Resolutions

If you kept your eyes closed, you’d miss it, Christmas. And now the New Year is raising its white flag, wafting it around, begging us to take notice.


In my head I’ve been summing up the year.

Writing = 3
Work = -4
Life = 2.5

Total = 1.5

All in all, not bad. One year I was minus two million so things are looking up.


Recently I’ve been having fantasies about winning the lottery. In these fantasies I don’t spend the money, or tell anyone that I’ve won it. Instead I put it in a bank and then have nightmares about the bank collapsing and losing everything. Then I think I’ll divide the money between lots of banks and then I get stressed about having so many bank accounts. Where would I put all my bank books?


What I think this fantasy tells me is that I crave security. Like America has the Declaration of Independence in a museum, behind thick glass, heavily guarded. It lets Americans think they stand for something.


(I got the above fact from National Treasure, one of my favourite films. Still Life by Jia Zhang-Ke is another of my favourite films.)


It’s depressing every time you look at the news, more people are losing their jobs, shops are folding, rich wealthy middle-class people with university educations are telling us times are hard.


In another fantasy I am walking through a wood with a friend. A chaffinch warbles. I turn to my friend and say, “I remember when all this was shops.”


It makes you realise how precarious the whole capitalist endeavour is. Bring back communism I say. But what did Marx have to say about love? What do capitalists say, for that matter?


Except that it can be bought.


My problem is that I am too easily influenced. Last night I was listening to the Elbow special on Radio 6. They like PJ Harvey, I order a PJ Harvey album from HMV, they play Beck, I buy a Beck song from iTunes, they are friends with the Doves, I write a letter,

Dear Doves,
You don’t know me but…

What I want is to be cool in my own right. I want to be Vince Noir, from the Mighty Boosh. Or rather I don’t want to be him, I want to be a cool me.


Don’t get me wrong, things are ok, and besides this is a blog about writing and books.
I am currently reading, This Book Will Change Your Life, by A M Homes. I am halfway through and my life is still the same. I wonder if I can take it for a refund.


(Just kidding – it’s great!)


I plan to read more books by A M Homes this year, and by A L Kennedy, P G Wodehouse, J P Donleavy, V G Lee, W H Auden.


That is my first resolution. To read books by authors who are known by their first two initials and surname.


I want to travel the length and breadth of Vietnam in a jalopy.


I want to enjoy writing, and do it for me, and not be crippled by insecurity.


I want to be fitter, healthier, and become a lean mean fighting machine.


I don’t want to do the things I don’t want to do.


I want to organise my CDs in alphabetical order.


I want to find the thing in life that makes me happy.


And world peace.

Happy New Year to you all,

Love from

Drew x

I’m on the radio! I’m in the Guardian!

It’s been a good week all round, which is strange as weeks aren’t normally round (I’ve said this before). Weeks normally have little fish-hooks in your body pulling you closer and closer towards death. Or they are like penguins waddling dangerously towards the cliff, on the other side of which is a penguin-eating shark.


Last Saturday ‘Me and Mickie James’ was reviewed in the Guardian. I’d known for a couple of weeks that I was going to be in it and I was dreading it. Pretty much like a penguin dreads a penguin-eating shark. Have you seen their teeth!


But either this shark wasn’t hungry or penguin-eating sharks are just a figment of my imagination. You see, the review was good. I feel respectable now, I’ve been in the Guardian. Although I don’t feel like a writer. When will that kick in?


(On the tv behind me is the Olympics. I love the Olympics, especially the athletics. I wonder if it’s too late for me to become an Olympic athlete?)


I wonder if I’ll wake up one day and think, ‘I’m a writer’. Writing for me is 5 minutes doing dramatic handstands, walking around the living-room, having a glass of wine, and about one minute sitting at the keyboard. After which I need a sleep.


(I read once this is pretty much how the Coen brothers work. Apart from the handstands. But then I don’t do them either.)


(The Chinese have just beat the Czechs in some rowing event.)


Also this week there is an interview with me over on Chroma. The interview starts, ‘I fell over in the ladies’ loos’ which is always a good place to start an interview. And there’s an article I wrote on Gaydarnation, ‘My Life in Gay Music’. The picture of me accompanying the article was taken at the Marillion convention.


(btw this week I haven’t bought any books but I have bought some music. Cyndi Lauper’s new album, very dancy!, the MGMT album, the Courteeners and Grace Jones Island Life (this after watching Frantic)).


And then yesterday I was on BBC Radio Leicester. The dj was lovely, he had read my book, “bonkers”, and seemed to genuinely like it and like reading. We talked about the Summer Sundae festival, at which I’m at tomorrow on the Phrased and Confused stage. But my favourite bit was when there was a song playing and we were chatting about the Summer Sundae and I asked what the weather was going to be like.


He tapped a few buttons and then gave me a run down of the forecast. I thought, ‘how cool is that, I’ve got my own personal dj’. This is now my own highest aspiration. I want a dj 24 hours a day in a little booth in my room.


Just imagine you could have your own breakfast show, late night love. And when you were feeling down you could have a phone-in.


“Caller on line one, go ahead…”


And there would be traffic news, weather, world news, sport. Just there! In your bedroom!


(Over on the Olympics Iraq have been allowed to take part in the regatta. Phew! ‘There was some controversy.’ I wonder what that might have been…)

Currently reading – Oxford Murders – Guillermo Martinez


Currently listening – as above