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Posts archive for: May, 2007

  • London Town Centre

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-31 – 20:27:29

    I met two young men on the tube today, wearing jackets and ties.

    "Which stop is for the town centre?" one of them asked.

    "Well, where do you want to see?  London is very large," I added, perhaps unnecesarily.

    After consulting each other they decided on Victoria. "We would like to find cafes and bars."  I suggested that Victoria wasn't the best place for that, and told them where to change to get to Leicester Square from where they could explore Soho and Covent Garden.

    Two Polish law students, from Gdansk.  They wanted to find a post graduate law course they could take in London University.  They were pleased when I told them how to find the LSE.

    "Have you got any Polish friends in London?" I asked.

    "No."  Probably my question sounded as odd to them their desire to find London's town centre had sounded to me.

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  • George W - it's just too easy

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-30 – 16:50:48

    Would I be funnier if I rolled up my sleeves?

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  • Narrative Voice/2

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-30 – 14:10:30

    Meanwhile [arrow], I have been giving a lot of random, sometimes rambling, thought about what to write next.  In the past I have started too soon, which meant all hell to pay in the revision and editing process.

    A few weeks ago I posted several possible first lines - but none of them pulled me enough to make me think this is the one.

    A friend suggested one of my random-phrases-in-a-conversation as a title "The Reluctant Man."  Well, maybe...

    The important thing is for me to find a strong, individual, sustainable narrative voice.  Once I can find a character (or two) I want to write a story through, I sense that they story itself will become clear.  And, to avoid what I call "autobiogrising" (when the writing is trying to incorporate "what actually happened" into a work of fiction) I want this narrator-character (or possibly characters) to be as far from my own as possible.

    A couple of weeks back I mentioned beginning to read The Observations by Jane Harris  (Faber paperback £7.99) - which has one single funny and convincing narrative character. (a 15 Irish girl born in 1849)  This voice carries the 525 page book, past some slightly unfeasible plot twists, no problem.

    So many novels, however well written, do not convince as being the thoughts and feelings of the hero [ine] or narrator.

    Anyway, that's what I think.  And if anyone sees me taking  a nap or apparently behaving in a lazy, couldn't-care-less way - remember  am searching for a new Narrative Voice (like perhaps Glen Miller, searching for a new Big Band Sound) - a voice that could make my fortune.

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  • A Narrative Voice

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-30 – 12:38:43

    Some of you may have been wondering what's happened to my career/calling/pretensions as a novelist since I announced I was going to self publish Low Life Games, my erotic but literary novella.

    I, like most of you, assumed the self-publishing process could be pretty swift - and, compared to the over-a-year that ordinary publishes usually take to bring a book out - d.i.y publishing can a hell of a lot quicker.  However, my novel - like any other - needs a dose of 'publisher's editing' before it's finally ready for print - and the person I want to do that (who has helped me through the last two drafts) is busy for the next six weeks or so. So everything's got a bit on hold.

    Of course I should be planning a marketing campaign (any suggestions welcome) but I never decide what to eat until the waiter takes the order.  In other words - until I know everything in the project is finally go-go-go, I find it hard to take specific decisions.

    Meanwhile,,,,,

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  • A song about no Sex

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-28 – 23:28:25

    Olga turned me on outrageously
    Mouth open eyes dirty over me
    Grinned sideways every time she strutted past.
    Her thong rose above her Primart jeans,
    A different pair for each lunchtime of the week.

    There was no sex.

    Anne told me her biography,
    Footless, fancy free
    Until Jake arrived, now in the pram,
    “You’d make a great dad,” she said to me.

    There was no sex.

    Emma had screwed adulterously
    With all the guys in Accountancy.
    I’m all through you’ll have to do,
    She said and goosed me in the arse.
    Her room was carpeted with unwashed underwear,
    And stuff stolen from Tracey Emin’s flat.

    There was no sex.

    Felicity was in love with me,
    She wrote poems and ate everything I cooked.
    Each night we talked about the world's catastrophe,
    And when I tried to change the subject, she slept.
    We were friends not lovers obviously,

    There was no sex.

    (inspired by a Comment from Time Killing Kid, although nothing like this ever happens to him)

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  • Each night she dreams of Monsters

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-28 – 00:25:49

    I longs to swim in the glittering browness of her eyes,
    She stares back, makes no fun of my pretension.

    Her accent reminds me of Austrian symphonies,

    But when she sleeps she always dreams of monsters.

    She’s young, but old enough to know.
    She’s bright and far from destitute,
    She desires so much from life
    Confused perhaps she longs to change the world
    Or maybe just control the space around her.
    Her smile makes friends of everyone she sees.

    Pity that she always dreams of monsters.

    There’s nothing I can do.

    I am me, she is you.

    I’m full of plans and courses she can take,
    Full of shit she says when drunk, with PMT,
    There’s no way she’ll let me help her destiny,
    She’s so much happier to be
    Alone, asleep
    And troubled by her monsters.

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  • The Unbearable Dysfunction of Being Weston

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-27 – 19:54:22

    Home phones, I've decided are really only there for relatives to phone.  There is something about a Sunday, especially, which inhibits friends from getting in touch, but makes family think they are facing in open, nay welcome goal.

    First my mum.  She rarely phones unless I'm ill, but now she needs a twice daily report on my flu.  I try to decide, live, how I'm feeling... better certainly, but on the other hand...  Perhaps I should announce a miracle recovery.  "Are you feeling like lunch?"  "Actually, I've only just had breakfast."

    Then it's my half-sister's turn.  She wants to talk about the legal contract we are due to be signing with some property developers.  Da-dee-dah, dah de dah.  I answer her questions and keep cool.  She obsesses about her 2  'children' c 25 and 29.  As always she hints of her envy at me having the biggest share of the land profits if there ever are any.  I do all the hard work on it and have the know-how.  Dah?

    I venture out for the first time in six days to my French cafe over the river for a quiche and salad.  Back I unplug the phone...  and when I replug it, of course my other sister phones - the one you know about.  She is going on safari holiday on Thursday, I'm about to send the money she lent me back, but she manages - probably Guilty - to sound as miserable as ever.

    Actually, talking to sis in this mood is rather like an attempted seduction by a strange kind of junkie..  "Go on, you know you want to - come down to the Land of the Permanent Mains Hum with me. Let's talk about throwing ourselves in front of the Moscow Express.  Let's act out the theme tune to M.A.S.H...."  If only I agreed with her unstated belief that life isn't worth living, we might become very close.

    Meanwhile, during the day my mother has developed a boil in a place she cannot mention to me as a man.  She is obviously in pain.  And there were no subtitles for her on Coronation Street tonight.  Gloom, gloom.

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  • A Gormfull of Google

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-27 – 13:25:01

    Ok.  All us Brits know what gormless means (see below)

    But what is Gorm? A fun Danish website...

    No way. Gorm stands for "Graphical Object Relationship Modeller" and is GNUstep's easy-to-use interface designer.

    Cool down Dude. The word belongs to IKEA | Storage systems | GORM storage ... shelf sections $48.99 Available to buy online ...

    Nothing whatever to do with cheap furniture.  GORM is Grails' object relational mapping (ORM) implementation. Under the hood it uses Hibernate 3 (an extremely popular and flexible open source ORM ...

    You need real maps for ours.  One model from Stardot Technologies, costing about 200 pounds sterling, and is sited at Glenmore Lodge (map ref 986095), 6km NNW of the Cairn Gorm summit ...
    Gorm oil field

    Are you all gormless?  Gorm the Old (Gorm den Gamle) was King of Denmark in the mid-900s.

    Gorm learns of the death of his son Canute
    Gorm learns of the death of his son Canute
    He was the father of King Harald Bluetooth. Gorm is one of the most misinterpreted figures ever in Danish history. Often maligned as a cruel old dotard and a staunch heathen, his ancestry descends from Danes who ruled East Anglia, one of whom was named Guthrum, a form of the name Gorm.

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  • Gormless Spellcheckers

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-27 – 13:03:22

    Of course, sv, "Gormless" is not recognised by the Firefox Spellchecker - because it's not a word used in the US ofA...


     The English-to-American Dictionary (aka English for stupids)

    G (exracts with 'definitions' mostly ommitted)

    gaffe n.
    gaffer n.
    gear lever n.
    geezer n
    Geordie n..
    get off v. In the UK, getting off with someone involves snogging them.
    giddy adj.
    git n.
    glass v 
    gob n., v. 
    gobshite n.
    gobsmacked adj.
    googly n.
    Gordon Bennett expl….
    gormless adj. A person who is gormless is someone slightly lacking in the common sense department; a bit daft.

    American – someone who thinks British English is a weird dialect.

    Spell checker – a guardian of American, commercial English

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  • The Weakest Tag

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-27 – 00:24:11

    7 facts about me that you might find interesting...

    1   I once won a fight in a boxing ring.

    2.  Everyone else who lives on my side of the street is a nun.

    3  Once I skipped bail in Australia, for a speeding charge, and resisting arrest. They took my finger prints.

    4  At my first boarding school, I used to pee out of the window at night, because we weren't allowed to use the loo.

    5  In the seventies, I  lived in house that had been the scene of a gruesome Edwardian murder commemorated in Madame Toussauds.

    6.  I had a tab of E at my fiftieth birthday party.

    7.  Oh, I don't know - I'm allergic to penecilin and rye bread, and hate the taste of corriander.

    [8. I confess to hating chain letters/ e-mails, even from friends]

    Scroogy spoilsport

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  • Memes and Grumps

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-26 – 15:55:24

    My flu symptoms are receding, normal temperature again, but still feel weak, a bit grumpy.  [As a matter of fact, I would much appreciate the gift of a single rose from a hitherto unknown admirer.]

    Meanwhile, memes are a bit easier on the brain than James Joyce or Wittgenstein

    [Thanks for the link, subville, to Blogthings]. 

    In the last half hour I have discovered :
    (a) I can be a great, supportive friend
    (b) I am 52% Aquarian and
    (c) a 22% shopaholic
    (d) I'm the polar opposite to my mother. 
    (e) And the best to last....

    "You Are 0% American You're as American as Key Lime Tofu Pie
    Otherwise known as un-American!
    You belong in Cairo or Paris...
    Get out fast - before you end up in Gitmo!"

    Now I'm really feeling better!

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  • Big Brother - Down Under, Out?

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-26 – 11:37:51

    Dad's death to stay a secret

    By Rebekah van Druten. Posted: Friday, May 25 2007 .

    [from ABC Online, Australia]

     

    Big Brother: Emma (m) with other contestants. (Photo: Supplied)

    Yesterday news websites and online forums were abuzz with reports that Big Brother contestant Emma's estranged father had died.

    Apparently Raymond Cornell passed away in a hospice last week and it was his dying wish that his daughter not be informed until after she left the Gold Coast compound.

    Producers stayed silent, outraging fans of the reality TV show.

    But today Endemol Southern Star has released a statement, saying Emma will be informed about her father's death "in private" when she is evicted from the house.

     

    "Big Brotheris observing the explicit request from her family that she not be informed of his death. Everyone who is part of Big Brother is very sympathetic to her situation."

    She is not up for nomination this week.

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  • No sex please, we're a responsible institution

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-25 – 15:16:50

    I have described the circumstances leading up to my shot-gun wedding (and then the late miscarriage) elsewhere in this blog.

    But, while writing the post below I remembered a little incident before we knew for sure that my girl-friend was pregnant.  She was having some break-through bleeding.  Could this be a feeble but genuine period?  We went to the main library in Southampton to try and find out.



    Not only were there no books about sex, reproduction or human biology on general display - all the relevant entries in the encyclopedias had been carefully torn out by library staff.  I discovered later that this was common practice at the time.

    The time?  January 1965.

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  • The Virginal Orgasm

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-25 – 13:56:34

                           


    We were already almost halfway through the sixties but we didn't know it at the time.  The first time I slept with a woman was an anti climax for both of us, and it got worse.  She had lots of admirers and several lovers before.  As tacfully as she could, my future wife (she got pregnant in month 3 of the relationship) pointed out my shortcomings.

    In a secondhand bookshop I found a book, first published in 1929, about a Husband's Sexual Duties to his Wife.  It was probably by Havelock Ellis, the world's first sexologist. 

    The book was very earnest and stern.

    Don't expect me to get the language right from memory, but it told me about The Necesssity of Foreplay (with diagrams of an unerotic woman's body to tell me where to touch) Being Sensitive to Her Needs and How to Give a Woman an Orgasm.


    Well gals, you may think this is all very laudable - but actually the tone was very condescending to women.  It reduced  passion to mechanics.
    It denied female responsibility and autonomy.  And it made me feel inadequate and miserable, my wife frustrated and angry.

    The sex got worse. I never really got the hang of it until I started committing adultery.

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  • One Last Heave

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-24 – 23:16:24


    Henry's Heave 2nd Best In State
    Dunn Daily Record, NC - 8 hours ago
    Cape Fear Christian Academy's LaWanda Henry had the second-best distance for the girls' shot put reported this spring among North Carolina prep athletes.

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  • Fever Patch

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-24 – 09:59:19

    My last post was in error - as far as I can tell 'cos it's quite hard to concentrate.  It wasn't the blood-pressure medicine that made me feel ill yesterday - it was a build-up to 'flu.  High temperature in the night, and not much sleep.  Sweats, low-level delirium.

    In a way, though, being ill is making me feel better... I sense I have been building up to this illness for weeks.  If only I could sweat my negativity away and get on with living...  It's nice, after having spent so long battling, to wallow in a bit of self indulgance

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  • If I had one wish...

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-23 – 21:00:59

    ... I would fall asleep now and wake up in two months time.

    Someone else would have found me a place to live and moved me, unpacked the boxes...

    Actually, that quite a few wishes.

    This evening I began to take these pills the GP has prescribed.  They make my face feel hot, make me feel listless, tired. Frankly deeply depressed.

    I am meant to take the pills for six weeks, until my blood pressure drops. Then I can have a general aneasthetic while they repair my unbilical hernia.

    The only reason for my blood high pressure - I think - is having to sell my house and move.  And pretend to my mother everything is all right.  And visit the hospital and the doctor.

    I am almost delirious.  It would be cathartic to kill a few people.  Please try to stop me.

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  • Reinvention Song

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-23 – 17:34:37

    A first draft, yet to be set to music - not to be taken too seriously.

    A blinding flash,
    A raw food diet,
    On the Road to Damascus,
    Figuratively.
    Love and caring,
    Fruit and chicory. -
    It's time I got myself reincarnated
    Again.

    An epiphany,
    A Freudian slip,
    A change to boxer shorts,
    Low clorestorol,
    No temper tantrums,
    A confrontation with some nasty thing
    That happened in the past.
    An old friend who turns out to be
    A publisher of pornography,
    On the look out for literary class.
    Yes, it's high time I got myself reincarnated
    Again.

    A sober anniversary
    Of the one time I took LSD,
    Hypnotic Vision,
    A mortgage on unbelievable terms.
    A turning round,
    A realisation,
    Meaningful sex
    Not Masturbation.
    A bedtime smile,
    A new beginning
    With low caffeine in the morning.
    For goodness sake
    There's got to be a way
    I can get myself reincarnated
    Again

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  • Against Enlargement

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-23 – 15:01:01

    Well, I never...  According to the sixth unsolicited e-mail on the subject today:


    Over 98 percent of men would increase penis size if they knew how.

    Not me.  I'm neurotic about a million things, but not this one.  Mines niether neither gigantic or miniscule. 

    Should I be worried?

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  • Popular Confusion

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-23 – 00:03:44

    It's a bit confusing...

    ... why so many more people are visiting Too Much to Declare at the moment.  But welcome, anyway.

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  • Back to Reality

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-22 – 20:12:51

    Now that my uncle's estate has been distributed, my sister has ofcourse every right to ask me to pay her back all the money she lent me to get thru' the Vanessa debacle.  And she is asking for slightly less than I expected

    But I do know if that our roles were reversed I wouldn't be so stingey.

    Still that's life - roles are seldom reversed.  Sis would never have go involved with anyone like Vanessa; and I would have never have got involved with anyone remotely like her [eternally almost ex-] husband.

    The good news that she my [younger] sister no longer any right to Worry about me or make helpful suggestions.

    I'm not broke.  I can find a way though somehow...

    It doesn't look as if this blog is ending any time soon.

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  • Toppish Blog? Surreal

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-21 – 23:35:48

    Turning my computer on just now I landed up not on the usual BCUK Homepage, but a list of the site's Top Blogs (for some reason I had to log in).  And I was amazed to see that Too Much to Declare had been listed as number 7 in the Top Blog List. 

    Why?  What was so particular about yesterday?  Is no one else I know (beside Kevin at number 2) getting any hits at all?  Perhaps it was all those Comments welshceltgirl and I exchanged over the weekend.  Maybe I have been up there for weeks.  It could be, of course, that the system is totally random.What does it matter?


    Well, I have to admit it being number 7, however meaningless, is slightly good for the ego - after an evening spent representing my mother at her Residents Association Meeting.  My principal achievement was to get all significant decisions postponed until the next meeting on October 1st, when I hope my sister will attend instead.
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  • We're all going to Hell (Official)

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-20 – 20:41:45

    The web has treasures in its most obscure corners.  Today I can bring you news that Forgiveness is itself a Sin:

    Words of Jesus from A Course in Miracles: Dear ones, because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good. Pardon is no escape in such a view.

    So hey - lets party!

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  • Pie/Sky/Up/Down

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-20 – 10:43:02

    http://www.free-pictures-photos.com/clouds/index.htm  
    It's pie in the sky to think we have the Right to be Happy.
    On the other hand, you and I are under
    No Obligation to be Permanently Miserable    .
    The image “http://gutenberg.net.au/widger/later/purgatory.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    How many of my parallel Alecs would feel obliged to be miserable?  See the Meme 3 posts below
     

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  • Smiling after all

    by alecweston Pro @ 2007-05-20 – 00:37:23

    Saturday has been one of those solitary days (the post about my mother reported second hand)...  one of those solitary days that the Comments I got around midnight really cheered me up.

    At about the same moment, I found a book to read:  The Observations by Jane Harris, set in Scotland in the 1860s, narrated by a servant girl.  Every page is bringing a new smile to my face.

    Funny how my mood can change

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