A Nice Quick Job And Or But Others

 I left the flat comparatively early today to record a series for Definitely Human. All twelve episodes. Imagine that. Three hours in front of a microphone, having fun playing an absolute nightmare, while everyone else does the work. It was hot in there though; I caught myself in a mirror at the end of the recording, and I looked like I'd been pulled out of a cow. It's cooler now at 5:59am. I did sit down to write this at a reasonable hour, but you know how writers like to get comfortable and, well, I ended up trying to reupholster the chair. I couldn't get all the screws out in the end. Or entirely back in again. (I'm surprised to see neither "giving up" nor "quitting" are tags on here yet.) Now it creaks beneath me, still mainly a nice chair, rescued from the Shunt Lounge ten years ago. Oh, if anyone remembers sticking chewing gum on the underside for later, come and get it, guys.

Notebookery 10 (2006-2005)

 Here are earlier pages from the same notebook, including, in reverse chronological order - and not that I encourage you to go looking for them -  rehearsal notes for the show that took me to Japan, Sulayman Al-Bassam's Kalila Wa Dimna, (hence the recurrence of jackals and murk), and Shunt's Amato Saltone and Tropicana. Two pages down is a polaroid of me (far left) in the lift on the Tropicana's last show before I shaved my head and took over as the operator. The shaved head was to make it easier to produce a silicon replica of me for the lift operator's autopsy. You can see both it and me four pages down. The replica's nostrils are narrower because of the clay pressing down as the mould was made.

Notebookery 9 (singed by the author)

 As I said yesterday, I found a whole other notebook while moving bits of the room around, so ta-daa. Like the green one, I clearly wanted this to be a thing I enjoyed returning to, a thing I would like to look at, and I finished it just before I started this blog. Big pre-lockdown cuddles must go to the friends who pulled its remnants out of the fire of 2009. Maybe there's a third I've forgotten about which burnt up entirely. While this was being filled I was touring Japan and the Middle-East and thinking about sketches and a writing maybe something bigger for kids, a standalone fantasy, called "Standalone". Unfinished. Unbegun. Not all the drawings are mine, and I'll post more tomorrow. (The first words we read "O ooo Jeremy Bottom" made me laugh, and as they were written in 2006 are also a complete mystery.)

"Bits"

 I found another notebook!

 Probably from 2006, because that's when I was in Japan. I'll post more from it, obviously, but just thought it worth noting how far our understanding of masks has come on since then, eg... 

Great. This is exactly why I set up the Time Spanner account. I'm an idiot. 

 I also found this:

Unfinished in '87: SIMON KANE'S HERACLES

 To celebrate the book that actually got me reading again this past fortnight - Natalie Haynes' brilliant Theban novel The Children of Jocasta - here is a classical adaptation of my own from 1987. Consider it an accompaniment to the similarly unfinished super hero comic and bivalve samurai epic from the same year, the year I met my mate Tom in fact. He didn't finish his comic of the Odyssey either. I went for Heracles, the original Greek name of Hercules, and a subject I'd visited before, back when I was eight. Thinking about it, it's surprising I didn't visit him more often; he was big, dumb, super-strong and fought monsters, the perfect subject for a comic book. His newly nobbly nose is proof I was by now healthily into Sergio Aragonés' Groo the Wanderer, a pre-Homer-Simpson comedy barbarian, and I can also spot the influence of airbrush fantasist Rodney Matthews in the thorniness of my monsters. 

 

 In keeping with my previous treatment of this material (particularly here) I have not shied away from the more tragic elements of Heracles' story, although I do now take the piss. And profuse apologies for my depiction of Tiresias; my only reference material for gender studies at the time was Mad Magazine.

... and that's as far as I got. (Why have I made all the sexy women look like Garfield?)

Still Life with Chicken. Landscape with Milk. (Issues with 1992.)

  On Tuesday I had my first dirty chicken since lockdown. I was in Wandsworth stalking my past, and talking like this because I was reading M. John Harrison. Even that attributes too much motivation though. I was just eating food and walking it off, a toy without an owner, and I wanted some of the elements of this cute process to be new, and the riverside did not disappoint.

 The flashiness north of Clapham has spread west since I was last here, sinuous new flats and fountains I thought would take me all the way to Putney but not quite it turned out. I hit a gate around Wandsworth, and a strong smell of milk, and then five large white patches on the ground which explained the smell but raised more questions. M. John would have approved.

  Whether I approve of M. John is another matter. Like that matters. But The Course of the Heart is not a complete fantasy, and its extrapolations from reality are, itchily, far more identifiably othering. Bullshit old tropes of white men, shadows and prizes. Was 1992 really that long ago? Maybe. And that's the thing about Horror, the unfettered imagination can be a bit careless of its targets. Every description that isn't of a human is extraordinary however, and it's nice to see familiar places written about: Camden, Peckham, Museum Street. Subjects of an earlier walk, Monday's I think.

 I'm sure there used to be an esoteric bookshop on this street. The wizard in Harrison's book lived just above it before moving to the flats in Putney, opposite where I used to get my hair cut. The book reminded me more than anything of Ken Campbell's Furtive Nudist, also published in 1992 - a bumper year for tragicomic, homunculus-themed meta-fiction it turns out... I think this is where Harrison's narrator lived: 

 Oh, and as with Parks and Recreation and Orange Is The New Black, I encountered theme-bleed between this and what I would read next:

'Their faces were drawn into snarls of concentration; they were grunting and sobbing frustratingly. Suddenly I saw my mistake. I put my hands up to my face and laughed. Not murder, then. They were fumbling and ripping at each other's clothes...' The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison

'"Neato," Kristy said, stopping short. "Those trees look like they're hugging."
"What?" Penn said. "No way, they look like they're fighting each other."' The Legends of Greemulax, by Kimmy Schmidt (with Sarah Mylnowski)

I'm trying to alternate between male and female authors.

Fancy Party and 4 Oz. of Furlough

 Sorry this is only going up now, but I was catching up with my fellow Ripper Walkers last night, in the actual flesh in an actual pub, and it turned into a tiny, tiny stag do. Yes, we all got married! Not really. Neil noted it felt a bit like being in a pub on the telly; busy enough to fill the seats, but no busier, and we all looked like background artists.

 I remember most of what happened. I think of Ben - author of our Walks, and founder of the Ghost Bus Tours - very much as one of the keepers of London. He always knows what to point out on a ramble, like the Duke of Wellington's replica noses poking out of the concrete on Great Windmill Street. Oh god I've just remembered the toilets. They were magical, they lit up, where were they?

  Here's something else I remembered, and it contains spoilers: I've been using the last week to start reading again, watching less television as a result, binge-watching less, switching more between shows. I put on an episode of Parks and Recreation, series three, episode nine, this one:

 And here's the spoiler, it turns out that the party April and Andy are throwing is actually a surprise wedding, and they get married. I then put on an episode of Orange Is The New Black, series two, episode nine, it was this one, literally the very next thing I watched on television:

  In which Piper gets furlough from prison to attend her grandmother's funeral and, here's the spoiler, at the service her brother throws a surprise wedding, and he and his girlfriend get marrried. I have nothing to say about this coincidence, except that I wish I'd been able to share it. I don't mean share it on the blog, because as you can see I have nothing to say about it. It wasn't even interesting enough a coincidence to share with Neil and Ben. I just noticed it would have been nice to share the oddness as it happened.

Goodye, Diana Rigg. You kicked arse.