last updated Sunday June 21, 2009
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last updated Sunday June 21, 2009 |
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September 2003
Philip Pullman writes in protest against the government’s
programme of reading tests for kids. “The rubric for a ‘Sat’ writing test told the children
to spend exactly 15 minutes on planning their story, and 45 minutes on writing
it,” he says; “proper writing just doesn't happen like that.” I’d agree with
that. “Nor does it always go through the process of planning, drafting,
re-drafting, polishing and editing, which teachers are also required to put
their unfortunate pupils through.” Not so sure about that, though; I’m all for
spontaneity, but how many worthwhile pieces of writing come out perfectly
formed in one go? “Nor does every piece of work have to be completed,” he goes
on. That’s for sure: “Some stories you aren't ready to write yet, so you put
them away for six months or two years and come back to them when you're ready.”
Or about 94 years in my case, or never. “There are no rules,” rules Pullman.
“Anything that's any good has to be discovered in the process of writing it.”
I’d completely agree with that. “Furthermore,” he concludes, “there must be a
willing suspension of certainty - Keats' negative capability, ‘the capability
of remaining in doubts, hesitations and mysteries’.” That’s another one of
those quotes that makes me feel better about the creative process.
The Italian power cut really did plunge the country into
chaos. Forget trains grinding to a halt, lifts not working and millions left in
the dark – that’s all small fry. The Guardian reports: “In the Strega al Corso
café in central Rome, Angelo Chiu said: ‘Everybody went without breakfast this
morning.’” Ouch!
*
The late
Dr David Kelly has been turned down for a posthumous tribute
because of Whitehall politics. The paper reproduces the tribute, which
among other things testifies to Dr Kelly’s “humour in the face of risk”. This
seems apposite, as I can’t imagine Tony Blair, Geoff Hoon, Jack Straw or
anybody involved in the government machine having any sense of humour at all.
Indeed, if they did, I dare say they wouldn’t be where they are now.
*
John Cleese is interviewed in today’s Independent.
After some embarrassing (and apparently irony-free) gushing about his daughter
and her love of ponies, he says the ex-Pythons still keep in touch with each
other on a regular basis via email. What I wouldn’t give to read a few of
those...
*
Last night’s Santana concert at
Wembley Arena meanwhile was superb. The legendary guitar genius was accompanied
by a drummer and two percussionists, a horn section, stalwart keyboardist
Chester Thompson and two excellent singers. The band opened with a thunderous Jingo,
replete with a video of African tribal images running behind the band. They
went on to perform several numbers from the last record, Shaman (an eclectic 14-track sheer masterpiece that
I cannot recommend highly enough to anyone who loves music of whatever kind),
as well as some from the one before that, Supernatural, and a clutch of
older songs including Black Magic Woman and, of course, Samba Pa Ti.
Best of all, he introduced (You've
got to change your) Evil Ways
by dedicating it to George Bush and Tony Blair. Good on you, Carlos!
Meanwhile, for those of you who weren’t
fortunate enough to be at Wembley, here are the lyrics to Jingo (taken
from the
Lyrics
Depot website):
|
|
Jingo
Jingo
Jingo
Jingo Ba
Ba, Ba, Lo
Ba, Ba, Lo
Ba, Ba, Lo
Ba, Lo
Ba, Ba, Lo
Ba, Ba, Lo
Ba, Ba, Lo
Ba
Jingo |
|
I know this isn’t much by way of compensation, but, you know,
you had to be there...
The Independent on Sunday
examines
whether David Blaine is cheating by taking salt
and/or glucose in his water or in some other way (through his blanket? by
telepathy perhaps?). He’s exonerated by the Sindy scientist, but I think I'll
feel cheated if Blaine turns out not to have cheated. If the best thing
that can happen at the end of his rapidly-approaching 44 days’ starvation is
that he staggers out of the box emaciated and wobbly, that's not much to look
forward to, is it? Blaine being Blaine, I thoroughly expect him to do something
amazing, like emerge even fatter than he was when he went in (although that'll
take some doing).
*
There’s
also an excellent column by Dom Joly in today’s Sindependent’s Review
supplement, headlined this week “Puss comes to shove”. It’s not available
online but I quote here from the first paragraph: “Buried my cat yesterday. I
found him dead on the lawn having finally given up the struggle... His brother
doesn’t seem to have noticed, even though they haven’t been apart for a single
day since there were born. That’s cats for you. Dogs are loyal, loving
creatures that follow you round everywhere telling you that you’re brilliant.
Cats only follow you round to tell you what a twat you are.” Perhaps I should
have called this week’s site “Thoughttwat”.
Alan Bennett writes an interesting piece in the Guardian Review about the making of his
first TV drama script, A Day Out, in the 70s. There’s also some very
touching writing about the people who worked on the production, especially the
women who characterised the BBC back in the days when the BBC really was
“Auntie”, rather than a faceless corporate entity. He also writes reassuringly:
“I can never watch a tape of Me, I'm Afraid of Virginia
Woolf (1978) without cringing at its final minute. It's not at all plain
where the action is going (and wasn't plain to me when I was writing it) but
five minutes from the end it turns into a love story.” There’s hope for my own
novel yet, then.
*
The Review also has a
really good profile of poet Thom Gunn, who looks pretty
amazing for his 73 years. He wrote one of my favourite-ever short poems, called
“Jamesian”: “Their relationship consisted / Of debating whether it existed.”
Brilliant. Oddly though I noticed a strange omission: despite the fact that
Gunn says he still lives with his partner Mike Kitay, whom he met at Cambridge
in his early 20s, Kitay is not mentioned in Gunn's "Life at a glance"
overview. I couldn’t help wonder why this was when the Review always includes
the marriages of heterosexual profilees in their potted CVs. I’ve written to
them to ask why.
*
In addition to the Guardian today I bought a
copy of The Times, which I don’t normally do but a large advert on the
top of the paper caught my eye. "FREE CD - Donna Tartt reads her
novel", it read. I was very disappointed therefore to find when I
opened the paper at home that the free CD in question was actually a sampler,
with the wording on the back "Listen to the first part of Donna
Tartt's superb bestseller" (my italics) and on the disc itself
"Volume 1 of a 5-CD set". I believe that under the Trade Descriptions
Act the front-page advert as worded is therefore misleading, as it implies the
CD is a reading by the author of her entire novel, which turned out not to be
the case. Given this, I strongly feel it to be incumbent on The Times to
provide the complete set of CDs or equivalent compensation to redress this
issue. I’ve written to the newspaper’s customer services section putting this
to them...
Tony Blair’s empire really is
crumbling. First Campbell goes, then Hutton explodes, now Granita closes! Blair’s favourite Islington
restaurant, “where the future prime minister thrashed out the notorious ‘deal’
with Gordon Brown in 1994, has closed for good,” reports the Guardian. “Thin
brown paper, neatly taped to the window, signalled the demise of the restaurant
which might have expected a rush of business this weekend when it features in a
television drama of the Blair/Brown partnership,” reads the article. (See TC
24th September below.) All of this is to say nothing of the anti-war march in London tomorrow. “The Stop the War Coalition, which has
organised Saturday's protest with the Muslim Association of Britain and the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, estimated that at least 100,000 people
inspired by the Hutton inquiry and the government's "lies" would join
the London march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square,” further reports the
Guardian. http://www.stopwar.org.uk/
*
I read today in the Times that
George
Bush is visiting the UK in November, in the biggest security operation
the UK has ever seen. Dubya will be appearing with an entourage of 900 minders
apparently, a nuclear-bomb-proof car and probably wearing Arnold Schwarzenegger
on his head. He'll be staying at Buckingham Palace no less. One can only
imagine the conversation between himself and Her Maj. He's probably reading
this (web stats for Thoughtcat reveal a regular, albeit slim, US government
readership; hi guys!) so I won't go into great detail about my assassination
plot*, but I will say I do plan to attend whatever anti-war or anti-Bush
demonstrations that may coincide with his visit armed with a box of rotten eggs
and a weapon of mass destruction (if I can find one, that is). The problem is that
knowing Bush’s "pre-emptive self-defence" approach he'll probably
bomb Britain before he turns up just to be sure he's safe. There'll only be
him, Tony Blair and Her Maj left.
* Pre-emptive self-defence disclaimer:
Listen, you paranoid,
murderous Pentagon dicks: if you take this seriously for a second you’re even
thicker than I thought.
*
Seriously
now, the Big Issue has launched a new online venture called
Big Issue Lists.
It’s a slight misnomer really as the “lists” are really guides in downloadable
PDF format to dealing with a variety of social issues, providing tips on how to
apply for a job, deal with a suicidal person or come out of the closet. Several
lists are free but others can be “bought” for a few pounds. Half the money goes
to the Big Issue Foundation which helps homeless people in the UK.
The
Guardian today reports: “A group of Israeli airforce pilots declared yesterday that they
would refuse to fly missions which could endanger civilians
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” I was quite amazed and very impressed by
this, although saddened to see it was immediately put down by one Brigadier
General Ido Nehushtn of the Israeli airforce, who said the pilots were a
“marginal, small group” of retired and reserve pilots, and Israel's chief of
army staff, Moshe Ya'alon, who said the pilots could be punished for their
"illegitimate" and "forbidden" statement.
*
I
received some spam today from a company I shall not plug saying I’d won a
Microsoft X-box. “This is not spam” said the subject line, which made me
immediately suspicious, as did the firm’s opening gambit, “Your
email address was entered into our promotional competition by yourself or a
friend, family member, or associate. Think yourself lucky!” it went on. I
logged onto the site to find no good reasons why anyone should send me a free
X-box or have my personal information, together with a page of “previous
winners” with dodgy passport photos and an advert with an animated stars and
stripes motif offering “Free T-shirts and car window flags for proud
Americans”. I emailed the firm’s “unsubscribe” address saying, “Thanks, but I’m
not particularly interested in an X-box or your politics.”
*
The
Times reports on a
TV
confrontation between Californian governor hopefuls Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Ariana Huffington, which rose into farce (I mean, it couldn’t exactly
descend, could it?) when Huffington defended an attack from the Terminator by
saying, “You know what? I'm not easily intimidated. Let's
see who can talk the loudest in a foreign accent."
*
Comedy actor and writer
Ardal O’Hanlon does a “You ask the questions” in
today’s Independent. Among several lovely lines, when asked about his religious
roots, he says, “I'm 90 per cent water, 10 per cent Catholic guilt,” and when
questioned about his politics he says “I wouldn't say I had any party politics,
although I do have strong philosophical beliefs - principles - and a barely
articulate rage.” I know how he feels. You don’t fancy running for office do
you Ardal?
*
Neither the Guardian nor Telegraph has printed
my letter from yesterday about their strangely different reporting of the
Bush-Chirac relationship at the UN. Not exactly surprising, perhaps.
The Independent reports on the fascinating but sad story of a homeless Paris artist known only as Joseph, hailed as a genius, whose canvases sell for hundreds of euros but who blows all the cash on three bottles of whisky a day and expensive cowboy boots. Even more tragically he’s been diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. Of scant relief is the news that an exhibition is being made of his work and the Pompidou Centre wants to buy one of his canvases.
*
Elsewhere
in the Indy today the actor Michael Sheen (no relation to Martin or
Charlie, and indeed not knowingly a resident of East Sheen either) is
interviewed about playing Tony Blair in a TV drama this weekend
called The Deal, a Stephen Frears film concerning the now notorious
meeting between Blair and chancellor Gordon Brown in poncey Islington
restaurant Granita in 1994 to agree which of them should be Prime
Minister. A preview screening of the drama made journos wince, apparently, but
they laughed out loud to see Sheen’s Blair preening himself in a dressing room
mirror prior to a TV appearance and saying, “I’ve always wanted to be an
actor.”
*
The Guardian today runs a story on its front
page headlined
Bush isolated as speech to UN falls flat, reporting as
follows: "Jacques Chirac ... blamed the US-led war for sparking one of the
most severe crises in the history of the UN and argued that Mr Bush's
unilateral actions could lead to anarchy... Chirac called for a transition [of
power of Iraq into Iraqi hands] within months, insisting that this was crucial
to securing peace". Strangely, though, the Daily Telegraph reports on the
same UN conference with a front-page story of its own headlined
France and US unite to fight WMD, reporting:
"America and France agreed to set aside their dispute over the war in Iraq
in order to take joint action against the spread of weapons of mass
destruction... Chirac declared his strong support for the moves against
proliferation, which he described as 'the major danger in the world today and
tomorrow'... Later, Chirac said he 'greatly enjoyed' his separate meeting with
Mr Bush on the margins of the Security Council and they had found many 'points
of convergence'." Two different media agendas, two different Chiracs, or
both? And what should the public believe about any of it? I’ve emailed both
papers asking what they think.
Still
no reply from BBC3 about the “interview” for a feature they’re doing on career
changes, so, unable to stand it any longer, I email them again reminding them
that I’m still available 24 hours a day to be grilled on camera anywhere in
Britain and for a special once-only fee of £0. I get a delightful response
within hours saying, “I'm so sorry I didn't reply to you, it
was all so incredibly last minute that we had to go with the first interview
that sounded good, so it was already too late by the time I got your email...
However I'm keeping potential interviewee details on file should another story
come up. In the meantime we're always on the lookout for stories so do let me
know if there's anything you think we could cover.” I think of emailing them
back with the exclusive story LONDON WRITER SUICIDAL OVER BBC3 REJECTION but am
so charmed by the response that I don’t.
The email from
BBC3 News also
includes a link to
the finished “career changes” story, which is quite
interesting (they picked a woman who’d left a job in financial services to
study medicine), as well as an advert for the BBC’s recent
Get Writing
initiative-cum-competition. There you can swap ideas and bits of writing with
other members of the forum, although it seems it’s really aimed at young,
beginning and amateur writers rather than anyone terribly serious. The
competition seems good though – write a modern version of a Canterbury Tale of
your choice and have it read out on BBC radio.
*
In
an effort to get over my disappointment about not being featured on BBC3 I go
up to the South Bank for a walk along the river and to see my mate Loyd Pfink
who’s updating me on the
Loyd’s Names site. On the way I see this bloke living in a
box doing nothing and saying he hasn’t had anything to eat for several days. I
give him 50p and he goes off and buys a can of Tennents Super. I walk along the
river a bit and see this other bloke living in a box and doing nothing and
saying he hasn’t eaten for even longer. Apparently he’s getting five million
quid for it. Should be enough to buy a few cans of Tennents, eh!
Thoughtcat’s
Auntie in Putney (Vermont) emails me a link to an organisation celebrating
Elephant
Appreciation Day. I did try to tell her that I appreciate all varieties
of pachyderm every day but she was having none of it, and indeed persuaded me
that this of all weeks should be called ThoughtElephant. So if you’ve even got
this far down the page, congratulations, and now you know why this is. The site
is pretty good actually, giving instructions on how to make an Elephruit
Salad (from a melon, a pear and four carrots) and Elephoot Cookies
(“Press on toes, three to four toes per elephoot – we suggest you use either
M&M's Brand candies or Reese's Pieces Brand”). Best of all is The
Elephant Poem by one Wayne Hepburn. “They [elephants] don't
beat up on smaller folks, / Don't care if they're the butt of jokes” runs one
of the lines. “Additional couplets welcomed,” says the small print. I’ll have
to think about that...
*
Liberal Democrat leader
Charles Kennedy is interviewed in the Independent today
further to the party’s triumph at last week’s Brent by-election. "I found
in Brent that nobody talks to you in terms of left or right,” he says. “We do
all the time at Westminster but out there people just don't. They talk about
the problems and want to know have you got a solution." I would have
thought this was pretty obvious actually but it’s refreshing to hear a
politician saying it. Better late than never I guess. And yes, I do believe the
Lib Dems are the only credible alternative to Labour now. Kennedy may be bland
but at least he’s honest bland. Iain Duncan Smith I wouldn’t trust with a
bargepole. (Is that a mixed metaphor or a Freudian slip?)
*
No reply from BBC3.
No reply from BBC bastard bloody damn 3.
No reply from BBC3.
To
my amazement, further to my experience on 10th September, I received
today a very nice letter from Sue Newey at
Cadbury Ltd saying, “I
am sorry that you have encountered a problem with a Brunch bar from one of our
vending machines. We are currently in the process of rectifying the problems
that caused this to happen and would thank you for bringing it to our
attention. I have enclosed a refund to the value of £2.00 which I trust is in
order and hope that we can look forward to your future custom.” Attached to the
bottom of the letter was a tear-off voucher for £2 redeemable against any
Cadbury confectionery product. I was so impressed I immediately went back to
the faulty machine and tried to buy four new Brunch bars, but was very
disappointed to find the machine didn’t accept the voucher. I am now in the
process of writing an email to Cadbury complaining about this. I wonder if
their compensation is worked out on an exponential basis, i.e. if I lose 50p in
the machine (or pay 50p for a faulty product) and they reimburse me with £2,
does that mean if I lose £2 they’ll send me a voucher for £8 and so on? I could
get rich at this rate, opposed as I am of course to “compensation culture”.
*
No
reply from BBC3.
No reply from BBC3, but
West Drayton’s very own
FionaCat does send me a link to another bizarre squid story on the BBC’s main
website. Basically it seems some
squidsperts
are trying to recreate squid sex for the camera. “The
Auckland University of Technology researcher said ‘The freezer bag at home - to
my wife's disgust - is actually full of giant squid gonad samples. We're going
to grind all of this up, and we're going to have this puree coming out from the
camera, squirting into the water. Hopefully the male giant squid, absolutely
driven into a frenzy, is going to come up and try to mate with the camera. This
is the dream - we're going to get this sensational footage of the giant squid
trying to do obscene things with the camera." Whatever turns you on, I
guess.
|
Thoughtcat offers concatulations to
Clare Morrall, whose novel
Astonishing Splashes of Colour has just been named as
a shortlistee for the Booker Prize. The book is the first of hers to be
published, although the fifth she's actually written. Interviewed
here for the Guardian, the 51-year-old says her technique
was to "send one manuscript out while getting on with the next one, so that
I was enjoying writing that when the other was rejected." Another
amazing aspect of this unusual story is that the book was published by a tiny
Birmingham press without the help of a literary agent, and it's only now
Morrall seems to be hitting the big time that she's been offered
representation. Goes to show what you can do when you're writing's good
enough. "Think outside the box," as the Americans say, I believe. Other books on the shortlist include
Brick Lane by Monica Ali,
Oryx and Crake by Margaret
Atwood, The Good Doctor by Damon
Galgut, Notes on a Scandal by Zoe
Heller
and
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre.
|
Thoughtcat's Booker favourite |
*
No
reply from BBC but also in the Guardian today is a very touching and
inspirational - if a little sentimental - account by Louisa Young of her
meeting with the late
Johnny Cash, and how it inspired her to quit her job
and become a novelist. (Is it my imagination or is everybody at it?)
|
The Guardian's website has a fantastic
Jane Bown gallery in Flash format, featuring some
of the great portrait photographer's best work from an astonishing 53-year
career, including this classic one of Samuel Beckett. Signed prints are also
available to buy via the site. |
|
I
receive an email from recruitment firm
Workthing referring to a survey I completed for them a
few weeks back about career changes. The survey asked whether I’d made a major
change or was planning one, to give details and to say if I would be interested
in being interviewed for some mysterious “feature” about it. I said yes, I’d
left a good job to become a writer and was now earning nothing but had the
greatest job satisfaction I’d ever had, and yes I would, naturally, be
interested in being interviewed. Today’s mail tells me to get in touch with no
less a body than the
BBC3 news site as soon as possible to “arrange my
interview”. Having fired off the email as requested I’ve spent the time since
tidying
up my flat in preparation for the BBC camera crew, thinking: Will they
interview me in the lounge or at my desk? What books shall I put behind me?
What shirt should I wear? What kind of coffee should I serve? Which bit of my
novel should I read out if they ask me to? Needless to say I have been unable
to concentrate on my novel at all since sending the email... watch this space!
Thoughtcat’s
Man in Chicago
Dave Awl
sends me a fabulous link to an
animation of
Adam Ant dressed in a gorilla costume dancing to a version of his classic
number one Stand and Deliver, called – wait for it –
Save The Gorilla.
When I read Dave’s email I thought it was a joke, or at least a real spoof, but
it turns out Adam is taking part in a 7km “fun run” through the City of London
on Sunday 21st September in aid of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. All
the entrants do their run dressed, naturally, as a zebra. No, only joking,
dressed as a gorilla. The animation links to a site called Justgiving which
enables you to donate to the cause online. It’s great to see Adam, after all
his recent trials and tribulations, doing something which manages to be fun,
charitable, ironic and creative all at the same time. Personally I think he’s
worth a few quid just for having the sense of humour to do it at all. Adam is
trying to raise £5,000 for the cause, so please give generously.
*
Thoughtcat is now listed under the “British Web Zines” category of Humorlinks.com, a US-based site with a huge directory of websites and resources for and by writers and performers of all sorts of humorous items from around the globe. It’s possibly the kiss of death for anybody vaguely comical to describe themselves as humorous or to include themselves in such a directory, but I’m stupid enough to take that chance. You can vote for and rate Thoughtcat here. Take a moment to have a look round while you’re there – there’s oodles of good stuff on it.
*
Talking of humour, I am reliably informed by today’s Daily Llama that
Eric
Idle’s “Greedy Bastard” tour is due to commence next month...
The Guardian has a great report today headlined “How Del Boy’s old motor could save the world” which reveals that scientifically speaking, an immense asteroid on course to destroy the planet in some 800 years time could be put off course with a mere Robin Reliant (for non-British readers, this is a notoriously naff old three-wheeled car). It’s all to do with thrust, apparently. How they plan to get a Robin Reliant up there though is another matter, especially as the cars themselves could hardly get to the end of the road without falling over.
This story appears on page 12 of the paper. The front page
has what looks like a Steve Bell cartoon of George Bush but is apparently a
real photo of the man, under the headline “Iran’s nuclear deadline”. The US is convinced Iran is
building a bomb, and during another rally of paranoia yesterday Bush reiterated
his “new strategy” of pre-emptive self-defence. “We are not waiting for further
attacks on our citizens,” he says. “We are striking our enemies before they can
strike us again." Given this, the thought of being obliterated by an
asteroid in 877 years' time seems something of a luxury. Then again, if
something as simple as a Robin Reliant could save the world from obliteration
by an asteroid within about 10 generations, surely somebody can come up with
something equally ingenious to stop George leading us to destruction within
about the next 10 minutes? I've got an old Beetle if that'll help, and I
challenge Thoughtcat’s Man in Nham to donate his Audi to this excellent cause.
The Guardian doesn’t print my letter about Catherine Bennett on David Blaine but it does print two other letters which are much better, quite correctly pointing out that it’s not very polite to throw eggs at people, and also that Blaine has brought quite a sense of community to the area. I especially like the phrase used by one of the correspondents, who says Blaine is “consuming himself”. Eat (as it were) your heart out, Damien Hirst and your ilk: this is much more interesting and disturbing art than anything you could imagine, or certainly have the, er, guts to carry out.
*
Doing my weekly (OK, daily) Google search on “Thoughtcat”, I come across a link to TC from nothing less than a UK directory for male models. My mind boggles: I mean, it’s flattering and everything, but frankly unrealistic. What is TC doing on such a site, featuring such dubious links as “catheter care” and “male model requires female model partner”? Turns out the link relates to an entry on TC from 15th January when I defended a raunchy Gucci advert which the Guardian said showed a woman "being pushed against a wall by a male model”. Which, incidentally, can now be seen online...
The Guardian reports today: “Donald Rumsfeld
said yesterday that most of the 660 suspected terrorists at the
Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba could expect to be
held for the duration of the global war on terrorism. ‘Our interest is in not
trying them and letting them out," he said. ‘Our interest is in ...
keeping them off the streets, and so that's what's taking place.’” Detention
without trial, eh, Don? Yeah, like, real democracy in action there – and
today of all days for such a comment, too.
*
Jack Straw grins sickeningly once again at the
news that (surprise, surprise)
the Intelligence & Security Committee report into the Iraq
dossier has exonerated him and just about everyone else of any wrongdoing.
“The
dossier [on Iraq's weapons programmes] was not ‘sexed up’ by Alastair Campbell
or anyone else,” says the foreign sexedupretary. What, despite his admission
only yesterday that he wanted a “killer paragraph” inserted into the very same
dossier to help “strengthen” its case? Meanwhile, defenceless sexedupretary
Geoff Hoon says he “regrets any misunderstanding” over his nebulous part in the
whole affair. Thoughtcat says: Do these people think we’re all fucking
stupid or what?
*
Catherine
Bennett writes in today’s Guardian that
David
Blaine’s perspex incarceration/starvation stunt over the Thames is so
risible that he deserves the eggs and other missiles that have been thrown at
him. I write to the paper: “Like Catherine Bennett I find David
Blaine's stunt ridiculous and in poor taste, but I disagree with her on two
points: firstly, he's not ‘faux-starving’, more designer-starving, and secondly,
he is, after all, only a few days into his fast so far. Although I would
respect this millionaire more for quitting immediately and going for a bacon
butty, I suspect he'll complete his task, either in one piece or several, and
make all his detractors eat their words.”
*
The
other week I ordered a copy of
The Medusa Frequency, one of my all-time favourite
novels (and in my opinion Russell Hoban’s best book), from
Amazon.co.uk for Thoughtcat’s Man in (Chelte)Nham, who
recently celebrated his 25th birthday for the umpteenth year
running. When said correspondent didn’t mention it after several days, I was
worried: did he receive it and simply hate it so much that he would rather have
pretended it hadn’t happened at all (unlikely), or was there a simpler
explanation, such as he hadn’t received it, and I was being paranoid to a
dubyanic degree? It turned out that the latter was the case – after some (soul)
searching, said classic modern opus had indeed been delivered several days ago
in Man in Nham’s absence and intercepted by his flatmate, who then sat on it,
fell asleep and forgot about it. However, by the time M.i.N. had tortured his
flatmate and prised it from his grasp, I’d already emailed Amazon to complain
about the book’s lack of appearance anywhere in Gloucestershire. Prepared, as I
always am, for a fight (q.v. email to Cadbury Schweppes below), I was
amazed to receive an email just a few hours later from the firm apologising for
the apparent mistake and, once I’d clarified the delivery address, offering to
send a replacement immediately at no extra cost. Now that’s what I call
service...
Following
George Bush’s proposal to up the US's Iraq budget by a
humungously paranoid $87bn, the Guardian asks several prominent people
how else that astronomical figure could be spent.
The
Times meanwhile has a column by Simon Jenkins which lists
ten reasons we should now get out of Iraq. Do we really
need that many?
UK
foreign secretary
Jack Straw is revealed to have wanted a “killer paragraph” in
the infamous September dossier to really, like, sell the idea of
war to the populace. Forget sensitivity – surely anybody without enough of a sense
of irony to make such a “killer” request should be nowhere near the foreign
office of any country in the world.
*
While
visiting a mate in Elephant & Castle for a guitar jam today, I had a nasty
experience, as the following email to
Cadbury Schweppes makes clear:
Dear Sirs
This afternoon at about 2.15pm I bought a Cadbury's Brunch bar for 50p from your vending machine number 0243 on the southbound Bakerloo line platform at Waterloo Station. The bar came out covered in a film of black soot which covered my hands and would not rub off. I had to find a toilet and wash it off with hot soap and water. Needless to say this was very inconvenient and unpleasant and I wasn't much inclined to open the wrapper and eat the chocolate bar either. I would be grateful if you would inspect this machine and please refund my 50p and/or supply me with a (clean) Brunch bar. I still have the bar, unopened and still with some soot on, if you wish me to send it to you.
Yours faithfully
Thoughtcat
Watch this space
for news of a response, if I get one...
Salam Pax, the “Baghdad blogger” who blogged all the way through the “allied” bombardment, tells his story of how he and his blog became as feted as it did in today’s Guardian. Among other things, he reveals he’s obsessed with blogs of all kinds and actually reads them... he’s an even braver man than I thought.
The
Independent reports that
increasing numbers of children are suffering from school phobia.
I was sad to read this, remembering only too well my own crippling experience
of anxiety at the age of 14 or so which prevented me from going to school for
several months. I immediately dashed off a 1400-word article about my
experiences and emailed it to the paper for consideration as an exclusive
feature, but they didn’t get back to me even to say “no thanks” [and still
haven’t as I update this a week later - TC], so I reproduce it below as a
Thoughtcat exclusive instead...
My experience of school phobia began on an
ordinary day during a German lesson. It
was the mid-1980s, and I was 14 years old.
I was late for the lesson, and although I badly
needed a toilet, the German teacher didn’t take kindly to latecomers, so
against my better judgment I bypassed the bogs and went straight into the
class. For years afterwards I wondered
how my life might have been different if I’d simply gone when I needed to.
German was never my best subject and the teacher
could be intimidating. You only ever
put up your hand in that class because you were a thousand per cent sure you
knew the answer to a question; nobody asked to go to the toilet – it just
wasn’t done. Logically I knew I wasn’t going to be denied
permission to go, but sitting there, my bladder bursting to the extent that I
could think of nothing else, my biggest fear was wetting myself for,
paradoxically, not wishing to draw attention to myself. I knew I wouldn’t last the full 35 minutes
of the lesson, so I stood up, put one hand to my mouth and the other to my
stomach in the classic pose of the projectile-vomiter, and was given immediate
leave.
After that, everything seemed to be fine. For the next German lesson I was extra sure
to go to the toilet beforehand. But to
my horror, the moment I sat down I had the feeling my bladder would give out at
any second. My pulse rose, I began to
sweat and feel sick, the minutes crept by like hours. I knew I didn’t need to wee, but I couldn’t rationalise with the
rising panic that, once again, I would wet myself and become an outcast from
school and, by extension, society in general.
As I made my excuses a second time, the teacher said, “I hope this isn’t
going to become a regular event.” I
hoped so too, and not just because of her, but because the eyes of twenty-five
or thirty other boys were on me as I made my way out – and back in again.
Within weeks the panic I’d experienced had
infected every other lesson in the curriculum – starting with my worst
subjects, then my indifferent ones, and finally consuming even those I was best
at and enjoyed the most, namely English, Art and Music.
I lived five miles away from school and
travelled there via two buses. One
morning I suffered a panic attack as I boarded the bus, and to the
consternation of my friends I had to get off after a couple of stops and walk
the remaining miles. Once I was outside
on the pavement, I was fine – just as my panic in school would ease as soon as
I was out of the gaze of the classroom.
After a few more weeks I was walking the five
miles to school every day. If nothing
else it was good exercise, and I enjoyed the time on my own, but I wished I was
doing it purely for those reasons rather than to avoid the sheer terror of
crowded environments.
It wasn’t as if the school was at fault; the
teachers were fantastic (I certainly don’t blame the German tutor for my
problems), I had some great friends, and although there were two or three boys
who picked on me, both at school and on the bus (at one point I was driven to
tears by one of them in full view of my form class – pretty shameful stuff when
you’re 14), I wasn’t the only one who was bullied, and those lads were the
exception to the rule of what was essentially an excellent comprehensive.
The school in fact allowed me to sit near the
door in all my classes and slip out to the toilet whenever I felt like it
rather than have to draw attention to myself.
However, as well-intentioned as that was, it only made me look as if I
was getting special treatment for something that couldn’t easily be explained
to my classmates. It wasn’t, after all,
as if I had an illness with a name.
The condition worsened over the following weeks
to the point where I could hardly get out of the house, and I stopped going to
school altogether. My parents did their
best to support me but the problem was beyond everyone’s comprehension.
The family GP found nothing physically wrong
with me, so I was referred to an out-patient clinic nearby which treated
children and teenagers for psychological problems. I attended twice a week (in theory anyway, when I actually
managed to get myself on the train for the terrifying six-minute journey) for
both group therapy and one-to-one sessions with a psychiatrist.
The group therapy could be depressing at times,
and we often spent long minutes staring at our feet as others described similar
school experiences to mine, as well as those of drunken, abusive or absent
parents and other problems in the home.
My sessions with the psychiatrist though were very enjoyable: he loosely
diagnosed agoraphobia and prescribed a beta-blocker for my anxiety attacks, but
discouraged any stronger medicines or hypnosis. Sharing my interest in poetry, books and music, he took a
sympathetic, creative approach to my treatment, and our sessions would often go
on for long afternoons and feel more like conversations with an old friend than
actual psychoanalysis. It was all on
the NHS – what I would have done if my parents had had to pay I have no idea,
as they simply couldn’t have afforded it, and at the time it was essential to
my recovery.
The period of two months I was absent from
school at the age of 15 was a kind of education in itself. Apart from doing schoolwork delivered to me
by my friends, I wrote poetry, taught myself to play the guitar, went for long
walks in the park, read some classic books, and even started to write a
novel. I knew I had to go back
eventually, and with the help of my psychiatrist and the school, which gave me
the safety net of doing my work alone in the library if I wished, I gradually
started attending lessons again. They
even let me take my O-level exams on my own, invigilated by a single member of
staff who probably had much more important things to do. In the end I passed five – English Language
and Literature with A grades – and found a place at an excellent college to
study A-levels. The college’s laid-back
attitude, together with the cosmopolitan student body, some superb lecturers
and an eclectic mix of literary, musical and intellectual influences all helped
me overcome the panic and anxiety I’d felt at school.
I left college with indifferent grades and no
real academic ambitions, something I had mixed feelings about at the time – I
panicked again in the exams and although I’d received some good marks for my coursework,
none of those counted towards my final grade.
But my disappointment at failing to get into university was offset by
winning first prize in a local poetry competition and another in a short story
contest. With school and college behind
me, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
I continued to see my psychiatrist until I was
19; we supposedly arrived at some kind of conclusion about the causes of my
anxiety, but that mattered less to me than our friendship and the things I
learnt from him and other people at that time about the good things in life –
namely, books, music and human relationships, still the most important elements
for me today both personally and in the wider context of writing.
On balance, I was lucky: the system – the rigid
school curriculum, the pressure of ‘options’ and examinations, the bullying –
all contributed to my school phobia in the first place, but in the end the
system and some great people came through for me, and I’ve always felt myself
to be stronger for the experience. Not,
of course, that I’d wish a single panic attack, and especially not in a school
classroom, on my worst enemy.
*
On a more lighthearted note today, the Guardian
has a hilarious story about how
a raggedy old folk singer called Jungle Barry has been wrongly
accused of being Lord Lucan, the notorious British aristocrat who
disappeared the day after his nanny was found murdered in their London home in
the early 70s. Lucan was never found, and this article proves he hasn’t been
found again. And even if he had, Jungle Barry is dead anyway.
That’s
right, the thought and cat are last week’s again – and why not, indeed, but I have
to admit the reason for it is the same technical hassle I suffered during the
last repeat a while back. Like last time, this page is being written on a
coal-fired laptop running a bribery-and-corrupted version of Word 2000, rather
than on Frontpage on a modern PC, since the latter, which used to be able to do
everything except make the tea, has once again decided, post-MS Blast, not to
let me boot it up. Having also had my FrontPage CD rom nicked by bastards
unknown hasn’t helped either, but I don’t mean to complain, especially since in
any damn case I’ve had another very productive and creative week in which I
passed the half-way mark with my novel, meaning I haven’t had time to write a
lot for the blog, hence the few shorthandishly pithy comments below. However, I
am planning to put a few extracts from the first draft of the novel on the site
in the coming weeks, so watch this space – if, indeed, this space even gets as
far as the internet...
*
Back
to the real world... the Independent on Sunday today has a profile of the
now-encapsulated
David Blaine as he commences his Tower Bridge stunt,
reporting that the only thing he has with him in his perspex box apart from a
tube to drink water is a picture of his mother.
I’ve
added
Penguin Books’
website to the list of recommended diversions (see right). It’s a great site
packed not only with news about the publisher’s latest books and authors but
also some fascinating interviews with people like
Pat Barker, Caro Fraser,
Jim Crace, Susan Williams and Orlando Figes. Meanwhile
Mark Lawson writes an
interesting
review of Robert Harris’s new novel
Pompeii in
the Guardian Review, explaining how Harris manages to maintain the tension in
the thriller despite the fact that everybody knows the explosive ending.
Click here to buy Pompeii from Amazon at half price (£8.99 for
the hardcover).
The Guardian
contemplates the gross effrontery that is George Bush’s attempt to get
the UN to tidy up the mess he started in Iraq: “If the Bush administration is
expecting grateful thanks for its proposal to give the UN a bigger role in
Iraq, it is going to be sorely disappointed... It is plain that the US push for
a new security council resolution does not derive from newly rediscovered
respect for the UN. President George Bush and his senior officials were happy
to bully and bypass the UN in the lead-up to the Iraq war. It is a grim irony
that they are now trudging back, cap in hand, to seek the help of the same
organisation they resoundingly rubbished.”
*
The
Guardian also reports on a movie world first, in which a new
film written by Simon “Full Monty” Beaufoy called
This Is Not A Love
Song is to have a simultaneous web-broadcast alongside the cinema
release... the Poetry Library on London’s South Bank has launched the first of
its
Poetry
Magazines Online Archive, documenting hundreds of excellent small
magazines for posterity (which in web terms could mean 5 minutes, but there you
go)... Computer antivirus strategies are in crisis, reports
the New Scientist...
works of Aboriginal art have been stolen, reports the
Independent; Thoughtcat wonders where Prince Harry is at the moment... and
Thoughtcat’s Man in Nam (nr. Stroud) reports with a link to a “brilliant
Flash animation thing” called
Dueling
Banjos, a surrealist Deep South satire featuring the eponymous music
from Deliverance (played by a squirrel and a penguin), pigs running
wild, a cameo by the Dukes of Hazzard (remember them?) and an exquisite poultry
denouement. Enjoy.
Paulo Coelho certainly is doing the rounds to promote his new book Eleven Minutes, here providing the answers to a ‘You ask the questions’ in the Independent. One reader asks: “A reviewer on amazon.co.uk described The Alchemist as ‘an almost childish, over-extended pop psychology session’. How do you react to that?” To which Coelho replies succinctly, “I write books. Reviewers write reviews.”
Tim Robbins talks about the problems inherent in being an
anti-war liberal film star in America, while
Shias mourning their recently-murdered cleric demand an end
to the US occupation of Iraq.
A very funny article in the Guardian reports on the “wars ‘r’ us” shopping culture in the US, cashing in on recent events with merchandise including talking George Bush dolls – some of them more patriotic than others. Coming soon, a Tony Blair doll, complete with a “Hutton Button” – press it and watch him squirm!
There
was a very silly programme on Channel 4 (or was it Channel 5? I get the two
mixed up so often these days) tonight called something like “Stars in the
Buff”, in which nude scenes, both famous and obscure, featuring various
actors were catalogued. It mostly consisted of some very inane stuff for the
truly desperate, such as Julia Roberts’ nipple being visible for a fifth of a
second in Pretty Woman, but it was of course compulsive viewing, and in
any case it did provide Brian Sewell with the opportunity to say something
typically exquisite. Defending one of the more explicit scenes from the
infamous Mark Rylance/Kerry Fox film Intimacy, he said that while it may
have offended some people, “the script called for an oral moment.” I seem to
remember he also said about this that “you knew it was coming” but I can’t be
sure as I was too busy laughing.
