A Bad Idea I Had, and How It's Going

  I'm not going to soul search here. I'm just going to report the facts. I bought Mondo and Sky Blue when I lived at Clapham Junction, to serve as a surrogate couple we could take with us on holiday and photograph in case we didn't work out as a couple ourselves. Mondo had one eye, and a goofy grin across his belly. Sky Blue's face was clear apart from the sun. These two vinyl figures came with us everywhere for six and a half years, and they stayed with me in the flat in Forest Hill when the time came for me to live there on my own. That's them, above. The night before my first night alone, I wrote the following in the notes app on my phone at 3am:

Those go there.

Mondo and Sky Blue.

Except they don't go there any more

Because there are more gaps now.

But you can't just move stuff, because then it's just things in a room and it's cold outside and that's all you have when this was going to be a home.

And you've made nothing that can be hung on a wall in fifteen years.

 I wrote more than that too. 

 They came with me when I moved to Mornington Crescent a year later, and they came with me to Notting Hill. I didn't know what to do with them, all my ideas seemed stupid, but here's the one I finally went with: near where we used to live in Loughborough Junction, there's a small, unexplained indentation in the wall where a brick has been slightly knocked in.

 

 On the 29th of August I took Mondo, Sky Blue, and a small bottle of Loctite, and I set them there. Sky Blue was glued a little more firmly as I couldn't find as flat a base for Mondo, but both stuck, and I took a photo and then left them, feeling I'd done something actually quite self-indulgent and pointless:

 

 A week later, on the 5th of September, I returned to Brixton and decided to check up on them. They were still there, but I noticed that Mondo had come unstuck. Someone must have moved them to see if they were glued down, snapped Mondo off, but then left him there unacquired. I was touched by this. I wondered if anything like this would happen in Notting Hill, if anyone would just leave something standing. I took a photograph, and decided to check up on them whenever I was south. As I may have said before, I have no memory of ever experiencing closure on anything:

 

 I revisited them again, a week later, on the 12th of September. They were still there. Sky Blue glued in place. Mondo left loose: 

 I revisited again on the16th of September:

 

 And the 2nd of October:

 

 And the 20th of October:

 

 And the 29th of November:

Signs of Life

Of course that should be "recommend" in the last post. I kept the misspelling in to communicate a sense of urgency. How do you think I did?

And where was I?

Well a year ago now the house caught fire, but nobody died, not even Kato the cat. It was kind of fine. The place has double-glazing now, although you can still make out the scorched paintwork above what used to be my windows - see? I took the above photo when I went round to Morgan's to pick up post. He lives next door. He always has. That was in... August? I had a swimming pool in August, I may have mentioned. I was living here:

Real twenty-first century stuff. It was called "Osprey Heights". That's my room at the end of the corridor. Then there was Cesar's, but he moved out, and then this room, as seen:

No permanent occupant, but every two weeks a different Israeli in his early twenties would move in. The first one asked to have a television installed. I was always welcome to watch it. None of them ever unpacked. They never shut the door. They all slept with the light on. I didn't mention the show to them- Hey we also had a gym! And it was eighteen storeys tall. Imagine the view! Don't, it's here!

Down a bit...

Down a bit...

That's your lot. Sorry but the windows are a bit narrow- And we had a sauna! And gates! Big gates! All it lacked was a garden.

So in October the lease ended and I moved out. And into Morgan's. That's really the point of this. I'm in Brixton again. With Morgan and his paints and the sign that says "Sea View" and the little Easter Island statues he sticks into alcoves of the Ritzy. And a nice guy called Ed who makes synthesizers from kits. Oh, and Kato!

Morgan painted that for me when I moved in. He's out at the moment, working on a totem pole. There's a chain-saw on the spare fridge in the kitchen, what the place lacks in bannisters it makes up for in carnivorous plants, there's never a shortage of crayons and this is my new view if I look down:

... which I prefer. If I look a little to the right there's a garden with a telly in it and a family and the faces we chalked on the bathroom wall for Fin's birthday, back in - wow... 2000. Yeah. It was time I moved.

(originally posted on myspace here)

Consilium Pilot (with easter egg extras)

(originally posted on myspace here)

Someone other than myself drew this sweet catalogue of me and my worldly possessions (Le Petit Plastrier) and for all the gnashing on bile that follows I remain giddy and red-eyed with gratitude for that fact, and have no complaint with anything outside myself as subsequent posts will hopefully testify... Pblaaackk! It's September now, is it? Yeah. Right. What is it in this room making me cough every time I come in? This is it, the only space I have remotely moved into, how can I be allergic to it? Money's opening in a week now but I'm missing the hundred-and-forty-third day of the Big Push, laid up here in the Jock Block instead as though I've just come out of hospital and we're back in February, incapable of sleeping on my back once again, turning to the sputum pot I'd only kept as a momento and staggering to the bathroom for a toxic harumph. Is it sun-stroke? Is it nerves? Is it the karaoke at the Dungeon Summer Party where I went as Daryl Hannah out of Blade-Runner? I want a microscope. I want to peer at a sliver of this and give it a name. I want to look in the mirror and not see Zach Galifianakis' downy corpse squinting back. I want to write about Paris, and the seventh week of "Let's run it again from the Jewish Question", I want to get some ideas down for Sirs Harry and Paul, I want to run off every footling, glittering nugget I promised everyone so that I can get on with the stuff I promised myself, but CHIEFLY I want to use this blog for something other than lists of stuff I'm supposed to do. How am I ever get my own unfathomably-depressed-literary-giant-teatime-telly gig at this rate? And have you SEEN how overgrown the machine's been getting in our absence?

Well okay, what have I written... There's the closing sketch of this week's Mitchell and Webb Sound so have a listen to that maybe (three closers in a row. "Closer" is an industry term I've just used wrongly) although now I think of it, if you have it on and  DON'T listen my sketch does sound pleasingly like Peepshow... And I also filled in this questionnaire I filled in on F*c*b**k a bit back (a bit is a measurement of time. I have lost track of time. The Bit System is: A bit equals some bits and some bits make up a bit, so we're talking a bit back. So it works fine.) You had to answer every question using the titles of songs sung by just one band or artist. I chose the songs of Leonard Nimoy, and after essentially two month's blog silence the results are as good a reacquaintance as any, so you can have that... (oh and I've put links to the tracks where I can so don't click on them if you won't be able to face it, they're not the easter eggs I meant, I don't really know what easter eggs are)...

Are you a male or female?

Nature Boy.

Describe yourself:

Where It's At.

How do you feel:

Contact. 

(Particularly proud of that one)

Describe where you currently live:

If I had a Hammer...

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:

Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Your favorite form of transportation:

I Walk The Line.

Your best friend is:

Music To Watch Space Girls By.

Your favorite color is:

Ruby (Don't Take your love To Town)

What's the weather like:

Sunny.

Favorite time of day:

Lost in the Stars.

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:

Consilium

What is life to you:

A Visit To A Sad Planet.

Your current relationship:

Gentle On My Mind.

Looking for:

Love of the Common People.

Wouldn't mind:

Both Sides Now.

Your fear:

Everybody's Talkin'.

What is the best advice you have to give:

You Are Not Alone.

If you could change your name, you would change it to:

Abraham, Martin and John

Thought for the Day:

Spock Thoughts

How I would like to die:

Amphibious Assault.

My motto:

Well what else would my motto be? The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins? And who knew Lego did whites? And weren't Buffalo Springfield good sports? Right I'm going to try and catch some L-shaped Z's now, sweet dreams and prosper. Pblaaackk!

Snap (+ a sketch Jon Taylor's mother was good enough to compliment me on last night)

So, back to the Machine today, whose insides, after a week of uninterrupted construction, have now been turned to stone, and whose outsides bizarrely sport – in just the latest of a number of unconscious nods to "Synecdoche NY" – exactly the same lamps as my new place. 

Was progress made today in rehearsals? I don't know. So many elephants in the room, so few of them earning their keep in the manner of the fall of the Second Empire (being digested). I did raise the question "Are there any plans to get an actor to play this part we know we have, but don't yet have an actor for?" and I think it was generally agreed that that might be a good idea. The part is that of a feral child. My knee hurts. Nigel diagnosed that as being 34. I didn't ask our director his opinion. He was in Portland Place cupping Robbie William's balls.

Thence to the last recording of "That Mitchell and Webb Sound", where my unvoiced plans for a sketch about a kid's show starring Christopher Hitchens were startlingly upset by a sketch Rob performed about a kid's show starring Christopher Hitchens. I felt I'd come home to an empty tub of Strawberry Cheesecake unable to remember whether or not it was mine. Well that's that anyway, no more sketch-writing for a while so Harrumble (although actually this last session has been something of a blast, still it will be nice to see what happens next). And for those who missed it on Thursday, here's the gang in happier times:

Yeh momma, I wrote that. And I admit to being smitten by absolutely every aspect of it, so thanks to youtube illegalers "goldsaq" and "felixulyssesmeritus" for getting it out there, although none of you seem yet to have uploaded "Jan Hankl's Patent Flankpat" - oh no, HANG ON, oh no what's this:

Lots Of Love. Does that mean I done a meme? 

... coming up this Thursday: Giant Death Ray Sketch.

What's missing from this picture?

 

 At nine o'clock it was still light in Battersea Park, and I'm trying to put my finger on what it is that's missing, and why I feel I'm wasting my time here. I mean, look at it. Where else would I rather be? Just behind me is the vicarage I lodged in when I left school, attached to a round church with a photograph of the planet Earth where Jesus would normally be, or at least that's what was there back in 1993, when I first left home. And it's becoming difficult to maintain that enthusiasm for independence now I'm 34. London has never looked more beautiful, and I'm limping to keep up. Battersea Park is practically deserted and there are party-boats on the the Thames but this doesn't feel like home tonight. It feels like a very well-appointed waiting room. 

 

 I don't know what's missing.

 Maybe this is because of the fire, because my home has gone but I'm only now getting ready to entertain. Maybe it's because of the pain in the right leg. Maybe it's because I should be writing. I've had another week off and done... not nothing I suppose, no, on Tuesday I went to the hospital to blow into a robot and receive a clean bill of health, good, and on Friday I went to "The Hospital" to eat Eggs Benedict and discuss a script about a hitman - but it's not much. I mean, Gemma went over to California for the week and still managed fit in research for the show (from a book about Manet... and there's a mur-mermuh-mermuh programme about him on iplayer right now in fact). It's all good stuff she's found. Here's some:

"This is a quote from the charge d'affaires at the British Embassy in Paris in 1869.

'The second empire has gone off the rails. It is no longer being guided it is hurling itself at an accelerating speed towards the abyss'... 

"The 1867 expo opened late. On the opening ceremony, they were surrounded by builders. because of bad weather, barely half the exhibits were there. Of those that had arrived, only a fifth had been unpacked. The opening ceremony, conducted by Emperor Napoleon was on 'a muddy fairground amid packing cases, tarpaulin-shrouded exhibits and crews of frantic workmen' one observed described it as 'a sickly child that was bound to die', so. That became the biggest show in Europe. It's all ok... 

"London in 1867 had a heatwave. They drank cold tea and gentlemen wore wet cabbage leaves inside their top hats... 

"Abolishment of arbitrary arrest and obligation of workers to carry identity cards... 

"Napoleon went to war in Alsace Lorraine with bladder stones. In a lot of pain, he rouged himself, and tried to die in battle but failed. He lamented he was 'not even able to get himself killed.'... 

"During the seige, they killed all the animals in the zoo to eat. The richer Parisians therefore dined on all sorts of curiosities. Castor and Pollux, the two elephants in the Jardin de Plantes, had been cruelly and bunglingly dispatched with a chassepot firing steel tipped.33 calibre bullets. Elephants had long been the most esteemed and well loved residents at the zoo. They were fed honey cakes and were said to enjoy the singing of patriotic songs. Their keeper, M. Devisme, had protested at the execution (which was watched by several big-game hunters and other Parisians) and afterwards fell sobbing in the snow, huggling the trunk of one of his dead charges. Elephant steak promptly found its way onto the plate of Victor Hugo who was further satisfying his gastronomic curiosity by tucking into bear and antelope. (Horse meat gave him indigestion. Wealthy Parisians were able to choose from zebra, reindeer, yak and kangaroo)" 

The night before Gemma mailed that, I had a dream about dying elephants in the Shunt Lounge, a whole pile of them at the foot of a low ramp being gored by elephants that had failed to make the jump and goring the next ones in turn. It was a mess. Maybe I need a desk. There are four canvasses stuck to the wall of the room I now occupy. They're stuck there with blue tak. Two are blank. The other two bear this picture:

 

 But as long as this isn't my home that's not my problem.

All good. Videgum has proof.

So, YES, I should alert you to the fact that there is at least one sketch, maybe two, of mine airing on BBC2 tonight at 10, as the third series of That Mitchell and Webb Look finally gets broadcast. And now I have. Alerted you. It's going to be very good, I'm pretty sure of that, and the what-is-called "red button content" should also be worth your thumb's time and energy. What they've done is taken a number of the radio sketches – including Asbo Zapruder – and turned them into cartoons, and what could have been a very bad idea has, in fact, been realized with great sensitiviteh and f'nesse, so I am cock-a-hoop. I'm cock-a-hoop and back online, though bound to this crippling, skip-green couch by a short, yellow cable, because my wireless connection is still for some reason – Well, I don't know where to begin, it's all magic isn't it, but the unimaginable resources of information that should be shooting invisibly into my laptop at speeds that can only be explained by the theory of relativity are still having to do so through a kind of wonky, TVam band of narrow plastic, and not through the air like I have every right just to expect it to. So my legs hurt.

But in better news it turns out that, during the week I've been offline, everything became fine! 

Well okay, not the Government, clearly, not the BNP, not, like the NEWS world, but the other world, the you and me world, the people just getting on with stuff world, the world, in short, so diligently monitored by the mighty, mighty Videogum has been throwing up all manner of giddying evidence of the excellence of people over these past seven days, which I have very much enjoyed catching up on. Although my legs do really hurt. Okay, so tuna might be heading for extinction, but LOOK, we'll always have kittens:

And LOOK, someone's spent three years making a wedding invitation (as one commenter puts it "Dear People in Love, the bar has just been raised"):

And LOOK, this should be fake, someone clearly must have faked this to advertise T-Mobile or Diet Coke or something, but NO, it happened, so everyone is definitely fine! I'm going to watch telly now with Tom and Will. On Sunday, I was dumb enough to say some nasty things about Gordon Brown in front of Will. "I guess we have different ideas what Leadership means," he said. Yeah. I think it definitely means this:

Videogum. My church. I can't get up.

MUST FLY

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

 

Day Two. Pah. This picture was much bigger than it should be because Adobe Imageready has got lost or some- I mean what even is it? - anyway I don't have the thing to make it smaller (Posthumously this may have been corrected). And It's just been intimated to me that "cockgoggles" is not a suitable word for radio 4 at 6:30 in the evening. Sorry, Miklus. Huh. Anyway... I'm a healer, says f*c*b**k, that's my "PURPOSE IN LIFE", and I should get my eyebrow pierced. Thanks. (Sarcasm. And I've remembered the asterisks this time, which is healthy.) I'm also Spider-Man, Footloose and Audrey Hepburn and should marry Cameron Diaz. Not my will, f*c*b**k but thine be done. However these are revelations I have too little time to ponder now, no I just wanted to stick up today's photo of the archaeopteryx... I wonder what interview with Lars Von Trier I am. Ah, "Which Marginalised Disney Gal are you?" Great, I'll take that one. Here meanwhile is a cartoon. X

Okay, why I might not be leaving facebook just yet

(originally posted on myspace here)

I think it's an archaeopteryx. Day One. 

Well I've added water now so we'll know in forty-eight hours. I bought it today in South Kensington for... ah, American laptop, it doesn't have pound signs... two pounds and sixty-five pee. I thought “something for the room”. It was an odd shop that, painted tin trunks "in the style of Jaipur lorries", scarves going for a grand and balls of twine for forty quid, so actually 2.65 for an archaeopteryx was very reasonable I thought. I took it upstairs to the till but there was no till, just a touch-screen beneath a tapestry besides which I ostentatiously hovered clutching the purchase and a fiver while the staff served free Turkish coffee to a troup of sonorous poshoes instead. But am I not also posh! Am I not sonorous! I may be between beards, these trainers may be fire-damaged and this belt quite obviously my sister’s but my fiver is as good as theirs. I very nearly just walked out with it. Did you, Charles Bukowski! Yes, I nearly did! That would have been great... It was an excellent day... I glimpsed Jennifer Tilly in the V and A. Better still I heard her. There is simply no verb for her voice. What both purrs and quacks? It’s like a sackbut if a sackbut could ask for directions. And I've just learnt she’s fifty! And the Marx Brothers didn’t start making films until they were in their forties! But that’s not why I may not be leaving facebook just yet.

Look I haven’t been able to find that strand of a hundred insults that I promised, but looking back over my "wall" here are some of the things I've learnt about myself since I logged back on:

“Which "Winnie the Poo" Character Are You?” I have completed the quiz, and I am Tigger. 

I am simply the life of the party. Life can get bumpy, but that's okay -- I won't notice it anyway! (And it’s “Pooh”)

“What kind of lover are you?” I have completed the quiz, and I am in the top 5 %.

"Are you truly eukaryotic?" I have completed the quiz, and I am probably an evil virus; re-enroll in college-level Biology.

"What Taylor Swift song are you?" I have comleted the quiz, and I am "Tim McGraw". Who is Taylor Swift? Who is Tim McGraw? None of this matters. I am Tim McGraw.

"Are you on a boat?" I have completed the quiz, with the result “You're on a boat."

“Femija juaj I pare…cun apo goc???” I have completed the quiz, with the result “Cun..”:

But there are so many more quizzes still to take,so much more i have to learn about myself. 

Join me tomorrow then, once I’ve run off these three sketches I hastily

promised Gareth Edwards for tomorrow HAHAHAHANOOoo... with the archaeopteryx

at half mast, and find out what I should get pierced. Or there’s one

called “WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE?” Maybe I’ll take that.

Okay this formating's going mental. (I haven’t read Charles Bukowski. Is he good?)

New Big Spaces

I'm well, thank you for asking.

 

 

In fact, I think I'm all well. I would go for walks on Hampstead Heath and check on my hand to see how my body was doing, like I used to in hospital, then see that it was glowing and have to find a bench, but that was back in February...

 

And, well, now, how to get from there to here? Am I just going to write everything? Maybe I should start by making my excuses: 

1. The lease ran out on my photoshop, which is half the fun of these posts for me (so these images are bigger and duller than I'd like).

2. I *was* of course going to write about my steroid-induced psychotic episode next (so very Christian Bale, so very topical back in February), but thought better of that until I'd found somewhere to live... which, now I set it down in print, strikes me as incredibly paranoid. Or is it? I don't know. Ah. No, but if I were vetting potential flat-mates I'd probably google them to see if they'd, say, started any fights in hospital with a club-footed Maori. Then again, to paraphrase Lenny Bruce, I'd google mud. 

 

 

Hmm. These paragraphs are more widely spaced than I remember, Yup, big spaces... Anyway, I moved out of Susy's at the end of March, into a long, uncarpeted, white-washed room in a large, airy, joss-sticky flat in Gipsy Hill, and I lasted there a month. The land-lady didn't like my hours, and who can blame her? The floor-boards creaked, her room was right outside the bathroom, she slept with her door open so actually yes I for one can blame her, but a home's a home, and that was hers, and I'm not even sure I want one right now.

 

Time passes, shut up! as Dylan Thomas once wrote, and I've found a room now, with a carpet and a coffee table, three storeys up a tower-block in Clapham Junction, with gardens, pool, sauna, jacuzzi, and loudly wuthering heights. I'm holed up across from the busiest station in Europe, I've found a "Complete Works of Shakespeare" for a pound, and Dr. Thompson's incomparable "Great Shark Hunt" for three, I'm pretending I'm on tour, or a scatty writer assigned to LA, while my stuff – the charred and the saved – stays in storage until I can face it, and the big money's been coming in fine from Shunt whose new show's more physical aspects can be seen here under construction.

 

In fact, they're still under construction. And with nowhere to work, and the director up in Scotland, we have this week off. It's okay though, it's all fine, I'm just in it for the company and the money, that's what I've got to keep telling myself. I mean, it's great! I'm better! I can do winch-work and wrestling, and I've got a pool and a sofa! And I've got work, biggish commissions for both LaurenceandGus' and MitchellandWebb's new radio shows, and it's work I can actually do (new stuff got laughed at)! AND the insults  Charlotte Hesketh and I have been throwing back and forth across f*c*b**k for the past month now number a hundred, so I can finally leave that! And here we are rehearsing: Hey Spacey, copy THIS!

 

 

 

 

Whatsamadda, Kevin Spacey, you chicken?! Oh yeh, you all: "I'm going to get a railway arch and put art in and shit" and we all: "Let's drop this flowerpot on the director's head a number of times before he leaves" and you all: "Good luck with that then" and we all "Ow, uh...." Yes well lots to catch up on then. Hello again, thanks for sticking around. A post every other day as promised, once. Join me tomorrow for those hundred insults then. I'm better. This is easy. 

 

(Oh yeah, 3:10 AM. I remember. Hmm... still big spaces.)