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

Awaiting Further Instructions

I have written no screenplay-he-dee-dee-doe.
I have written no screenplay-he-dee.
Done nothin all the livelong day but written this song
And then whittled a fiddle out of whicker from a skip
And stuck it up me bum-dee-doe.

Dear Hollywood, I'm afraid I did not get round to writing "Fat Adolf" in the end but here is a song I just done instead, can you make a film of that? Yes? Excellent, phew that's a load off.

Writing isn't hard you know. Graham Linehan said in an episode of Screenwipe I have left it now too late to link to, it was like "doing a poo". Perhaps I should get off the pot then. Certainly I'm not going to get anything written at the British Library; people are distracting, and I've never written anything in a library I now realize. When I write I tell myself a story and take it down, and that means being on my own, maybe in bed, with warm low lighting. Sounds nice enough but I'm still not doing it, I'm simply filing these reports. Some excellent writers were interviewed for that Screenwipe and the only thing, disappointingly, they had in common was that they all dreaded writing. And willies. They all had willies in common I mean, they didn't all dread willies. Russell T. Davies' one piece of Advice To Writers was "Finish it", which is sterling.

Wednesday's the half-point, yes? The half-point of the week? So I'm at the half-point of my paid holiday now and that's five livelong days of procrastination (ten day week, yup... You weren't told? You're in for a big shock come Stansday)... five days in which I have written nothing, and done very little else either because I know I'm meant to be writing. Everything has been put off, even sleep. I mean I've been for walks. And into second-hand bookshops, as should now be obvious (NICE FACT TO STAVE OFF PANIC NECESSARY TO GET MY ARSE IN GEAR: Shunt have asked me to be in their next show, which is based on "L'Argent" by Zola. I've been looking for a copy). And I've been eating out a bit (SECOND PROCRASTINATION-FRIENDLY FACT: The money came through from those Mitchlook and Webbell sketches, the ones with this

in, on the back of which I have now been invited to write for BBC 3's "The Wrong Door" following a very friendly meeting with – I think – the producer and receipt of a brief in which "Edgeyness" was misspelt.) I've been swimming. I've been running baths. I've found an old sitcom of my Dad's in its entirety on youtube, and been reminded yet again just how kind a writer he is, and how glamorous ITV used to be back in the eighties: that handover from Thames to LWT, those floodlit office blocks along the South Bank promising such good times for the weekend (recalled to perfect life in the opening credits of "Man To Man with Dean Lerner"), and Richard O' Sullivan in a pastel blue track-suit toppling suavely into Regent's Canal... I mean, yes, the BBC had the world for its logo, but ITV had the South Bank! And the West End! AT NIGHT!

And what am I going to see of that glamour, eh, in this day and age? Where will I find all the magic bits in a W1 I now know like the back of my tiny hand?... Anyway sitting in front of the laptop this morning looking at – I don't know – this maybe –

 

- I received a text out of the blue from Dr. Meikle of Foix: "Lazy bottom..shift and do something other than pretend you know what its like ouside!scoot!i think you should go to....maida vale today!why not."
So I got up and headed out.
I went to Maida Vale.
I'd never been.
It was sunny. I had ciabatta on a barge. I picked up a leaflet called "Little Venice Circular Walk". I hit Regent's Canal and attempted a run, like Richard O' Sullivan. I felt queasy and slowed down. Ibis to the left of me, dingoes to my right and up ahead moored to the Cumberland Basin, the top-heavy Feng Shang Floating Restaurant just waiting to be hijacked. I continued my way to the top of Primrose Hill and, similarly buoyed, awaited further instructions.

Paradisehead

From "Adam and Eve" by the late Willie Rushton and the Primitive painters of the Portal Gallery, a beautiful little book picked up in Oxfam in Kentish Town on a Sunday evening set aside to be spent as though the doctor with a talent for tenderness was in town and knocking about beside me (the "she" mentioned below is Mrs. Bradley, Rushton's own imaginary companion, like my doctor or that American who lives inside Jack Dee's head in 'Lead Baloon' - or maybe he's a ghost, or a cylon, I don't know. And the painting is "First Love" by Martin Leman):

"Now she's tut-tutting very loudly.
" 'Mr Leman,' I say, 'is well-known for his cats.' I don't know why I think this will help. 'World famous.'
" 'Tut-tut-tut.'
" 'He loves chess.'
"There is no way I am going to persuade her that these are two cats playing chess."

That made me laugh a lot. I loved this book:

"Tuesday: God brings every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air to Adam 'to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.' Here we were very lucky as he was 100% right."

And here's one of a number of bizarrely oblique jokes I recently unearthed that I had sent off to Private Eye back in the nineties. Eh?

HUNDREDTH POST! (one word of advice)

(originally posted on myspace here)

Fully qualified veterinarian Dr. Meikle and I said a second goodbye-of-sorts to each other a number of Mondays back, up in Hampstead, the afternoon before I visited the Death Ray set I think. I uncharacteristically teared up over a hot chocolate and rather more characteristically bought a rubber duck and took photos... But it was relaxing, and she gave me a word of advice I shall pass on to you now, in this my hundredth post, because it's a good word of advice, and to name something is to give yourself a measure of control over it, so here it is:

Cockgoggles.

I had been worrying to her in passing about a scheduled meeting coming up with a former object of desire, and she said "You're empowered. You're completely empowered. Just don't wear your cockgoggles."

It's very important to be reminded that's an option. Yes, cockgoggles. Of course. As a salutary reminder I took myself off a few days later to see Elegy, in which Ben Kingsley plays a public intellectual who meets, falls in love with and then has to say goodbye to Penelope Cruz's breasts (the title can only refer to her masectomy), and with the saddening clarity now afforded by the good doctor's advice I could see that every decision here weighed and every savvy pronouncement delivered in this movie was just patently dotty: the sayings of a sap who'd thought he'd made sense of this world at sixty, but had accidentally kept his cockgoggles on. All this time. Like a sixty-year-old cucumber seed in your beard nobody has thought to mention. Take 'em off, Philip Roth.

And I got a call from Dr. Meikle this evening, well yesterday evening now, sounding kind and happy. She's working 13-hour-days now at a veterinary practice up in the Pyrenees. Yeah I wonder what she does... Here's today's death ray:

Remember: Take 'Em Off.

FRISSON, QUANDRY AND PAYOFF - Days 3 and 4

 

Case 1. Female. Friday. Single. Musician. Or advertising or something.

"What would you say is a specifically male characteristic?"
"Avoiding confrontation."
"You don't think women avoid confrontation?"
"I think men tend to brood. Haha."
"Why are you laughing?"
"I'm enjoying the feeling of being uncomfortable?"
"You enjoy being uncomfortable?"
"Yeah. Yeah I do. And not being able to breathe."
"Mm... Have you always... When - Did you... Was there a point where you realized you enjoyed being uncomfortable?"
"Mid-teens."
"... When did you last enjoy being uncomfortable?"
"My chiropracter said 'My God your buttocks are extraordinary!' I enjoyed that. He was talking about knots."
"How's your back?"
"I broke two vertebrae when I was fifteen."
"How?"
"I was doing hand-stands."
"Can you still do hand-stands?"
"No."
"Was that the same time you realized you enjoyed being uncomfortable?"
"No it wasn't."
"... Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?"
"Can I ask you something?"
"..."
"What's your name?"
"No."
"Is it alright that I took a bite out of your apple?"
"No."


Case 2. Friday. Female. Single. Not a vet.

"Tell me about the last film you saw."
"Knocked Up... It's errrr, about a woman who finds she's pregnant from a one-night stand but then falls in love with the guy and then they live happily ever after."
"... You're single?"
"Yes."
"... You're a vet?"
"Yes."
"Where did you study?"
"Australia."
"How many balls have you cut off?"
"Seven. Can I try on your cap?"
"No. Seven?"
"Yes."
"From which animals?"
"Oh animals! I though you meant from people. None."
"You haven't –"
"No."
"But when you're studying to be a vet, isn't the main thing you do –"
"Okay, I'm not a vet."
"I see... I wanted to cry last Friday –"
"Okay."
"And I was in public. And I was looking for somewhere I could cry, I was in the park, but I couldn't find anywhere I could cry. There were trees but they were so centrally located that I couldn't go behind them. And suddenly my predicament reminded me of... Do you know what I'm going to say?... Needing to pee. For example there was a stall selling coffee and I thought 'Well if I drank some coffee then I'd REALLY need to pee, but similarly the kindness of the woman serving me coffee might set off my tears.' So I thought more and more about the parallels between wanting to pee and wanting to weep, and after half an hour I realized that I'd been thinking about this so much... that I no longer wanted to cry. But I did now really need the loo."
"Right... Yeah. I've been feeling quite weepy for the past two weeks."
"Really?"
"Yeahhhh."
"Why?"
"Oh... it's a long story. Why did you want to cry?"
"Why did you want to cry?"
"I just found out that I'm two months pregnant. And I don't want it."
"..."
"So why did you want to cry?"
"I didn't."
"Oh... Can I try on your cap now?"


Case 3. Saturday. Male. In a relationship. (Sitting in for this one: my mate Ella Smith) in a corner, fanning herself.

"Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?"
"Not in English."
"In what language then?"
"Welsh."
"... Ella?"

Ella speaks Welsh. A very happy coincidence. Man baffled. High five. Big improvement on Friday.

The Shout Goes Out

Current mood:*no longer extant facebook moodmoji* grateful

 

Last Monday was laid back. I took the Central Line east and met Miss Meikle in Kensington Gardens. The air was full of drifting seeds and she leant me her sunblock, ferried me round a lake on the stern of a pedallo, and explained the effect of hormones on tissues to me in a big leather pub in Holland Park. Hanging over the whole jaunt however was the Schrodinger's Cat-box of her limbo veterinary status... waiting for results. And my feet were a bit hanging too. There were no white men on the Central Line west that evening, just pink.

 

The next day I took the Central Line east to go and see my friends in "...SISTERS" at the Gate, but it was sold out, so I ended up in Kensington Gardens again. Fortunately, I'd brought a book. Unfortunately, it was "The End of Eternity" by Isaac Asimov. There were no seeds in the air that evening, just moths and bats. I also spotted an Archery contest, and a mugger resisting arrest. Quite a few people saw that last one. There were about four police vehicles pulled up beneath the trees, and nine officers sitting on a twat. As I made my way back to the theatre, past the victim and the ambulances, it occurred to me that I had actually quite wanted to spit on him. I thought: Come on it's only spit. Spit's actually fine, isn't it? I wouldn't mind if I got spat on, definitely not. At worst, it's weird... In the bar, Gemma, Hannah and Heather were discussing David R's proposal to move Shunt out of the London Bridge Vaults, and into a sewage farm. In Woolwich. David's twins are now two years old, and apparently really into poo.

And on Wednesday I took the Central Line east a third time, to White City and perhaps the starriest writer's meeting I have yet attended. The excellent Toby Davies came up with yet another idea for a sketch involving Gary Rhodes (he has now, for some reason, written three), Gareth Edwards, our producer, raised the possibility of borrowing a CGI dinosaur from another sketch show (from a sketch written by my sister, in fact), David M queried the practicalities of borrowing something that doesn't actually have a physical aspect, and Jesse Armstrong cleared up what it was that Miss Meikle and I could smell so strongly in Kensington Gardens on Monday: Linden trees. And not what we'd thought.

And on Friday, Miss Meikle graduated. And everyone in her house graduated. And everyone on the steps of King's also graduated, where I was sitting in my tea break getting the news on my little cream phone which can't take photos which is why I haven't posted any. Friday was just one great big Graduatey-In as far as I could... hang on... I'm just going to pause Adam and Joe... can't hear myself think... it's important this... Right, that's better. Ahem...

CONGRATULATIONS, DOCTOR MEIKLE! And I don't know what training you had in marsupials, but if you do end up in Australia DON'T SEW ANYTHING UP WITHOUT CHECKING! And congratulations also to everyone in your now vacant digs in Potters' Bar. Have you had to take this down from the wall?

Have you had to wipe this from the whiteboard?

And I wonder who'll move in. And I wonder where you'll go. And I wonder why I photographed any of that. Phoo... I'm teary. That's new... But good , actually. I didn't shed any tears for the Noys Lambent lady, but I'll happily shed tears for you, mate, because graduating's a big deal, and anyway I only cry these days when I'm grateful. And you've taught me shit-head. And patience. And you've kept me so bouyant while I've known you. So off you shoot, and thanks for the lift, Miss Meikle – Doctor Meikle. The shout goes out to you, Ruth...

Monty Hall Problem? What Monty Hall Problem?

Hello again. I haven't been here in ages. Obviously I lack motivation. There is a cure for this though. I will come to it.

 

I haven't really been writing for Laurence and Gus either which is bad, there's going to be a read-through on Monday... It's just every time I've sat down to write since receiving the commission I've always seemed to end up returning - like Grendel - to a tired squall of my own making on Chris Goode's blog "Thompson's Bank Of Communicable Desire" (all hinted at in my last post - blimey - two weeks back!... It's been going on that long. Well it's over now, and actually it has a happy ending. If you're interested to know more, cut and paste this little honey:

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=28051672&postID=8131853324620900174

 

I come in about half-way down and then never shut up. Actually I might try a summing up in my next post. No, come back.)  Anyway, yes, so as I was saying to the producer over a risotto, I am obviously phenomenally unmotivated. 

 

What does Derren Brown suggest? Well now I know because I've finally got round to reading his book (not to motivate myself, no, that was not the idea, no... nor to find out if he uses stooges. He states unequivocally in the book that he doesn't though. I'm a little disappointed by that. I think it's fine if he does. I didn't want to know.) Anyway he suggests "Playing with Pictures". Visualizing the writing of this blog, according to Derren Brown, means that I should picture it from a FIRST-PERSON perspective (ie not looking on at myself writing this, my first clear mistake) and big like IMAX (like the one in Hertfordshire where Miss Meikle and I saw Beowulf - "MONSTAH!" - after driving through the first snow I've seen this winter. Actually, yeah, good thing I didn't stay in London that evening and get some writing done, I'd have missed the snow) I should "make the colours rich and intense", turn up the brightness, bring it in closer, in my face. And finally I should "add sizzle". Thus:

 

And it works!

 

Later on, Derren writes about the "Monty Hall Problem", and it's the following episode played out today at lunch (and slightly reminiscent of my conduct in the Thompson's squall) that I am actually here to record:

 Me - Jess, do you know about "the Monty Hall Problem"?
Jess (with whom I work, and who is American) - I know about Monty Hall. No.
Me - There's three closed doors, and behind one is car and behind the other two there are goats, and you have to choose a door. Then I open a door behind which I know to be a goat. Okay? Now I ask you if you want to stick with your choice, or change and pick the remaining closed door. What do you do?
Jess - I stick.
Me - WRONG!
Jess - No it's not.
Me - YES! YES! Okay, say there were a HUNDRED doors instead, and you picked one, and then I opened up NINETY-EIGHT doors and they all had goats and there was just now the two doors left again. Yours and mine. Think of the probability. Would you still stick with your first choice?
Jess - Yes.
Me - But that's wrong.
Jess - No it's not.
Me - Wh... why not?
Jess - Because you never asked me how I feel about goats.

 Excelsior, Jess! I'll write about Shunt next time. Catch up then.

33rd

 An excellent party and I didn't even have to throw it.

 

Ruffians, toffs and catty slags hanging by the gibbet at the Prospect of Whitby, watching the fireworks going off in Blackheath, sporting sparklers and gins, cakes and tails, stage blood and corsets. And Ms. Meikle makes it over with a big bag of watercolours, colouring sheets, pudding mix and "FOUR INTERNATIONAL GAMES" taped to a board for 99p. All for me! And let me here record that she whppped my ass at Chinese Checkers, and immortalize the butterflies coloured in by the stragglers at 4am washing their brushes in pink champagne, irrespective of insignia.

 

shit and shithead (and the GURUN observation deck)

Halloween. A three-day leave from the Dungeon starts today and I can tell it's gotten colder while I was inside because my shirts still aren't dry and it was British Summer Time when I hung them out five days ago. I've not that many work-related scars to show for the half-term push: a slight wonkiness from where I cracked my nose on Bedlam, a black toe from where I dropped the cleaver, some blood in my hair that turned out to be real from where I failed to clear the chain hang on no, okay maybe I have been showing signs of tiredness... A corporate event on Monday evening saw us warming up in Torture with an exercise that required us to evoke through collaborative improvisation a given landscape which the poor schnook who'd just been sent out would then have to guess ("Chess Championship", "The Final Frontier" etc. It's not that easy to evoke Uhura actually if you don't have a chair, very easy to topple). When the final landscape we were given turned out to be "Inside Simon's Head" everyone just started screaming. So yes I must have been showing signs of tiredness. Oh and he guessed it. Meanwhile next door in Shunt, Luke was stuffing my rubber double into a minicab to take to a party. 

 With my looted corpse the toast of Stoke Newington and the contents of my head a warm-up exercise I went to relax in Gordon's Wine Bar with some churlishly unloaded cheese, a deck of cards, a bottle of red and Ms. Meikle who was down from Potters' Bar, herself fast becoming the toast of the cat-neutering circuit. She taught me Shithead. It was very relaxing...
SHIN!
GURUN!

 I'll explain those in a minute, but no I've been fine fine. Just busy. Simultaneously occupied and vacant. None of your business. Been looking forward to a few days off and a chance to kick back and enjoy some perspective.

 

... So it was very profitable to find myself at 11 o'clock this morning summoned to the twenty-ninth floor of Centre Point and staring out of a sound-proof window at Hyde Park, Wembley Stadium and this evening's weather rolling in over Chiswick. Here was perspective alright.
"Our clients have decided to write their own copy I'm afraid, and it's, um... incredibly repetitive. But what we want is, you know, warm and friendly... " In my booth there was a pint mug of about thirty pencils to the right of the microphone. The engineer, seeing that this was clearly too many as we came in, left me with three for some reason. On the other side of the glass before me was a plate of perfectly arranged biscuits no-one dared touch, an equally untouched dish of fuck-me fruit and two warm and friendly men unwittingly slinging my financial ass out of the fire. And beyond the sound-proof glass to my left: the bigger picture... SHIN! GURUN!

 

An hour later and twenty-nine storeys down I happily bumped into David from Shunt outside a coffee shop in Portland Place taking a quick break from his day-job in anaesthetics, writing in a notebook. It's the first time I've seen him in a suit. I told him about the medical modelling. The last time I bumped into him making notes outside a CoffeeSomethingNationBucks he'd told me about the theatrical commission he'd just got from the Lyric Hammersmith which would let him try out the forty-odd remote headphones he'd already bought in bulk: The audience would stand outside on the balcony, watch an actor or actors in the building opposite, and through the cans be able to hear the inside of their heads (not screaming, I'm assuming, other stuff). Today he asked me if I wanted to be in it, and was I free to help him try something out at the Lounge next week. It wasn't even midday yet...

 But man it's got late now. I'm meant to be resting. Instead the area beyond my peripheral vision has just switched from black to white.
I'll leave you then with some Manga sound effects from Eiji Otsuka and Housi Yamazaki's excellent "The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service" which I bought because of the cover. All the speech balloons have been translated into English of course, so you have to keep switching between following the action from right to left and following the dialogue from left to right, while the sound effects - the Kapowees, the Screeches etc. - have been left as pictograms and then translated in a big glossary at the back (ie the front). And here, in no particular order, are some examples, verbatim:

ONGYAA ONGYAA
baby crying

KPFU
sound of a refrigerator door popping open

SHUGOGOGO
sound of propane stove

ZUZUZU
body slowly climbing in

PAKU PAKU
sound of flapping mouths

CHAPOON
splash of pebble hitting water

GYU KYUN
spirit being pulled into the bullet

KYUN
last bit of the spirit being pulled in

GORORON GORORO
sky rumbling

KAR KARI KARI KYUDWOOOON
air crackling then loud lightning

TSUU TSUKU TSUU CHA ZUNCHAKA ZUTCHA TSUU TSUKU ZUN
sound of music being overheard on someone's headphones

SHIN
sound of silence

GURUN
sound of world spinning

PAKIII
sound of a bolt falling through glasses at terminal velocity into eye socket
 

 Happy Halloweeeen!

Spurious Temporal Generalisation (dark note sandwich)

Now I was promised a future that was down and dirty full of, yes, weird new crime but also gaudy animal excess and a lowered everything age.

So what's happened?
Why are they talking about raising the drinking age, say?
Who do they think that's going to calm down?
What happened to our pre-packed longpig sandwiches and mescaline patches?
Someone recently posted on their profile the simple question "What in the name of God is going on?" and I posted back "The fifties" because that has been my consolation. It's what I said to Ms. Meikle back in the caravan when she expressed a global hopelessness: that for all the paranoia and the bangs and the juvenile delinquency and the dead-eyed certainty of a culture telling us how badly our lives were being led, that this was just a bad decade and a smarter sixties future was just around the corner full of excellent music and second-hand clothes and popular art that made no sense and kids expressing their discontent with society through slapstick and dirty comics. "This is just the fifties," that's what I kept telling myself. "History's a cycle. I can't wait for the sixties."
But, Ms. Meikle, if you're reading this: Dudo, I doubt. There is another possibility that seems increasingly likely to me every time I step out of work and see the news-stands and a surrendered public... that history in fact is like a pellet in a game of pong, not a cycle... that we're going the other way, and that what in fact lies just over the horizon is not another 1960s, but another 1940s. And not a cool Lauren Bacall 1940s either, with lots of great roles for women and smoking in the library but, you know... 1948... Strength through Joy... Lights out.

But on a lighter note: I came home from work to find that Morgan had left us a big black bin-liner full of pain au chocolat.

And on a darker note:

SETTLEMENTS (time excellently spent)

To my right (your left) is Ms Meikle. We met arbitrarily (pictured) at a Superthriller gig, when I was in the mood to be met. That was last year. Her veterinary training has come on quite a bit since then, and now they let her inside cows.

She's been staying in a caravan in Dorset, training on a farm, birthing calves, visiting the abbatoirs, waiting for the cows to die, inspecting meat, considering the waste of such finely evolved teeth in the head of an animal that once bled to death has only about a fifty per cent chance of ever being eaten, going for runs and getting shat on a lot. And as mentioned in the previous post I invited myself over. We're both mumblers, but she seemed fine with it over the phone I checked.

My God I learnt so much. The amount of roadkill on the 12 mile stretch from Salisbury to Sixpenny Handley alone was an education. She looked like a millionaire when she picked me up from the station in her bauble-coloured Clio, and it was a red sky at night. And the caravan was family-sized and quiet and stuttered with valances but with everything, like Japan, in its right place. And she'd never heard Miles Davis so I flipped open my powerbook and I put that right and then, as requested (since she'd played me Hot Chip) cradling bulgarian red and amaretto and orange we moved onto Arvo Part, King Oliver and O Superman. "You have a lot of stuff that's good for... if you don't want to think about anything, but you don't want to think about nothing either," I made out, and nodded. And she told me about the local walks and the abbatoir and the time it takes to die from a bullet wound and the great times she had at Matt and Fred's in Manchester just sitting by the music and smoking roll-ups - Ah! - Laurie Anderson pronounced "Smoking? Or Non Smoking" and neither of us are "smokers", but it hits home. And tipsy enough not to mumble, we basked. Like Michael Caine and Clive Owen in the film "Children Of Men" if you've seen that. Exactly like that.

And so it went on for two days: dropped off by Salisbury Cathedral while Ms Meikle went to work... Magna Carter, Second Hand Books, checking out Scope for board games and finding a bag of South American Lying Dice, free tea in the town hall while I sat at a bank of laptops being market-researched... yes, a dip had been reached, I wasn't feeling very much like Ferris Bueller. But: Then: a call from Mia Sara Meikle to say she'd been given the afternoon off. So: Back into the Clio and off to the settlements. Stone Henge, wangling free entrance by impersonating Egon Ronay (both of us! in a big coat! No! Fences are fine. Neither of us have an issue with fences), and then the Roman Villa, four-hundred years in the making, sixteen-hundred years hiding in a hill, mosaics, pins, bones, sun and unburied treasure. And time.

And another day. And a big walk. And an idea for something formenting. Farms and flies around a horse's eyes, which is normal apparently, and a light drizzle so I don't get burnt. And pizza and packing and a lift to the station. And forty-eight hours in which I haven't been rotten to anyone. I am a passenger. I naturally passenge. Thankyou for that, Ms Meikle.

No, I didn't want to come back. Every single paper on the midnight train to Waterloo (I know it's not called that) carried as their main story an event gleaned from a television trailer for a show about the Queen which was unresearched, unimportant and, unlike the weather or the Magna Carter, never even happened in the first place. Where's the facts? Where's the stuff? What did I learn in London today? What corner in what track did I turn to be delighted?

Actually, when I left work at six today, I found, lying in the middle of Joiner Street, pretty dusty and passed on either side by the six o'clock rush, a bra.

I just haven't found a name for it yet.

La Cabeza De Pez Y La Sibila

 

It means "Fish-head and the Sibyl". I have received some tales of mine translated into Spanish. I am in no way blase about this. I feel like Brian Eno. Finally.

And tomorrow I'm off to spend a couple of days in a caravan with one of this country's most up-and-coming young veterinary students/castrators. She is staying in a village called Sixpenny Handley and I have a very long anecdote prepared about a swan to while away the evenings.

This was Sunday. It was blocking our path out of an uncharacteristically disreputable corner of the otherwise Ayckbourne-Arcadian (with a dash of frontiersman) island of Cleve Aits, just by the weir. On a tour of the island, we had clambered through to an unlit shack, with its untended garden of rusty motor fragments and purposelessly sawn-off plank corners – hundreds of them – and this inscrutable swan with its bulldog underside, standing chest-high in our way, as though it owned the place... which I found a very entertaining idea... and one that would account for the evidence of bad carpentry.

Tom of our number – clearly more up to speed than anyone else on which part of the swan it was exactly that could break which part of a person again (the neck, the arm? the wing, the neck?) – finally faced the creature off if that's a verb, and it waddled on to let us pass unhissingly... and I presume get back to work on the extension, clumsily sawing off more bits of uselessly short wood with its unevolved clipped wings...

Actually that's not much of an anecdote, is it.