Too Much To Declare

He drove me to Ealing Film Studios - which brought back a memory like a fit of vertigo.  I first worked there 40 years ago, one of my first jobs for the BBC.  The only task I remember is handing Twiggy her dressing room keys.

My friend said the rough cut was an hour long, perhaps a little longer. The director said one hour forty five.  It felt like eternity.

The film was dreadfully organised, and until the end as visual as Radio 4.  Afterwards I made some tactful suggestions for improvement, but frankly the task is hopeless.  Depressing.

It took ages to get home on the District Line (or rather ages for the train to leave).  I felt giddily tired and hungry.  And back home - I found I'd missed a crucial phone call.  Why hadn't I given the guy my mobile number? - It would have given me an excuse to miss some of the rough cut.

So this Reuters report from Beijing today will have to do:

My Netgear router has obviously got an Industry Standard 53 week life expectancy - one week longer than the gaurantee. 

Never mind. Allegedly, my Mac man will be round at 10am tomorrow with a new Router and a batch of diagnnostic tests.  By my reckoning, I will have no more problems until the first full week of March next year.

Meanwhile, while I wait this is - well, my last post.

Apparently my Netgear router was locked into a stale session - I think that's what the guy on the helpline said, when I eventually tracked down the right number.  The router needed an hour's bed rest before rebooting.

As you can guess, computing is not my specialist subject.

It was hell not being able to get through - especially to here.  I felt so pathetically cut off.

What would it feel like if the whole www went down one day - for all of us?  I seem to remember the was a kind of civilisation before it started.

1 Take the book nearest me:  Writer and Artist's Year Book 2007

2 Turn to page 123: headed Books, Getting Started

3 Fourth, fifth & sixth sentences on the page:
"There is more competition to get published than ever before.  Hundreds of Manuscripts (also referred to as typescripts) of would-be books land on the desks of publishers and literary agents every day.  Both publishers and literary agents acknowledge that potential authors have to really dedicated (or perhaps very lucky) in order to get their work published."

Anyway, last night - like the night before - was different.

My best, male, friend has been sent to prison.  I'm not sure why he's there, or why I don't got to see him, although there's a back story about his heroism that I've now forgotten.

The dream ends before it becomes sexually explicit

My tags are limited to Friends (or ex-Friends, 'cos I don't check often; couldn't BCUK make the page look a little more exciting?)

Well, there are a lot worse epithets than "Miserable Bastard"

Am I going to delete it?

Nah

I could tell I had some reservations.  There was a back story that was not entirely clear.  Not that I didn't get on well with her.  And she looked beautiful and sexy all over (as far as I could remember; last night all I could see her face)

Wow!  All a big shock to me.  More of a shock when, waking up, I realised I'd been dreaming mostly about Vanessa.

I thought by then Knacker of the Yard would have charged one of his close staff with cash-for-peerages, or related, offences.  In the ensing political uproar, Blair's position would  become untenable.  A bit like catching Al Capone fiddling his tax return, but still a result.

But it's not going to happen is it?  I get the horrible feeling that Inspector Knacker isn't going to come up with the goods.  Or somehow Blair will find wriggle room.  The man has a para-hypnotic power to make all of us feel, at least some of the time, that he is invincible.

We need a cathartic end to his prepostrous reign.  Maggie cried when she left Downing Street.  The ousting of the Tories in 1967 felt for a glorious, misguided moment like a Revolution. (and I could list earleir examples).

A seemless, smiley handover to G. Brown (how many months before we'll all be bitterly disappointed?) will be no catharsis at all.

Tony announced today that he wants Britain to compete for the privilege of having part of the new Stars Wars Two missile sytem installed here (rather like winning the right to hold the Olympics?).  This is meant to be part of his legacy - he hopes to be reigning over us still in 5 years time - courtesy Brown or preferably Cameron.

(and I'm not a peadophile of a bestialist, either; not a heavy fetishist, for that matter)

But I don't feel my sexuality straightforward, or 'normal'.  To use academic jargon, unproblematic.

Perhaps all the rest of you heterosexuals out there feel all your desires fit into a nice clean 'straight' box, but I doubt it.

There should be another word.  'Hetero' is ugly, and just the Greek word for "other".  So, an acronym, perhaps?  Attracted to the Opposite Sex - AOS?  It sounds like a trade union.  SAOS?  Too like the School of Oriental Studies, or the SAS.

No more Hole!  Rejoice!

at 10.30, I happened to be walking round the corner on the way to Sainsbury's when I was almost run over by a truck with a pile of tar in the back.  The workmen inside had McNicholas badges. 

Twenty minutes five later, they were still sitting in their cab, dangerously parked, presumably waiting to be supervised.  But then, soon after, unsupervised, they filled the hole in a matter of minutes.  To their credit, they also took the barriers away - I thought they might need another specialist sub-contracter for that.

So, three and a half weeks after the Hole was dug, a fortnight after I first complained (and began to bore you silly with the saga) the job has been completed.  Whether or not my actions had the slightest effect I will never know.

Now, someone suggested here the other day that the Hole had some Freudian significance in my life.  Now it's gone, who knows what might happen?

Hell is other people.  Sartre said it first, and then too many others. Sartre wrote a play about people, after death, living in a room together, unable ever to escape.

Probably because of the heavy duty massage yesterday - I usually have a bad day-after reaction.  Or whatever. 

This is because - as Jon Snow told me dismisively when I challenged him about it once - that there is "no time" to provide subtitles. 

But I don't believe it.  There are plenty of French-English simultaneous translators.  Subtitles are provided for the deaf 'live' for live events. And anyway this report, like most, was recorded.

C4 News is meant to be serious, for intelligent people.  Many of its audience has a working knowledge of French.  And it is hard to judge eg Signore Royal, the Socialist candidate featured in tonight's report, if you can't hear the quality of her voice. 

The translating device - usually using reporters with no attempt to match the voice with the orginal speaker - is insulting, condescending and misleading.  It creates the impression of a world with one, Anglo-American language.  We are only allowed to hear the voices of public figures (and ordinary people) who speak English.

Yes, there are some documentary reports that are subtitled, but very few in news programmes.

I accept that some viewers don't like subtitles.  But, in fact, with digital TV, it would be easy to give us all the option.

Assume it's there, forever, until I tell you otherwise.

Assume strained but civil phone conversations with the Council official respnsible - excepet heis not "really" responsible.  Assume I'm put through to the wrong number, and cut off.

Assume I'm drawing on years of Assertiveness Training and Anger Management,

Reread Kafka.

She had a far healthier attitude to her (now deceased) mother than I have yet managed.  She moved to New York.

She specialises in Rolphing - which is a deep, pretty painful massage system that releases muscular tightness like a dream.  My shoulders and chest, for example, which tonight feel alive and open.

All this massage - and eating lunch out, and so on - despite discounts and continual restraint - is costing too much.

I'm in denial about my (lack of) money.  When did I last mention it here?  Besides the book, there possible sources of money on the horizon, which I can do little to help along.

It's a bit like waiting for sunrise while flying westwards in a plane.

At last I got the first three chapters off to the publisher's agent my posh fishmonger had introduced me to.  And the synopsis, and a covering letter.  I resisted the temptation of further revision, removing every exclamation mark and surplus commas.  Enough!  Enough.  Off to the Post Office...

Unfortunately I had no new A4 envelope.  So I put the papers into an old one, and bought a new one at the local PO's stationary section.

The only one they had was a tiny bit bigger.  At the Post Office Counter, they measured it.  "First Class," the clerk announced.  "One pound twenty four."

"What about this one?" I asked, as a matter of interest, passing through my second envelope in which the papers had fitted perfectly.

"That, First Class, the same weight would be 65 pence."

Still, nothing is too good for my agent might-be.  With luck, I should hear back from her by Easter...  Every night, I pray to the god of Patience.

That's when (like last night) our hero feels too excited, full of himself and does something stupid.

I had a great creative day yesterday and began to feel very good about mYself.  Ideas flowed, optimism unbounded.

A little too much, maybe.  I didn't eat properly.  After midnight I devised a "True Friend Quiz".  Others have used the quiz to see who knew them best. ie to do what it said on the tin. I, on the other hand, chose obscure or clever-clever questions that were almost bound to prove I had no true friends at all.

I'm trying to fit in the word 'hubris'

The cafe is also a delicatessen.  I phat (see tags), order, sit down and begin to read, when an enormous man in a flapping white suit squeezes through the door from the street.

No.  The story ends in anticlimax.  Eventually he pays without smiling and leaves with two heavy bags.