Post of the Week: Week 7 nominations.

We played this record over and over that weekend. In our enlightened states, we studied the passed around album jacket, searching for clues. The back cover featured a picture of John and Yoko, posed on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West. They look fit and prosperous, facing east and an unknown destiny. Or was it? I was most unsettled by this picture, and still am to this day. Their expressions are grim, almost determined. What were they thinking? What did this photograph portend?

What’s been so heartwarming about the whole experience is how people have immediately understood the way that this is beyond publishing – reflecting the paradigm shift that is blogging and its neo-punk underground ethos. That is, no-one is actually getting paid. Even if I were to share out the royalties amongst the contributors, there’d be so little to distribute to individuals that it’s better that the small sums are all consolidated into one bank account.

Whenever I leave a parental interview like this, I feel that there’s been a sleight of hand played on me. I come out bewildered and being less sure about how my son is doing than when I went in. I feel it in other situations, too, like the doctor’s, dentist’s – even the hairdressers. I always come out with a completely different hair-cut than I intended having. But meeting with my son’s teachers is the worst.

And the book was perfectly fine and good, very well written now that I come to think of it, but there was just something a little bit…wrong with it. Something not quite right. And it got less and less right, the deeper I read. And I remember sitting in the airport lounge about halfway into the book when the suspicion turned into a conviction. I looked up from the page I was on (in which Hermione was about to fellate Harry) and realized that, well, this surely couldn’t be possible.

And with this Manchester appointment it trusts surpassing to Birmingham as tourist destiny and moving away more to Liverpool, with which it maintains a ferocious rivalry historical. Of course, also it hopes to dilute the image of gray and declining city that drags from the industrial time, of when the textile factories and cotton estigmatizaban the urban landscape. Painful it is, in this sense, a famous phrase of Mark Twain: “I would like to live in Manchester. The transit between Manchester and the death would be imperceptible”.

14
First kiss: Rubber gloves. Second kiss: Broom handle. Third kiss: Hoover. Fourth kiss: Mop.

15
Youth Theatre Yorkshire; backstage excitement. Touching willies in grandmother’s spare bedroom. Finally understand Rocky Horror.

“There was, like, a gallon and a half in the can,” said I. “If you’re car’s still not starting, you might have a bigger problem.”

“The needle was way below E,” explained Jim, as if he had run the vehicle beyond “empty” and actually managed to create a quantity of anti-gasoline in the tank, which my fuel had only served to negate.

There’s only one pub for miles. It hasn’t applied for a new license. We locals are worried that it will ruin the secret illicit enjoyment of sitting in the dark after hours. Not that we do that. Never.

His brother walked in. ‘Ma’s socks!’ he said, looking pleased.

‘How much?’ I said.

‘Um. Five pounds’ said the brother.

‘Nooooooooo…’ said the shopkeeper, squirming.

‘Look at them’, I said, ‘they are lovely. And I will always remember your mother when I wear them.’

We immediately went out and bought a cashmere wool carpet inlaid with gold filigree. Probabilities of buttered toast landing on the carpet were increased beyond 99.9% and cat-spin entropy in the buttered cat scenario was reduced to negligable levels.

To the person asking permission to cross dress – NO cross dressing allowed. We will have booster seats for short people. Low fat food will be available for those on a diet. We cannot control the salt used in the food so we suggest those people with high blood pressure taste the food first. There will be fresh fruits as dessert for diabetics; the restaurant cannot supply “No Sugar” desserts.

Sorry! Did I miss anything?!?!?

…I casually announced that the Cubs had turned me gay. Of course this random verbal statement made everyone laugh, and someone questioned how that was possible, to which I replied that I had gone on a Cub’s Summer Camp for a week and came back gay and with a certificate to prove it. Well once the mocking laughter had died down, I was asked to expand on my peculiar statement, so…

Still in South London where I was born, I climb into the taxi to catch the 05.34 Eurostar from Waterloo. The grime from the bonnet has smeared itself all over my fingers as I placed my case in the boot and I accidentally wipe it on my Hobbs jumper. In my new attempt not to try and control the entire universe I do not ask the cabbie to turn off his loud music, but rather lean into it. It is a live recording from around what seems to be a Nigerian campfire. It is very beautiful. The cabbie can hear me listening.

It began, all too poetically, last New Year’s Eve. Not being able to enter into the social whirl and increasing paranoia of trying to find myself with some people, somewhere, celebrating, I was at home in bed. Admittedly, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind because, well, we all know that New Year’s Eve is one of those dates when being alone hangs heavily over one’s head, don’t we? However, as I lay there and listened to fireworks going off and the sounds of drunken revelry in the hours around midnight, I began to ponder my lengthy obsession with disappearing. My dreams of leaving. Getting the hell out. Vanishing off the face of the Earth.

The trouble was that Felipe’s visa was running out and he was facing the possibility of having to return to Argentina. He couldn’t bear to leave Sam, worrying in particular that Sam might become ill when he wasn’t there to look after him. They didn’t want to move to Argentina either; Felipe described it as ‘horribly Catholic and homophobic’, and Sam was receiving good health care here. After much discussion they decided the only realistic option was to find a British woman who was willing to marry Felipe. They had a few thousand pounds in savings, and hoped this would be sufficient incentive. So, discreetly, they began to ask around.

Following are my photos (or image, in one case) that Flickr designated the most “interesting” based on feedback and number of views…

I want a fixed price. I want grey boredom. I want the land of eternal rain and eternal sarcasm. I want a world where no one goes to church, where no one listens to the queen’s speech, yet they go out on the BBC once a year, regardless. I want my cats to puke on my bedclothes, I want to rifle through my own records. I want my dad to start snoring halfway through the movie. I want curry and peshwari naan. I want money whose colours I recognise and count without really seeing. I want a world where it’s okay to make a prat of yourself and just laugh about it. Where you know which streets are the dodgy ones.

Gilbert: “OK, I’ll meet you at Drury Lane Theatre for my show which starts at eight.”

Chorus (in his head): “He will meet you at Drury Lane Theatre for his show which starts at eight!”

Gilbert: “The traffic will be murder so you better not be late.”

Chorus (in his head): “Murder! Murder! Murder and hate! The traffic will be murder so you better not be late!”

“So remember, dear, only one Vitaball a day…unless, of course, you want to experience the same severe irritability, vomiting, blurred vision, hair loss, large-scale peeling of the skin, and agonizing death as those intrepid arctic explorers.”

The brisk orchestral arrangement of “Eleanor Rigby” is tense and fussy, with something of Eleanor’s spinsterish neatness: the strings bring to mind sewing, or sweeping the steps, one of those little daily things you do unthinking, or instead of thinking. They also sound a little like a horror film soundtrack, and “Eleanor Rigby” is cinematic, and it is about horror. It’s Paul McCartney taking one of pop’s smooth-rubbed words – “lonely” – thinking it through, and recoiling.

On previous trips I had always travelled with my best friend. Having each other as a point of reference had been, I now discovered, the key to staying sane whilst in culture shock. A mere: “Oooh, look at the taxis! Aren’t they weird?!” or “I guess that must be a potato curry of some sort” had been enough to translate the concept of ‘car’ or ‘food’ from one culture into another. Now however, alone and with no reference point for the very first time on my adventures, I panicked.

Survival instinct took over, and I did something I had never done: I rushed to the nearest three star ‘Western’ hotel. There, defeated and ashamed, I ran up to my suite, ordered dal and rice from room service and listened to the manic beep of Indian city nightlife.

I know that apostrophes are the bugbear of many, but this is my ‘bear – people who use over-inflated, high-falutin’, overblown twaddle for language, when everything they mean to say can be communicated so much simpler using little, podgy, Anglo-Saxon words, or something like.