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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.

Or – things I wrote on the train while half asleep this morning, following a weekend of heavy birthdaying. Mine, as it happens. I’ve been olded.

Trivia tourettes – the compulsion to spout flimflam at inappropriate times. When being sent down by a magistrate, the young lag would shout ‘there is only one breed of cow indigenous to the Northern Ensweer peninsula’, or ‘Poldark wasn’t real, although his dog was based on a real dog’ – as opposed to ‘that’s the third time you’ve sent me down, you rotter’. Which, of course, would be inadmissable as evidence. As would any of the trivia he recited. Unless he perhaps came across the trivia will performing his offence – eg on reading the host’s New Scientist in the middle of a burglary, should he be caught short. Or becoming engrossed in Wikipedia while performing a Nigerian 419 scam or needing to refer to the 1996 Haynes’ Owner’s Guide to the Vauxhall Carlton in an attempt to hot-wire the vehicle.

Then the idea could be extended to Trivia Roulette – who could come up with the most obscure fact while still remaining broadly on topic. And then we’d all be employed by Radio 4 and be chums with dead comedians.

Of course most men of a certain age are well used to Trivia Top Trumps, aka ‘Going to the Pub’. My twenties would have been immeasurably more, um, quiet, had I not known and been rewarded with endless amounts of completely pointless information. It probably said something about my ability to retain this information that my role in the pub quiz team was generally to offend members of my team and think of the team name, occasionally at the same time. In fact, so regular was my capacity to cause offence and or random outbreaks of giggles that the landlord created a special prize for me to win each week (generally the contents of a Kinder Egg). Without this incentive, who knows if such winners as ‘Default Horse’, ‘My wee smells of nuts’ or ‘Fiona’s repeated Question 4 so many times that I have lost the will to live’. (more…)

Le mojo c’est tombe en panne. I think that means it’s French. Does that mean it’s covered in bread? French bread? Like a Pret-A-Ris morsel? An idea sandwich that has gone slightly stale and sits limply alongside the novelty flavoured pasties on the shelf of the third fridge from the door in the motorway service station outside Llandudno (is there a motorway there? I’ve no idea. I’m fairly sure there is a Llandudno – even though I’ve never been there – I’m not going to fall for that whole tree falling in a forest malarkey AGAIN. It exists. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a service station on a motorway outside it. Assuming there is a motorway. GAH! Foiled! Curses! I shall have to change my secret pasty-drop-spot shelf. (S)pies are everywhere. (Sorry, sorry, sorry, that was dreadful)).

Anyhoo. Idea sandwiches. Must send that off to Steve Coogan vis a vis the third series. Although why Alan Partridge would appear in ‘Bread idol – the contintenal version’, I’m not sure. Although I do like the idea of the judges throwing granary rolls at each other.

Ok. Forget the sandwiches. I’ve had a slow few days, writing wise. I’ve been adjusting some key plot points, plus the obligatory jotting them down on paper, then in Storylines, then in my plotline document, and finally in my pseudo-first draft. At no stage has anyone leant over and said ‘my God, that’s genius’. No matter how much I waft my notebook about. Philistines. Philistines with their own lives and ringtones and cups of coffee.

I’ll show them. But maybe not just yet. I’ve got some more editing to do. You know how it is. Wouldn’t want them tutting. NO TUTTING! Or tsking. Tsking is very bad. Although now I’m forced to think about it, it’s probably better that there is no reaction at all. Or perhaps no reaction until I offer them a sandwich.

And (obviously) at no stage have I bothered to, you know, actually commit any sentences to paper / screen that were not full of dates and angst-ridden notes to myself. I’m fairly sure that Joyce didn’t have a notebook full of entries saying ‘why does Stephen do this?’. Although it would have made for a better film….(ducks, then crawls under the carpet for good measure).

Which is a very long winded way of saying it’s Wednesday. Should they make bread that tuts and tsks when it’s toasted? Musical bread? ‘Toast is burning, toast is burning, come save me, come save me…’ etc

Bread’s complimacated. Ideas more so. Give me back my mojo.