Too Much To Declare

Halfway down Whitehall, a motorcycle policeman is making some strange balletic gestures.  He looks like a clownish actor in a bad Italian film.

He's stopping the traffic.

A convoy of three cars drives, very slowly, out of Downing Street.  I can't see who is inside, but they all look important.  I assume one of them is Blair, but I later see on the News that he gave lunch to Sarkovsky, the Thatcherite candidate in the French Presidential elections (his main opponent is Ms Royale a centre-left "socialist", so Sarkovsky is logically Balir's new best friend).

How self satisying must it be, to have traffic stopped for you, day after day.  How pleasantly cut off from real life you must feel.  Or have you forgotten about real life? 

Take extensive notes.

There's an old Western playing.  Almost immediatly, our heroes shoot half a dozen guys dead in a bar.

Watch with Mother.  Great family viewing.  We take this sort of thing for granted.

Yet, it's against the TV Guidelines - any time of the day or night - to show corpses on the News.  Sometimes, it's true, in Bagdad, there's no avoiding them - but producers go to great efforts to cut dead bodies out of transmitted footage as much as possible.

Cowboys - fiction - that's different.  Pistol killings hardly rate as what the regulators call "moderate violence."  All that matters is that we don't see any pain suffered.  And no regrets, minimal grieving.

A great message for children.   Good entertainment before Countdown.  Sanitised homicide.

What a strange culture we live in.

Well, it turns out it may be physically possible.

I'm serious.  Or rather Bryan Appleyard is.  He's written a new book called How to Live Forever or Die Trying:  On the New Immortality.(Simon and Schuster £12.99)   He argues that, with current and near-future developments in medicine, there is no need for us to fall apart and stop working.

Appleyard, and others, apparently believe in what they call "medical immortality" - swould still be killable by violence or accident, but otherwise able to go on and on.  And on.

Apparently, with medical advances, we wold soon be able to go back to being... say 29 (or get there first if you are a younger reader)

There was a review in the Guardian yesterday.  I will try and add a link later.

Strange.

This all began to change about March time last year, when I got into blogging big time.  And now, blogging or not, it rarely feel such a downer.

Even today, when an IBS attack stopped my creativity right in its tracks.  Even writing here felt impossible till now. (memo: avoid bread, all the time)

My good feelings helped by the Australian Open Tennis Final, live from 8.30 this morning on the (marxist, ha, ha) BBC.  Federer was amazing as usual (strangely, though, when he plays you can hardly ever see his eyes), but his opponent, Golzales, a Chilean gave as give as he's got (very fluent in the rallies) and was occasionally brilliant.

I liked the exhuberance of the Chilian fans - of course, Melbourne is nearer to Chile than it is to Switzerland.

The only negative was the Brits commentating - two never-have-been-greats, hypnotised by Federer.  We needed Macinroe or Becker.

Yes, Federer is a genius - but the racket are so light and fast these days (even I can hit an occasionally decent shot).  He could never had played the way he does in Connor's or John Mac's day, even Sampras'.

But I'm realistic.  they'll never make me a tennis commentator.

She refuses - as she has for years, though more unnecesarily by each monthly banks statement - to believe she has enough money to live quite well and without constant anxiety.  But that means she would be no longer a victim - and she has built her whole life on this.

I do want to say more, much more - but I am totally done in from the emotional experience - and getting up too early to catch the train etc. I may write more on the subject tomorrow - or I may have moved on.

But I took a decision I may later regret (reverse it if I don't blog it for the world to see).  If I do get my novel published, it's going to have my own name on it.  And if it precipitates horror, disbelief and disgrace by association down in Motherland, so be it.

A few words, maybe a sentence, then downstairs, a lot of pacing, then back up the staircase to my keyboard.

The creative process takes longer than it used to, even a few months ago.  But I think I'm making fewer mistakes.  More important, I'm beating myself far less.  Growing older but - incredibly - less grumpy.

Leopard spot-changing?

I became obsessed.  In the shower I adapted the song from West Side Story:
Lucinda, Lucinda, Lucinda!
Sing it loud and there's music playing,
Sing it soft and it's almost like praying..

How sad is that?  I joined a couple of Lonely Hearts sites.  No Lucindas there - a couple of Lucys and Lucille, 18, an Arsenel fan, from Coulsdon.

One afternoon, in the French cafe I go to, I overheard the proprietor on the phone:
"Non, Lucinde, absollument pas."
But I might have misheard.  Anyway I didn't think it was tactful to ask him about it.

It was hopeless, of course. 

Then I got a text.  "Meet me at Heathrow tomorrow, T3  ex BA1622 x Lucinda"

It was a joke, a set up.  I got to the arrival lounge early, held up a sign.

A woman of 35, 40 walked towards me, waving.  Until I saw her eyes I didn't think she was particularly attractive.  Her eyes were black and shiny.  In colour they matched her short hair, tee shirt and jeans.

"This is ridiculous," she said.  She kissed me, nibbled my lips.  "I've never done that before," Lucinda claimed, pulling away after several erotic seconds.  "I've decided to live life on the spur of the moment." 

I couldn't think of anything to say. I couldn't place her accent.

"Look, I'm catching a flight to Berlin in a minute, but when I get back we can meet properly - if you like."

"Berlin?"  I repeated stupidly.  "When will you get back?"

"My husband wants to get together again."  She shrugged her shoulders, pulled a face, gestured.  "Perhaps a couple of days."

When we said good-bye, Lucinda said, "It could be fun, you and I.  It could be disastrous."  Her face seemed to light up when she said disastrous.

We were on the way to King's Cross, stopped outside Stevenage for no apparent reason. 

The guy pretended to be asleep.  "I've got a room,"  I volunteered.  I'd sleep on the couch.

"I'm not sure if I trust you." 

"Suit yourself."  I'd had bad luck with relationships when I was too obliging.  Not that I was fantasising about a relationship.

We caught a taxi from King's Cross, although the tube might have been quicker.  She wanted to make phone calls.  By accident, I touched her thigh when the driver took a sharp corner fast.  She raised an eyebrow.

She liked my house.  She liked my waterbed.  "Let's get this over and done with," she suggested.  Her eyes said, "You'll have to do.  I'm randy."

I was - shocked.  It was a long time since anything remotely like this had happened to me.

Our sex was a disaster.  Eventually she turned away and had a lonely climax.  Myself, I didn't bother.

Afterwards, downstairs, whisky in hand, she looked almost happy.  "You'd love my friend, Lucinda,' she told me. 

"Really?"  I couldn't imagine loving a friend of hers.  "Lucinda?"

"I'll introduce you."

Nevertheless, the tennis cheered me up.  For four hours - until almost 3pm - 2am Tuesday in Melbourne - BBC-2 realyed the spellbinding match between Raphael Nadal and Andy Murray.

Long-term readers of this blog may recall I confessed to a homophobic crush on Rapha during last year's Wimbledon.  He ability never to give up, to get every ball is prodigious - but Murray matched a lot of this.  Incredible rallies, angled shots. The 6-1 first set score didn't reflect how close the Scot (lease pleasing to watch, but very inventive and varied in his game) came to winning.

Andy Murray is the first UK player in my lifetime who plays tennis and not 'British'.  He never creates the impression that when he wins it's only as a prelude to failure.  One is never tempted to crouch behind the sofa in embarassment.  He's nothing like Hemman, Jeremy Bates before him. Mottram, Virginia Wade...    He's nothing like most of British sport.

Still, I'm glad Rapha Nadal won.  Not my pin-up, but my hero.  Courage, concentration, adaptabily and persistence (aka patience) are  qualities I'd like to have more of.  Unfortunately I've passed the optimm age for wearing a cut-off tee shirt

But, at the moment I haven't got time to give my full attention - especially for those autobiog posts I enjoy writing.

One of the reason I began to blog was to break the spell of loneliness, hyperintrospection - and, lets face it self pity.  Most of my early posts do now read back very sollemn.

Now - with occasional lapses - I feel differently about myself.  And blogging doesn't feel so - necessary.

I don't want to finish in anti-climax (let alone a wimper).  Or a bang, without warning.

And perpetual re-incarnation - frankly I do find it hard to believe in.

However, the thought that this is our only chance of life is pretty scary.

Best of all would be two chances - the first time a rehearsal.

To quote Anthony Newley:
If I could live twice,
I'd make life paradise
For someone really nice
Like you, Evie.

Though I doubt if I'd choose someone called Evie.  And, come to think of it, most of my Rehearsal-life girlfriends have prefered to inhabit hell or purgatory.  So next time around, I might concentrate more on making life Paradise for Alec Weston.

Except that whatever I blog can be read within seconds, perhaps by a stranger (compare and contrast with a novel without a signed-up publisher).

It would be nice to know that someone was ot there - Friend, passer-by, foe.