September 2nd - September 8th 2002
Sunday Friendly
Saturday Not getting any Younger
Friday Apologia
Thursday Controversy
Wednesday Work (just a little bit)
Tuesday Drug news
Monday Suicidal
Sunday 8th September 2002
"Your date seems very friendly..."
"Mm."
"...he has his hand down the back of my trousers."
"Ah."
Saturday 7th September 2002
"Tributes are continuing to pour in for former Tory Cabinet minister Baroness Janet Young.."
Not in my part of town they don't. Indeed, I imagine Old Compton Street will find itself en fête tonight: the wicked old witch is dead.
Peter Tatchell, quoted in The Independent gets what may well be the last word: "Future historians will rank her alongside the defenders of apartheid. She supported homophobic discrimination to the last."
De mortuis nil nisi bonum my arse. May she rot in hell.
Stuart was not dismayed by his sexual feelings about the boy. He had, or had had, more or less vague sexual feelings about all sorts of things and people, schoolmasters, girls seen on trains, mathematical problems, holy objects, the idea of being good. Sex seemed to be mixed into everything.
Well, quite.
Such a pleasant outing to the Spiral last night, with the ver' chatty Dane as arm-candy, drifting from flower to flower, testosterone levels set to a low throb, talking to John, to Sam, to Chris, to Liam, to Ed.
I've always had a weakness for the company of good-looking men. Yet the drunker they get, the shallower their aspirations and the deeper their confusion. I wish I had a beer last night for every time someone said "Oops, am I interrupting something?"
Actually, I probably did.
Friday 6th September 2002
Apologia
The lively scientific spat between Professors Higgs and Hawking has trailed a predictable plethora of anecdotage in its wake, much of it designed to illustrate Hawking's "mischievous sense of humour".
As with this story (sadly not on-line) about Stephen Hawking becoming visibly frustrated by his neighbour's conversation at a Cambridge high table "...until Hawking fixed his voice synthesiser to repeat, at a volume audible to the whole table: 'Bor-ing, you are bor-ing'. That brought the conversation to a swift conclusion."
Seems to me Hawking has a lot of nerve complaining about Higgs's "unnecessarily personal remarks"; brain the size of a planet he may have, but if he tries that kind of childish behaviour round my dinner table, he's gonna get a slap.
And then there's Madonna talking about London to Vanity Fair from the cushioned luxury of her Holland Park home: "I love the way the city looks, minus all the council estates randomly and profusely built up everywhere."
Slap!
Meanwhile, across the water, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill has dismissed as "inadequate" an apology written by a copy editor on a local newspaper the day after he subbed a story about a fire at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and headlined it: Roasted Nuts
English prat?
Silly bitches?
Whining maniacs?
Apologise!
Apologise!
Apologise!
Thursday 5th September 2002
The plastic bag controversy winds on and on, with repeated accusations of murky motivation, much touting of mysterious plans and, doubtless, a deal of covert lobbying behind the scenes.
I know I'm not the only one who feels the whole issue has been blown up out of all proportion. Enough, already: the battle has been lost!
Just charge me 10p a time and be done with it.
Wednesday 4th September 2002
"Getting the world of work right in fiction is difficult. Get bogged down in mundane details and you risk boring the reader. Fail to give it the weight it deserves and you lose credibility.
"It deserves a lot of weight. Work is the driving force of American life: finding it, getting to it, dressing for and recovering from it take up most of the hours in a day...
"People see more of their work colleagues than they do of their spouses, and develop bizarre, work-based approximations of these relationships - they may acquire office husbands or wives they don't even sleep with...
I quote these extracts from a recent LRB review (of Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings) in an attempt to explain why I want to try to spend some time over the next few months talking about some of the various jobs and careers I've had.
In my time, my clients have included Coca-Cola, British Telecom and the Ford Motor Company. I've worked with Frank Muir, Joanna Lumley and and a host of minor British actors. I've written two books and 14 perfect words for the back of a crisp packet.
I've worked on a film script for a feature-length movie set in seventeenth century Holland. I've designed complex touch-screen consoles for the Natural History Museum and built interactive games for Tango, the soft drinks people.I've designed web-sites for Death cigarettes and the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority and acted as web-master for the British Army.
I've travelled to Germany, Spain and Holland as a consultant on a multinational children's encyclopaedia, made presentations at animation festivals and served long hours behind a bar.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, I've hardly ever mentioned any of it.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday 3rd September 2002
Drug news
This week's astonishingly high level of hoo-hah created by a report suggesting that Ecstasy may not be such a bad thing after all (shock! horror!) all but drowned out a couple of equally bizarre despatches from the pharmaceutical front.
Like: an American expert says the best way to treat cocaine addicts is to encourage them to talk about their problems. (As if they don't do that nineteen to the dozen at the best of times.)
Like: Air Jamaica has reduced its flights to the UK in the wake of the introduction of hi-tech wands that can detect cocaine inside passengers. (Harry Potter, Customs Operative)
And (my favourite, this): Disa Eythorsdottir, a professional bridge player, has been stripped of her medal after refusing to take a drugs test.
Now, I've played a fair bit of what's known as country-house bridge in my time (that's the one where you're allowed to ask for instructions as you go along, and the smartest player barks "One, two, that'll do" and you're so stoned or drunk that you haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about but you nod wisely just the same and then drop all your cards on the floor.)
And, it's true, a pill or two of the brotherly-love variety might have mollified some of the more argumentative post-hand analyses I've witnessed in my time. (If you permit a married couple to play as a team, you have only yourself to blame if you spend the night mopping blood from the kitchen table.)
Drugs and bridge is an issue, apparently, because the World Bridge Federation has been trying to get the game accepted for the Olympics, a campaign that fell flat on its face this week when the IOC issued a recommendation that also dashed any hopes for bowling, surfing and, tsk tsk, ballroom dancing.
No mention of our favourite pastime, so far as I can see. Just as well: if some of my favourite bloggers had to pass a drugs test, we'd never hear from them again...
Monday 2nd September 2002
Felling somewhat suicidal this morning? Just want to lie down somewhere quiet? Counting the minutes to that next cup of coffee?
Take a moment to consider the fate of James Bird, 20, who carefully calculated the number of Pro Plus tablets it would take to kill himself (answer: 384) and then proceeded to take them.
Suicide by caffeine. What on earth would that be like? And why??
......previous week