Oh, good idea Butch. Yes, very clever, well done. Thrash your head against the wall over this woman, like you've been doing for the last five months. That will make you happy. Doesn't exactly fit with your New Year's Resolution, does it?
As always, my NY resolution emerged victorious from a shortlist. That shortlist - and the reasons the losers were turfed out of town like no-good drifters - was as follows:
1. To undermine and subvert my current lifestyle.
Points against: Too pretentious. Why not just try to change? This is what every man-Jack - and woman-Jackie - of us tries to do every year. So stop talking cock.
2. To assassinate Bryan Ferry.
Points against: I don't really know why this made it on to the shortlist. I love Ferry, although his best days are behind him, instantiated by the first five Roxy albums, from the eponymous one to Siren. I would always be known as 'the man who killed Bryan Ferry', but, in the final analysis, that is not enough.
3. To play at polo with the skulls of my enemies.
PA: I stole this idea from the film The Man Who Would Be King and, although it sounds sensational, it is impractical and - as with number 2 - illegal.
4. To walk into the hardest pub in London's east end - I imagine there are helpful websites indicating likely candidates - order a pint of lager, drink it in one, up-end it on the bar and enquire of the men present; "Any of you ladies take it up the tradesmen's entrance?"
PA: Although the feeling would be unrepeatable, it just seems, I don't know, lacking in poetry.
5. To re-record Joy Division's first album, Unknown Pleasures, on the ukulele with my mum on washboard and American novelist Thomas Pynchon on bass.
PA: Mum was really up for this, but Pynchon is notoriously reclusive.
6. To mount cannon on my narrow boat, sail down the Thames, and attack the Houses of Parliament.
PA: I can't get tidal insurance to go on the Thames.
7. To write to Charles Manson asking if he would like to play correspondence chess.
PA: Nothing I have ever read about Manson indicates that he is interested in chess, and the postal system is notoriously lax, at least on this side of the herring pond.
8. To move to Kingston, Surrey, and behave like a Yardie who mistakenly believes he is in Kingston, Jamaica.
PA: Me nah deal with home counties. Buyakasha!
9. To tie chicken bones around my neck and claim to anyone who asks that they are the remains of Saint Willoughby, the little-known patron saint of Meccano.
PA: I just don't do surreal.
10. To have a sexual experience inside the Large Hadron Collider.
PA: I don't know enough about the physics to pull it off.
In the end, none of the above made it. I decided instead to act not analyse. Too many of my blog postings, on perusal, mistake morbid and obsessive introspection for valid self-analysis, which just makes me look like a tosser. Good luck with your resolutions, Butchers!
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
You can tell your kids you were there at the birth of a new word
Neologism time. I read about this guy Anjem Choudary in The Sun, and Guido Fawkes has a table explaining how his benefits relate to the pay of a soldier. I don’t think I need to add to the swelling chorus pointing out the obvious consequences of our enemies’ actions – I’m talking about Socialists, not Muslims – and I am sure that there will soon be a counterpoint featuring that wonderful word ‘Islamophobia’. May I suggest a new term to describe my feelings towards Mohammedans, whether saliva-flecked of mouth like Choudary or the mythical “vast majority of peace-loving Muslims” of whom we read so much but who seem to exist in the same way that leprechauns exist, in the minds of the gullible and stupid?
Islamonausea.
Butchu akhbar.
Islamonausea.
Butchu akhbar.
World not completely crap shocker
"Child protection campaigner Sara Payne is responding well to treatment after she was taken to hospital with complications following brain surgery.
Ms Payne, 40, was taken to St George's Hospital in Tooting, south London, in a critical condition on 23 December.
A hospital spokesman said she was now in 'a stable condition and improving', and a friend said she was also talking."
I blogged about Sara Payne before Christmas, when things did not look good. Not a whole hell of a lot cheers me up at the moment, but this snippet of news has. Come on Sara; outlive us all.
Ms Payne, 40, was taken to St George's Hospital in Tooting, south London, in a critical condition on 23 December.
A hospital spokesman said she was now in 'a stable condition and improving', and a friend said she was also talking."
I blogged about Sara Payne before Christmas, when things did not look good. Not a whole hell of a lot cheers me up at the moment, but this snippet of news has. Come on Sara; outlive us all.
Icebound, or, Desperately Seeking Rhonda
If I remember rightly, the phrase bitter-sweet was first used by Sappho, the saucy female Roman poetess with an eye for the ladies. As phrases go, it will do for last night.
Gelly and I met in the Paradise Bar in Kensal, where we met once before. She looked a lot better than the last time I saw her, but I’ll never see the woman I knew in August again. I made her laugh a few times – I can be a funny guy, amazingly – but there doesn’t seem to be any joy in her eyes these days. Her whole mien has changed and it’s a shame.
To my unconcealed delight, she brought Patsy the dog, who was overjoyed to see me even by the manic standards employed by hounds. Nothing much seems to have changed in her life. Gelly’s, I mean, not Patsy’s. Her job is at risk as the Russians she works for [I bet their money’s bent] may be relocating to Switzerland, and Gelly is talking about commuting there for the week if they do. Bit drastic isn’t it? I said. Why not just get another job here? I mean, I think I’m justified in thinking that, if you earn £75K, then your job market must be a broad one with glorious prospects, no? She looked straight at me. There are, she said, no jobs. Then, I rejoindered, you should just get out to Switzerland and stay there. This country’s finished. And I explained to her about Standard & Poor, triple-A credit ratings, gilt bond uptakes, quantitative easing and public sector borrowing as a proportion of GDP. I really did. Don’t you find that, if you hang around the media long enough, this stuff seeps in? It’s like Bart Simpson in France when he suddenly realises that he can speak French, that the information was creeping into his brain in all those lessons in which he didn’t pay attention. Brave new world. It amazes and appals me how little some people know about what is happening to money in this country. How much longer will people keep amusing themselves before the facts punch their way through the screen of the plasma TV? Gelly isn’t stupid, by a long chalk, but she just knows nothing about the economy. I mean, I’m no financial analyst, but I know a hawk from a fucking handsaw. But I digress.
She’s still with the infantile boyfriend. She mentioned him once last night – let’s call him Sammy. I was making a point about writing – I’m attempting to go into business as a freelance copywriter, of which more later – along the following lines. If you take the three basic art forms as music, plastic [painting, drawing, sculpture etc.] and writing, you don’t need the first two to function in business unless you are a musician or an artist. And, at this point, if anyone wants to add dance as an art form then I’ll meet you anywhere you want for a fight. I knock off at four in the week. Dance. Fuck off out of it. Anyway, writing you will need, whatever your line of work, which is why everyone thinks they can write. Gelly interjected at one point to say that it was true about music. Sammy had been in the music business but can’t play a note. She mentioned him once and it was to put him down. I said to her later, as we walked to her car, “So you didn’t marry him then.” She laughed, a short, derisory, joyless snort. “No. I couldn’t. Not if I had to have an affair on the way.”
Actually, not just the one affair. She slept with someone else shortly before she met me. I know because she told me. I also know that the spirit of Sappho was watching over her that night too although, as far as I know, Gelly never slept with the woman again.
So, now she’s in a loveless relationship and you can see it in her tired eyes. It’s such a shame. She has to be able to control a man, you see, although in her case she has every right to require that of the opposite sex. As I mentioned, there are aspects of Gelly’s CV which I haven’t covered. Secrets, secrets I can’t keep.
As I said, Gelly is a divorcee. She married a Kiwi. I’m not sure whether she met him in Kiwi-land or here, but NZ is where they ended up. The relationship had problems. They tried for kids but he had a freakishly low sperm count. Also, there was a particular sexual act which he refused to perform on her. It’s one of those activities which generally please women on two fronts. Gelly is a fan, I happen to know. Physically - and if performed competently - it’s all the fun of the fair, and it has the added benefit of shutting up a woman’s husband or boyfriend by virtue of the fact that we men are too polite to talk with our mouths full. We’ll say no more about it; this is a family weblog. Yeah, The Addams family, or the Borgias.
So, a marriage with its problems even before Gelly sat down at her husband’s PC one day for some reason or other, and came across a folder which looked odd, appeared in an odd place, as though hidden. She opened it. It contained photographs. It’s hard to imagine what it must be like for a wife to discover hundreds of photographs on her husband’s hard drive which depict very young, very naked children engaged in acts that very young children should not have to endure and would not, were it not for the wickedness of some of our fellow species members. What do you do in that first couple of minutes when you realise you have married a paedophile? Perhaps that’s it for you. Perhaps, after that bright line has been crossed, joy is just something that happens to other people. She told me this story the first time I ever met her. “I could,” she said, “have buried him with that.” Why, I wondered [although not aloud] didn’t you then? You were, after all, an accessory after the fact to a horrible crime. But that’s her business.
So, that’s why she has to be able to control the man she’s with, and I suspect she realised early on that I am not for taming. When she pushed off, she gave me a lift back to the canal, where Sabrina lies more or less icebound, which is how I feel. Are we friends? I asked. Yes, she replied, but there was still that sadness in her eyes. I find it a hard memory to revisit this morning. I don’t think I saw things from her point of view, or at least I didn’t pay that point of view enough attention. Why, I asked, didn’t you reply to my emails and texts after we saw one another last? Because, she replied, I wanted a complete break from you. I realised something then. It was the same for her. At one point I said,
“August. You do remember, don’t you?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“It wasn’t just me, was it?”
“No.”
I was looking at Patsy during the evening, her great big brown doggy eyes lapping me up. They weren’t the only peepers inspecting yours truly. I looked suddenly at Gelly. She was looking straight at me, and obviously had been doing so for some time. She looked away. I don’t think I realised. She liked me too.
Oh, this is just depressing me, to tell you the truth. I hope that she’s okay, but I have to – as politicians say – draw a line under this affair and move on.
And the place to which I must relocate is becoming increasingly clear. I’m rather lonely and I need a woman in my life. That isn’t supposed to be as utilitarian as it probably appears, it’s just a fact. I think I’m going to do what I did a couple of years ago; I think I’m going to sign up with a dating agency. I did it a couple of years ago, and I think I’m a little more qualified and prepared this time around. I dated eight women, liked four of them and slept with two, although no full-time business resulted. Actually, I think there is a utilitarian aspect to all this. You oughtn’t to use human beings as erasers, to rub out the ghosts of your recent past, but I have found that to be a by-product of some of my recent affairs. It isn’t just that, really it isn’t, but I can feel a Beach Boys lyric coming on, with which I will leave you;
Well, Rhonda you look so fine
And I know it wouldn't take much time
For you to help me Rhonda
Help me get her out of my heart.
Gelly and I met in the Paradise Bar in Kensal, where we met once before. She looked a lot better than the last time I saw her, but I’ll never see the woman I knew in August again. I made her laugh a few times – I can be a funny guy, amazingly – but there doesn’t seem to be any joy in her eyes these days. Her whole mien has changed and it’s a shame.
To my unconcealed delight, she brought Patsy the dog, who was overjoyed to see me even by the manic standards employed by hounds. Nothing much seems to have changed in her life. Gelly’s, I mean, not Patsy’s. Her job is at risk as the Russians she works for [I bet their money’s bent] may be relocating to Switzerland, and Gelly is talking about commuting there for the week if they do. Bit drastic isn’t it? I said. Why not just get another job here? I mean, I think I’m justified in thinking that, if you earn £75K, then your job market must be a broad one with glorious prospects, no? She looked straight at me. There are, she said, no jobs. Then, I rejoindered, you should just get out to Switzerland and stay there. This country’s finished. And I explained to her about Standard & Poor, triple-A credit ratings, gilt bond uptakes, quantitative easing and public sector borrowing as a proportion of GDP. I really did. Don’t you find that, if you hang around the media long enough, this stuff seeps in? It’s like Bart Simpson in France when he suddenly realises that he can speak French, that the information was creeping into his brain in all those lessons in which he didn’t pay attention. Brave new world. It amazes and appals me how little some people know about what is happening to money in this country. How much longer will people keep amusing themselves before the facts punch their way through the screen of the plasma TV? Gelly isn’t stupid, by a long chalk, but she just knows nothing about the economy. I mean, I’m no financial analyst, but I know a hawk from a fucking handsaw. But I digress.
She’s still with the infantile boyfriend. She mentioned him once last night – let’s call him Sammy. I was making a point about writing – I’m attempting to go into business as a freelance copywriter, of which more later – along the following lines. If you take the three basic art forms as music, plastic [painting, drawing, sculpture etc.] and writing, you don’t need the first two to function in business unless you are a musician or an artist. And, at this point, if anyone wants to add dance as an art form then I’ll meet you anywhere you want for a fight. I knock off at four in the week. Dance. Fuck off out of it. Anyway, writing you will need, whatever your line of work, which is why everyone thinks they can write. Gelly interjected at one point to say that it was true about music. Sammy had been in the music business but can’t play a note. She mentioned him once and it was to put him down. I said to her later, as we walked to her car, “So you didn’t marry him then.” She laughed, a short, derisory, joyless snort. “No. I couldn’t. Not if I had to have an affair on the way.”
Actually, not just the one affair. She slept with someone else shortly before she met me. I know because she told me. I also know that the spirit of Sappho was watching over her that night too although, as far as I know, Gelly never slept with the woman again.
So, now she’s in a loveless relationship and you can see it in her tired eyes. It’s such a shame. She has to be able to control a man, you see, although in her case she has every right to require that of the opposite sex. As I mentioned, there are aspects of Gelly’s CV which I haven’t covered. Secrets, secrets I can’t keep.
As I said, Gelly is a divorcee. She married a Kiwi. I’m not sure whether she met him in Kiwi-land or here, but NZ is where they ended up. The relationship had problems. They tried for kids but he had a freakishly low sperm count. Also, there was a particular sexual act which he refused to perform on her. It’s one of those activities which generally please women on two fronts. Gelly is a fan, I happen to know. Physically - and if performed competently - it’s all the fun of the fair, and it has the added benefit of shutting up a woman’s husband or boyfriend by virtue of the fact that we men are too polite to talk with our mouths full. We’ll say no more about it; this is a family weblog. Yeah, The Addams family, or the Borgias.
So, a marriage with its problems even before Gelly sat down at her husband’s PC one day for some reason or other, and came across a folder which looked odd, appeared in an odd place, as though hidden. She opened it. It contained photographs. It’s hard to imagine what it must be like for a wife to discover hundreds of photographs on her husband’s hard drive which depict very young, very naked children engaged in acts that very young children should not have to endure and would not, were it not for the wickedness of some of our fellow species members. What do you do in that first couple of minutes when you realise you have married a paedophile? Perhaps that’s it for you. Perhaps, after that bright line has been crossed, joy is just something that happens to other people. She told me this story the first time I ever met her. “I could,” she said, “have buried him with that.” Why, I wondered [although not aloud] didn’t you then? You were, after all, an accessory after the fact to a horrible crime. But that’s her business.
So, that’s why she has to be able to control the man she’s with, and I suspect she realised early on that I am not for taming. When she pushed off, she gave me a lift back to the canal, where Sabrina lies more or less icebound, which is how I feel. Are we friends? I asked. Yes, she replied, but there was still that sadness in her eyes. I find it a hard memory to revisit this morning. I don’t think I saw things from her point of view, or at least I didn’t pay that point of view enough attention. Why, I asked, didn’t you reply to my emails and texts after we saw one another last? Because, she replied, I wanted a complete break from you. I realised something then. It was the same for her. At one point I said,
“August. You do remember, don’t you?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“It wasn’t just me, was it?”
“No.”
I was looking at Patsy during the evening, her great big brown doggy eyes lapping me up. They weren’t the only peepers inspecting yours truly. I looked suddenly at Gelly. She was looking straight at me, and obviously had been doing so for some time. She looked away. I don’t think I realised. She liked me too.
Oh, this is just depressing me, to tell you the truth. I hope that she’s okay, but I have to – as politicians say – draw a line under this affair and move on.
And the place to which I must relocate is becoming increasingly clear. I’m rather lonely and I need a woman in my life. That isn’t supposed to be as utilitarian as it probably appears, it’s just a fact. I think I’m going to do what I did a couple of years ago; I think I’m going to sign up with a dating agency. I did it a couple of years ago, and I think I’m a little more qualified and prepared this time around. I dated eight women, liked four of them and slept with two, although no full-time business resulted. Actually, I think there is a utilitarian aspect to all this. You oughtn’t to use human beings as erasers, to rub out the ghosts of your recent past, but I have found that to be a by-product of some of my recent affairs. It isn’t just that, really it isn’t, but I can feel a Beach Boys lyric coming on, with which I will leave you;
Well, Rhonda you look so fine
And I know it wouldn't take much time
For you to help me Rhonda
Help me get her out of my heart.
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
All is quiet on New Year's Day
My heart bleeds to have to use a line from a U2 song as my header, but it seems so apposite. They are such a genuinely rubbish band, with the honourable exception of the song Vertigo, the riff from which would have graced Lizzy or Zeppelin. I saw U2 twice in the 1980s, and both times they were supporting Echo and the Bunnymen, an infinitely superior outfit. Second time around, Bono - that absurdist jackanape who has gone on to be king of the bien pensant world - walked out over the crowd, an act he filched from the mighty Iggy Pop. He looked like a wanker then, and nothing has changed. I notice he keeps schtum about the band’s much-vaunted Christianity these days. Gotta be inclusive and diverse for the kids, man. There’s more rock ‘n’ roll in Keith Richards’ plectrum than in all the U2 albums ever made. Do you like U2? Have you listened to The Stooges? Compare and contrast, gentle friends, compare and contrast. Authenticity plays inauthenticity, and all this without the help of Martin Heidegger.
My New Year's Day, as mentioned, began in Chelsea Wharf, where I was as snug as a bug in a rug in Di's spare snort fort. I turned on my phone to find an agreeable selection of New Year greetings from chums and ex-lovers, of which more later. The girl herself pushed off to an appointment with some of her girlfriends, and left me in charge of her flat with a set of keys to boot. I toyed around with her massive telly - after an introductory seminar - watching a bit of Frasier and some of the mildly amusing The Three Amigos.
Around 1pm, I had a slug of Absinthe and took a walk. Chelsea and Imperial Wharves combine to form a cold but beautiful micro-city, with more than a touch of the steampunk about it. It was cold, empty and slightly eerie. I always find buildings with no people the tiniest bit ominous. Have you ever seen Hitler’s architectural paintings? There are never any people in the scene. I walked to the Thames at high tide, me and the river both. I wandered around until I found a pub called Lot's Road, set as it is, uncontroversially, on the corner of Lot's Road. I spent 90 minutes there with my copy of Standpoint and a couple of pints of Kronenbourg. It was the most beautiful of days, as any of my readers who were in London will verify. It was as though the gods were trying out some new weather software, Sunlight 2.0 or similar. So bright, so cold, so much reminiscent of some women I've crossed swords with in my life.
And, on a related subject, one of those women is Gelly, who sent me a New Year message by text, suitably oblique and lightly sprinkled with little text kisses, like specks of chocolate on the warm foam of a cappuccino. I simply don't know how to deal with the fact that her text made my day; it's not something I want to think about too much. I sat in the pub and sent her a flagrantly flirtatious reply, my reward being another text reading simply; X.
Di called me to say she was back, and I joined her for some rather wonderful home-made soup - which my almost-cockney old man calls 'loop the loop' - and conversation.
And conversation. Di has recently had a short-lived affair with a man who has left a void in her life when he elected to leave it, as he seems to have done. We talked for what seemed like hours - mainly because it was - then ate bacon and eggs [she's such a darling] until she suggested we watch a DVD.
Now, I am very well aware that I must watch more in the way of contemporary cinema, what with trying to add to its tally and all. She suggested a movie, then fell asleep halfway through. I didn't. I watched it all. By the end of it, I was an emotional wreck, partly through having been gripped by the combination of the slickest of scripts, the simplicity of the setting, and three of the finest performances I have ever seen. I haven't seen a film that grabbed me by the throat like that in years. If you've seen it, I'd be very interested to know what you thought. It's called In Bruges, and we'll say no more about it.
Di then told me everything about Robert, the current fly in her emotional ointment, and I told her far more about Gelly than I've ever told your good selves. Nothing personal, O my brothers and sisters, but I left out the stuff here that wouldn't look too good on Gelly's CV - on the broad principle that she's not here to defend herself - and the stuff that has haunted me for the last three months but that I deemed too dull for your ravening blogging requirements. I never forgot, you see, and I have to see her tomorrow night.
Di and I then watched Zoolander, which was agreeably vacuous and funny after the emotional mangle of the earlier movie. I stayed the night again, although I didn't sleep well. I couldn't help but think about Gelly. In one way or another, it doesn't quite seem to be game over. At which point do our dreams end and our lives begin?
My New Year's Day, as mentioned, began in Chelsea Wharf, where I was as snug as a bug in a rug in Di's spare snort fort. I turned on my phone to find an agreeable selection of New Year greetings from chums and ex-lovers, of which more later. The girl herself pushed off to an appointment with some of her girlfriends, and left me in charge of her flat with a set of keys to boot. I toyed around with her massive telly - after an introductory seminar - watching a bit of Frasier and some of the mildly amusing The Three Amigos.
Around 1pm, I had a slug of Absinthe and took a walk. Chelsea and Imperial Wharves combine to form a cold but beautiful micro-city, with more than a touch of the steampunk about it. It was cold, empty and slightly eerie. I always find buildings with no people the tiniest bit ominous. Have you ever seen Hitler’s architectural paintings? There are never any people in the scene. I walked to the Thames at high tide, me and the river both. I wandered around until I found a pub called Lot's Road, set as it is, uncontroversially, on the corner of Lot's Road. I spent 90 minutes there with my copy of Standpoint and a couple of pints of Kronenbourg. It was the most beautiful of days, as any of my readers who were in London will verify. It was as though the gods were trying out some new weather software, Sunlight 2.0 or similar. So bright, so cold, so much reminiscent of some women I've crossed swords with in my life.
And, on a related subject, one of those women is Gelly, who sent me a New Year message by text, suitably oblique and lightly sprinkled with little text kisses, like specks of chocolate on the warm foam of a cappuccino. I simply don't know how to deal with the fact that her text made my day; it's not something I want to think about too much. I sat in the pub and sent her a flagrantly flirtatious reply, my reward being another text reading simply; X.
Di called me to say she was back, and I joined her for some rather wonderful home-made soup - which my almost-cockney old man calls 'loop the loop' - and conversation.
And conversation. Di has recently had a short-lived affair with a man who has left a void in her life when he elected to leave it, as he seems to have done. We talked for what seemed like hours - mainly because it was - then ate bacon and eggs [she's such a darling] until she suggested we watch a DVD.
Now, I am very well aware that I must watch more in the way of contemporary cinema, what with trying to add to its tally and all. She suggested a movie, then fell asleep halfway through. I didn't. I watched it all. By the end of it, I was an emotional wreck, partly through having been gripped by the combination of the slickest of scripts, the simplicity of the setting, and three of the finest performances I have ever seen. I haven't seen a film that grabbed me by the throat like that in years. If you've seen it, I'd be very interested to know what you thought. It's called In Bruges, and we'll say no more about it.
Di then told me everything about Robert, the current fly in her emotional ointment, and I told her far more about Gelly than I've ever told your good selves. Nothing personal, O my brothers and sisters, but I left out the stuff here that wouldn't look too good on Gelly's CV - on the broad principle that she's not here to defend herself - and the stuff that has haunted me for the last three months but that I deemed too dull for your ravening blogging requirements. I never forgot, you see, and I have to see her tomorrow night.
Di and I then watched Zoolander, which was agreeably vacuous and funny after the emotional mangle of the earlier movie. I stayed the night again, although I didn't sleep well. I couldn't help but think about Gelly. In one way or another, it doesn't quite seem to be game over. At which point do our dreams end and our lives begin?
Monday, 4 January 2010
I’ve been to a marvellous party
On balance, New Year's Eve - and indeed New Year’s Day itself - knocked Christmas into a cocked hat. Perhaps I respond more favourably to the opportunity of an illusional renaissance dictated by the random occurrence of a particular date than I'm able to in the face of a notional celebration of an event which means so little to the world around me that I can't whack up the ginger to celebrate it myself, at least not in any meaningful sense. Who can say?
Sir William Gazy was good enough to invite me down to Croydon to prowl and prowl around, like the Midians in the Biblical tale, but that usually means arriving back at my mum's at three in the morning four sheets to the wind, and she quite possibly deserves a break from me after four days of my rather sullen company over yuletide. Also, my vapid ex-girlfriend tends to be social secretary in that particular postcode, and she has taken a dislike to me for reasons too tawdry to be mentioned here, and I don't say that through any personal sense of shame. That's not a condition I suffer from nowadays.
Instead, I took up the offer of my old friend - and old girlfriend - Diane, which is how I came to celebrate the extinction of the old year and the slouching-toward-Bethlehem-to-be-born new version in a one-million-pound apartment in Canary Wharf beneath whose windows the Thames slapped and chatterred against the wharves and jetties.
Di has always moved freely through the moneyed areas of society without ever quite collecting enough for herself, partly because she is saintly enough to pay her elderly parents' mortgage - as well as her own disbursements - after their misfortunes on the stock markets or, rather, the treachery of so-called friends who advised them poorly in matters financial and speculative. Di's current lodger, for example, is worth a few bob. On the cork board in the kitchen, I noted, was an invitation to that very flatmate to a wedding in June at some speakeasy called St Paul's Cathedral.
Canary Wharf from Di's place in Chelsea Wharf on NYE was a punishing cab fare, but the game was well worth the candle. There were only a dozen people there, and it was extremely civilised. Even I wore a tie, which I borrowed from one of the residents at work. The owner of this des. res. works for one of the biggest investment banks in the world, and it was a little like stepping back into the 1980s, with a slight tweak to interior design, smaller shoulder pads, and even smaller mobile phones. Some good conversation was had, we watched the phenomenal firework displays - particularly the one at the London Eye - and played a charades-type game wholly appropriate to a group of people who had consumed a great deal of expensive champagne. I've been to a marvellous party, as Noël Coward famously sang, and I couldn't have liked it more.
New Year's Day, predictably, began with something of a hangover, of which more later…
Sir William Gazy was good enough to invite me down to Croydon to prowl and prowl around, like the Midians in the Biblical tale, but that usually means arriving back at my mum's at three in the morning four sheets to the wind, and she quite possibly deserves a break from me after four days of my rather sullen company over yuletide. Also, my vapid ex-girlfriend tends to be social secretary in that particular postcode, and she has taken a dislike to me for reasons too tawdry to be mentioned here, and I don't say that through any personal sense of shame. That's not a condition I suffer from nowadays.
Instead, I took up the offer of my old friend - and old girlfriend - Diane, which is how I came to celebrate the extinction of the old year and the slouching-toward-Bethlehem-to-be-born new version in a one-million-pound apartment in Canary Wharf beneath whose windows the Thames slapped and chatterred against the wharves and jetties.
Di has always moved freely through the moneyed areas of society without ever quite collecting enough for herself, partly because she is saintly enough to pay her elderly parents' mortgage - as well as her own disbursements - after their misfortunes on the stock markets or, rather, the treachery of so-called friends who advised them poorly in matters financial and speculative. Di's current lodger, for example, is worth a few bob. On the cork board in the kitchen, I noted, was an invitation to that very flatmate to a wedding in June at some speakeasy called St Paul's Cathedral.
Canary Wharf from Di's place in Chelsea Wharf on NYE was a punishing cab fare, but the game was well worth the candle. There were only a dozen people there, and it was extremely civilised. Even I wore a tie, which I borrowed from one of the residents at work. The owner of this des. res. works for one of the biggest investment banks in the world, and it was a little like stepping back into the 1980s, with a slight tweak to interior design, smaller shoulder pads, and even smaller mobile phones. Some good conversation was had, we watched the phenomenal firework displays - particularly the one at the London Eye - and played a charades-type game wholly appropriate to a group of people who had consumed a great deal of expensive champagne. I've been to a marvellous party, as Noël Coward famously sang, and I couldn't have liked it more.
New Year's Day, predictably, began with something of a hangover, of which more later…
Thursday, 31 December 2009
So farewell then, 2009
Anyone else out there had enough of 2009? Worry not, my gentle friends. By the power of Greyskull, I mean by the tower of Butch Powers, I mean by the power of Butch Towers, I decree 2009 over! That’s right, Jack. I’ve had enough of it and I’m putting a stop to it. Now. Tonight. See can you stop me. Actually, that reminds me of a gag by the great American comic Steven Wright:
“I can levitate birds. Nobody cares.”
Do you remember him? I can actually be arsed to Google, and I’m off to see if he’s still around. He was knocking on a bit 20 years ago. Wait here. Help yourself to a drink and nibbles.
Oh! Oh! Yes, he’s very much still around.
I really can’t sing Wright’s praises highly enough. This is a taster, from a list of books on his website that he’s never written:
‘Skip the Wonder Horse: Set in the late 1600's in Holland. The story of a homosexual race horse that can see into the future.’
He is a master of the one-liner, delivered in a tired hippy drawl. Example: I took a lie detector test. No I didn’t. Favourite gag: You can’t have everything. Where would you put it? I don’t know, perhaps he’s not to everyone’s taste, but I could do with a laugh just at the moment.
Went to the pub last night to watch Arsenal lead Portsmouth a merry dance. I know everyone raves about Arshavin, and so they should, but my player of the season shortlist at the halfway point has but one name on it; Abu Diaby. The man’s a colossus. Have a look at that Ramsey goal too, if you get the chance. What with that and a test win in South Ifrika [sic], a good sporting day. I got talking to a guy from Nottingham and his German mate whose sister the Notts guy had married. Families. I love to hear about them because I don’t have one myself. The Kraut – from Aachen – bought me a pint of ESB, easing Anglo-Teutonic relations somewhat. Keep ‘em coming and I’ll forgive you for Hitler.
Anyway, what’s in the news on this last day of a toxic year?
Ron Wood is heading for a ‘showdown’ with Sir Michael of Jagger in the new year. Bad mistake. These jobs should be given to Keef. Jagger’s an absurd human being. I love the Stones’ music and always will, but I hate them as individuals because of the way they’ve treated Mick Taylor. They deserve Ron Wood. It will teach them to turn down George Thorogood.
Gordon Brown, our Prime Minister, and his six-year-old chum David Miliband have said rude words on China for executing a drug smuggler according to their legal code. That’s right. A man who aimed to bring misery to thousands in order to enrich himself has been whacked by the world’s next superpower, and our [non] elected representatives have a problem with that. I wish I could live another hundred years, if only to see Guardian readers’ faces when China takes over the role of Great Satan from their hated America. Human Rights Act? Toilet paper to the Chinese, my liberal friends. Also, I love the fact that every Brit in chokey abroad these days has got a ‘psychological condition’. Yeah, they have. It’s called being British. From a court case in the near future:
DEFENCE LAWYER: M’lud, although it is indisputably true that my client was found in the same room as seven dismembered corpses, with a bloody axe in his hand and repeating the phrase “I am death”, we would move for a plea of mitigation due to a psychological condition suffered by my client.
JUDGE: And what is the medical term for this condition?
DEFENCE LAWYER: Britishness, m’lud.
JUDGE: Case dismissed!
In other news, we can’t stop telling Iran how to run their internal affairs, either. It has absolutely nothing to do with us if a bunch of theocratic spastics want to club opposition supporters, be they women or children, half to death for the unislamic activity of having an opinion. So why are we getting so wobbly lipped about it? These people have yet to enter the eighth century; why do we think they will suddenly respond to adult suggestions, even those made by Childe Miliband? The only concern we have with Iran is keeping nuclear weapons off the menu and, if we lack the courage to do that, Israel will do it for us and I, for one, will have a street party on the day the first mushroom cloud is spotted over Tehran.
On a related issue, another Mencap sponsee has attempted to blow up his pants in mid-air. Educated in Britain, and presumably with the attendant psychological condition mentioned above, he went to UCL at about the same time as my ex-girlfriend. He may have passed me by as I waited for her at the school gate. I saw an interesting suggestion on a blog the other day. Why isn’t there a revival of something like the Knights Templar? Every time muslims try one of these witless pranks, the church militant laces up its Doctor Martens and stomps off down the mosque. Oh, hang on…
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was 2009. I hope it worked out for you, and I hope too that you have a splendid evening bidding this most mischievous of years adieu. I hope also that 2010 brings everything you desire, however warped and illegal that may be. Happy new year from the staff at Butch Towers, and may the road rise with you.
“I can levitate birds. Nobody cares.”
Do you remember him? I can actually be arsed to Google, and I’m off to see if he’s still around. He was knocking on a bit 20 years ago. Wait here. Help yourself to a drink and nibbles.
Oh! Oh! Yes, he’s very much still around.
I really can’t sing Wright’s praises highly enough. This is a taster, from a list of books on his website that he’s never written:
‘Skip the Wonder Horse: Set in the late 1600's in Holland. The story of a homosexual race horse that can see into the future.’
He is a master of the one-liner, delivered in a tired hippy drawl. Example: I took a lie detector test. No I didn’t. Favourite gag: You can’t have everything. Where would you put it? I don’t know, perhaps he’s not to everyone’s taste, but I could do with a laugh just at the moment.
Went to the pub last night to watch Arsenal lead Portsmouth a merry dance. I know everyone raves about Arshavin, and so they should, but my player of the season shortlist at the halfway point has but one name on it; Abu Diaby. The man’s a colossus. Have a look at that Ramsey goal too, if you get the chance. What with that and a test win in South Ifrika [sic], a good sporting day. I got talking to a guy from Nottingham and his German mate whose sister the Notts guy had married. Families. I love to hear about them because I don’t have one myself. The Kraut – from Aachen – bought me a pint of ESB, easing Anglo-Teutonic relations somewhat. Keep ‘em coming and I’ll forgive you for Hitler.
Anyway, what’s in the news on this last day of a toxic year?
Ron Wood is heading for a ‘showdown’ with Sir Michael of Jagger in the new year. Bad mistake. These jobs should be given to Keef. Jagger’s an absurd human being. I love the Stones’ music and always will, but I hate them as individuals because of the way they’ve treated Mick Taylor. They deserve Ron Wood. It will teach them to turn down George Thorogood.
Gordon Brown, our Prime Minister, and his six-year-old chum David Miliband have said rude words on China for executing a drug smuggler according to their legal code. That’s right. A man who aimed to bring misery to thousands in order to enrich himself has been whacked by the world’s next superpower, and our [non] elected representatives have a problem with that. I wish I could live another hundred years, if only to see Guardian readers’ faces when China takes over the role of Great Satan from their hated America. Human Rights Act? Toilet paper to the Chinese, my liberal friends. Also, I love the fact that every Brit in chokey abroad these days has got a ‘psychological condition’. Yeah, they have. It’s called being British. From a court case in the near future:
DEFENCE LAWYER: M’lud, although it is indisputably true that my client was found in the same room as seven dismembered corpses, with a bloody axe in his hand and repeating the phrase “I am death”, we would move for a plea of mitigation due to a psychological condition suffered by my client.
JUDGE: And what is the medical term for this condition?
DEFENCE LAWYER: Britishness, m’lud.
JUDGE: Case dismissed!
In other news, we can’t stop telling Iran how to run their internal affairs, either. It has absolutely nothing to do with us if a bunch of theocratic spastics want to club opposition supporters, be they women or children, half to death for the unislamic activity of having an opinion. So why are we getting so wobbly lipped about it? These people have yet to enter the eighth century; why do we think they will suddenly respond to adult suggestions, even those made by Childe Miliband? The only concern we have with Iran is keeping nuclear weapons off the menu and, if we lack the courage to do that, Israel will do it for us and I, for one, will have a street party on the day the first mushroom cloud is spotted over Tehran.
On a related issue, another Mencap sponsee has attempted to blow up his pants in mid-air. Educated in Britain, and presumably with the attendant psychological condition mentioned above, he went to UCL at about the same time as my ex-girlfriend. He may have passed me by as I waited for her at the school gate. I saw an interesting suggestion on a blog the other day. Why isn’t there a revival of something like the Knights Templar? Every time muslims try one of these witless pranks, the church militant laces up its Doctor Martens and stomps off down the mosque. Oh, hang on…
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was 2009. I hope it worked out for you, and I hope too that you have a splendid evening bidding this most mischievous of years adieu. I hope also that 2010 brings everything you desire, however warped and illegal that may be. Happy new year from the staff at Butch Towers, and may the road rise with you.
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Flashman on the March
The summer before last cost me my copy of Gerri Hirshey’s Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music, but my loss was mitigated by a delightful quid pro quo. I lent the book to a fellow boater after we’d had a barbecue accompanied by some of Tamla Motown’s finest offerings and I’d recommend the book to anyone. Don’t be put off by the fact that Amy Winehouse was once photographed with it under her arm; if you only read the first chapter on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins you’re in for a rare treat, and the rest of the book is a schoolroom of information. I came back to the mooring one day to find my fellow soul fan’s boat gone. No matter; people who live on the canal are always bumping into one another, usually and, hopefully, figuratively speaking. Sadly, I have never seen him since, so that book has gone to the great library in the sky, at least as far as I’m concerned. But, when I got on board my own boat, I saw a bag by the door which I hadn’t left there. Inside was a book, a swapsy from my errant chum.
It was Flashman and the Dragon by George MacDonald Fraser and once I’d opened its pages I devoured it. I expect you know the series – I’ll bet Harry Hook’s read all of them – and I was always aware of Flashman as a literary figure [bully in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, no?] without ever having chanced across any of the novels. Well, the second-hand bookshop to which I repaired yesterday afternoon had two of the Harper Collins editions in stock for two quid each. I bought one; see top of page. I was attempting to read it in the pub after work when I supposed I ought to meander back to my ‘office’ – to name it thus gives a certain grandiosity to broom cupboards everywhere – and take this call from Gelly. This I did.
4.30pm came and went. So did 4.45pm. At 5pm on the dot [the time, you will recall, that I had suggested she call] the phone rang.
ME: Hello.
GELLY: Hi.
ME: 4.30, I think you said.
GELLY: They only sat down at 4.45pm.
I should point out, at this juncture, that Gelly is a chef privately employed by an impossibly rich Russian family. She earns approximately 25% more than an MP.
ME: Okay.
GELLY [sotto voce]: So I’ll have to be quiet.
ME: You’ll have to be quick too. When’s a good time to meet?
GELLY: Next week is good.
ME: Pick a day and a time and stick to it.
GELLY: Tuesday?
ME: Is good. Remember that xxxxxx bar?
GELLY: Yes.
ME: I’m moored up there. Time?
GELLY: 5.15?
ME: 5.15? Why not 5.14 or 5.16?
GELLY: Okay. 5.30.
ME: See you then. Have a good new year.
GELLY: Oh yes. See you next year.
ME: Sure.
I hung up. From my posting concerning Gelly on Monday:
“[W]hat disturbs me most of all is that I fell for it, couldn’t see the punch coming.”
I note that my pugilistic skills haven’t improved with age.
It was Flashman and the Dragon by George MacDonald Fraser and once I’d opened its pages I devoured it. I expect you know the series – I’ll bet Harry Hook’s read all of them – and I was always aware of Flashman as a literary figure [bully in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, no?] without ever having chanced across any of the novels. Well, the second-hand bookshop to which I repaired yesterday afternoon had two of the Harper Collins editions in stock for two quid each. I bought one; see top of page. I was attempting to read it in the pub after work when I supposed I ought to meander back to my ‘office’ – to name it thus gives a certain grandiosity to broom cupboards everywhere – and take this call from Gelly. This I did.
4.30pm came and went. So did 4.45pm. At 5pm on the dot [the time, you will recall, that I had suggested she call] the phone rang.
ME: Hello.
GELLY: Hi.
ME: 4.30, I think you said.
GELLY: They only sat down at 4.45pm.
I should point out, at this juncture, that Gelly is a chef privately employed by an impossibly rich Russian family. She earns approximately 25% more than an MP.
ME: Okay.
GELLY [sotto voce]: So I’ll have to be quiet.
ME: You’ll have to be quick too. When’s a good time to meet?
GELLY: Next week is good.
ME: Pick a day and a time and stick to it.
GELLY: Tuesday?
ME: Is good. Remember that xxxxxx bar?
GELLY: Yes.
ME: I’m moored up there. Time?
GELLY: 5.15?
ME: 5.15? Why not 5.14 or 5.16?
GELLY: Okay. 5.30.
ME: See you then. Have a good new year.
GELLY: Oh yes. See you next year.
ME: Sure.
I hung up. From my posting concerning Gelly on Monday:
“[W]hat disturbs me most of all is that I fell for it, couldn’t see the punch coming.”
I note that my pugilistic skills haven’t improved with age.
Remembrance of flings past: Swann’s way
Of course, I knew exactly what was going to happen. I always take mobile phone calls outside pubs. I hate going into a boozer for a pint and a paper and having to listen to some balloon-head braying into their mobile. In The French House in Dean Street recently, William Gazy pointed out to me that mobiles were banned in the bar, and anyone transgressing would be barred. Sensible policies for a better Britain.
But the imminence of irritation, the historical necessity with which what was surely about to happen would go ahead and happen, left the bar with me like a shroud. As I walked outside, I knew Grahame Swann was about to make test history with a hat-trick to effectively win the game. I’d miss it because Gelly is a jinx. I stood out in the porch in the light rain and took the call.
ME: Hello?
GELLY: Hello. It’s Gelly.
ME: So I see.
There was a pause then. She is the type of woman who expects to be asked how she is before she asks you.
GELLY: So, how are you?
ME: Good. You?
GELLY: A bit freaked out with all these sarcastic texts about my wedding.
ME: What? I can’t hear you properly.
GELLY: I said what are all these sarcastic texts about my wedding?
ME: You don’t get it yet, do you? We are supposed to be friends. It wasn’t sarcastic. I was congratulating you.
GELLY: Well I –
ME: I can’t hear you. If you’re getting married, I’m happy for you. I –
GELLY: I’m not getting married.
ME: …was congratulating you. If you –
GELLY: I’m not getting married.
ME: …have decided to… What?
GELLY: I’m not getting married.
ME: Did you say you’re not getting married?
GELLY: Yes.
ME: Then we need to talk.
GELLY: Yes.
ME: Meet me for a drink.
GELLY: Okay.
ME: I can’t hear you properly.
GELLY: I’m on hands-free. I’m driving.
ME: I’ll call you later from a land-line to arrange it.
GELLY: Better if I call you.
ME: Okay. 5pm?
GELLY: 4.30 is better.
ME: Right. 4.30. I’ll talk to you then.
GELLY: Okay. I –
ME: I’ll text you the number. Bye.
I walked back into the pub, not exactly in a daze but not geared up for a pub quiz either. I retook my stool at the bar. The South Africans hadn’t lost any wickets. First ball I watched, Swann came in and bamboozled Prince, who bat-padded a sharp, low catch to Ian Bell. I roared with delight, alarming one or two of the fossils in the snug. A dozen minutes later, the spinner produced a fantastic ball which deceived Almia in the flight and did him through the gate. The South Africans were at the start of a collapse which would ultimately put us one up in a tough series.
I finished my pint and did what I often do in moments of confusion; I went straight to the nearest second-hand bookshop.
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Yuletide [epi]log[ue]
Well, I made it through another Christmas. I spent four days in my room watching old movies, Friends and The Simpsons, doing a little writing, eating, and drinking coffee and Famous Grouse, often in the same cup.
I don’t enjoy Christmas. It reminds me I come from a broken family. It reminds me how worthless much of modern life has become. It reminds me of poverty. But it’s over now, for another year, and I’m glad. I hope, though, that you had an agreeable time.
I barely left the house for four days. I went to the pub to watch Arsenal beat Villa. I walked Chad the dog, who is a funny little fellow obsessed with food. I went to the shop. I thought about the year that has gone and the one to come, lousy and prospectless respectively. This, to quote Joy Division, is the crisis I knew had to come.
An anniversary came and went; it was Boxing Day of 2008 that I posted on Keep Thinking, Butch for the first time. I forgot the cake and candles, a missed anniversary. I’ve very much enjoyed writing it.
It’s about all I have enjoyed this year. I’ve enjoyed playing music, very much, but it hasn’t really gone anywhere and, without transport, I can’t see it going anywhere anytime soon, quite literally. I got involved with, not to put too fine a point on it, a toxic bimbo, and what disturbs me most of all is that I fell for it, couldn’t see the punch coming. We had a final flurry of texts over Christmas, closure at last. They were incoherent [hers] and bad-tempered [mine]. The card I opened a couple of weeks ago wasn’t from her; it was a Christmas card from someone else. Nevertheless, Gelly is marrying the man she described to me as a ‘giggling idiot’, apparently. She clearly has no intention of being my friend, but that’s fine. I had no intention of being hers; I just wanted to get her in the sack again. I’ve met some of her chucklehead friends, and she made a theme of how she didn’t want to lose her boyfriend ‘as a friend’. That’s right; when she was doing the horizontal bop with me in Brighton, that was how she was treating her ‘friend’. You may recall that she asked for my address. Nothing ever arrived by mail. Here are the texts:
ME: Indulge my curiosity. Why ask for my address and then not send anything?
GELLY: Curiosity killed the puss, guess you are home now. Had written a letter to you but decided not to send it after yr wee text… So sorry if you were expecting a surprise. Have a wonderful Christmas. G
ME: Yes, I can see how a friendly, well-intentioned text would have annoyed you. Like the ‘Happy birthday Gelly’ text I sent on your birthday. So irksome. Have a happy Christmas yourself, sweetheart.
GELLY: Did you forget to mention id forgotten to send you a wedding invite now that wld involve an incredulously irksome response. I was very appreciative of that silly. So long and thx 4 all the fish x
GELLY: Appreciative of yr kind birthday greetings I hasten to add!
ME: It’s just a shame we were supposed to be friends but just ended up as a skanky little shag. Congrats on wedding though. It shows that you can still do the right thing.
ME: I knew you wouldn’t answer a text you didn’t like. You remind me of that Leonard Cohen line: “Now you who must leave everything that you cannot control/It begins with your family, but soon it comes down to your soul.”
The whole episode irritates the fuck out of me. Why is it still going on? I’ve got one last card to play; my infamous closing letter. I’ve sent these before, and they are designed to tie up loose ends, say goodbye definitively, and state some barbed home truths. I began composing the most venomous of poisoned pen letters in my head as I stalked off to the pub to watch the English spinner Graham Swann take a couple of early wickets to put the South Africans under vice-like pressure in the Durban test. As I sat at the bar, the phone rang. One of the residents who couldn’t open a traffic barrier. I took my seat again. The phone rang again. I looked at the little window on the screen. It read: Gelly. Now what?
I don’t enjoy Christmas. It reminds me I come from a broken family. It reminds me how worthless much of modern life has become. It reminds me of poverty. But it’s over now, for another year, and I’m glad. I hope, though, that you had an agreeable time.
I barely left the house for four days. I went to the pub to watch Arsenal beat Villa. I walked Chad the dog, who is a funny little fellow obsessed with food. I went to the shop. I thought about the year that has gone and the one to come, lousy and prospectless respectively. This, to quote Joy Division, is the crisis I knew had to come.
An anniversary came and went; it was Boxing Day of 2008 that I posted on Keep Thinking, Butch for the first time. I forgot the cake and candles, a missed anniversary. I’ve very much enjoyed writing it.
It’s about all I have enjoyed this year. I’ve enjoyed playing music, very much, but it hasn’t really gone anywhere and, without transport, I can’t see it going anywhere anytime soon, quite literally. I got involved with, not to put too fine a point on it, a toxic bimbo, and what disturbs me most of all is that I fell for it, couldn’t see the punch coming. We had a final flurry of texts over Christmas, closure at last. They were incoherent [hers] and bad-tempered [mine]. The card I opened a couple of weeks ago wasn’t from her; it was a Christmas card from someone else. Nevertheless, Gelly is marrying the man she described to me as a ‘giggling idiot’, apparently. She clearly has no intention of being my friend, but that’s fine. I had no intention of being hers; I just wanted to get her in the sack again. I’ve met some of her chucklehead friends, and she made a theme of how she didn’t want to lose her boyfriend ‘as a friend’. That’s right; when she was doing the horizontal bop with me in Brighton, that was how she was treating her ‘friend’. You may recall that she asked for my address. Nothing ever arrived by mail. Here are the texts:
ME: Indulge my curiosity. Why ask for my address and then not send anything?
GELLY: Curiosity killed the puss, guess you are home now. Had written a letter to you but decided not to send it after yr wee text… So sorry if you were expecting a surprise. Have a wonderful Christmas. G
ME: Yes, I can see how a friendly, well-intentioned text would have annoyed you. Like the ‘Happy birthday Gelly’ text I sent on your birthday. So irksome. Have a happy Christmas yourself, sweetheart.
GELLY: Did you forget to mention id forgotten to send you a wedding invite now that wld involve an incredulously irksome response. I was very appreciative of that silly. So long and thx 4 all the fish x
GELLY: Appreciative of yr kind birthday greetings I hasten to add!
ME: It’s just a shame we were supposed to be friends but just ended up as a skanky little shag. Congrats on wedding though. It shows that you can still do the right thing.
ME: I knew you wouldn’t answer a text you didn’t like. You remind me of that Leonard Cohen line: “Now you who must leave everything that you cannot control/It begins with your family, but soon it comes down to your soul.”
The whole episode irritates the fuck out of me. Why is it still going on? I’ve got one last card to play; my infamous closing letter. I’ve sent these before, and they are designed to tie up loose ends, say goodbye definitively, and state some barbed home truths. I began composing the most venomous of poisoned pen letters in my head as I stalked off to the pub to watch the English spinner Graham Swann take a couple of early wickets to put the South Africans under vice-like pressure in the Durban test. As I sat at the bar, the phone rang. One of the residents who couldn’t open a traffic barrier. I took my seat again. The phone rang again. I looked at the little window on the screen. It read: Gelly. Now what?
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