Too Much To Declare

Following my homoerotic fantasies about Raphael Nadal yesterday...

Why is that I always want Martina Hingis to lose? Dump the serve! Overhit! Throw a wobbly over a correct line call!

And why do I couple this with fantasies of humilating her - and worse - in bed? I loathe, I lust... unspeakable things, not nice at all. The girl with a pout and dirty secrets her mother doesn't know - clothed in Virgin White.

Wimbledon does things to me. Must give myself a dose of Cognitive Bahavourial Therapy. I suppose.

I suppose the self-hypnosis tapes and Positive Thinking Program I have been using in the last few months (and sometime mentioned here) are a form of Cogitive Behavioural Therapy. Forget childhood, parents and past mistakes - get cured by changing your way of thinking in there here and now.

There an interesting long piece in the Guardian today about CBT being alble to cure a whole load of pyychological problems from bulima to schizophrenia (with a little help from medicinal drugs) ("A Little more Coversation" by Helen Pidd. I'm hopeless abut putting links in here, but it is on the Guardian website). However, the article doesn't seem to me to deal with CBT's severe limitation.

The fact is - especially if, like me, you have lived a lot of life already - the past cannot be whisked away. We all have patterns of behaviour that we like, we are used to, even if they don't do as much good. And our attachment to these patterns isn't merely a matter of choice. They are often physical patterns (my IBS, your migraines? lack of energy?) which have medical, genetic and -dare I say it - Freudian origins.

Positive thinking can help us battle with these - and win victories; I thinks that's what I have been doing, more or less since I began writing this blog last October. But our body and unconcious might have other ideas. They may well prefer to stay in their favourite, comfort zone. And their fightbacks can be vicious (eg bad sleeping, self pity attacks, low-level catatonia).

If you (I) want to change, you (I) have to be prepared for a lot of dialogue with our past. There the last thing that will happen to most of us is a Road-to-Damascus type conversion. Besides, flashes of Lightning can be flashes in the pan. Born again is reversible.

So I like to think that my Positive Thinking Programme (BritEnglish spelling 'cos I'm including all media) is rather like an Imaginary Uncle - a rival, more rational and supportive para-parent who I hope one day will supplant my Judgental Super Ego and have civilised conversations with my rampant Id and my wounded, poor-me-but-I'm-great-really Ego.

There you go again, Alec Weston, letting your imagination run away with yourself. Pass the tangetellers.

Good-bye Mad about Blogging. At the end of the month (ie about midnight today) I'm going to remove its little window from my site.

Cynics will say it's because this site has been dropping in their rankings. Nerds comment that their hit-counting system appears to be even more erratic then Blogcuk. Snobwatchers might not like the company I'm keeping.

Well, for all I care, people can post droll remarks about going to the vet with their pet budgie every day of their lives. Hide their feelings in a smog of mild amusement every time they blog. (You never know you might get some sympathy hits for a while) Express lots of hurt righteous indignation - as if the world were designed to be fair.

As for me - I didn't start blogging for a Popularity Contest, win or lose. And quite apart from other, more pressing demands on my time and writing skills at the moment, the temptation to blog for the sake of it, to keep up the numbers game - that's beginning to bug me.

Imagine getting to, say, number 3 in the MaboutB list, like Wulfweard the White - would my self esteem come to revolve round getting three, four, five hundred hits a day? (I don't think he's ever written about taking the budgie to the vet, though. This ain't an attack on him. Others I might name later, if they really get on my wick. Respect here, to all my Friends.)

I joined Mad About Blogging in a May moment of misguided hubris. Everyone is checking me out, I must be brilliant!! Understandable, a bit pathetic.

All I want to is to write here only and whenever I feel the urge to write, and to be read by people who appreciate what they read.

Oh, fuck off, wanker. I'm beginning to sound insufferably pious here.

The fact is I don't want to be moderately popular in this or any other little world. I don't want to be moderately anything.

His energy, his charisma with just a hint of vulnerabilty, his grace, his courage... oh, dear. I'm even beginning to get off on his biceps. And his phenominal, stubborn skill, of course.

I had already watched too much tennis, wanted to get back to my writing. Agassi played well enough but it depressed me I was wasting time waching. But there's something about Rapha that thrills me. Even, this afternoon, during the first two sets he lost.

Yes, the American played brilliantly well, but I've already forgotten his name.

Tennis at its best is gladatorial combat. The match took me back to the days of MacEnroe, Connors, Becker, Rafter. But none of them had quite Nadal's intensity. Nor, I have to say, as an honest, 100% straight man, Nadal's looks.

Maybe my life is taking a radical new direction.

The Queen's spokesman said yesterday that the Royal Family costs her subjects only 62p a year each.

That's too much. And economies can easily be made. For the sake of my country, I am volunteering do the job of Monarch for an annual figure of only 52p per head. (Excluding VAT)

For that I'd have a sex change if necessary

Blog Therapy has its limits, and for the moment I seem to have hit them. Not that I'm down and out with depression, only too tired to be coherent. No point in pontificating here, then seeing the morning what I've written makes no good sense.

So many negative thoughts at night at the moment. As if I'm punishing myself for announcing here that I was happy. My body appears reluctant to go along with the idea.

All I need is a straight eight hour's sleep.

After more than a week the Tag window on BCUK's home page has been updated today. (apparently they have installed a powerful new server. let's hope it speeds things up as well)... and the new list makes me wonder why I ever bother to check it out.

IIPM is back in several forms, mostly in trendy lower case. World Cup, yeah, yeah.

The most interesting tag looks "comedy dentist," but unfortunately it turns out to be two separate words coincidentally alligned. Maybe there should be a prize of the day - to day awarded to someone who can write a post which could legitimately be given the "comedy dentist" tag.

I'll disqualify myself.

As often as not, now I am concentating on revising my novel, I walk or take the bus across Hammersmith Bridge to a little French cafe/bistro for a light lunch and a friendly atmosphere. A choice of two hot dishes, soup in cooler weather, sandwiches, quiche. Not expensive. But the real attraction is the staff and the style.

A lot of French people eat there - I'm not sure from near or far. But several other foreigners and a fair number of Brits; by now I recognise quite a few. On Saturday there was a broad shouldered, posh spoken elderly man called "Alistair" He had the air of being a famous writer. A delicate woman, older than him, got politely impatient with one of the waiter's attempts at English and switched into impeccable school French (learnt at Rodean, perhaps, c1950)

The proprietor/chef is called Fabrice; one imagines he could be the brother or (more feasibly) the son of Gerard Depardieu. [Female Friends can send me a Private Message and I will reply with bistos' exact address]. Younger women might prefer his two delicate yet charming and clearly hetereo waiter assistants.

Only one tape ever plays on the sound system; Sergi Gainsborough, joined, ever hour, by Jane Berkin for Je t'aime. The sound is kept low, the sytem bad, so the sexual moans and oohs and ahs are lost on the mainly bourgeois, mainly middle-aged, eaters.

And then there is Agnes, who few people, even the men, seem to pay much attention to. Round, cheeky face, exhuberant size ten body, a seldom seen tattoo along the base of her back. Agnes is Polish. She grins when she sees me come in.

Alas! I'm too far too old for her. She speaks little English, and no French. My Polish doesn't exist. Nevertheless, every smile and laugh and body movement makes me feel good about myself... (of course I am exaggerating)

To be frank, the only way we could communicate properly would be in bed together. For a second, the idea seems natural, inevitable. I finish my Salade Nicoise, fantasising about a world where conventions or existing boy friends would not be unduly upset by a happily passionate night of sexual romping - Alec and Agnes.

Je l'aime - in the Gainsborough/Berkin sense. Moi, plus. ooh...aah. Helas! If I had my years again, I would live them all in a French movie.

In a perfect world,
it would be possible for me
to turn off Grandpa's
nasty, moralistic voice
which keeps whispering
at the most annoying moments
"you are a disgrace to humanity
for not being
perfect."

Sometimes, like this evening, I get a sort of buzz out of being incredibly tired. A trippy selfish feeling, brought about partly by the knowledge I can do very little. Not even sleep; from experience I know I'll have to wait for a few hours yet.

I'm tired because I couldn't sleep last night (restless, anxious,bloated) - until I worked out what was bugging me. Not long before the summer dawn, I spent an hour writing an epic post, admitting to and explaining my angry, negative feeling about You-Know-Who - despite all I've written before...

A few minutes after I finished writing (about the time, I imagine, Life-Lessons gets up) I fell into a deep sleep until 9.15, way past my usual waking-up time (Protestant Work Ethic Guilt: a handicap for me, a natural night-person. Man, I was surely born into the wrong womb.)

Anyway, now I'm feeling almost elated.

Let me take this opportunity - the first rain break of this year's Wimbledon - to explain my mother's attitude to tennis, and mine. Like the Times Crossword, it's an enjoyable way of communicating with her.

This could well be her last Wimbledon. No doubt, the thought crosses her mind several times an hour.

My mum was taught to play by her bullying father, who she still worships, as least as far as his tennis skills were concerned. She tried to teach me a bit, but I so hated sport as a teenager, she failed. When I was working for the BBC in the sixties, I met Rod Laver at Wimbledon - and didn't even remember his name.

But, ten years later, with a girlfriend I started watching, and learning the game (in theory). Sice then I've never stopped watching and learning. And I've become more and more fascinated with the Mind Game.

Play, myself? I'd love to have a partner. The new, light rackets are brilliant. Vanessa and I played once and I thrashed her. But frankly, playingwise I'm an ultra novice.

Meanwhile, my mother has tennis heros and heroines... And guess what? None of them are gay, volatile- tempered(she often claims I'm v-t) - or black, or even dark haired. It's only strange because, when challenged my mum says all the choices she ever makes are based on reason.

So in the woman's game - Chris Evett, Steffi Graff (both retired) and Kim Clijsters (especially after Lleyton Hewitt dumped her). She admires Natratalova but, but... Hingis is a littlet to full of herslef for both of us.

My current heroines, by the way are Mauresmo and above all Justin Henin (probably 'cos she had such a shitty family life, but also because her amazing mental toughness, which rivals anyone in the man's game.)

The male playes my mum likes, besides Federer, are all fading way. "My" Agassi, "My poor" Henman. Hates Roddick, Rusedski (and who am I to disagree about these two? Wham/bam serving is so boting to watch). Disapproves of Murray, doesn't like the muscles on Nadal... But, in truth, my mother much prefers the "girls" The blonde hetereosexual ones. Her own hair is dark.

Sometimes, I do wonder about her own mind games. And why I have never gone out with a blonde girl.

Was it just me - or did everyone else lose their blog content about an hour ago?

For me, there was just no Content there. Terifying. Maybe I was dreaming, after a late night pouring my heart out here.

Someone please tell me if they had a similar experience...

AND THAT 24 HOUR TAGLIST MUST GO!!!!!!!

It's been the same for weeks, now. Better not have a list at all than this

I don't regret anything I wrote in "Farewell, my Lovely", a few post ago, as well all the other possitive, happy stuff since I am lucky guy, and I am moving on from the Vanessa debacle, and that makes me feel good.

But there is one crucial thing I didn't mention, and I have to deal with before I let go completely.

(Well, two things, because the story of my novel was based of an idea of Vanessa's, and so until it is away and published, there will still be a vestige of her in my life. And at the moment (2.40am) I want to give it a different, darker ending to make it truly mine. But that is by the by.)

Far more important is to acknowledge that Vanessa conned me. After that message: "Please Leave me alone" I can't pretend any more that she has the slightest intention or need to "work things out." To hell, with misuderstanding, merely not listening when I said i was running out of money, etc. To hell with me, even now, blaming myself for being a fool.

She played on all my qualities, good and bad, extraordinary and every day, to get exactly what she wanted. Conciously or unconciously, with or without her boyfriend Bland's help. She manipulated my generosity and compassion, my vanity, my pride (I thought I could 'tame' her eventually), my fear of letting her down, my ingenuity and creativity, my sexual desire, my jealousy, my liberal guilt about inherited money... and lots more beside.. every aspect of me she twisted to get her own way, to get everything I owned.

And it has taken me almost two years to accept this. (Most regular readers of this blog probably realised months ago) Friends told me, with varying degrees of confidence and insistance - a hypnotist told me 4 years back (maybe I had said something in my 'sleep') - but all this time, I've gone on defending her, more or less. "Narcissistic, but not criminal/she loves me really underneath") Unfortunately, only a couple of friends sympahtised more than they criticised me.

Even when I tried to sue, I made sure the solicitor let fire on Bland, not Vanessa. Anyhow the suing was about money at the edges - a lot of money, but only a fraction of what she conned.

It would be very, very hard to prove it was a con trick. Very expensive and time consuming, incredibly emotionallly exhausting - and I can't be sure that somehow I wouldn't be sucked into her spider's web again. She, and so many women I've been involved with, have had this knack of making me feel in the wrong. Vanessa knows this and exploits it, time and again.

No - I have to let go. I want to let go - but I can't completely, until I face up to the anger I feel now, until I accept that for more than three years I deeply loved someone who effectively stole from me for all and more than I had. And at the moment, only my stomach and its IDS had experienced this feeling of rage.

I am not a victim - but only because I choose not to be. I've got a great life ahead of me - but only if I can feel, and then let go of the anger that has been building up inside for years. Now, I have acknowledged the anger, that's a start. Now it's only a matter of expressing it without violence outwards or inwards, and finding a way to let the matter rest at last. "Only a matter"!! How on earth do I go about this?

So, excuse me, if I do return to the subject again. I'd like not to have to, of course.

When I was a teenager, my father bought a house (being my dad, a row of cottages three of which he knocked togther) in Hamble, near the Solent.

He bought a sailing dinghy (being my dad, not a regular one that could have been raced against others, but a one-off model with too tall a mast)

I wanted to learn to sail. My father was determined to learn first. He never learnt. In the end I had a few lessons from someone who didn't know much more than I did. The first time I took the tiller I crashed the little dingy's over-tall mast into a bigger boat and it cracked in half.

Very Freudian.

Actually, this story can't be entirely well-recalled, because I do remember once going sailing with my father with no particular desination in view and ending up in the Isle of Wight. A happy day.

But the moral of the story is true. My father wanted to be success in everything before I even began the race. This was particularly true with women. Once the two of us were going round a girl school, to see if it were suitable for my sister (it wasn't but that didn't stop him sending her there for two disastrous terms). As we rounded each corner, a dozen young female eyes appeared then quickly disappeared. "They're looking at me," my father said. Proably true, but not wonderful for my confidence.

Therefore, a few years later, when I brought a girl home and told him she was pregrant... well, we never got very well ever again. And I stopped putting so much energy in helping him finishing his book, about Liberalism in the Twentieth Century, which after 50 years, remained unfinished.

I made a good start to my Rewrite today. It's fun to do. I enjoy compressing events, heightening the tension, adding detail to making the atmosphere more telling. (And it's a welcome change to be using a text editor rather than Microsoft Word)

I don't think the changes are going to be difficult to achieve. But the whole process sure is exhausting. Emotionally knockout devastating. To be honest, I'm not quite sure why.

Anway, all those long blogs half formed in my head and a Song about The Joys of Summary Justice - they'll have to wait for another day, maybe another decade.

This afternoon I began my Great Novel Re-Write.

Unfortunately, it has coincided with the annual fete at the Convent School at the bottom of my garden.

For 364 days a year, the school is quiet, the Catholic-educated girls well behaved. Not even fags or mobiles on the way home via the Underground station. The most un-alluring uniform ever designed by woman or man.

But once a year (usually next weekend, mid-Wimbledon) a mammoth PA system is installed, and the street is overwhelmed with a disco/live band/ karaoke thingy.

We've just endured a hyper-dramatic version of My Way. Is it too much to hope this was the final climax?

Yes, too much. The girls and their parents must now be bouncing along to Beyonce. I can hear them singing along.

Just what I need to re-write a seedy pub seduction.

I'm a lucky man. My life is a lot better for me than I have hitherto admitted. And realising this makes me feel... well, excited, about moving on.

What's this guy on? (my regular readers maybe be asking) There's no point in checking out his stuff if he's going to stop moaning..

I'm sure there are lots more moans ahead. I don't claim to have converted to doe-eyed optimism. All is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Alec Weston hasn't gone all American on you.

Nevertheless, consider the facts:

§I'm in pretty good health - except for the IBS, which hospital test show is not life-threatening. And when I'm relaxed, it goes away.

§I've come through a very bumpy financial situation and now, compared to most people even in the UK, I'm not badly off.
I've had a good reaction to my novel. It's not right yet, but I'm confident of producing a good final draft.

§A lot of this confidence has come from writing this blog, and positive Comments to it. The more I am honest about myself here, apparently the more it's appreciated.

§I have got good friends, old and new. And good Friends here.

§At last, I have managed to say good-bye to Vanessa (see previous posts and tags ad infinitum Yesterday's FAREWELL, MY LOVELY pretty well sums it up) Better to have have never loved at all, than loved and lost a fortune? That's one of the many abstract, loaded questions I can now move on from.

§I look pretty good, but I'm just back dated, to quote a Who song. Backdated? My wrinkles are ironic and I've still got all my hair - that's from a song of mine I've yet to find time to write.

Talk to you again soon

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives every citizen the right to bear arms. Perhaps one day this right will be extended, and given to every citizen of the world.

In the future we could all feel safe, possessing our own, personalised nuclear deterrent (PND).

Competition to produce PNDs would be fierce. No doubt Sir Richard Branson would be early into the market, producing someone else's design under a licencing agreement. Virgin Armeggedon, anyone?

Good-bye Vanessa.

Ever since she told me to leave her alone (if 'ever since' is the right phrase for something that happened less than 48 hours ago) I've been feeling a huge sense of relief.

I've been experiencing a lot of other emotions as well, and since the middle of last night epic stomach cramps. Unusually for me, I've made several false starts to this post. Sometimes I want it to read like a Road to Damsacus conversion, sometimes to lace it with so much irony that it meant very little.

But the fact is, for the first time since I told Vanessa by text I had really, really run out of money, in August 2004, I actually feel we've split up. I acknowledge, I admit. I feel good.

All my life I have tried to console and rescue women from despair. My mother, of course, is inconsolable. My wife, virtually all my lovers, have all been thoroughly screwed up, and I failed, to 'rescue" any of them. So when I fell for Vanessa, and all she seemed to want was money (other things, too, but on the surface she appeared to be so sane) it felt, at some deep level, a chance at last to succeed in a rescue operation.

In fact, at the back of my mind, as my financial situation got worse and worse, I built up this absurd, narcissistic fantasy that if I gave all my money to her, with nothing left, she would see how much I loved her and.... and she'd be grateful for the rest of my and possibly her life.

How screwed up is that? Thank God my uncle didn't die 15 months sooner, because I would probably have managed to get through his inheritance as well.

I'm not denying that Vanessa behaved like an utterly selfish, egotistical bitch. I'm not denying, that even now I'd love her to acknowledge her part in my financial downfall - but she's not going to. So, far better she tells me to fuck off now, than she ever tempts me into her web again.

No. My rescue missions are finally over. The only person I can 'save' is myself.

Can I love someone without casting myself as a hero? It would be great if I could.

This morning I intended to tell the world that I had seen the light, was a completely different human being, life wasn't crap after all etc, and that I was happy and positive about the future.

Unfortunately my bowels have objected. They claim that they were not consulted.

An attack of IBS, which kept me awake from 0200-0500 BST, is continuing to remind me that life is, in fact, barely worth living. I'm pregnant again, overdue with twin elephants. Pills and all the usual strategies and remedies have so far had no effect (and prunes never do).

So any announcement of my epiphany has had to be postponed.

For now

The Hare and the Tortoise decide to have a race, observed by the Man in the Commentary Box who had bought the teelvision rights.

The hare can move much faster the tortoise - we'll say only the times faster to simplify the maths, but the principle is the same.

The tortoise is given a handicap. She starts nine tenths of the way along the track. The hare starts - well, at the start.

In the absence of a referee (this joke has a small cast) the Man in the Commentary Box fires a starting pistol. Bang. The hare rushes towards the tortoise and covers nine tenths of the track in the time it takes the tortoise to move forward just nine hudredths forward - but still the tortoise is ahead, by 9 hundreths - we'll simplify that to 9%.

"Of course I can catch him," says the tortoise, who is very arrogant. He runs at his usual speed to catch the tortoise. But when he reaches the spot where the tortoise was, the tortoise has already inched forward 0.9%, so the hare still hasn't overtaken him.

And so on, to several decimal places. The track is long, so even 0.00009% is quite a distance. The tortoise is still ahead, by less and less, but still ahead. The gap never completely closes.

"Bugger this for a lark," says the hare. "This is ridiculous. What's happening?"

"It's hubris," say the tortoise, who has been reading some Greek Tragedies while he waddles towards the finishing line.

"Nonsense," says the Man in the Commentary Box. "What you have is a logical fallacy. Bertrand Russell explains it one of his books about Philosophy which I have got here. Come and have a look if you like."

"I'm not falling for that one, " says the hare. "I'll track it down on Google."

But while the hare is searching the internet, the tortoise wins the race.

A good day for me

"Please leave me alone.Have no internet access at the moment. I'm going to have a baby in a few weeks."

So much for my long concilitary e-mail and calm phone message. And love, and trying to work things out, and all the rest of it. And so much for internet cafes, too.

Perhaps in a few days I'll be able to express my feelings in song lyrics.

PS I bet the baby isn't her 'boyfriend's'. Bet she's told him it is.

Usually, I go and see my mother once a week.

I do her weekly shopping (although she likes to come with me to Waitrose. Do a few jobs around the house (although, as well, someone comes in every day to help her). Help her with her bills and tax demands (which puts her into a panic). She cooks me a meal.

She's a good cook, but how much longer she can go on cooking... how much longer she can go on... My sister and I (maybe protecting ourselves from the future shock) feel this could be her last year. She loves Wimbledon. Then there's her birthday and (except last year, her 90th, when she let us make a fuss and have a party) she feels life is downhill.

My mother has spent most of her life feeling low, and she has always expected so much emorional support from her two 'children'. It's so easy to be sucked in by her depression and her anxieties (I've written abot this before), but at the moment - feeling so much stronger in myself - I don't get so sucked in, thank goodness.

Perhaps it's also because as if she has so little energy left now to fuel her fear of death (her terror; despite her Catholicism). I long for her to relish life just a little bit, before life leaves her. Yes, she is happy sometimes - but always, for sixty years anyway, in such a minor key.

It's so, so, almost unbearably sad.

This blogging business has taught me a lot of things: one of them that I've got a lot to write about.

The novel I'm about to start revising is only the first of a number of projects - and not the most important one. While not wanting Impatience take over and make the manuscript seemed incompletely realised and a little desperate, what is crucial for me is to make it good, get it published and move on to other things.

Perhaps if I accept that this clautrophobic, erotic novella of mine is not going to be listed in the World's 100 Greatest Books of This or Any Other Century, but may lead to a busy late-onset writing career, I'll be able to affect a level of detachment from the script which will help me improve it - and innoculate me from self-hatred bouts that so often get in the way of happy living.

Now, that's quite enough about me, me, me for the week.

In the 1970s, somewhere in South America, I believe Paraguay, the Goverment held political dissidents in a vast prison where inmates could be addressed not by name but only by number. All prisoners were forbidden to smile.

Of course you could argue that, considering the conditions they were held in, the inmates had nothing to smile about. Who smiles in Guantanamo Bay?

But smiling is more than an expression of happiness; often it's conveying friendship; we don't even have to have a reason. In fact, a prison that forced its inmates to smile all the time would be almost as oppressive.

The rictus smile of Blair/Cameron's Britain.

I said almost as oppressive. That's a cheap jibe, rhetoric. Few images chilled and haunt me more than film of that prison/concentration camp near Montevideo, where smiling led to solitary confinement.

Actually, I think I need more of a break before i start writing.... a holiday. It's so long since I've gone on holiday I've forgotten how one goes about it! Any (inexpensive, sensual) suggestions?