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I’ve just finished reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which, disappointingly, is nothing to with the history of secrets or flan or the Da Vinci Code, but is instead about Gregory Peck. I kept reading the character Henry as Peck’s performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mocking Bird, although they are moral polar bears apart.

Anyhoo. As usual, none of that is relevant. Except that the chilli-induced dreams I had last night featured a death. The death of my youngest brother. And in my dream I was suddenly overcome with all the emotion that I have big-brotherly shielded from him all this time and howled like a banshee. The grief I was experiencing in the dream was simply incredible. When I woke up it took a few moments to return to my usual flatline state. And realise that he wasn’t, in fact, dead.

Which leads to duende, the gypsy curse. Spanish lore has it that it’s the struggle with the duende within oneself that brings out la pasion – in bullfighting, flamenco, firework throwing (probably). My brother has it. Dogs have it. Cats don’t. I don’t. I guess it’s the mischief gene, crossed with selfishness and vanity. Fires the soul.

I feel a bit flat at the moment. I haven’t written anything all week. Plans that seem so firm from one day seem somewhat less firm after days of inaction. Decisions are smudged. Which can only mean one thing. Breakfast.

Tired. Feeling a bit drained. I haven’t spotted a single Womble or talking bear for ages. Otherwise, I’ve had a good week, ideas-wise, but not a great deal of output word-wise. I know you’re all devastated to hear this.

I often wonder whether there’s a limit to how creative you can be – in a day, a week etc. I appreciate that it takes a certain amount of energy to run your brain at that kind of level and so on a basic physiological level you can’t fire the neurons at the same rate for extended periods, but is it really true that you have a finite number of (good) ideas per week? I guess it’s re-stating writer’s block as ‘units of creativity’ or something.

Some days I know I’m on a roll, and to an extent I was on one earlier, but I can’t help feeling that I tend to get to a point and think ‘there, I’ve banked my ideas for the day’ and switch off. Like I do in so many things (running, particularly) I don’t always push myself as much as I should do, relying on external influences (guilt triggers mainly) to get me to ‘perform’.

Sigh. On the fun side, the chiddlers playing in the park outside the flat have been tormenting each other with made up versions of the Harry Potter ending. Which amuses me. And on occasions, disturbs me (Ron marries Harry?). But not as much as the pre-tween (girl) voice singing ‘My humps’ that never ceases to amuse me. Life ‘s so much simpler without post-modernism. Or the post. Or, in fact, the word ‘or’. That’s surely one of the beauties of childhood – the reduction of choice.

Oh. My. God. I’ve turned tweed. And twee. Mourning the fact that I’ve got choices and I haven’t written as much tiddlypoms as I should have. Idiot.

But still. What does a unit of creativity look like? And does it have a glycemic index?

Some days the mojo simply isn’t there. I’ve been writing a lot (of pantaloons and felafel-based metaphors) and it’s getting to me. I feel a bit like a performing seal. And yet it’s me who put me here. In my own small way I’ve been reaching out a bit further than usual to try and get non-friends to read. React. Respond. I know how hard it is to read some of my words sometimes (hell, how do you think it feels writing them) – too many backflips and dead ends and pun-nerisms.

Tcha. Beans. I’ve been trying to get my headspace into gear. It seems that people generally like the nonsense more than the emo-lit, so I’ve been quietly shelving Tom I and trying to summon up enthusiasm for Tom II. But I don’t know if I’m simply doing a Lucas and shooting things out of sequence. I’ve got the basic stories for Toms I through VII. I just lack the discipline to get past 0 at the moment. Tom II is also my homage to Kafka and Gibson, which is somewhat harder to live up to than Tom I, which is just my dad. Tcha, indeed.

I’m probably just tired. I was contacted today by the guitarist in the best band I was in (Endless Drone, yes, we were marketing genuises) – someone I’ve heard from twice in thirteen years. Which was pretty cool. Sometimes you should really focus on cool. And not on targets.

Anyway. I dare say normal service will be restored tomorrow. Hell, I may even do something about the sidebar. Or the other hundred chores I have to do around this place. Tomorrow is another day.

In other news, I wrote my own version of Little Fluffy Clouds today. I’m very pleased. Particularly with the malevolent tape spool noise. Sometimes life is all about the malevolent. Or is it the magnificent? I forget….

There were umpteen things wrong with Lady Bonjela today:

• Item: Lady in purple. Now. Let’s see. I’m going to go to all the effort of wearing a purple dress, accessorise with purple glasses, a rather funky purple bag and YES! PRAISE JAYSUS! I will die my hair a delicate shade of purple. But. I will wear black shoes. Why? Surely the easiest thing to have in purple is shoes. Why even I, Lord of Unfashion, have a pair of purple shoes. Ok. DMs. Ok, I don’t anymore because they squeaked or something that I can’t remember now. I used to dislike the soles. The oil and water resistant soles. Ugly. But I digress.
• Item: No fliers please. Which was so nearly, nearly ‘No pliers, fleas’. Which is a really easy to follow instruction for pet owners with a particularly poor understanding of veterinary science.
• Item: that lastminute ad on the tube and bus shelters that talks about making new friends in the sea. And then eating them. What is WRONG with you people? And as if the text wasn’t bad enough, they’ve kebabbed some sea-horses. Now I may be an evil omnivore, but I am fairly clear that I have never, ever, eaten sea-horsey. And the seahorses are all looking at different things. Evil. Evil.
• Item: David Lynch should be back on the television.
• Item: There is no ‘i’ in team. But there is one in mayonnaise. Let that be a lesson to you. And before you get all smarty, there is no ‘u’ in mayonnaise. But there is one in ‘but’.

It’s quite hard work writing all this random rhubarb. I might return to shallow vapidity tomorrow. As ever, if you’re passing through, feel free to suggest some nonsense for me to riff off….

Hmm. What would happen if you could really brew a storm in a tea-cup? Would you be able to send forth little bolts of lightning from your pinkie? Or make it rain on a sixpence? (That last one would be even more impressive if I knew what a sixpence looked like, and perhaps how I could turn on one….) I guess you’d have to sell the tea bags in an extra strong box. It would probably rumble and shake in the basket as you took it to the checkout and embarrass the kind of person who thinks other people think they are constantly breaking wind when in fact they simply have very squeaky shoes. Or storm-in-a-bag.

What else would they have in the range? Coco-stones. Kind of moccha-frappe-hail. Obviously. Make everything chocolatey. Although they’d give you a freezing tongue and one of those weird headaches you get from eating too much ice cream. And jelly-vision, for when you’re watching something really scary.

Sigh. Well. It’s a post isn’t it? Brain is currently addled by too much running on lemsip.

Any other products I’m missing?

With these words, John Bolton, ex-US ambassador to Chessington World of Stupidity, has gone up amazingly in my hard-to-be-amazed estimation. The fact that he turned his interviewee (sorry, her name escapes me but she’s Not Jeremy Paxman and Not Sophie Raworth) into David Caruso and she had to conduct the rest of the interview with her head tilted at a 60 degree angle just made the whole thing better. She better be asking decent questions or she be getting capped in the ass by the Mala Noche/BoJo for Majoris gang (Ed Sturton).

Not much to report to report on the novel – been concentrating on running and various domestic/professional matters that I cannot discuss. Not even on here. To myself. In a careless whisper. Not in that way though. Or a suggestive whisper. Or Wispas. Or any form of chocolate, Belgian or otherwise. Especially not any Brazilian chocolate which any fule no is covered’n’pubes. Tis true. It’s the law. Floss your tange. Anyhoo. One of these days I will be a proper little blogger and go and comment on other people’s blogs and do it all properly like whats I does for wuk and stufs. And then I will be having been popularz. Hai! I be your frenz! Make me your lolblog! Jelly! Cut me for I bleed satire.

Oh yes.

Sigh. So – in character driving news…. excellent potential two days ago in the man that was secretly reading the bible in a PSP case. (Seriously. I almost broke the cardinal rule and spoke to him. But like any good citizen journalist I sucked it up for blogging later. Interaction is overrated after all. And does nothing for your TechnoratiOfThePops). Who else? The women dismissed as ‘vacuous’ by an old couple who were forced to sit apart by virtue of turning up later than the former and so having to listen to two old friends catch up. Ok, so one of them explained she was playing korfball to ‘expand her social network’, which is a bit like saying you like to drink Swarfega. But never mind. There’s been a few too many fairweather Big Issue sellers around. And Jose Luis Hernandex – President of Polaris World. He’s my new special friend – Barry Scott isn’t returning my calls.

Who else? Umm – the guy at the gym whose job it is to marshall the equipment got his chance to be a PT today as people are on hols. But his reward was a spinning class with only one participant. And I’ve made a new friend at work. He’s called Brian and is a jiffy bag in Third Life. In Second Life he wants to be a coconut.

Always the coconuts. Bah. I was much funnier ten hours ago. It’s much harder without an audience.

Ask me a question….

Pootling along, minding my own business on the train. Ok, pretending to be reading some Really Important Pamphlet, when my semantic reverie is broken by an earnest and unnecessarily long conversation (by mobile phone, because that makes all the difference) about a disciplinary matter involving various Johns, Wally, Charles – all of whom were on the board of an unspecified organisation, but it sounded like a social enterprise thing. One of the Johns had punched Wally, and the police had been called. She was trying to diffuse the situation and keep the media off the case. By talking about it, at length, mentioning their full names (not repeated here out of some bizarre sense of decency) on a crowded train. A train whose ‘customers’ where bored shitless by some pathetic air in the atmosphere type excuse as to why we arrived half an hour late.

Thirty minutes I would have enjoyed immensely, had I not spent half the night having a nightmare (my third in two sleeps, which is a bit worrying, although at least this time it didn’t feature Chucky eating my spinal column. Seriously. And I hadn’t eaten any cheese, acid, car battery acid or other stimulants. I blame CSI. Ok, ok. I blame CSI Miami. Again. Fucking Caruso and his sideways school of acting. And to think I liked NYPD Blue…)I digress. I was also trying hard to be Int.Elle.Eck.Shual by reading a collection of essays which are at best, repetitive. And at worst, written by Jemima Puddleduck-Bounty.

Now, consider this for a second. A duck that only eats coconut. Shirley proof, if proof be needed, that Beatrix Potter was talking out of her bloomers. As was Enid Blyton. In fact, the only credible children’s character of the last 117 years four months eight days and tea (except the kind of tea which is really brunch. I’m talking about children’s tea. Think of me as the Children’s Tea Tsar. And I’m particularly interested in the size of the measure s of the Wish Tea that modern youngsters (ooh, how 70s of me) are pouring themselves). Anyhoo. Children’s characters and realism = The Borrowers. But only because they form the basis for the Stepford Wives, Straw Dogs and The Rockford Files. You scoff? How could Jim Garner’s performance as ‘bow dow diddlum dow’ Rockford not be delivered except by several dozen thieving little people living in a mobile home? Yes, yes, a mobile home with a fixed land line for telelelelalacommunications jiggery japery.

While I’m at it. Kill Jimmy Carr. Now, I don’t mean that literally. But oh, to have that power. Minions! Do as I say. Oh, dear reader, if you could only hear the sigh. It has surely trumped the sigh (and no, it wasn’t that kind of sigh. Or trump.). But ooooooh. The joy of never having to see him again.

Although, as per usual. It’s really a signifier of how little I have achieved that I even have to mention Mr Carr, who I will endeavour never to meet (I shook Brigstocke’s hand, but it was an accident) in order to vent my spleen. And I don’t even dislike my spleen! HA! Take that Mr So-Called Jimmy of So-Called Carr.

Neil Diamond. The End.

[Edit] Bollocks. Any fule no I meant Jimmy Diamond. Although the crushing, nay soul-emptying irony of ‘I shoul d have known better’ has never been more apposite. I love that word. What the banjo does it mean? A. Poz. It. Hurrah!

I’ve realised, a bit late in the day, that my random jottings are becoming perfect spam fodder. I should really run it through a spam filter one day to see how much gook I di gobble. But enough of that seriousness. On to verbiage.

A propos of nothing, I decided to write down everything I thought worthy of a story en route to my first appointment of the day. Here’s the list:

• Schoolgirl on the tube reading her neighbour’s Metro over the top of her library book. There were a number of ways this could have gone – perhaps she recognised a friend in a photo, or maybe she dreams of being an actress. Not much to work on, but it was really the repetition of the look, like an addiction, that made it interesting.
• I saluted a single magpie hopping on a garden wall as I walked past it, and in doing so saw a pair of ballet shoes discarded neatly in the front garden. You want niche? How about ballerina cat-burglars? Or better still, ballerina cats. Or perhaps mice living in the ballet shoes – kind of one-up-mouseship among the mice population.
• A man was reading Sharpe’s Drift on the tube. So far, so humdrum. And how! Anyhoo. I was somewhat surprised to discover when his phone went that he was actually Polish (the very idea of an English person speaking Polish never crossed my mind, which is another story in itself). Which leads me to wonder what on earth this man makes of Sean Bean. And why the bally hell is he not reading Harry Potter? Did he not read the code when he entered the country? You may not be able to pronounce ‘sugar’, but you know what side your Hogwarts’ buttered on. Or something. Anyway, weak, relies on crude stereotypes, plus culture clash is best served over ice. Diamonds, to be precise.
• Much more promising – the homeless man on Hungerford bridge (irony, thy name is a cup of tea) mewling softly into a harmonica as his two dogs slept doggedly by his side. In that they were big and fluffy and dog-like, and their bellies puffed as he huffed. His hands were covered in tattoos, which on first glance read ‘Jade’ and ‘Goody’, but on closer inspection were just the usual not-so-cryptic ‘fuck you’s to friends, family, god and the state. I felt bad about not giving him any money, but if he’s not going to have performing dogs, I don’t want to know. God knows I’m a sucker for anti-capitalist ventriloquism starring golden retrievers. To be honest, and serious for a moment, it seemed vaguely pointless to give him anything. He seemed beaten, even in his begging/busking. Sigh.
• Further along Hungerford bridge you pass by some supporting columns going into Charing Cross. The supports of these are covered in spikes, presumably to keep people from jumping on to them, and you know, having a party or something. It seemed a perfect perch for a human-gull nest. Which leads on to human gulls. Like harmonica man. Or that Gibson book where they all live in the supports of a bridge, if memory serves.
• On the South Bank there was a solitary workman breaking up the paving slabs. I’m always fascinated by men in yellow bibs who work on their own. It takes someone unusually bloody minded to do that. Or perhaps he had a vendetta against the National Film Theatre and was tunnelling his way in. You know. Slowly.
• And finally, the man set apart from his peers, juggling a coffee and salmon-encrusted bagel, looking hot and uncomfortable despite being one of the few men not in a shirt and tie. Waiting for an event to start that I didn’t really belong at. But that story is far too easy to tell.

So – there you have it, the insides of a story-teller’s head. The constant extrapolation of events, filling in backstory, weighing up the sheer unlikeliness of things. What works, what doesn’t. What’s believable, and then a sanity check of what’s believable by others. Like my response to the arrival of concrete blocks in front of various public buildings – surely this is a fantastic opportunity for public art or corporate sponsorship or similar.

Anyhoo. Not up to my usual standard. But sometimes you need to let the drain clear. Oh, and someone trumped me tonight – describing something as not ‘rocket salad’. Slightly spoiled by possibly being pre-meditated. Otherwise, comparable to ‘it’s all gone fruit dougal’ for describing my outlook on life. Little bit of philosophy there. I won’t let it spoil my dinner.

There are now enough Poles serving coffee in the land for the pronunciation of sugar to  be changed wholesale to shoe-gah.  Or perhaps we should simply accept that coffee is meant to taste of shoes.  Or it should be drunk from shoes.  Made from Italian leather.

I’ve never been clear about this – do the cows have to be Italian or is the skin cured in Italy or is it simply enough for the leather to have passed through Italy on its journey to becoming a shoe.  Gah!  Confusing. And if it’s an Italian cow, does that mean that they moo in Italian?

Speaking of which.  There is no sound more annoying than an Italian man speaking Italian.  In a falsetto.  Although on thinking about it, any number of Italian men where that number is greater than one and the number of men speaking in a falsetto are greater than one would be even more annoying.  Annoying +1 if you will.
Of course, I am now waiting for the BBC to confirm these, and other theories (there is no department for Wampum Physics, no matter how many times I say ‘heap big research institute need to be powered by buffalo mozzarella”).  I have arranged it with them (via my tinfoil hat) that they will introduce a slav character into The Archers that stands around all day asking people if they want shoe-gah and maybe cinammonnutmegchoklitontop?  I understand the Beeb pay by the word, so I think they should de-syllable that one.

Perhaps the character could save up to buy a cow.  An Italian cow with a special bell.  Like the Lindt cow.  But with a falsetto moo.

Hmm.  It may be time for lunch.  Burger with italian sauce, methinks.

The minister for trams. The clam of chowdertown. The big cheese. Chief Monkey of Golden Triangle. Elvis of our hearts. Princess of our jaffa cakes. The raisin of our dreams. King. Of. Cheese. A grin for all seasons.

Ok. So a long day being mildly tingled by politickery. And obnov, feeling a teensy bit old. I haven’t held political office for ooh, 16 years. My last campaign was based on Dirty Harry. And revolved around how little I wanted to do the job. Naturellement, this being England, I won. Ok, I didn’t win the last election, but I was elected on the same platform previously.

I got to play at being in the West Wing for approximately 3 nano-seconds this morning. Real politics is nothing like as fun as it is portrayed. It’s like looking at your feet through binoculars. Familiar, yet not as fun as spying on your neighbours. You know. If that’s the kind of thing you like to do. Perhaps Milliband could be made a minister for it. Ah yes, my mistake, Mssrs Straw and Long are already in charge of that.

Sigh. Politics. Poli-tics. Many mannerisms. Multiple parrots. Long day.