Monk Quixote

This week, I expect there will be some new read­ers of this blog. Wel­come. Pull up a pew*. Although if you really believe that this is a church you are sorely mis­guided. But now I men­tion it, the Cult of Monk Quixote has a cer­tain ring to it. So on sec­ond thoughts, pull up a pew, give me all your cash and start wear­ing odd clothes (you’ll soon dis­cover that I believe the con­cept of things match­ing to be vastly over-rated). Any­hoo, wel­come one and all. Or as is infi­nitely more prob­a­bly, one.

* I have just attempted to find ‘pull up a pew’ in my new Allen’s Dic­tio­nary of Mod­ern Phrases, hop­ing to dis­cover some hid­den ref­er­ence to the Ref­or­ma­tion in my sub-conscious, or per­haps some deep aver­sion to acan­thus wood, but no such joy. I have, how­ever, dis­cov­ered that ‘go phut’ is a Hindi expres­sion mean­ing to ‘burst or split’. I think it should be my duty to be more edu­ca­tional from now on. Ahem, I digress…

Ok. So where was I? New begin­nings, yes. As of about 17.54 on Fri­day I am wife-employed. I have new objec­tives set in the lunch-making, parcel-collecting and gen­eral repairs and main­te­nance depart­ments. Ok, ok, I mainly have objec­tives in the ‘being happy and please hurry up and fin­ish the books’ kind of way. I have also been told that exces­sive lying out­doors in the gar­den is a dis­ci­pli­nary offence, and that while the pub across the road does have wi-fi, antipodeans and arm­chairs, it is not an office.

I think this is a lit­tle short-sighted of her, as my hol­low legs could ensure I nego­ti­ate top dol­lar on the busi­ness that comes my way while dilly-dallying my way through a bowl of mixed nuts (£2.50) and a gin­ger ale (£1.10). That’s all I’d have, dar­ling. Once I’ve sorted out the nod and the wink with Darren-barman and a clear view of your approach path from the house. I could maybe write another script for the guy from Gimme Gimme Gimme who seems to spend most evenings ‘walk­ing his dog’ there (using the time-honoured method of tying said excrement-production-operative to a table and down­ing enormo glasses of Sauvi­gnon blanc while smok­ing. A fag.). Or maybe I could write some pithier sales pitches for the refugee estate agents who wan­der the streets of Chiswick at night, hav­ing spent the day scream­ing silently into their over­sized mugs and star­ing mood­ily out of their respec­tive plate-glass win­dows. (We don’t get Big Issue sell­ers here, we get zom­bies from Foxton’s mut­ter­ing ‘cor­po­rate let, cor­po­rate let sir’ into their shiny lapels, scuff­ing their flimsy designer shoes on the small­est of kerbs and waft­ing Lynx Unpleas­ant in a fug of des­per­a­tion). That’s unfair, we do get BI sell­ers here, they like to patrol the street out­side the super­mar­kets on the High Street like char­ity quar­ter­backs. Cheer­ful sods, the BI sell­ers in Chiswick. I guess they don’t have to deal with com­muter misery.

Any­hoo, the Roe­buck will not be my office. Sadly. There are a bazil­lion cafes here, any num­ber of which are pop­u­lated by peo­ple avoid­ing being cre­ative because you know, the sun’s out, and well, we’re not estate agents are we, and the reces­sion will end even­tu­ally, and no-one really believes the BBC will stop employ­ing Nigel Havers. It’s quite a reas­sur­ing world, really.

So I will pot­ter away in the study instead, as I harry my char­ac­ters (and yes, that’s a lit­tle in-JK joke. Twice over.). Peo­ple have been ask­ing me what I’m going to do. And the sim­ple answer is I really don’t know. For the most part I intend to occupy other people’s heads, and let their voices type for me. I want to spend a lit­tle time craft­ing and prac­tis­ing some shorter bits and bobs. And then I will plunge off into novel-land. Every now and then I will sur­face to do some paid-for copy­writ­ing, and build bet­ter, smaller, more effec­tive web­sites, with peo­ple I like.

But for the most part I sim­ply get to be ‘me’. It feels amaz­ing. I mean, for most of my adult life I have had to tem­per my ‘me-ness’ through the vision of oth­ers — brands, cus­tomers, bosses, cor­po­rate and per­sonal ide­olo­gies. And some­where along the line I stopped fight­ing back. I stopped wear­ing nail var­nish to work or telling the Board they were wrong. I stopped believ­ing in myself. I stopped hav­ing the big ideas because they weren’t soundbite-friendly. I stopped dream­ing. I became frus­trated, and tired. And drunk. I with­drew into a spe­cialised world of jar­gon and, to all intents and pur­poses, inan­i­mate struc­tures who wouldn’t talk back. Hello data-modelling. Ok com­puter. I tried to live in the matrix. But the matrix never lived in me. And yes, I’ve never actu­ally seen Mssrs Neo et al. I hate moder­nity as much as the next suit. But com­put­ers are the cars of today, n’est-ce pas. Know­ing some­thing about them is what passes for being practical…but I digress.

I stopped dream­ing. I think it’s as sim­ple as that. Michael Mar­shall (Smith) wrote an amaz­ing book about the power of dreams (Only For­ward) — part Dou­glas Adams, part hor­ror — per­haps a lit­tle ‘young’ for me now. It was the book I felt I should have writ­ten at the time. It was the book that made me call Harper­Collins mar­ket­ing folk and enquire about his sales. And I thought — there are oth­ers like me. There are oth­ers who make this dream­ing… work. And yet. I didn’t have the self-confidence. I’ve never under­stood that, as I’ve always con­sid­ered myself arro­gant at heart — part of the Span­ish psy­che that won’t die, no mat­ter how many times I laugh at the Stephen Fry or the word ‘tuck­box’. And in the inter­ven­ing time, Mr Mar­shall has writ­ten another eight best­sellers, sev­eral scripts and had options on films from Dream­works for as long as I’ve been read­ing the small print in the pre­lims of his books. This being the mod­ern age, I get to fol­low him on twit­ter (@ememess). He does not fol­low me. Yet.

So this is a new begin­ning. My wife has been amaz­ing. She smiles at me, and tells when I’m being self-indulgent. Occa­sion­ally she tells me I’m bril­liant. It’s the best feel­ing. The best. And I will write for her, and for our future chil­dren (fin­gers crossed). And I am thank­ful to her, most of all, for believ­ing in ‘me’. For let­ting me out of my box.

And so, ladies and gen­tle­men. Wel­come to the new me. It looks a lot like the old me. But with added odd­ness, sen­ti­men­tal­ity and shiny things. Bring your thought-tweezers (and your tow­els), and let’s go tilt at elec­tronic windmills.

Wish me luck.…

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 8:31 am, is filed under observation and tagged as: beginning, biggaybears, chiswickians, douglas, Life, mms.. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

If you don't want to leave a comment, why not read the previous post: « Ketchup karma’s going to get you, or a random post: A new version of Ivan Salcedo is available! Please update now. or the next Writing blind, running wet ».