Too Much To Declare

Last night, on the phone she told me the same anecdote twice.  She's never done that before.  Her hearing is as bad as ever.  She fears she is falling apart.  She fears death, she fears life.

No one is able to vote twice, unless you change computer.

So, it's pleasing that I have now made my way to the top of Page 3 of my particular section.  Number 21 in the My Life section (out of about 2,500).

Of course it's a load of tosh - or at least some of the the blogs of my competitors are.  But it's a better system than the usual Pageview ranking sites.  Some interesting  people may check the blogs out.  In theory, all I'm after is appreciative readers.

In practice, I'm just as much a pathetic egomaniac as the best of you.

A few paragraphs at a time.  In the old days (ie up to a few months ago), when I got stuck for the perfect phrase I'd curse, scream, beat myself up i, usually metaphorically.  This week I went for a walk, cooked, took a break some other way - and waited for the solution to come to me.  And each time it did.

So out have gone, the meandering chatty bits, the over-explanations, a lot of the abverbs.  In their place some telling physicall or emotional details.  I hope they are telling.

I know The singer not the Song is the title of a 1961 movie with Dirk Borgart, and also an early Stones' track.

But I'm sure the phrase a quotation from an earlier book or play.

Unfortunately, so far google searching hasn't helped me find it.  It's not on any quoation site I can find.

Anyone got an idea where the phrase comes from, or how I can track it down?

When she fell out of love - or was it ever more than admiration? - she accused me of not being the man she wanted me to be.  She accused me day after day.

I tried to play the part, and learnt the lines.  But at the time I knew nothing about Method Acting, and she knew I was a fraud.

Of course we should have broken up.  Instead I let her break my life apart.  It never occured to me that the worst crime was not be myself.

She lived with her eyes on a rear-view mirror.  If only we had done this isnated of that five minutes ago.  You mucked things up by your behaviour last week. It was wrong, everything was wrong in the past.

She was a moralist.  She blamed me for hearing her orgasmic scream when she first had sex with her girlfriend.  Her infidelities and lies were of no consequence, and at the same time my fault.

At the time, in the early eighties, her insults fitted my self loathing perfectly. 

Tony Blair's ambition is to create an environment where the last vestiges of political disagreement disappear.  And he's almost succeeded.

The new tories are "we too-ists" because there's no space on the right for them to go; not enough of the electorate are xenophobes or out and out racists - yet.  The Lib-Dems lack the courage or coherent ideology to challenge the status quo.  The Left is a series of fragmented gestures.  We are meant to think there is no alternative.  Our only choice is which brand to consume.

You think I'm exaggerating?  Mr Blair's latest venture is to convene a number of 100-strong focus groups to consider what they would do in Government.

"Well, I wouldn't start from here" is presumeably not a permissable answer. 

Enough of my Chr*stm*s.  The nightmare (see below) un-nerved me, and I slept badly after it.

Now I have managed to strip away some of the layers.  I no longer feel like a murderer.  I have felt anger against my father - in passing.  The main character seems to be my girlfriend in the early eighties, when I last dreamt something like this. (see nightmare tag).

I know I am forgetting something fundamental about our relationship...

We all construct and maintain a narrative out our own life, to make sense of it.  But, abruptly, my self-devised narrative no longer fits.

That's all I can say at the moment.  Some buses are running today, so I'm going to walk in Wimbledon Common, three miles along the 72 bus route.

(Superfluous details like these hopefully misdirects you away from the fact that I have told you very little about my current, confused, inner turmoil)

Last nghtt a bad dream, tonght a nightmare.  I havaen't had one for years.

Especially this one - a version of the one I reblogged a few weeks ago.

This time I have murdered a young boy - and I and another (both of us young kids?) are about to be tortured and bullied.  Our friends are walking away, not believing.  An old friend (now dead) walks away.

It's set in an elegant country hose, complete with furniture.  Part of me is feeling the enfolding catastrophe.

Before, an old colleague (at the time I last had the nightmare?) has previously saved my job, thanks to management consultants...

Yes, a jumble.  I'm writing it down so it'll go away.

This had happened before when I become happy (eg on Christmas day)

It no longer Pings me back.

But in the run of things,

Does it really matter?

I have a character called Marilyn (Marilyn Peterson)

I also have a friend called Marilyn.  Once, I helped her draw up some legal documents, using her full name.

Whenever I begin to type 'Marilyn' in my novel document, MS Word helpfully suggests MARILYN ROBERTA JAMES.

Just as when I type 'nov' for novel, it wants me to choose November instead.

If I want my characters to exchange letters, MS Word prompts the Office Letter Writing Wizard, complete with reference number, 'your faithfully' and my own name and address.

To avoid this (and ok, for the  sake of brevity) my hero and heroine now write each other e-mails/

Cretin program.

I want Word for Writers.  Word for Scrooge.

I don't have much of a role to play in their mother/daughter psyhco drama -  since being sent away to boarding school aged 9.  My sister likes me to be there so I can stay with our mum while Sis goes Hunting on Boxing Day...

Yeah; we live on different planets.

Anyway, I've decided not to go - but I have been able to speak to either Sis or Mum about it (normally I speak to my mother six or seven days a week).  Sis has switched her phone directly to her mobile - which she hasn't answered in 7 attempts (possibly she's always out of range).  She's left me one message, so I know there's been no disaster.

The phone switch off is probably because my mum won't be able to hear it ring.  And her deafness precludes a proper conversation if she did answer. (A phone with an amplifier costs £20).

Last night I left a tired messages saying I wasn't going to come.  I could hear myself sounding defensive, whiney - I wanted to speak to someone in person.  Have some sort of dialogue.  Tell most of the truth.

This morning the phone is still off -  Sis on another frenetic trip somewhere.  Anything to avoid her real feelings.

Days like today, I hate her.  My 'family' doesn't function.

Details, details.

The fact is, our days will be get longer for the next 6 months.  As long as the fog lifts soon, I'll no longer be plagued with irrational fears that the sun will disappear for ever.

My editor/ reader/editorial agent sent me an e-mail the night before last (2 am) full of praise for the revisions I've made to the first 3 chapters of my novel.  The changes she suggests are as trivial as removing an adverb, altering the odd bit of phrasing.

In other words, I'm almost there.  For the first time I dare hope that Low Life Games will actually be published.  That I can stop thinking of myself as a worthy, obsessed might-have-been writer.

[Like my dad - but tonight, for once, I'll leave him and psycho-babble out of it.  This is about me.]

Yes, I have got more work to do on the other chapters.  Some is no more than sb-editing, some needs more fundamental work.  But I now know I can do it...

Of course to get it published is a different matter.  Hopefully, I'll be entertaining you with the saga of that next year.  A steep hill to climb, but a different hill.  I can do it!  It's more than good enought to be published, for the moment that's all that matters.

Five years writing this story... ten years before struggling with others.  Always 'showing promise', often good, great in paragraphs.  Never quite there...  but now - I can't describe how good this makes me feel.

And a little bit scared.  I'm out of my comfort zone, good and proper.

First of all, an attitude of benign resignation.  Then making sure I had all the necessary documents with me.  A few unecessary ones, to be safe.  And something to read.

The queue stretched as far back as the diaries and plastic rulers.  Much as I'd expected.  An hour waiting ahead?  More?  I was go