In With the New

Hello! Happy New Year to you, each and every one! How are you? Are you well? Are you happy? Looking forward to the next year? I do hope so. I am.

There are going to be some changes around here, however. For various reasons. One reason is that I’m done besmirching the web with this half-baked life. I’ve been cutting back on soaping my smalls in public for some time now, and although at time it’s tough - for the urge is strong - by and large it’s working out. So much so that I’ve decided to go the whole hog. For various reasons. And I’ve been led to believe that this is quite common, that it happens to a lot of people who blog. Sooner or later, they go the whole hog. Well, it’s happened to me.



Also. I’ve got a job. Not writing words of my own that I care about, no, but not writing words of my own that I don’t care about either. Not writing words at all in fact. Merely editing them, and making up some headlines to boot, which is basically just playing. I’m looking forward to it. Very much. I think the routine will do me good, and hopefully I can learn something about concision along the way, which, I think we can all agree, would be no bad – or in any way unduly negative - thing.

I don’t intend to stop blogging altogether, however. Rather I will write something once a week, something slightly removed from my stomach and my groin and my heart, but still connected to my brain. And maybe my spleen. A review of something I’ve watched maybe. Or read. Or something else. I’m not really sure yet, and as I grope around for ideas now, in the dark of a dank new decade, where the future drops a banana skin and darts off, fast as a badger through a time hole in the wainscoting, I realise this might be much more of a challenge than I have hitherto imagined. But that’s no bad thing either. It's good to be mentally challenged.

So there it is. I'll post it on a Monday. This is the bridging post. Between the old and the new. Next week will be better. (Or worse.)

If you think your day would be brighter for sharing my dreams or my anxiety or drunken come-ons, then please feel free to follow me on Twitter. You’ll also be privy to provocative reportage, devastating cultural commentary, refreshing titbits of philosophical fingerfood and lies.

Oh, and one more thing – the party I talked about last summer… I’d like to have it next summer. The paperback of the book comes out around June so that seems like the perfect time to try and get the publishers to pay for a tiny party. Or even a medium-sized one. It really is the least they can do. But even if they choose not to, because they are too mean, they can go hang. We should just meet in a pub somewhere. What do you think? I’m thinking Friday 4th June, somewhere in London. Are you free?

Let me know in the comments and I hope to see you then.

For now, for the most part, for a while, cheerio.

x

Random Memorandum :: Unintelligible Sailing

I’m not complaining. Life is good and there is more now than there ever has been for which to feel thankful. And I am thankful. But people are complex, often inexplicable creatures. And it isn’t easy being one.

That’s all I’m saying.

Right. Feedback.

bulk :: 15st 7
booze :: some
films :: 2
jazz cigarettes :: some
days till next fresh start :: 7
days till book deadline :: 34
panic threat level :: low
unpleasant change threat level :: moderate

In other news…

…the kitten is on hold but there is a new basil plant in the kitchen. Sadly, he is already on the wane. Is it actually possible to keep a basil plant alive? Is it? Because I don’t know how.

…I was pestered on Twitter by a chap who’s just started a blog about his failed attempts at becoming a chef. ‘I shook the TV chef’s hand and began blurting out a load of nonsense. He took a step back, staring into the eyes of a madman. “I’ve always been into cooking, and well…I love cooking fish…in fact, it’s my favourite…and I just wanted to pick your brains about being…well, about being a chef.”….’ This is from the first post when he blags a week at Rick Stein’s kitchen as a lowly galley slave. It's called Chef Sandwich and it looks like it might be fun.

…Burns Night celebrations went slightly awry as changes of plans meant I ended up spending it alone at the cinema. But at least I got to feel increasingly depressed watching a film about terrorism.

And that’s probably enough feedback for now I think. Please excuse the slackness of this blog of late. I swear I’m not neglecting it. In fact, I’ve got something very exciting planned for Valentine’s Day. I hope you’ll be proud of me.

Hope all is good with all of you. Is it? Tell me everything.

Feedback Friday :: Working From Home

bulk :: 15st 8 (damn you, Christmas chocolate!)
exercise :: 0 (joining new gym next week though, I swear)
glasses of wine :: 6
cases of wine :: 0
cohabitation disputes :: 3
kittens :: 0
senses working overtime :: one, two, three, four…. Four.
Twitter updates :: 111

So here we are, one week down, hopefully at least a couple of thousand to go. And I’m happy to report that it’s gone tremendously well, especially once I’d moved down from the icebox of the study-cum-second bedroom to the relative hospitality of the kitchen. As well as being at least 10 degrees warmer than the spare room, the kitchen has the concomitant allure of a fridge full of fish, a kettle full of water and the inexorable poignancy of a poor poinsettia, for whom it seems, it is forever Autumn. It does feel a little odd masturbating at the kitchen table of course, but that’s something I’ll get used to, I’m sure.

I mention masturbation not merely to shock you, gentle reader, but rather to neatly segue, like a fractured infinitive, into the subject of Distraction. In my previous incarnation as a website editorialist and junk-puking killer of trees, deadlines tended to impend. I’d generally have just a few days or a week or two at most to get something done. This meant I was usually up against it and if I wanted to get paid, I couldn’t afford to piddle around on Facebook or Twitter or – eek! – YouPorn. With this book thing however, I’ve got till some time in March to complete, and although there are countless mini-deadlines along the way, I don’t think I’m going to get dropped if I miss them, so you know… ooh, look, a penguin!

It has to be said however, my main distraction this week hasn’t been pornography, and it hasn’t been abused penguins. My main distraction this week has been Twitter.

I must admit, until the beginning of this week, rather like the ghastly Bryony Gordon, I didn’t really get Twitter. I just thought it was a place where a bunch of people – the vast majority of whom you didn’t know and would never want to – mouthed off about the wholly insignificant minutiae of their often very mundane lives. And I was absolutely spot on. That’s exactly what it is. What I didn’t realise however, was that although that sounds like the height of tedium, it can in fact be excellent fun and a source of constantly sporadic fascination.

Two things make it particularly enjoyable. One is the arrival in the Twitterverse (shudder) of Jonathan Ross.

Wossy, to give him his Twitter name, is a fantastic fellow to follow. And if you’re a fan, Twitter is a great place to get close to him. Obviously he gets a lot of people yammering on to him all day and night (a Twitter search for to:Wossy gives you some idea), but that doesn’t mean he won’t get back to you. Most of his Tweets now are responses to some of the hundreds of messages he receives daily. Indeed, for a man who occasionally abuses one-time national treasures, Jonathan Ross is extremely personable. He’s also perfectly wiling to speak his mind. For example, in one Tweet he describes Piers Morgan as ‘a grotesque talent-vacuum’, which made me feel all warm inside. And in another he writes: ‘Just broke wind with such force that my wife is on the verge of tears’, which I must admit made me laugh out loud.

Of course it’s not just would-be starfucking that’s endeared me to Twitter – it’s more that I just happen to have started following the likes of Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry, John Cleese, Graham Linehan, Henry Rollins and Darth Vader in the same week that it finally clicked for me. The other thing which made it all make sense is TweetDeck, which, thanks to Patroclus, I downloaded yesterday.

TweetDeck is an application which sits behind your browser and aggregates all of your Twitter twaddle. What this means is that I can have the document I’m working on here in front of me, and then, just to the side I can have TweetDeck feeding me Tweets as and when they are twittered. So I don’t even have to stop typing! I can just glance to the right and see that Stephen Fry is cuddling a narwhal or whatever and the delightful Veronica Belmont is going on and on and on and on about tech stuff. Please stop, Veronica. Tell me more about your cats!

In short, Twitter, via TweetDeck, takes all the lonesomeness out of working from home, but without the annoyingness of actually having to share a room with real people.

Do you see now?

Come on. Let’s live together!

...

In other news, I got virtual chatting to one Alex B, who was diagnosed with Clinical Depression in 1996, has now given himself 45 days ‘to defeat a lifetime’s worth of negative thinking’ and is chronicling his efforts here. Good luck, Alex. Look! Sunshine!

And speaking of depression, I’m finally owning up to the fact that my eyes are not what they once were. I’m going blind. Or – exaggeration aside – I think I might need glasses. I’m going to seek out an optician this afternoon. Oh, and because of a piece of tooth that broke off while I was in Scotland, I’ve also made an appointment with a dentist.

Oh, God.

I AM FALLING APART!

More wine!

See you next week. If I’m still here.

Oh, and have a nice weekend. Are you up to anything nice by the way? Let me know in the comments. (Twitter will never take the place of comments by the way. Comments are for real friends. Mwah.)

Futile and Witless? Count Me In…

I’ve always thought Twitter was a fairly futile and witless waste of time if I’m honest, but an online acquaintance of mine – let’s call him Fanshaw, but let’s pronounce it ‘Featherstonehaugh’ for big laughs – is incredibly enthusiastic. This afternoon he convinced me to give it a proper shot.

He said the way to do it is to start following lots of people you know or kind of know or would like to know. He said most of them will start following back. And then every time you have a pearl to toss, or of course every time you blog something new, you twitter it, and all your followers come running, desperate to worship at your hem. And they may even bring some friends along too.

So that’s what I’m doing.

I’m owning up to it here so it doesn’t seem so cynical and self-serving.

If you’re on Twitter yourself, please follow me immediately. It'll give me the greatest pleasure to toss the occasional pearl in your lovely face.