do make me despair. Often I read stuff like this and I find myself thinking, ‘I could do better than that’. This time I actually found myself thinking. ‘Amanda Platell could do better than that’. So you see the level to which we’ve descended. The tragedy is that if I really had written those words, I would probably have neither the sense nor the decency to give my brain the bullet it so richly deserves. Do I exaggerate? Do I really? Three words: Attila the Sunny.

Oh, Barbara.

Just as youth is wasted on the young, and wealth and success are wasted on the rich and successful, so it seems that broadsheet glossy columns are wasted on the arse-clenchingly inane.

For shame, the Observer. For shame.

Working On Sunshine

I feel very ambivalent about the sunshine. On the one hand, I feel I’m at least three parts cat and I’d like nothing more than to roll around in it, luxuriating and spreading myself across the tarmac, rubbing my face on the bare legs of hot strangers. But on the other hand not only do I burn easily, but my skin dries up and my eczema makes a mini-comeback. In the past, this has always been enough to make me rather hate the sun. This year however, I’m determined to try and fight. Fight for my right to sunbathe.

So first stop, Sally’s homeopathic mother. I sense from a few of the comments I received last week that homeopathy is not particularly well thought of round these parts. And I understand that. I don’t think particularly well of it myself. Or at least I didn’t use to. To be honest, Sally has brought me round somewhat. But I’m still fairly sceptical.

‘What about Ben Goldacre?’ I asked her over the weekend. Did you read that article?’

She shrugged. ‘Skimmed it,’ she said.

‘Well, what did you think? You can’t deny he puts a devilishly convincing case against.’

‘But none of it matters,’ she said, ‘I don’t care about placebos and regressing to mean. All of that may well be true but it totally misses the most important part of homeopathy, and that’s the care.’

I looked at her a bit blankly. She looked quite peeved.

‘Alright, let me try and explain. When was the last time you went to the doctor?’

I told her it was a couple of years ago, when I suddenly started suffering from a lot of migraines.

‘And what was the treatment?’ she asked.

‘I think I was just prescribed some painkillers,’ I said. ‘Oh, and I was advised to keep away from bright light, but I already knew that.’

‘And why were you getting migraines all of a sudden?’ she continued. ‘Did you discuss that with your doctor?’

I shrugged. ‘Stress?’ I suggested.

‘Did you discuss it with your doctor?’ she repeated.

I shook my head. ‘No, I was in and out in about two or three minutes.’

‘Well, there you go,’ said Sally. ‘There’s your conventional medicine right there, in all of its scientific glory. Let me ask you: do you have any pains at the moment? Anywhere in your body?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My calves are throbbing. Like slapped meat. Like Kenneth Tynan’s buttocks.’

She ignored my rather witty allusion and asked me if I had any idea what the cause of the pain might be.

‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Running. I’ve been running like a wildebeest.’

‘Right,’ said Sally. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Cause and effect. Like getting a hangover after drinking a lot of vodka, or a runny nose after shoving loads of coke up there. So what about your migraines? Why were you getting them?’

I shrugged. ‘Stress?’

‘OK, so why were you stressed?’

I shrugged again. ‘Life?’ I suggested.

‘If you can’t be more specific than that, there’s not much chance you’re going to be able to stop it happening. The painkillers your doctor gave you may have killed the pain but they didn’t make the migraines stop. They stopped for reasons unknown. That’s your Goldacre’s “regression to the mean”. It applies equally to traditional medicines. But the difference between traditional medicine and homeopathy is that, where you got three minutes and some ibuprofen from your proper doctor, you’d get an hour or so in-depth consultation from a homeopath, and with their help, you’ve got a much greater chance of finding out why your body is doing whatever it’s doing. Pain isn’t an accident, you know. It happens for a reason. It’s your body reacting to something. A homeopath is much more concerned with finding out what that is, and it’s that level of care and consultation which helps. I don’t care that Ben Goldacre and that fucking Teabag bloke think it’s a load of bollocks and that the pills are placebos – I don’t care if the pills really are placebos – it’s the full care package that homeopathy offers that works. I have complete faith in it. Is that faith part of the reason it works? Probably. Do I give a fuck? No. Are you a wishy-washy shit-for-brains who changes his opinions according to whatever he’s just heard? Yes.’

‘Hmmm. I’m definitely beginning to understand though,’ I said. ‘Because now I have a terrible headache and very low self-esteem, and I’m pretty sure it’s a direct result of the lambasting I just received.’

‘Good. Yes. Cause and effect.’ Sally nodded. She looked quite pissed off. I felt bad for talking about Ben Goldacre in such glowing terms. (His article about Gillian McKeith is however, a work of art.)

Having said that, what Sally said about care makes just as much sense as Goldacre’s science to me. Plus, crucially, Sally lets me pin her to the kitchen table and sweat into her. Can I say the same for Ben Goldacre? No, I cannot. Not yet anyway.

So, as soon as possible, I’m going to go and have a session with Sally’s mum. Not a pinning and sweating session, but a homeopathic consultation. I’m looking forward to it. I love talking about myself.

Until I have been cured by homeopathy however, I shall have to continue to hide from the sun, which is frankly, really depressing.

I love the sun. But the sun hates me. Actually, maybe Ben Goldacre can help. I shall write to him and find out.

J Evans Pritchard PhD Spotted in Leicester Square

Sally took this photo with her phone in the Photographers’ Gallery yesterday afternoon.



It’s a man enjoying an exhibition of 2,700 passport-size photos of Maria Elvira Escallon, taken over a period of ten years. It sounds cool. I wish I’d thought of that. Eleven years ago preferably.

The man in the picture was a visiting Turk. His name is Melik. I know this because he told Sally when he tried to pick her up, and Sally told me. His opener was, ‘Do you know how many photos?’

Not a PUA.

Sally pulled a befuddled face.

‘How many there are,’ he said. ‘You guess.’

Sally guessed.

‘Higher,’ said Melik. ‘Higher.’

2,700.

He knew because he'd counted them. He'd counted down the side, then he'd counted along the bottom. Then he did the math.

It seems to me a rather strange response to a piece of visual art. I suspect Melik probably works in a bank.

Oh, and when I think of Sally getting chatted up in a gallery... I grow below. Is that wrong?