Author: ivan

Stress. Is relative. Or to be more accurate. Stress is relatives. And what with everything being relative, well that would mean that stress is all around us. But if love, actually, is all around us, then that would mean that stress equals love and all around (ie everywhere) would be relative. Which could be a problem, as at any time I may turn into a square MC, and slam dunk the funk.

If I were to dunk the funk, then I would probably trigger some kind of wormhole, by simultaneously proving that continuum is contiguous and the rhythmym is mellifluous. And possibly superfluous. But never viscous. Betty Boo is doing the do and there’s nothing you can do. Unless you’re a relative, in which case proceed to Go via the stair upon which a little mouse is sitting on, right there.

A little mouse. With clogs on. Well. It sure beats dunking the funking. And if you don’t like, what you see here, get the funk out. Although out itself is relative, as we have already proved, see words passim.

Passim is as passim does. Et tu Brutus. Yes, for are we not all relatives on the spaceship Funkadelic.

And then the pictures of the kittens arrived and all was well. You can’t beat me, stress. No, no, no. Try to send a man to rehab, I say no, no, no. Or, as I am, actually, relatively well around, I say.

Maybe. That is all.

Hmm. And again, hmm. And thrice hmm. Hmm hmm hmm (wasn’t that a song?).

First, some apologies:
(1) To the couple standing opposite me at a crossing after I’d been running 17 miles. The hysterical laughter was in fact at the pain, not the bloke’s hair. Though it was funny.
(2) To the driver of the silver merc that I was charging at like a bull rhino without realising. What can I say – I was in the zone. Nice of you to stop though. Chicken. :o)
(3) God. I swore a lot at you today.
(4) Women. Generally. Especially those with lovely legs. I don’t mean to drool. Honest. But you do take the edge off a long run.
(5) The bloke I ended up racing up a hill. Yes, it was fantastically childish. But hey, every loser wins. Or so Nick Berry would have us believe.
(6) Anyone I have ever recommended this training regime to.
(7) My legs. That’s two weeks on the trot that my legs have told me to eff off and leave them in peace after 2h 20. Sadly today I still had four miles to get home. Sorry legs. Although they are quite lovely and are by far my best physical feature.
(8) My sanity. Despite eating a large bowl of weetabix, two large coffees, two gels and nearly 2 litres of water I was 1kg lighter after my run. I guess I was steaming in the heat. 2900 calories according to the HRM, once I’d finished the post-run shop (whyohwhyohwhy don’t I go before)
(9) The sunshine. You were lovely. Let’s do lunch.
(10) The wind. You rocked. But only on my tail. Blowing a gale down the only big hill in Cambridgeshire is neither big nor clever. You’ll regret it one of these days.

I will obviously have to rethink my ‘no runs except for a long run’ policy. It’s not working. I started this because I didn’t want to get injured. I guess I could just throttle back until I’m really back in shape – perhaps another six weeks at this rate. But that’s simply not the Fetch way….

Runners, I salute you. I feel honoured to be among this mental, obsessed and ever so slightly-smut-obsessed web gathering.

And now to my M&S gastrotreat, as there’s not a power in the verse that will make me cook now and I can’t imagine walking again – ever- or to a decent pub. Plus it’s my weekly flirt with the smirking sales assistant. If by flirt you mean entering your pin number a bit riskily.

Odd day. Odd McBod. An hour long chat with someone I used to work with where I was acutely conscious that I wasn’t so much joining in a conversation as simply recounting my experience of their experience. And vice versa. I guess it’s fair to say neither of us are natural networkers.

At work I was called in to do some impromptu journalism, which was a lot of fun. All I had to do was look at people, ask them fairly mundane questions and stick a mic vaguely near where they were speaking. It was a lot easier than being on the other end of the lens. Except for the very first interview – I had forgotten I would need to keep a conversation going, particularly one that didn’t involve me either being cynical, sarcastic or telling a long shaggy dog story. I had to be nice. Urgh. And smile at people. And be reassuring. And listen. Urgh urgh urgh.

Then stuff. And nearly making someone cry. And nearly crying myself. But not at the same point, though for similar reasons. And cake. And being complemented on looking thinner. By a married man. And then impossidoku.

Walking up Gray’s Inn Road, I passed a woman in a blood red coat sat on the steps of the old funeral home. I think it’s an antique shop now. Her skin was translucent and her eyes, pupils shrunk to accusatory dots, danced with anger. Her shoulders and feet were pinched – someone was being given a hard time on the other end of the mobile inevitably clamped to her ear. She had a classic beauty. I wondered what this scene would have looked like fifty, a hundred years ago. I wondered why she was sat on the step – it would have been cold and wet – perhaps she’d been waiting a long time, or she was simply too angry to care.

Blood red coat and stone cold eyes sitting on cold stone on the phone. Gnawing a thought bone. Or something. Ta. Xi.

No writing.

He can tell they are arguing from a hundred yards away. The man is gesticulating, his arm punctuating sentences with open fisted punches, a one armed prayer. She is pushing a pushchair at near glacial speed. Her bottom rises and rolls, encased in a thin layer of denim. He is wearing leather and anger. The argument appears well worn, neither party as enthusiastically vehement as when they first had it. He’d be hoping for recognition, she’d be hoping for peace. It was a domestic drama, literally a pedestrian affair. The child, trapped in the pushchair between the walls of sound and silence, sat chewing on a beaker. Learn the lesson early, my son, the only escape is in a bottle.

Across the street is the local gang of the awkward squad. Too young to be up to anything serious, too old not to keep a discreet eye on. They dressed alike. Urban shadows wreathed in flannel and towelling. Sneakers and caps aping a culture that they found easier to define than their own. He wondered where the pride had gone. The sharpness. The joy in difference. Why were these kids wearing overalls in their spare time. They were little better than rats. Human rats. Feasting on fries and grease encrusted chicken, the perfect precursor to another evening of existential nihilism.

And then it rained.

The last few weeks have been very stressful for various reasons. I haven’t written anything, even here for a while now, which is both annoying and not part of the plan. As much as I would like to, I simply don’t have limitless amounts of energy and creativity – work (as in the paying kind) is eating up most of both. What’s left is going on NCIS and the elliptical trainer, with the odd long run thrown in. Sadly, these events cannot be combined.

Dr O is threatening to write 50k words next month, so perhaps the challenge will be met. I’m still not entirely convinced about the first story, but when I do get my head down it does at least seem to try to write itself.

Ugh. This is such a dull post.

I’m ill. Which is in no way news. It’s not ill behaviour, or ill-gotten gains after all. It is simply a virus, attached to a lifelong genetic issue that is aggravated by stress and is simply, tedious. A lifelong condition – more of a social illness than anything particularly serious. Well, depending on your view of blood. And how important sleep is to you. And feeling, you know, vaguely human.

Anyway. Mustn’t grumble. At least, not on my own time.

One side effect of the discomfort is that I’m feeling constantly hemmed in. Literally, by my own skin. Which is hopeless for friendships, but is rather good for claustrophobic writing. For yes, after a few weeks away I have finally started writing again. And what better start than a long pretentious scene involving thought stones skimming on endless pools of emotion.

Yes, I will keep taking the tablets. And you?

I’ve completely gone off the boil, writing-wise. All my energies are going into work and training at the moment. Ok, and rioja. Tom and Frank are less distinct in my head, stepping back into line of the players in my mind’s theatre. Or something less p-word. I haven’t read a book for a while either – I think I have about 40 unread novels slowly breeding in word-piles. A holiday would sort at least ten of them out, but then I’d almost certainly buy new shiny words rather than words that have sat around my home for a while, waiting to be cool enough for me to read.

I miss pootling away in here. I miss pootling away on the story, but while I’m less than 100% convinced about the plot there seems little point in bullying it onto the screen. I may go to a writers’ thing tonight – there’s an agent from PFD coming to tell us hungry hippos how to wallow in the glorious mud of acceptance. I normally avoid writers’ like the p-word. I tend to fall in love with their hair and their giggles, without realising that by definition they are as neurotic and paranoid as I am. And occasionally more talented. Bastards. And there’s little worse than a paranoid neurotic bastard. Ooh, a despot, maybe. Or Alan Sugar. Or a sugary, hairy author who writes under the nom-de-despot Alan Paradroid. (And as I type, Idi Amin has been referenced on Today’s Thought for the Day. Kudos.)

Anyhoo. A whimsical post. I woke up too early today and I will suffer for this shortly. I just wanted to post ‘bewitched, bothered and bewildered’. But instead typed ‘neglect and negligees’. As you do.

I have been exercising my parapsychological nose-twitch recently. Willing things to happen. The score is currently 3:2 with standard probability about to bring on a substitute (probably one of the highly amusing Physics PhDs on the train last night sharing in-jokes about recruiting people with basic maths skills. Seinfeld had nothing on them. Thank NBC). But little does probability know that I am about to introduce the socks of inifinite doom to the equation. They’re never wrong. Except when I buy the Independent. Then everything’s wrong.

Hmm. Rambling. No, not that kind. The Lemon Jelly kind. Everything changes but you kind, by Take That. And Party.

And on that note, I think I shall decamp to the train, ergo work, sum London. I don’t even have the braincells to ask my one reader a question. I can has chhezburger?

I have / am very busy. As in my arse is in gear, mon derriere c’est busy. By which I do not mean I have diarrhoea. Oh no. Far from it. But still, busy. Like a busy thing. Excitement, isn’t it?

Oh. And in typical volte-tush, I have decided to not finish this novel and instead write one that’s more ‘me’. Le sigh.

There appears to be a surfeit of adjectives doing the rounds. I blame the blueberry-flavoured, extra-filtered yet comfortable, expensive and soft, new, improved Cillit Bang. And the grammar’s gone! Seriously, there are too many things that are too many things. Let a thing be a thing, people. Why can’t a cereal bar simply be a humble cereal bar?

Why does it have to be both crunchy and chewy? What kind of message is that sending out to kids? EH? You can’t be both black and white. Unless you take out the middle eight and ‘ooh oohs’. But then you’re left with a B side, and never was an adjective more deserved than as a B side. Except perhaps a conjunction – ‘however’ or ‘because’ would work equally as well. Although it’s generally – what can I not sell on the next LP. Kids.

Anyhoo. So – where was I? Ah, yes, confuzzling people. Well – you see – we’re pretty au fait with there being too much packaging in and around products nowadays. The liberal forget-me-nots and the neo-con naysayers all meet in the middle, surrounded by an extra fine sheet of bio-degradable, ethically sourced, ribbed for her pleasure – her shopping pleasure – bio-exo-nanoo-nanoo-plastic.

However (that word again – if I could compare you to a summer’s day you would be Thursday July 28 1979), no mention is made of how much word-(w)rapping goes on nowadays. Individual word clouds surround politicians and marketeers like Vurts. There is too much language. Too much sentiment. Too many empty adjectives. And not. Enough. Fucking. Nouns.

Or nuns. Or clowns. Or clown nuns. You know the ones – pretending they’re in some kind of religious Black and White minstrel show, except with red noses instead of face paint. They’re taking over the world you know. And you know what? They’re crunchy and chewy.

No. I didn’t write any of the novel today. Thanks for asking. Try the veal. I’m here all week. And let’s face it, I should know. BANG! And the thought is gone! [smile for the camera]

Not even a chocolate mousse has alleviated my petty *meh*ness. I haven’t found myself the time to write for a week and while work has been stressful and involved longer hours than of late I think it’s simply the same old same old doubts about the plotline kicking in again.

I’m tempted to simply finish any old tat and print myself a copy through lulu.com simply for the sake of doing it.

Meh. Meh. Meh. The more people I read on t’intertron, particularly aspiring novelists, the less I feel like finishing the current story and the more I feel like going more outre and genre than at present. Meh. I’m not sure I’d read the thing I’m writing. If you see what I mean.

Meh. Give me an E, give me a M, give me an O. Grumpy grumpy grumpy.

Looks like it’s time for a nap.