Journal Entries
BYRON
Posted May 15, 2005
I've said before that I haven't got many RL friends. Well, that's true enough, but on the other hand, I have a huge number of acquaintances. I like it that way. RL friends require time, effort and emotional input; they've really got to be worth it. Acquaintances come and go in a conveniently casual sort of way.
Whenever the walls start closing in, I take a bus into town and wait to bump into someone. It never takes long. Being unemployed, my acquaintances comprise the sort of people you find on benches and in doorways, or working behind the counters of bookshops and libraries, or sitting all day in the local pubs trying to stretch their giros across a drinking week. Even if I don't bump into someone I know, I'm generally approached by someone who has an interesting story to tell.
I met several of them on Friday. On entering the first pub on my round, a drunken Scottish accent came floating out of the gloom: "[Snailrind]! She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies! I haven't seen you in *ages*! What have you been *up* to? Something literary, I hope."
I've known this guy for about nine years, though in that time I've only managed to slip about four sentences between the rare pauses in his monologues. Let's call him Byron, since I'm pretty sure he believes himself to have been him in one of his past lives. He certainly dresses like him.
He had a breathtaking young American woman on his arm, whom he introduced as Artemis. She introduced herself as--well, as something more prosaic. She bought me a coffee. I liked her. So I sat with them for a bit, listening to Byron explaining how he had discovered the secret of alchemy (and trying to stay upwind of the enormous reefer with which he was distressing the bar staff), and then Artemis showed me a book of poetry written by another acquaintance of mine. This acquaintance has had to live with the epithet 'Captain Sheep's Head' for many years now, owing to an incident best left unspoken. I was pleased the guy had got himself together enough to publish a book, so Byron said he'd get hold of a copy for me.
"Where do you live?" He asked.
"I don't tell people where I live," I said. Gothly hates me bringing nutters home. They always do something unpredictable. (Which in my books makes them utterly predictable, but there you go.)
"Well, f'ck you!" shouted Byron. "F'CK YOU!"
I drank my coffee and waited for him to subside. Then I suggested we meet in his favourite cemetery. He was delighted by the idea. So this afternoon, I am going to meet a lunatic in a cemetery. This is what ennui does to a person.
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Latest reply: May 15, 2005
HEADHUNTED
Posted May 4, 2005
A new arts magazine wants me to write an article for them on Surrealist literature. They want my poetry, too. And they want to pay me. How about that.
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Latest reply: May 4, 2005
SLIGHT RETURN
Posted Apr 28, 2005
In the days when I ran a bookshop, we stocked the biography of a guy called Bill Hicks, which never sold, even when I reduced the price. I remember leafing through it to find out who the guy was. He was an American stand-up comedian, who karked it back in 1994: a ranting, political frenzy of a man, prone to swearing and chain-smoking his way through all his routines; notorious and incorrigible, his gigs were attended by audiences as high on pot and mushrooms as any crowd at a Grateful Dead concert. It surprised me that, in a student bookshop such as mine, nobody was interested in the book. Perhaps students have changed. I've noticed that mobiles, designer labels and Christian pamphlets have become de rigeur in recent years.
Well, MrFlay's latest play is about Bill Hicks--and what better venue for such a thing than the Soho Theatre? So there we were in the foyer, Deswald and I, being told by the girl at the desk that she'd been given strict instructions not to allow latecomers in, not even ones who had come all the way from North Wales. But she also said that ticket sales had been so good that a second performance was due to be shown straight after the first. The tickets for that one had sold out too, but our details were put on reserve in case a couple of people failed to show up. I prayed that two poor hapless bastards would fall down a manhole and miss the play.
While we waited for the manhole accident, I kept my eyes peeled for MrFlay in case he happened to be wandering about. Problem was, I only had a memory of a photo to go on, so pretty much every bloke who walked past me looked like MrFlay.
The first performance ended.
"There you are, Ms [Snailrind]--two tickets for Bill Hicks," said the ticket girl, pressing them into my hand. I could have kissed her.
The auditorium was dark, but for one spotlight illuminating a solitary microphone. A palpable hush fell on the room; then a disembodied American drawl greeted us, introducing itself as Bill Hicks, who was up in Heaven, but contemplating returning to Earth for one last gig. All we had to do to make him appear to us, the voice explained, was to drop a handful of mushrooms.
"And how is everyone in the audience?" it leered.
Everyone whooped and cheered.
"And how is everyone in the front row?"
We were in the front row. As everyone around us clapped and whistled, I tried to look inconspicuous. It was past my bedtime. I wasn't feeling sociable.
"And how is the lady in the black hat?"
There was a long, horrible pause as all eyes turned to me.
"Yay," I croaked.
And 'Bill Hicks' stepped through the curtains, clad in a white suit and magnificent angel wings, and lit up a fag.
The man had charisma. From start to finish, the audience was in his horny, Goat-Boy hands, and he knew it. Still, when his next couple of jokes made reference to "the lady in the black hat," I began to yearn for the security of that hazardous manhole.
Bill / Chas rained pseudo-drug-fuelled invective on our heads, whanging home the hypocrisies of modern government and making us each feel personally responsible for the actions of the corrupt administrators of Britain and America. Somehow, he did it in a way that was side-achingly funny. He swaggered back and forth along the stage, urging us all to get drunk, do drugs, and screw around; the audience cheered, like they'd forgotten that this lifestyle had been the death of their idol and it wasn't *actually* Bill Hicks standing before us. And he urged us all to switch on our brains and think for ourselves; the audience just laughed. I laughed smugly at the audience, but for the next couple of days, I was filled with a desire to get stoned out of my skull, do the Hicks Goat-Boy laugh, screw around, and swear every five minutes. Then I went to stay with my family, who embody the exact kind of permissiveness that 'Bill Hicks' was advocating. Which put an instant dampener on it. 
I was impressed by the guy's acting skill. He dealt with hecklers in a smooth and friendly manner, without slipping out of character. He could switch accents at the drop of a hat, and it was impossible to tell which was his real one. Was he even American? We didn't know.
Turns out he's from Catford. 
Deswald and I met MrFlay the following day, in a coffee shop in Streatham. Having never met up with someone I know from the Internet, I was a bit nervous. You hear all these stories, don't you? But I wasn't so much concerned that he'd turn out to be an axe-wielding maniac, as that he'd turn out to be John Major. Here's this person whose talent has lit a fire in my brain and got me laughing uproariously and writing like never before--I thought, 'if I meet him, and he bores the pants off me, what then? Will this newfound inspiration and motivation all go down the pan? --Or, what if he thinks I'm stalking him? Hey, *am* I stalking him?'
Luckily, Gothly and I had prepared a list of things *not* to say upon meeting him:
Hi! I'm your number one fan. 
I'm not a stalker,you know. 
Go on--say something funny. 
Have you got a saucepan? 
Fill me with your little babies. 
And there was something I was really curious about: does MrFlay, curmudgeon extraordinaire, ever crack a smile?
Well; now I know all. In real life, MrFlay is a darling. He's a dude. And he was smiling, oh yes, oh yes he was, with teeth and everything. But it was only when I gave him a parting hug as we said our goodbyes that I noticed the reason why he calls himself MrFlay. He is extremely tall.
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Latest reply: Apr 28, 2005
OH, BROTHER
Posted Apr 24, 2005
I've been sitting on a bench in the sun, on London's Streatham Common, watching the birds and insects and the phenomenal streams of people and traffic, all piling past at high speed like they've got somewhere important to go. The aerial photograph of Streatham looks like someone has tipped ten tons of rubble onto a car park and spread it around; but at street level, it's quite pleasant. There are cherry trees blooming everywhere, and the shabby little shop fronts give it a small-town air that's not overcome by the dual carriageway thundering down the middle of it.
What am I doing here? I came to see a play by MrFlay and a guy called Chas, which was showing in Soho. Sadly, Gothly had too much work on to join me, so instead I took along the older one of my brothers (let's call him Deswald). Having invited myself to stay at Deswald's, it was only fair that I bought him a ticket to see the play.
"There may not be a kitchen when you get here," Deswald had warned me. "They've got builders coming in to demolish it."
"So how are you going to do your cooking?" I'd asked.
"Cooking?" Deswald was baffled. Turns out he never cooks.
"Well, what do you live on?" I'd asked, remembering that he's big on Japanese food.
"Noodles. 9p a packet. I stick 'em in a mug and add hot water. Bingo!"
Around the beginning of last week, I phoned Deswald to check whether I'd have something to cook on when I got to his place.
"Oh--is it *this* Thursday you're coming?" he asked.
"Yes," I told him.
"Oh, God," he said. "Um... I'm probably not going to be here when you arrive."
"What?" 
"Well, I'm supposed to be in a meeting and, well, I've already rescheduled it from last Friday, because I slept in and missed it."
"...So will there be someone to answer the door to me?" I asked.
"Er... probably."
I put on my most dangerous tone of voice. "Deswald?" I said.
"Absolutely, one hundred percent certainty, without a shadow of a doubt," uttered Deswald quickly.
"Good."
"But it might be a builder."
"A builder?" I considered this. "Do they know I'm coming? Will they let me in?"
"Er...."
"Deswald?"
"They will do."
Sheesh. Then the night before I was due to set off, Deswald rang me.
"Is it *this* weekend you're coming, or *next* weekend?" he asked.
"THIS weekend!" I told him.
"Argh, no!" he cried. "Excuse me while I run around and panic! Argh! Argh! WhatamIgonnado?"
He had booked the landlord's spare room for the wrong dates, and there was some old American geezer staying in it on the date I was due to arrive.
"Hmmm," said Gothly wrily when I relayed the problem, "I wonder where *Deswald's* going to sleep."
Deswald has been sleeping on the sofa.
I have been able to cook, though. The cooker is standing amidst a load of rubble, scaffolding and mousetraps, but it works, so I've been cooking Deswald gourmet meals and trying to get him enthused about vitamins and things. Not with a great deal of success. And I keep finding mousetraps stuck to the soles of my boots.
Deswald told me that, if we set off for Soho one hour before the play was due to start, we'd have time and to spare. So off we set at 7pm. The first train arrived at nearly half past.
"We'regonnabelate!" muttered Deswald helpfully, every five minutes. One change later, on the tube, he suddenly said, "this is the wrong train."
We got off at the next station, intending to change our route; unfortunately, there was only one possible route for commuters at that station. The silver lining was that the train we had just got off was, in fact, the right train.
When we arrived above ground near Soho, Deswald said, "I wish I'd remembered to bring my A-Z."
"Don't worry," I said valiantly, "I've examined the map and I've got a photographic image of it in my head."
But everything was a whole lot bigger than it had seemed on the map and, after ten minutes of fruitless circling, we started asking people for directions. But this was Soho. Everybody was drunk, stoned, or tripping, and most of them were tourists who were also lost. My legs muscles felt like par-boiled spaghetti, and my speech was getting slurry from all the exertion. The sight of the theatre's neon sign softly illuminating a back street was like stumbling upon Shangri-La.
We were twenty minutes late, and the play was only an hour long. Glad that I'd bought the tickets in advance, I handed my receipt over to the ticket lady.
"I'm sorry," she said. "The play's already started. You can't go in."
The strength of my disappointment came as a shock. It felt like a punch in the throat. I had to turn my back on the woman and stick my fist in my mouth to stop the burning behind my eyes. How strange. I'm used to cancelling things at the last moment because of my CFS playing up. This was only a damn play, so why was it so different? I had made a fatal error: I had actually let myself believe. I don't do that, not when my life is so short on guarantees--but I'd let myself believe that I would be seeing MrFlay's play. What an idiot. What a fool.
Next installment coming up!
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Latest reply: Apr 24, 2005
THE GRAND SLAM
Posted Mar 19, 2005
Gothly's uncle died suddenly yesterday morning, in his sleep, at the age of 65. It was a shock to everyone: he was of good health and not exactly aged. Nobody in the family can quite believe it.
Like everyone on Gothmum's side of the family, he was a huge rugby fan. Wales has been doing extraordinarily well in the Six Nations this year. Weekend after weekend he must have watched in amazement as our men pulled their socks up and kept wining and winning and winning: a hell of a turnaround from last year's performance. There was one game left to be played when he died.
This afternoon, we and the rest of Gothly's family sat in front of the box in our various homes (and pubs) and watched the final game: Wales against Ireland. Gigantic inflatable daffodils were being waved all over the stands in the Millennium Stadium. The game was ferocious, and the Irish looked as angry as all hell; everyone was fired up. One Irish player even leapt on top of a Welsh player and started pummelling him, while the ball itself moved off to the far side of the field. In the final minute of the game, it became clear to everyone that Wales had won the Grand Slam. The last time we did that was in 1978, when I was just five years old. Some of the players would not even have been born then.
Now a sense of euphoria mixed with sorrow is permeating Gothly's family. The uncle didn't get to see this victory, so we all watched it for him and drank to him. The Grand Slam, and this sudden death: neither one seems real yet.
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Latest reply: Mar 19, 2005
Snailrind
Researcher U516766
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