Milk

Last night I went to see Milk. For those of you not in the know this is film-maker Gus Van Sant’s biopic of America’s first openly gay politician, Harvey Milk. Milk was assassinated by Dan White, another Californian city supervisor who had recently lost his job.


The cinema was packed, if you could say that 6 people could pack out a cinema. Mind you it was in competition with Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist and Bride Wars.


White, Milk’s killer, says to him, “It’s ok for you, you have a cause, something to believe in.”


This was the 70s, in the Castro, an area of San Francisco which had become home to a huge number of gays. I’d read about this before in Francis Fitzgerald’s excellent Cities on a Hill. I’ve also read her other excellent book, Fire in the Lake, on Vietnam.


The only similar experience I have to what the Castro must have been like back then was the two years I lived in Sydney. Oxford St, a long sprawl heading just out of the heart of the city, is where a lot of the gay bars, restaurants, shops, clubs are situated. But it was more than that. It was that there were gay people everywhere. It sounds a cliché and it probably is, but I felt at home.


70s America was also the time of Anita Bryant. This former Orange juice advert queen started a national campaign from her base in Dade County, Florida for the repeal of laws which stated someone couldn’t be sacked or thrown out of their accommodation because of their sexual orientation.


“It’s not that I’m not a friend of gays,” she said, “I am. And it’s because I am that I can tell them that their way of life is wrong.”


More sinisterly this campaign was then taken up by John Briggs, a conservative state legislator who went on to say that homosexual people should not be allowed to teach in schools. Or indeed anybody that was a friend of a homosexual person. It was this that Milk was fighting against. He won. And then he was killed.


Laws, at their most fundamental level, are formed from a consensus of opinion of what society deems acceptable. You won’t kill, steal, persecute people because of their ethnic background, sexuality and so on.


The laws protecting gay people are still, constitutionally speaking, babies. It was ok for John Briggs, Anita Bryant to publicly and openly conflate homosexuality and paedophilia and to talk of this pervasive threat.


It will take time before such aforementioned throwaway comments become unacceptable. But we are moving in the right direction. It is not so long ago that Thatcher, under whose authority more gay men than in the history of this country were arrested and who introduced the draconian Section 28 of the Local Government act, was nominally in power.


Harvey Milk was 40 before he became involved in any way in politics. Like the Village People song ‘Go West’ he headed from New York, where he was closeted and set up home in San Francisco’s Castro area.


So there is hope for me yet. As I said, I am 38 and I need to do something. It is that question again, what next?


I wonder about my writing. My first novel, The Lodger, I wrote after seeing a newspaper article which stated gay men shouldn’t be allowed to adopt. This is what, under the murder plot, it was about.


My latest novel, Me and Mickie James, has a gay couple at the centre of it but I wanted it to be mainstream. It is not a novel about coming out or gay politics, or dying of aids. It is a story about a pop group. And it was published by a mainstream publisher.


But in my head, that was its politics, that it wasn’t political. It was the kind of book I would want to read.


Like in my life I want my difference to be recognised but to be treated like everybody else.


Harvey Milk had a box and on it he had written ‘SOAP’. He would stand on this box and into a loudhailer say, “I am Harvey Milk. I want to recruit you.”


I want to recruit you.


And yet somewhere along the line I have failed. Perhaps it is because I am just not good enough. I am sure that I am not. But still I want people to ‘vote for me’. This is my what next. I am waiting for my Harvey Milk moment. Maybe it will be around the next corner.


Or maybe it won’t.

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On Saturday 31st January I am appearing at Derby’s Hello Hubmarine event. It is at the Big Blue Coffee Company, Sadlergate from 20:00 to 23:00. Details on Facebook here.

I am also running another 50 Word Short Story competition. The theme is Love, Love, Love. Write your 50 word love story and post it here on Facebook. Winners will appear on this blog on 14th February.

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Currently reading – The Great War for Civilisation by Robert Fisk


Currently listening to – Talk Talk

Saramago and 50 Christmas Words Competition

There’s a great interview with Jose Saramago over on the Guardian site this week. If you don’t know, he’s a Nobel Prize winning Portuguese writer. The film of his book, Blindness, is out around about now.


Saramago starts with a big idea and works it through to its logical end. For example, Blindness starts with the someone going blind and then one by one everyone else in the population goes blind.


At the opening of Seeing an election is held; almost no one votes. Another election is held. Even fewer people vote. Democracy crumbles.


This is good advice for writers – write about Something.


What I didn’t know about Saramago was that he didn’t become a writer properly until in his 60s. Before that he worked as a car mechanic.


This is heartening to know. I can spend the next 22 years working on my next book and still be a spring chicken next to Saramago. However, I’d rather not be a car mechanic being no good with small parts.


It’s lucky I didn’t choose to be a pop star. As Louis Walsh said to Eoghan Quigg on X Factor last night.


“You’ve got everything it takes to make it in the music business. You’re young, you’re on a tv show, you’re Irish.”


I’m neither young, Irish, or on a TV show.


There are plenty of other writers who have made it while elderly. Post Office, Bukowski’s first book appeared when he was in his 50s, and Penelope Fitzgerald didn’t become published, like Saramago, until her 60s.


And look at Doris Lessing, dancing the Fandango at her Nobel ceremony, leaping out of taxis. She’s 89.


(There a good Lessing site up at the moment – you can read The Golden Notebook online and there are ongoing discussions by a number of chosen readers jostling for position on the sidelines.)


Lessing, like Saramago, was also a communist. Saramago says he still is. I agree, as we watch capitalism crumble.


The problem we are in is due to cheap lending and over-borrowing. The answer to the problem seems to be to reduce interest rates to encourage more borrowing so people can spend. This will stimulate the economy.


When the economy is stimulated interest rates will go back up and people will be asked to pay back the money they borrowed and never had and we will fall back into recession.

1. Idea for book. America, through its economic dominance, forces laissez-faire economic policies on emerging economies (see Argentina, post-Soviet Poland, post-apartheid South Africa et al). This brings about widespread unemployment, poverty, starvation and hardship.


Interventionist economic policies are not allowed.


When own economy starts to stumble, intervention is suddenly the thing to do. Let’s give lots of money to banks.


It will be a picture book. Louis Walsh will produce a CD to go with it. Westlife will perform a number of songs they haven’t written themselves and sing them without passion but a disenfranchised population will lap them up mistaking it for art.

2. Idea for book. America elects black president and whole world slaps it on back. Its history of slavery and apartheid is forgotten. Africa which has already quite a few black presidents is largely ignored.

Saramago’s website apparently gets a million hits. He not only talks about writing but also gives out advice like recipes and marriage advice.

Therefore in a new column I write:

Marriage advice: A wife is good for warming your shoes by the fire. (This from Charles Darwin.)

I am currently running on my 50 Word Facebook group a 50 Christmas Word story competition. Write any 50 word story with a Christmas theme, post it on the group page and then the best ones will feature on this blog on the 20th December. They will also be a podcast to go with it if I can get my Christmas arse into gear.

And for those of you struggling to think of Christmas presents my book Me and Mickie James is still out and available to buy. Details on my website.

Currently reading: Broken Doll by Neil Campbell


Currently listening: Hurricane by Grace Jones

Bukowski: Poetry and Motion

Doldrums

I read in an interview with Ali Smith that she likes to spend the first hour of the day in bed reading, and drinking tea. This seems like such a civilised procedure I have taken it up myself. But adapted it.


Yesterday I spent the first eight hours in bed and then moved straight downstairs to a bottle of vintage port and the 3 disc tv adaptation of Bleak House.


Actually yesterday I was in Newark as the peripatetic judge of the Fosseway Writers annual short story competition. While at the train station I saw the latest edition of Dazed and Confused had a free book, ‘Cool Brands of 2008 – 2009’.


I look at D&C these days as I was in it a few months ago. Note to magazine circulation managers. Include me in your magazine and you might increase circulation by one.


I didn’t buy it. After all, it was £3.95 and cool brands aren’t really me. I shop at Aldi and often find myself gazing at an old pair of curtains thinking they would make a nice pair of slacks.


The last comment I had on this blog was ‘that it is a bit all over the place’. I am going through my Cubist period (an object seen from all sides at the same time). This matches my current state of mind.


I feel that I need to go and do something useful in China and at the same time I don’t know if I can be bothered. We are going through momentous times. Obama is President elect and there is a new policy at work that we have to wear ties. This is to do with PRIDE!


Honestly.


Will I ever escape from my McJob? What shall I do with my life? The new shirts I have ordered for work are so voluminous so as to accommodate big space between neck and tie that I imagine that if I am caught in a sudden gust of wind my shirt will be filled with air like a balloon and I will be carried aloft to somewhere else.


I’ll be like Icarus without his original folly.


But some things cheer me up. On coming back from holiday someone asked, “How was Barcelona? Did you go to the Vatican?”, another person on coming back from America, “They asked me what language I speak. I told them English. They said the English language comes originally from America. Is that right?”, and another, “I watched that film In Bruges last night. I’ve always wanted to go to Brussels.”


And other things make me mad. I’ve been watching the Storyville series on BBC4. This week’s was Operation Filmmaker about a Jewish film producer and director who bring an Iraqi young man over to work as an intern on the film, Everything is Illuminated, which they are making in Prague.


Good intentions quickly go sour. The young man instead of working hard goes out partying and when asked to do jobs, photocopying, mixing grains and nuts for the producer’s snacks mumbles, ‘this isn’t my fucking job’.


And the situation becomes complicated. The young man says, ‘if you send me back to Iraq now, they will kill me’.


On screen he ages, becomes more and more manipulative, blackmailing the documentary maker who then becomes a character in her own film.


That’s not what makes me mad. It is seeing all these people doing creative things, they seem alive. And my life seems so dull in comparison. Which is my fault. I don’t feel alive.


I’ve been thinking.


I spent the last seven or eight years with this dream that I wanted a big mainstream publisher to publish a book that I have written and now it’s happened and my life is exactly the same. Except now I have to wear a tie.


I need to book that ticket to China. Or join the army. Do something.

On the plus side I was shortlisted for this year’s short story Bridport Prize, have just received a book to review and host on my blog from Salt (Sister Morphine by Catherine Eisner), got payment from the BBC for my short story Teeth, been advised that my electric payments are going down, and been asked to contribute 3 short stories to a new collection coming out.


So things are looking up.


I told you.


Cubist.

HOME the new short story collection by the Time Travel Opportunists is now available to buy. (It has a story by me in it.)

Trailer for Operation Filmmaker

Cat and Duck

 
Yesterday the neighbour’s cat came to visit. For the purposes of privacy I won’t be revealing her name.


I came downstairs and there she was climbing up the glass of the patio door, yowling. She is small and has this way of looking at you from under her eyes. She also runs sideways, dancing.


She exhibited quite a propriety air until I introduced her to H, my former cat’s, ashes. That calmed her down a bit, as no doubt it would. But, I thought, this house, (my house!), is definitely missing a live cat.


Yesterday I had this feeling that I needed something French. You know what I mean, a film about amour fou, or amour perdu with full frontal nudity? I thought Jean Seberg might turn up at my door, breathless, clutching a contract to buy rights to my book.


“We’re going to do it in French,” she would say. “You can write the script and direct. And organise the catering!”


She didn’t. Which was a pain, as I had wanted to go to the gym.


But my mum did pay a visit. She came with a bag of shopping; 3 apples, a net of clementines, some after-dinner chocolates, a carrot cake, a dundee cake and a bottle of parsnip wine.


I could imagine her walking around the co-op, looking for things I might like.


The house feels nice now, with all these things in it. I would never buy myself a cake. It’s like aftershave. I would never buy myself that either.


Or a car.


I’m still enjoying Our Mutual Friend. Mr Boffin is becoming a miser. He is going around London buying books about these eccentric characters and Mr Wegg is reading them out to him in Boffin’s Bower at night.


I like Mr Dancer who sat on his dinner to keep it warm and died naked in a sack.


It’s something to aspire to. I must admit I do like the sound of a light-switch clicking off.


At the moment what with all this credit crunch business I am making an effort not to buy new books but to read the ones on my shelves which I haven’t got around to reading before.


So coming up I have:



God’s Own Country – Ross Raisin

A History of Modern Britain – Andrew Marr

The Philosopher’s Pupil – Iris Murdoch

The 25th Hour – David Benioff

Martin Chuzzlewitt – C Dickens

The Lost World – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Getaway – Jim Thompson

Slow Man – J M Coetzee

The Castle – Franz Kafka

Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor

The Man Upstairs – P G Wodehouse

The Magic Barrel – Bernard Malamud



In a neat bit of symmetry the day ended yesterday with another cat, this one an enormous big fat one. I bought the newish Peter and the Wolf animation from iTunes.


Not only does it have a cat but there is also a bird with a broken wing and a duck. Not for the fainthearted though, especially if you do like ducks.

Clip from Peter and the Wolf

Writing Tip no 39

Some people ask me, ‘Where do stories come from?’


(Actually they may be asking me, ‘Where do storks come from?’ my hearing not being particularly great these days. For the answer to this question please see my previous blog, ‘Where do babies come from’, storks and babies often being found hand in hand. Rather like the devil and George Bush.)


In respect to the first question let me lay my cards on the table and say that I don’t have any faith or belief, Christianity, for example. If I did, a typical story might be about a patriarchal society that endorsed a history of slavery, torture, war, invasion and destruction all the name of some poor sod who got nailed to a cross.


(Or a story about McCain’s current running mate might be about how her church prays for the successful conversion of gay men to the Christian way (more death warriors for the American crusade?))


Being free from such shackles, rather like a Big Bang theorist, I would say look to the beginning. If you’ve got a beginning the rest will follow.


For example – a farmer’s son spies some towny newcomers parading across his land. The young girl is quite attractive. (Ross Raisin – God’s Own Country.)


They become friends, then lovers, then run away, then…


For example – A former POW suffering from post-traumatic stress goes back to Germany to be an extra in a film about POWs. (Day – AL Kennedy)


Not a good situation for someone with PTSD. He goes a bit wobbly, highlights of the war flash through his head.


For example. Some do-gooder gets born in a stable and starts telling everyone how to live their lives. (The Bible)


See above – (the cross bit).

I’ve been ill for the past week or so and so sorry if I’m not my usual jaunty self. Some good news today has cheered me up. Elbow have won the Mercury music prize. Woo hoo! I’m going to see them again in October.


Marillion have released their new album on the net, for free. Listening to it now. Sounds good so far. I’m going to see them in November. Tickets on sale now.


Tickets are also on sale for Stanza@LaDanza where I am appearing with Clare Summerskill. I have read that she is a ‘hilarious stand up comedienne’. That’s brilliant! But she will be performing next to me. I’m not even a sit down comedian.


Yikes!


Come along if you can. It’s in London. Details on the this link.

Currently reading – Blindness by Jose Saramago


Currently listening to – Happiness is the Road, Marillion.

Also check out this serial on BBC 7 – The Scarifyers.

Trailer for SOMERS TOWN. Go and see it, it’s BRILLIANT!

Watch out! Vikings!

As no one has turned up at my door this morning with a suitcase of unmarked bills I thought I’d better get on with my blog. Question to self, what are unmarked bills? And if they were marked would I say that I didn’t want them?


“Sorry, please bring me some clean ones.”


Actually I am not so bothered about money. Or maybe I am. I’ve been watching Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain. At the end of the last episode he said, whether we like it or not, we are all Thatcher’s children. Perhaps. When she came to power I was eight years old, nineteen when she left.


I wonder if the world is a better place for her policies. Has the selling off of so many industries that were already owned by everyone (through taxes) to the few benefited me? Was the persecution of gay men under her regime a positive influence? The mass selling off of council houses? The use of war to manipulate an unwilling population?


Like last week’s Doctor Who perhaps we need to ‘Turn Left’.


Oil is in the news a lot. England had oil. What did the government do with those billions? And if energy production was state owned now would it be easier to just spend the money needed to build wind farms instead of asking the Saudis if they want to invest?


How did you get me on to this? Perhaps because I’ve been reading books of popular economics. On a purely people in coffins basis it seems clear that capitalism is a bigger killer than communism.


So, bring back the communists!


Mind you, these days Islamic Fundamentalists are the new communists. Funny that. I wonder what the next big enemy will be?


Scandinavians? The re-birth of the Viking hoards!


Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that there are some dates for your diaries. Next Saturday 28th June, I will be performing / reading at the Lowdham Book Festival. Come along if you’re in the area. There are loads of readings all day and I imagine, people who like books. I’ve never been to a book fair and I’m looking forward to it.


On July 22nd is the Me and Mickie James launch in Waterstones, Market St, Leicester.


(Some one asked me, ‘What are you expectations?’
‘I think in the bleakest possible terms, that everything about it will be a complete disaster.’
So, I might be pleasantly surprised.)


And on 13th September I will be at Stanza@LaDanza.


There is also a short but nice review of Me and Mickie James in this month’s GT.


In a strange coincidence this week also sees the release of a Jim Jarmusch box-set including the film Down By Law. The band in Me and Mickie James are called Down By Law, after the film. There is also a Jim Jarmusch film, Broken Flowers, available on the iPlayer. It’s got Bill Murry in it.


Anyway, that it. I’m off to write, as I’ve got a new story on the go.

Currently reading – Fiasco; The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas Ricks


Currently listening to – In Rainbows, Radiohead

Clip from Down By Law

Plot idea. Woman Gets Onto Bus

Plot idea. Woman gets onto bus

The title this week is from a Lorrie Moore short story. I’ve been reading her, sitting in bed this morning. I wasn’t put off by Adam Mars Jones’ review in the Guardian or somewhere. He criticised her introduction to her own stories. What’s that all about? You can’t even introduce your own stories in the right way these days.


I read there, or somewhere else, that she was influenced by Woody Allen. And she is, no doubt. She’s funny.

“A self-described ‘ethnic Catholic’ he once complained dejectedly about not being cute enough to be molested by a priest.”

Woody Allen is one of my favourite funny people. But you don’t seem to see many of his films on tv these days. Perhaps part of the backlash against him. I try and save my moral outrage for things that are morally outrageous.


Dropping uranium depleted weapons on Iraq. Fifty per cent of the world’s household wealth being held by two per cent of the population. The fact that my oven just seems to take forever to heat up.

“After fifteen minutes he knew that this was the woman he wanted to marry. After thirty, he didn’t want to steal her purse.”

Plot idea. Man buys a mobile phone.

I received yesterday the cd of my Radio 4 story, ‘Teeth’. It’s brilliant. I listened to it five times and it made me laugh.


“It’s me gums!”


Lines that weren’t funny when I wrote them are funny because of the timing and delivery. Am I allowed to like something that I am part of? Or should I be like all the actors, ‘Oh no, I don’t watch myself.’


As if, I think. Dame Judi Dench no doubt has a private cinema in her house showing back to back reruns of A Fine Romance. She sits there gin in one hand, fag in the other, thinking, ‘Those were the days’.

Plot idea. Monkey invades Latin American country with a hairbrush and a band of revolutionary former Big Brother housemates.

The first reviews are also starting to appear for Me and Mickie James. There’s a nice one here on Chroma. And I am in this month’s Dazed and Confused, page 44 if you happen to be drifting past WHSmith on your lunch break.


I liked the D&C article about me. I was worried about it, what the picture would be like and about what I said. But it’s nice. That’s another thing people say, “I don’t read reviews”.


I am always googling myself. Well, not myself, just my name. Because none of these things seem to be about me, not really. The real life is feeling tired because I’ve been at work all week. I need to go to the gym in a bit, and the tennis is on tv, then later the football. Come on Czech! And I have to go shopping. There are more Lorrie Moore short stories to read and the ten other books, more! waiting to be read by the side of my bed.



Plot idea. A world is formed and life begins.

Currently reading – Lorrie Moore, The Collected Stories. Read Debarking



Currently listening to – Coldplay, Viva La Vida

Woody Allen – Annie Hall

H

This morning I grew concerned that I was suffering from ADHD. Unfortunately I was not able to sit down at the computer long enough to fully research the matter.


As it happens I am texting this blog to a small Peruvian lady who offers such transcription services while simultaneously shopping, eating, watching the tennis and trying to read a number of books.


Reading is most traumatic. I fan books around me on the floor, pick one up, read a few pages, put it down, read a few pages of another, jumping from a novel, to a book on economics, to one on history.


Perhaps this accounts for my blurring of fact and fiction. Doris Lessing said that fiction allows you to talk about things that you would not be able to in normal debate. George Saunders said the same thing of comedy.


I can run with it.


The blog is late this week. Last Tuesday I took my cat to the vet to have a tooth out. At 11:00 I got a call from my ex-partner, with whom I share custody of the cat.


“Turn the music down,” he said. “It’s H. He’s got cancer.”


The vet said we should have H put down straight away. He would only live for another week, and then in discomfort. It was a shock, because I had no idea he was ill.


I wanted to write this whole blog about H, going to get him from the rescue place, worrying about him every time he went out, remembering how he used to grab your feet under the bottom of the duvet, sleeping with his head on the pillow.


But it’s a bit difficult, all this reality. Enough to say, I loved him. As did Gary, my ex. When we went back to his after, he went and got this black lacquer box.


“Look,” he said, “I’ve kept his whiskers. Every time one fell out over the years. I kept it.”


We’ll miss him.


Doris Lessing has a cat called Yum-Yum, named after a character in the Mikado. She was interviewed by Alan Yentob on Imagine.


“Watch out for him,” she said, “he’s rather spiky.”


Rather like Doris herself. I loved watching the interview with her, and the clips from her life. She didn’t want to talk about leaving her children. “Look, I’ve talked about that before” and I loved the way she imperiously dismissed other interviewers.


“When I took mescaline I rather wish they’d left me alone.” Because it’s all about putting on a face. At 88 she doesn’t have to bother.


“It doesn’t matter if they think I’m a loony now.”


Interestingly the warning on the iPlayer states of the Lessing programme ‘Contains very strong language’. For Kiss of Death it states, ‘Contains some strong language’.


Kiss of Death also contains in the very first scene, a body cut into pieces, later a head full of maggots, scenes of graphic torture, kidnap, imprisonment and murder. And Danny Dyer.


No warning for that necessary apparently.


I wonder if that’s what Lessing means when she decries the death of culture. What comes across though is her love of life. Even going out into the garden her eyes light up as she gazes out across her plants and trees. That was the biggest influence of her life she said, gazing up at the stars (her dad let her stay up to do this). It makes you feel very small.


Indeed.

Currently reading – The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein



Currently listening to – Catch the Brass Ring, Ferraby Lionheart

The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuaron and Naomi Klein

A Perfect Boob

It’s been a good week all round. Which is disconcerting. Weeks aren’t normally round. They start on Monday and head in a straight line through to Sunday. Then it starts all over again. Until you die.


I didn’t need any fake breasts after all. This was on Monday when I went to London for my photo shoot in the glamour palace of Bethnal Green.


“I’ve seen this nice tree,” was the first thing the photographer said to me. “Then we can go to the park. There are some really big slides.”


The park was great, enormous. I imagined myself running to the centre of it and disappearing like that character in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up. I wondered if it was shot there. Then I walked through some trees.


“The light is great.”


It is, I thought. Sunlight, what would we do without it? Then I sat on the promised slides. They really were big. Everyone has nice memories of slides but my favourite one was Aqualand, South of France, zipping down it, laughing.


There is something very Zen about having photographs taken of yourself. Perhaps that’s what all those Buddha statues are about. A statue being a more concrete representation than a flat image. Therefore more Zen.


Everyone has their favourite Buddha statue. Mine was in Japan, Daibutsu. You could walk inside him if you wanted and there was enough room to spread out a picnic blanket. That day I ate potato ice-cream and my Japanese gave me this small bottle to drink out of. It was supposed to give you special powers.


(I didn’t hold out much hope. I had had my fortune told to me in a Japanese temple – ‘You won’t die in a car crash’. Goodo!)


“You seem relaxed,” said the photographer.


Clickclickclickclickclick.


On Wednesday I received four nice emails. 1) From the BBC, the studio script for Teeth for me to check. It’s being recorded on 5th June. I also found out who’s going to read it. 2) From the editor at Gaydarnation re my interview with them. 3) The editor of Tell Tales who have accepted my story Gus. This will be published in October. 4) From my publicist at Random House to say the finished copies of Me and Mickie James are in.


My copies are in the post. So I am going to see the final finished thing. Next it will be in the shops. Then people will be able to buy it. Or not.


Now here’s the caveat. You work for years for this. Then it happens and you realise it doesn’t change your life. That crap job you are doing is still crap when you have a book published. That view of the housing estate outside your window doesn’t change.


I have decided to change my life.


Yesterday, I bought a Neil Diamond song for the first time. It’s good. But is that enough? I went to see Persepolis. It was great. I read another Albert Sanchez Pinol book, Cold Skin. This is great too, like HG Wells.


But I wish I had lived in the Enlightenment. London is destroyed in the Great Fire. I, astronomer select, give up gazing at the stars and design a new city. There will be broad boulevards, temples, no skip that, Big Buddhas. There will be potato ice-cream for everyone and water slides. Everyone will write books and read them. There will be public libraries on every corner. Music will play everywhere and everyone will get chance to be mayor even if you are a buffoon.


We will all change our jobs every two years and when bad things happen we will all pull up our socks and dig in to help. We will study all our lives and pass on our knowledge to our children. Or not if we don’t want.


And so on.

Currently reading Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine



Currently listening to Neil Diamond



Persepolis trailer

Me and Mickie James Launch

I don’t know what’s happened to this week. It’s like a salt and vinegar crisp someone holds under your nose. You turn your head away, you turn back, and it’s gone. Just gone.


However, I have now confirmed the date for the Me and Mickie James launch party. It’s going to be on July 22nd starting at 6:00pm in Waterstones, Market St, Leicester. There will be a reading, a chance to buy the book and free refreshments and music. Afterwards will be drinks and things at The Basement Bar.


I’m not quite sure what the things will be (a naked dancing boy? Several naked dancing boys? Lots of them?) but it will certainly be a good chance to buy me a drink. Haha.
Everyone is welcome. Especially as I have visions of myself standing alone in an empty room full of wine and books. Now you put it like that…


If you want to come just email me here or just turn up. Or if you have Facebook the event is here.


In my head I have been thinking about what I want to say. This is usually witty and erudite but I will probably turn out to be more like Bukowski. He was so shy that he used to get drunk before he was on and then become abusive. People loved it. Anything like the success of his novel Post Office would be amazing. He wrote it in a couple of weeks and then it went on to sell millions.


Of course any kind of success would be amazing. It’s quite a scary thing, wondering if this thing that has been produced with my name on it is just going to disappear.


I’ve had two emails this week which have started, ‘I know you must be very busy.’ If being ‘very busy’ means sitting watching the snooker every day and drinking beer then I am. Definitely. I am really very very busy.


I had a nice day in Sheffield last Tuesday thanks at the World Championship and I am there again tomorrow. Keep your eyes peeled. I will be the one in the audience naked except for a copy of Me and Mickie James strategically placed ( balanced on my nose).


Well, you’ve got to haven’t you? And I can’t bear the thought of being on Big Brother.

Currently reading – Northern Lights, Philip Pullman (I loved reading Once Upon a Time in the North last week and now have started on the Dark Materials trilogy. It’s great.

Currently listening – Hallam Foe, Original Soundtrack

Young Adam music video