www.drewgummerson.co.uk

Yes I am now www.drewgummerson.co.uk. In the future when my many fans flock towards me (Note from the editor – ‘Can one person truly be said to ‘flock’?’, ‘Or be ‘many’?’) I will no longer have to cast my hands novelistically in the air and say, ‘Just Google me’. Meaning my old website address was a few cats and a rabbit short of the Magna Carta.


For those of you who are interested and I didn’t know myself, it is very easy to buy a domain name (i.e. www.drewgummerson.co.uk). I did it from here, but there are loads of others and it cost £5 for two years. All web traffic to your chosen domain name is then sent to your old website (if you have one).


It’s been a good and busy week so why I found myself at one o’clock this morning sitting on the side of the bath sobbing I don’t know. I’d just been watching Michael Jackson perform Billie Jean at Motown 25 and I think I was reminded of the time I’d first watched it with my mum, my dad and my brother, all of us together. Or listening to Thriller on the bus to France on holiday and thinking it would be great if I sat upstairs right at the front. And then the sun came up and up and up.


That’s the thing about past. It is always behind you.


And I was emotional anyway because I finished the third draft of the Penguin Variations yesterday. When you get to the end you always think, ‘this is shit. I’m rubbish. I’m stuck in a call centre till I die with a phone welded to my ear’.


Then this morning I got a call from the BBC as you do at 10:30 on a Sunday morning. They want one of my stories. Woo hoo! If you read this blog you know I love the BBC. So woo hoo!


I’d sent them the story a couple of years ago. The person who read it originally liked it but was told to send it back. She has since left that post, returned to a position of more power and this time it’s in. Or on. It’s not signed in blood yet, but it should be ok.


Also this week I was proof-reading my story ‘Intimacy’ which is going to be in ‘Boys In Heat’ out in June. So for those of you who like hot boy on boy action (and who doesn’t?) note it in your diary. Actually my story is about a policeman who is sent to train a Polish bicycle task force, there is a serial killer cutting off penises, some stuff about the Catholic Church and Al Qaeda. The usual.


And finally this week I was at a photo-shoot for Leicester’s What’s Your Favourite Book. You can see the damage here. Nice to see everyone dressed colourfully in complete black…

Currently reading – Submarine by Joe Dunthorne


Currently listening to – Duran Duran, Red Carpet Massacre, Sweeney Todd, and Michael Jackson, Thriller.

Rik Mayall reading George’s Marvellous Medicine:

Kenneth Williams and Jackanory:

Anal Sex

In an interview I read this week with AL Kennedy she said her writing was rather like anal sex. “If that’s what I want to do and you’re not into it then go away because that’s what will keep happening.”


I am currently reading her latest book Day and I am rather enjoying it. Perhaps that’s just me after all I…


Kennedy has a reputation (in the press, whatever that means) of being difficult. Day is hilarious so far. I don’t know that it’s difficult but it does take place in the eponymous Day (Alfie Day)’s head.


For me this gives it a great economy. Kennedy can flit from scene to scene without all the dull bits. It opens with Day in Germany after the war. He has returned to the place where he was formerly a prisoner to be an extra in a prisoner of war film. He is on an excursion with one of the other cast members, Vasyl, a Ukranian. They are going out to the woods so Vasyl can piss on Himmler’s unmarked grave. Then there is an incident with a Luger and some Germans.


If that’s not plot I don’t know what is. Because that’s what people say about ‘literary’ fiction, isn’t it?


(Ironically my iTunes has just jumped from Pink Floyd to Robyn. Dark Side of the Moon to Konichiwa Blues.)


That it doesn’t have a plot.


Another book I read this week is Donjong Heights. This is a novel written in verse. I wrote a review and that turned out to be almost in verse too:

To the party come Tyrone, his neighbour, and ‘one man, all-night Dub Selecta’, Hylie ‘the fair-skinned Rasta-Queen’ (used to be known as Kylie), Lord Byron ‘governed by his Johnson’, his brother Chester, a pro-wrestler, John J a sozzled former academic and finally Tony, the tailor.
It may all end in disaster.
Oh yes, and don’t forget the omniscient narrator. With a lisp.
‘We find him in the blacketht thtate
Tith truly foul and unpropitioth’



I found myself reading it out loud in bed. If you read last week’s blog you’ll know this is getting to be a regular thing. Luckily this time there were no neighbours up ladders. Nor did I roll down the stairs.


For those of you who care about these things, my welfare, I’m back to work tomorrow. Paid work that is. I haven’t had a day off from writing for months now. I’m on the third edit of The Penguin Variations, two chapters from the end.


In the same article Kennedy said she will edit her novels up to 175 times. So I’ve a fair way to go. Or perhaps it’s because her novels are more like anal sex than mine. If you don’t get it exactly right it can be painful.


Or perhaps it’s just that I’ve had more practice.


(Joke!)

Currently reading – Day by AL Kennedy (keep up!)


Currently listening to – Seventh Tree by Goldfrapp

Kennedy talking about Day

Writing Industry Conference

Last Saturday, 9th February 2008, I attended the Writing Industries Conference at Loughborough University. I wrote about my part in it in my blog last week but not about the whole shebang.


First off it was arranged by the Literature Network. They are an amalgamation of the Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire literature development departments at each of their respective councils.
The aim of the conference was clear. While other conferences, events etc focus on the act of writing itself the WIC would be about the industry of writing, how to make and establish a career in it. How to make money.


The day started with a keynote speech by Stephen Booth. He’s a crime writer. Although I have to admit I never heard of him he gave a very good talk. And he was an example of his own methods. He said writers have to get out there. If people don’t know who you are, they are not going to buy your books.


(Note to self – Mark Brown mentioned a Me and Mickie James fan-club on my facebook page. After all Me and Mickie James is about a pop group and a fan-club would be a nice thing. Since then I have been thinking of getting badges made and other promotional paraphernalia. I will do this.)


(Note to others – I do like crime fiction. I have read everything by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M Cain. In fact, The Postman Always Rings Twice is one of my favourite books, probably my favourite short book. If I had more time I would read it now.)


Throughout the day there were three sessions running at any one time. For example Careers for Writing in Television, Writing for Children, Routes into Poetry, Working in the Community, Producing Live Literature and so on.


I picked up on some good tips. For example, all scripts for the BBC go through the Writers Room. If they like your writing they will get back to you. They probably won’t produce what you send in but you might get taken on and tasked to write for Doctors, then Eastenders, then Casualty, then if you are very lucky and very good, you will get your own show.


Michelle ‘Mother’ Hubbard talked of making the change from doing performance poetry as a hobby to a profession. Getting business cards made, and acknowledgement slips, sorting out your tax.


I don’t want to write for tv as it happens or be a performance poet but I did enjoy every minute of the day. I felt alive.


Writing is a lonely thing you see so it is great to be around people even for a short time who are trying to do the same thing as you. You can go mad sometimes.


B S Johnson, a writer, railed against the publishing industry. He saw that editors, publishers, publicists, secretaries, agents, in fact everyone could make a living from writing except perhaps the writers himself.


He set up an almost unique arrangement, through force of his own will, with his publisher. He would be paid a wage in return for writing his books.


It didn’t exactly work out. He killed himself. As did Hemingway (blew his brains out), Richard Brautigan (ditto), Hunter S Thompson (ditto ditto).


Perhaps there is a book in there. The Suicidal Writers Club: Entry is Death.


But I am going off the point and work looms over me like a massive hammer.


Yesterday I considered breaking my own leg, like in Escape to Victory, or least gnawing an arm off so I didn’t have to go. You see, I wanted to say here at the computer doing my stuff. That is when I am happy, like you wouldn’t believe.


The editing is going well on The Penguin Variations and to end here is a very small snippet that I edited in today:

“Mindful that Kwong has just collapsed I go over to the kitchen area to get him a glass of water. As I turn on the tap I sense Torn and Travis behind me.


“What do you reckon?” whispers Torn.


“He looks a bit strange,” whispers Travis. “That wig looks like something from Starsky and Hutch. Whichever one had the curly black hair.”


“Starsky,” I whisper. Then I point out that as the pair of them are wearing nothing but see-through plastic they probably look a bit strange too. “Kwong is connected to Spud and Spud is connected to Caractacus and Caractacus saved all our lives so I think we should help him.”


“It would be good to give the old bird a spin,” says Travis.

“So we’re agreed then,” says Torn.


Kwong’s nods his head in thanks as I pass him the water and tell him the good news and then his eyes open wider as a figure appears at the door of the warehouse.


“Is that a penguin?” he says.


“Yes,” I say, “it is.””

Currently reading – Light Reading, Aliya Whiteley


Currently listening to – still Elbow

Elbow – Fallen Angel

Me and Mickie James Cover

This week I received the cover for ‘Me and Mickie James’. I was surprised. I was expecting a picture. Instead it is covered in writing, front and back. Also it’s black.


I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book covered in writing and I can’t think of many black books.


The last thing Felicity, my agent, asked me for before sending the book out was a blurb. I ran upstairs, grabbed a few books I liked and quickly wrote one. Those are the words that are now all over the cover, in squiggly white letters.


I’ve been looking at it a lot. I printed it off and took it to bed with me. I didn’t actually sleep with it but it was there on the bookshelf next to me. I kept taking out other books and comparing them.


“Yes,” I said, “it’s your cover.”


I held it at a distance.


It looks at a fly-poster for a band. The book title is in yellow and the writing under it is white. It’s like the name of a pop group and then the venues they are performing at underneath. This is a good thing as the book is about a pop group.


Looking at it more closely I like the quirky details. There are astericks in yellow and little pictures. There’s a picture of a toilet and one of St Pancras Station. There’s a boat, and a weapon of mass destruction. This is a good thing too as the book is quirky.


It works I think as it would make someone want to pick the book up. They would want, I think, to know what the writing says. And hopefully then take it to the cash desk and hand over some money.


That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?


Well, perhaps. It’s scary that people are investing money in me; designing a cover, editing the manuscript, producing the book.


But for me I would do the writing regardless. This week I’ve been working on The Penguin Variations. It makes eighteen days now that I’ve been going over the first two chapters. I’ve been reading them again and again and again. I look at paragraphs for minutes on end, thinking, ‘is this any good?’, cutting bits, adding bits, for hours and hours.


I think about it when I’m lying in bed, when I’m at work. I feel guilty when I take a day off, which I haven’t, and do anything else.


It’s worth it. Because then I might get to see another nice cover.

You can see the ‘Me and Mickie James’ cover here.


You can join the ‘Me and Mickie James’ Facebook group here.


You can pre-order ‘Me and Mickie James’ here.

Currently reading – Six Word Stories (read them and vote for your favourite)


Currently listening to – Children of Men soundtrack (fantastic – John Lennon, Jarvis Cocker, Deep Purple, Donovan and so on)

Marillion performing ‘Made Again’

As if!

There was a quote at the end of the Start the Week podcast. Q. “Why are you not unhappy?” A. “The time I have left is to precious for that?”


Spot on. I have become a year older this week. 37. How did that happen?


Actually it was the Start the Year podcast it being the beginning of January and all. I was listening to the podcast as I was doing my shopping. I am up to speed now on the problems of the year ahead – China, America, the credit crunch, Hilary Clinton, Obama, world flu pandemic and so on.


Podcasts were a new thing for me last year.


And already, for this year, the BBC have launched the iPlayer. You can watch and download BBC programmes onto your computer. As I was working over Christmas this is a good thing. I sat here, where I am now, and watched Dr Who and Extras.
And I write here, email manuscripts and stories, work through corrections, listen to the radio, watch the snooker. I might never actually have to speak to anyone again.


As this has been the year of Facebook this might be true.


I wrote the last line to ‘The Penguin Variations’ on my birthday and immediately I wasn’t happy with it. You would hope it would be a good feeling to get to the end of something but it isn’t. All you do is somehow feel it is not good enough.


So already I have gone back to rewriting. Over the past two days I have been working on chapter one. I read the first page of J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Slow Man’ to help me. That starts with a bike accident. There is an accident at the end of chapter one of ‘The Penguin Variations’.


Coetzee is a fabulous writer. That’s what I’d like to be like. To write so simply but so well. I think that’s why finishing something makes you sad. Because you realise you’ll never be that good.


I hope Me and Mickie James does well. I’d like to be able to write more. Although, in fact, I do write every day. I mean write more in terms of go to work less.


I don’t want to be adorned with diamonds but I would like to have handfuls of pencils and the time to sharpen them.


I had an idea for a new book this week. It will be called ‘The Submariners Artificial Banquet’. But it’s quite sad so I don’t know that I’ll write it. Perhaps someone could write it for me if I tell you what it’s about?


There’s a new story too this week, called the ‘Bwindi Impenetrable Forest’. It’s a real place and really does have gorillas in it.


And I believe there are still places up for grabs at the Writing Industries Conference where you can meet writing people, make contacts, speak to agents and so on. I shall be there talking on a panel about commercial fiction.


Perhaps next week I should go back to writing about something in these blogs. I just seem to meander….

Currently reading – Don Quixote. (I’m now on book 2. It gets better and better.)


Currently listening to – Control Soundtrack album

Nik Kershaw performing Don Quixote

A New Year Message

For the past three days I have been editing the final chapter of ‘The Penguin Variations’. So I am finishing it as the year ends.


It’s been a good year.


In February I got an agent. I’ve mentioned before that this was almost by chance. I’d almost given up on getting an agent and publisher and had resigned myself to writing what I wanted rather than feel I had to curb my enthusiasm to fit in. Writing is my passion and because work and daily life are pretty tedious I wasn’t going to compromise what I wrote. Then the whole house of cards would be a sham.


One day I was browsing the internet and came across a website with lists of agents. I saw that a few had email address, very few, and so I emailed the ones that did. I wasn’t expecting much, didn’t spend ages on the email.


Within a few days Felicity got back to me. She was immediately enthusiastic. She asked for the whole manuscript, was enthusiastic about that, and we met and I had an agent.


Vintage, one of the publishers we sent the manuscript to, got back almost immediately. The publisher there wanted it but when she spoke to marketing they said they couldn’t back it, didn’t think my book would sell. Other publishers said the same thing. They liked it but thought it would be difficult to sell.


So that was that.


With the rejections back Felicity sent the manuscript to Cape. Cape are the hardback arm of Vintage. The publisher at Cape, luckily for me, liked Me and Mickie James and wanted to publish it. The deal was agreed on Sunday, Felicity called me on Monday. I was at work, dealing with criminal damage to a wall I think, when the call came through.


So ‘Me and Mickie James’ will be published by Cape in 2008 and then by Vintage after all in 2009.


It’s a small success for me but what I wanted properly since about 1999 which was when I began to write seriously. I feel content now for the first time ever. That an agent and publisher think I am good is the best thing.


And it has made the writing of ‘The Penguin Variations’ this year such a good experience. I don’t know if the agent or publisher will like it but I feel for the first time I know where I’m going and what I’m trying to achieve and I know that people are going to read it at the end.


Strangely enough this sense of myself came from one of the rejections for ‘Me and Mickie James’. The publisher said I mix surrealism with humanism and that is probably about right. ‘Me and Mickie James’ has been sent now to an American agent and foreign publishers and a film agent. This all seems pretty surreal.


All that would be a bonus. For now, this year my dreams have come true. It really is what I’ve always wanted. Happy New Year.

Join ‘Me and Mickie James’ Facebook group



Currently reading – McSweeneys 25


Currently listening to – Joy Division – Closer

Joy Division – Transmission

The Writer is in…

The writer is in.


Do you remember those scenes from Charlie Brown? Lucy is the dr, she has a wooden booth, and Charlie Brown goes to visit her.


“I don’t know,” he says. “I feel so alone.”


Or the relationship between Snoopy and Woodstock? Or my favourite, Lucy’s relationship with the school. She used to go and speak to the school building.


Canongate are releasing all the Peanuts books, right from the beginning up until the end. Schultz always felt himself a failure, even to the end when he was so famous.


I loved Snoopy.


Reading Don Quixote, as I am, I am realising how much it is like Winnie the Pooh. Harold Bloom missed that in his introduction. That’s the problem with literary criticism these days. They can’t see the wood for the trees.


Winnie the Pooh is Don Quixote. Piglet is Sancho Panza. Read the one in which Pooh and Piglet go in search of the Heffalump, or to find the North Pole.


Don Quixote is so funny, and sad. I love it. I thought I would struggle through it. But I keep picking it up, wanting to read the next paragraph.


I wrote eight 200 word stories about arse licking this week. Then I wrote a sad nostalgic piece about the place I grew up in being pulled down. And about other stuff. The arse licking ones are funny things, about a football team who kind of get addicted one by one. The sad one made me cry.


I imagined performing them on a stage. Back to back. The former is a result of the latter you would see. It would be a great exposition. There would be applause, I thought, as I strutted around the front room with a bottle of beer.


Only it wasn’t a bottle of beer. It was champagne. Presented to me for being so wonderful.


Or a fool.


I am pleased at least that Leon won X Factor. I knew the writing was on the wall when Don Quixote was more appealing than Rhyddion. Actually I had the snooker on too, on my computer. O’Sullivan got a 147.


I went to see Terry Griffiths play Cliff Thorburn in 1979. That was the year Terry Griffiths was World Champion. We got told off by the referee for eating crisps. I was 8.


For those who are counting The Penguin Variations is going well. I’ve edited up to page 101 now out of 128. I go over the plot in my head over and over. I don’t know if it’s any good but I like it. It’s the hardest I’ve ever worked at anything.


And I’ve started writing a new short story. It’s about a man whose wife is sawn in two. The man goes in search of the magician who did it via his father who is a ventriloquist with a talking penis.


It’s about the breakdown of a relationship.


The writer is in.

Currently reading – Don Quixote (alright already)


Currently listening to – Kate Bush, Lyra

Charlie Brown’s Christmas

The Only Way to Rob a Bank is Naked

I’m a big fan of public transport. It’s the people they let on it that bothers me. In the same way I’m a big fan of democracy. It just depends whose hands it’s in.


Brief excerpt of overheard bus conversation:


“And who’s paying for it? Us! The taxpayers. It’s all going on these foreigners. I was staying in the hotel. It was £40 a night. Not cheap. It was like a halfway house. Full of immigrants.”


Sadly, I judge people only on whether they will or will not buy my book. These people probably would not.


Luckily I was on my way to the Phoenix Theatre to see the Joe Orton Project premiere. This was a one man show, two chairs.


On stepping through the door I was a handed a leaflet by a very nice woman (a definite book buyer!).


“Are you aware of the, uh, content of Orton’s work?”


I smiled, “Yes, I am. Do you know where the toilet is?”


This was a joke. It was lost on her. It was partly lost on me.


The foyer was full of book buyers, I could tell. The effete old man who walked with a cane. The tall man with the silver hair. Two men with scarves (scarf wearers are the biggest book-buyers according to Heat magazine.)


I bought a glass of wine and asked for a plastic cup so I could take it into the auditorium. Glasses of wine make or break cultural performances.


For example, the Marillion concert at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall was better than the Marillion concert at Rock City. The former served wine, the latter beer. Both had the edge over Steve Hogarth at the Union Chapel (no alcohol allowed out of the crypt (bar area) and into the concert hall (church).


“This is a church for Christ’s sake!” said the angry bouncer.


Will and I had to relay from the pew, taking it in turns to have a drink.


Jesus!


U2 played the Union Chapel this week. Perhaps Bono will petition the Pope. Have I told you my pope story?


But I’m losing the plot.


This week’s blog was going to be about Art and how great Art is, how it can be the meaning to your life. You see, along with the Joe Orton Project, this week I watched Jindabyne and eXistenz. Jindabyne was a film with proper acting, scenes like Carver (from which it came), eXistenz a film with a proper story that was full of imagination.


(Me and Mickie James was sent to a film agent this week. Fingers crossed!)


I also had three proper days editing The Penguin Variations. I’m halfway through now. I love it when it takes over my whole brain. I spent one night reading the chapter I was working on out loud, over and over again. If you can hear me through the walls neighbours,


“Sorry.”


I said that out loud.


Actually I know they can hear me. They complained about my music about two days after I moved in. They called the landlady, she called me.


“H E L L O,” I shouted down the phone. “S O R R Y, JUST LET ME TURN THE MUSIC DOWN. I CAN’T HEAR YOU.”


And that so is a true story.


Luckily, they are not something I specialise in. Like democracy they so often end up in the wrong hands.





Currently listening to – Werner Herzog talking about Rescue Dawn



Currently reading – The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt

Clip from Orton’s Loot – a naked bank robbery

Papa Smurf Pays A Visit

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk writing when I turned around and noticed Papa Smurf standing in the centre of the floor behind me. He was just as I remembered him, about an inch high, red hat, blue body.


I wasn’t overly surprised. Like any 36 year old male I am often haunted by my past.


“What are you working on?” asked Papa Smurf.


“The Penguin Variations,” I said and then I told him the story – earthquakes, tsunamis, a plot based on the mechanics of the game of Mousetrap, penguins, The Whole Earth Movement, airships, scientists, philosophers, an animal sanctuary, the American occupation of Iceland, Spud in a tutu, his mad Aunt, knives at dawn, submarines, a haunted oil rig, a one legged man, Global Warming jumpers, a faked car crash, a mountain hideout, a New Year raid on a government building, stolen architectural plans and so on.


I was really getting into it, full of myself, when Papa Smurf held up his hand and interrupted me.


“What your story lacks is a cute marketing opportunity. Have you any idea how much money the Smurfs generated in their heyday?”


I nodded my head. I did. I used to collect Smurfs.


Past the Mace shop was the garage. The garage was about as far as I would ever go as a child and even that was out of my comfort zone. On the other side of the road was White City. I knew if I went there I would be killed. After all, I had had real death threats, had been taken out of school but that’s another story.


In those days garages were garages. They didn’t have shops attached in which you could do your weekly shop, book holidays, organise funerals, move in an set up a new life if you so wished. They sold petrol and that was that.


Except, except…..


The garage was like a palace. It was white and if you went in the square building you were almost blinded by the bright lights, the highly polished floors. The interior disappeared to infinity. And in this interior was nothing.


Except, except…..


In the centre of the floor was a glass display cabinet. In this glass cabinet, lined up one by one, each with acres of their own space, were the Smurfs.


It was heartbreaking looking back, having to decide which one you wanted next, because if you were lucky you might be able to afford one. And then once you had decided you couldn’t just pluck it off a shelf you had to go and ask the garage worker.


For a shy little boy, all alone, who had walked so far from home, and faced such danger, this was torture.


“No, I don’t have any fuel. I wanted to buy a Smurf. Poet Smurf please. Do you have him?”


Surely the adoption process is not as tough as this.


But it was worth it. Because then you get to take the Smurf home. He will be your friend. You can talk to him, tell him the things that you don’t have anyone else to tell.


I told Papa Smurf all this. And then he told me about life in the village. It had gone sour for a few years, with declining merchandise revenues many Smurf businesses had closed up shop. They couldn’t compete with x-boxes, Playstations, absurdly cheap DVDs. But things had improved recently. They had had a conference, ‘What is it to be a Smurf?’ and they had re-evaluated their lives, worked out what they had stood for.


They believed in peace, friendship, living at one with nature.


“Did I know that Smurf world was carbon neutral?”


No I didn’t.


“Had I heard of the Smurf wind-farm project?”


No I hadn’t.


Papa Smurf thought it sad that I had lost touch with my inner child. He said it is possible to grow up and not lose that sense of wonder at the world.


I said I hadn’t. I pointed out the things in my book.


“Oh yes,” he said. Then he did that Smurf dance. You know the one? It is like a small aeroplane doing a loop the loop with the engines turned off. Then he was gone.
I looked for him under the sofa. In an upturned teacup. But he was really gone.
I thought it was a shame. Because who might come in his place.


Hong Kong Phooey?


NOW he was quiteaguy!

Currently reading – The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson


Currently listening to – Peter, Bjorn and John (still)

Unicef commercial against war featuring the Smurfs

Advocat for breakfast

I need to go shopping.


This morning I had gateau and half a tumbler of Advocat for breakfast. And I need to do some washing. If you went into my spare room you would think the Chinese laundry had packed up and left the building.


At the door the Chinawoman stands forlornly, a bus ticket to Beijing in her left hand. “I’m leaving you. IT’S TOO MUCH.”


And I’m not even the kind of person who changes his clothes every day. I can’t afford the goddamn water and environmentally friendly non biological naturally resourced detergent doesn’t go on trees (does it?).


Besides we over-wash. I read it on Green Weekly.


I’m saving the planet, that’s what I’m doing.


In my house only one light is on at any one time. When guests are round the logistics become complicated as we troop from room to room, negotiating arms to manipulate switches. Let me tell you it can get crowded in my tiny bathroom!


I’m kidding you.


I never have guests round.


Actually this lack of shopping is evidence of a good thing. I’ve become a writing junkie again. The proofs to Me and Mickie James are finished and ready to ship, annotated in blue and red. And I’m 20% into the next edit of The Penguin Variations.


I’m loving it. I can spend hours and hours on the same few pages before moving on.


As I was writing I bookmarked hundreds of pages I thought I might need later for research. This week I’ve read about Icelandic Christmas – the book is set around Christmas and in Iceland. The reading might mean that I change only one or two sentences but I am happy with that.


Adding bits. Shuffling sentences around.


But I should go shopping.


I’ve just finished reading ‘Comrade Rockstar’. This is about Dean Read, an American singer who espoused Communist ideals and made it big behind the Iron Curtain before it was melted down for scrap.


Towards the end of his life (in fact at the end) he was found dead in a lake behind his house in East Berlin. The book is an American writer’s attempt to get to the truth behind his death.


In pretty much the first chapter she crosses to East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie and goes to a record store. She picks up a basket and finds that, due to the small size of the basket, almost nothing in the store will fit into it.


For her this is a CATASTROPHE and from here she extrapolates everything that is wrong with communism.


Jeez!!


It’s funny how we can judge a system without thinking of the faults of our own. In the West we can push trolleys the size of tankers around supermarkets the size of space stations gorging ourselves on transfat until we balloon ourselves to an early grave.


Well, some of us can. Those with cash.


Those who car adverts at aimed at. And plush sofas. And hanging gardens.


I just want a cat.


I would like a supermarket with small baskets. I would like no choice of fruit. Or only one kind of tin.


I would like one day to find an Egyptian selling black market oranges from the back of a peripatetic souk. I would buy a sackful and I would visit all the people who can stand my company for just a little while.


“I’ve got an orange,” I would say. “I”VE GOT AN ORANGE.”


Then I would say, if they were nice, “Would you like one too?”

Currently reading – The Gum Thief, Douglas Coupland

Currently listening to – Peter Bjorn and John

‘Father and Daughter’ – A fabulous animated short.