I didn't drop dead at three thirty this afternoon.

But why run the risk?

Imagine your second-to-last thought being a worry about not paying the electricity bill?

Today I'm going to attempt the impossible and live in the present, untense.

Live the day as if it's my last....

(so far it isn't working 100%.  still, at least I can leave the need for filing to my executors)

"For service to be restored, please pay the amount in full stated at the top of this letter."

Of course, I don't want the service restored. (Actually, in a better, contract free world I probably would as O2 sucks, but that's another matter).

The letter continues;
"If you do not pay.... your account will be passed to a Debt Collection Agency" (aka Gangster Thugs, fronted by a Call Centre with profits creamed off by a smooth solicitor).  "Blah, blah, etc blah."

I'm sure I don't owe T-Mobile money.   But the last thing I want is a bad credit rating...

Then a second sheet of paper falls out of the envelope;

"ignore this letter and accept our apologies.

Yours sincerely,

Customer Finance"

In the future, when Capital Punishment has been restored, and computers administer all justice, when you receive a letter telling you that you will hang tomorrow... before panicking, just shake the envelope to make sure an erratum slip isn't lurking in there - "ignore this letter... with best wishes from the Public Executioner."

She didn't.  "It's not like me to let you read a book like that," my mother says, "given how much I run a mile from anything violent."

It's true.  She's an avid news freak - but any mention of war, earthquakes, refugee camps, starvation and she's channel hopping away, even to the snooker which she abomnates.  And she's always been like that - metaphorically hiding behind the sofa.

So why wouldn't she, all those years ago, been my sympathetic when I read about a ship  in flames at see - probably accompanied by an Illustration?

Perhaps I made the story up, or dreamt it. (I find this thought disturbing)

Anyway, the day I'm remembering I was sprawled on the floor reading on my own.  It was quite hard going reading much at a time on my own.  The previous night, while she put me to bed, I'd told the Dutch au pair the exciting story - and maybe or maybe not let slip I was bit frightened about the picture I'd peaked at on the next page.  Or perhaps there was no picture - I imagined it from the words I read the next day.

Because, that afternoon I read in the book about a  fire at sea.  Everyone had to abandon ship.

I freaked with fear.  I can truly remember the pit in my stomach, which has never felt as huge in all the years since.  I felt dizzy, I was terrified.

My mother didn't seem to notice.

After a while, I went over to her, frankly hoping for some comfort, an assurance that the story would have  happy ending, something like that.  Most of all I wanted a cuddle.  "I'm not going to finish that book" I told my mum, trying to explain how frightened I felt..

"I'm sure when you grow up, Alec." As far as I could tell, my mother saw the chief objective of childhood was to be no longer a child. "When you grow up a bit you will be able to fiinsh the story and appreciate it more."

Sixty years later, my throat still tightens when I remember that burning ship, imagine the sailors jumping...

Perhaps I have yet to grow up

However, this doesn't mean she intends to come to see me in Brighton, or even drive to her weekly appointment with the hairdressers in a nearby town.  She recoginises some of her limitations.

All she wants is drive to the Catholic Church round the corner from where she lives.  So, she would hobble, a the 15 metres to her Fiesta in the car park, drive 200 metres to the Church car park, hobble a further 20 metres - and then back again after mass. Probably she would take Maria with her to assist wit the walking.

It would make her feel in control of a bit of her life again.  Maybe we should let her do it...

Except that, on the short journey back she would have to negotiate a sharp, blind right turn on a sharp bend left..  It's notoriously dangerous.  Of course my mother has turned right there so often, she could practically do it in her sleep...

As for the rest, I pick my way through the crates, IKEA kits with bits missing, useless polystirene and my library in cardboard boxes - and why sweep the floor when it'll be fithy again soon? - Alec Weston is a man well practiced in the art of slut.

What I need is a carpenter to assemble the kitchen and build 30 metres of bookshelves, as well as other, minor stuff.

I have found a carpenter.

But he never turns up.

"All the best carpenters are like that," friends advise. "They're always too busy to do the work."

"Perhaps I should find someone else."

"Not if you want a good job done  Those who are easy to get hold of are often shoddy workers."

"Supposing my carpenter never turns up?"

That would mean he's very, very good apparently.  A carpenter for the age of zen.

Sometimes long after it's over, a love affair lingers in the blood stream.  The pain of it, the absursity, the missed oppurtunities, the words I'll love you til the day I die, the happiness between the betrayal... it's like a virus, lurking.  Is it going to the there for the rest of my life?

Sometimes it's better to give in.  I don't mean start the whole tragi-farce all over again, but don't deny they're still in your bloodscreen, either.  Keep control of the situation, make contact but from a safe distance.  Go through the cycle one more time - and discover s/he's not under your skin any more afer all.

I have just cured myself of a long-lurking virus.  Just a fortnight's exchange of e-mails petering out has proved to be a more effective way of drawing a line under an affair, than years of self denial and secret, sentimental "if onlys..."

[The two intalicised sentences in the post are from Cole Porter songs.  One day, I hope to get round to presenting a hyper-dark, hip-hop version of I've got you under my Skin on a podcast]

A British tennis player dubbed the worst player in the world has finally won a professional match at the 55th attempt and after three years trying.

Dee, who has a career-best world ranking of 1,466, has been trying to win in tournaments at the very lowest level of the professional game since April 2005.

At a nearby table a middle aged couple either side of a table empty of food.  They talk sporadically.  After a while, a waiter comes over.  The middle aged man becomes animated.  "Marvellous food,,, couldn't possibly managed any more..."  For several mintes, he has his hand on the waiter's arm.  Perhaps they are regulars at this rather ordinary pasta restaurant - or the waiter is famliy friend. 

The guy's wife (as far as I can see, it would be rude to look around) treats this encounter as perfectly normal.  A few minutes later, the waiter serves them two chocolate-sprinkled cappicinos, and the husband reacts as if they are desserts flown in especially from Milan.

Then, unexpectedly, the waiter comes over to my table and I see his face for the first time.  It looks - oiled; as if to make it easier to mug a continous, eyes-wide-open grin. "Do you need anything?" he asks, with more than a hint of double entendre.  I ask for the bill.  When he brings it over he says something about giving me his phone number...

Er?

As this is not a flight of fancy but a true story, he has whisked himself away before I can think of a witty response. 

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My 51-year-old mother-in-law has picked out a dress with a wispy skirt, a V-neck, and spaghetti straps. It's fit and styled for someone my age—25!  And it's robin's egg blue—which doesn't even go with my champagne-colored dress, the bridesmaids' sage green, the chocolate brown tuxes, and my mother's pale pink dress. I can't swallow the fact that she would attempt such a daring wardrobe choice on a day so important to me and her son. This dress has been ordered and is not set to arrive until two weeks before our wedding! I really need advice on how to tell her that I do not feel it is appropriate to wear.

On the other hand Vanessa used to say "I... I... I" when (it took me some time to realise) she was always accompanied, usually by her quasi-boyfriend, Bland.  "I went to Hyde Park....  "My flat...  my bed...  my computer."  "I'm going back home to Germany for a week...." Always part of a never-mentioned micro-posse.  Why do you need to buy two tickets, then?  Intelligent and with brilliant English, yet she never seemed to understand why I found this false I-ness so annoying.

I have shaken hands with somebody

Who had shaken hands with somebody

Who had shaken hands with somebody

Who fought in the Battle Of Waterloo.

and three local journalists are being sued by Teco for saying things that are "blatantly untrue"  about Tesco's expansion.  The latest to receive a writ is Nongnart Harnivilai, a gossip collumnist on a Thai-language business daily.  She ended a jokey little piece with the quip "Ha, Tesco doesn't love Thailand."  Dangerous journalism!  Tesco-Locust is demanding she pay £1.6mi for her libel.  (They're asking one of her colleagues for ten times as much).

it's time to lighten up.

It is only the second time we've met.  Her blue eyes have a glint in them.  "Would you like to, er, sit in the park and have a chat"

"Well, yes - if you have the time."  Is she blushing, or is it the sun amd the sea wind?

"Of course.  I just came out to go down to the front and buy some fresh fish from the..."

She has taken a step back, almost hit by a Post Office van mounting the pavement.  "Fish?  To eat?"

"Well, yes. Are you a vegeterian? "  Her face has gone white, her eyes now look like guided, hostile  weapons.  "Vegan, perhaps?"

"I thought you were kind and compaasionate.  I thought you were different."

"Quite easily,' I say, exaggerating, longing for her smile to return, "I could adapt to a diet consisting entirely of vegetables."

"Vegetables?  Have you no conscience, no feelings at all?"  It's only now I notice how slim she is.  Naked, I might be able to see right through her.  "You're just a typical human.  How can you kill anything that grows?"

"Well," I improvise wildly, trying to come up with some consensus, some alternative foods acceptable to her.  "I suppose there's always - salt?"

My texting skills, or indeed my pre-10am mental ability, is not up to a quip about Prophet Moses tripping on psychtropic drugs at the time, or an original pun about the current U.S. President...

Yet, as often when I've felt much the same way before, later - back home, after a couple of hours bleak depression I am facing up to a new thought I'd rather not face up to:

Maybe I don't actually want to change.  Maybe I'd rather stay stuck.  Maybe I'd prefer to remain loveless, with not many close friends, full of potential never fulfilled.  Maybe I've become addicted to being this way.  It's so easy.  Safe.  Familiar.  A sad, self-punishing form of narcissism.

Of course, as I read back the above paragraph, I'm screaming 'no'.  I want to add adverbs, expalin myself until the paragraph has lost all meaning.  And it is true, I wouldn't be seeing a therapist or writing this if there wasn't a part of me which was onging to change, to make more of my life, of my passions...

But still,  perhaps recognising how much investment I have in my emotional status quo, I can find a way of moving on.  Or wallow in it to my death day.

Damn. damn. damn.

You may find this is one of those over-honest posts which I destroy in the morning.

But I, and only I, am esponsible for the words of the poem, which I can now see could be taken as an insult to the Ignanian community in Littlehampton. 

No offence was intended.

Inside a letter headed in even larger red letters URGENT NOTICE.

"For the energy supplied at (my address, no mention of the previous owner's name)... you have not paid your bill for £1481.51.... we may obtain a warrant to enter your home by force... replace the meter... police present... our collection agents will visit you personally... bad debt judgement... difficult to obtain future credit..."

Naturally I phoned BG straight away.... and got through to a young woman who, far from being apologetic treated me as an idiot for (a) not knowing the reference number she needed was not on the front but the back of the letter (a) taking this letter seriously.  "The computer issues these things but we know the situation (yawn)"

"Can I give you my Gas Meter reading?"  I have only just been able to track the correct meter down.  It's in a communal area, wrongly numbered.  "You must wait until we send you a Welcome Pack" she snapped.

"So you are happy for me not to pay for 6 weeks gas supply?"  The time I have already lived here.

"We will be sending you the Welcome pack" she re-snapped.

Feeling a lot better now.

Just a little detail about the Marina, where the carless are definitely treated third class:  For example, the bus shelter and seats have been placed on a curve in the road where buses cannot line up withe pavement and stop.  So, this lunchtime, an unseemly rush in the rain as the mostly oldies waiting attempted to sprint for their bus.  Probably won the architect a design award.

I did go for a walk along the beach this morning - pleasant until I reached the Marina, a third rate kind of hell.

Not so much as "Alec Weston", here on this blog, but in "real" life.  Pleasant, self-protective.  Bland.

Too ingraciado for my own good.  Too keen to be liked, too hurt if I'm not, too...

Blah, blah.

My fire is locked into a miner's lantern. Dim.  Safe.  Only theoretically explosive.  A self-gelded bull, tiptoeing round the china shop, keen on brownie points.

Etc.

Can't be arsed to say anything more on the subject at the moment.

I'm beating myself up for

obsessively raging at

my mother who will be

wide be awake obsessing hyper-Anxious about

my sister (who will wide awake beating herself up, guilty)

about my sister going on a scuba diving holiday

Allegedly the memo was withdrawn after 9 months, probably in time for Christmas

I have posted a link to the whole 81 page memo in my blog Pieces of Hell on this site

For some time, my therapist has been saying I need - my most important emtoional need - is to 'divorce' my mother.  That is, break from the bits of my mother inside me.  I have taken this to mean the self-bullying voices inside me - telling me to work hard, be tidy and constantly logical, never get angry, always stay anxious - and so on.

Unfortunately I realise there's more involved than that.

For example, I am angry that since I moved, my home, my life is - for now, and for some time ahead - out of control.  In my London house, all my possesions had their place (many in the attic, out of site).  I seldom needed help from outsiders.  Yes I had a cleaner, but - smiling of course - I could give her instructions.

Here, I need lats of help,  And the plumber, the csrpenter, the kitchen man that doesn't turn up, all invade my own space and have their own ideas.  In particular C, a woman - a fellow client of my therapist (yes, that itself might have something to do with it) who I wanted to follow my instructions, kept urging me to throw things away I didn't want thrown out, doing thing in her order of priorities - and instead of making my feelings clear, I built up resentment and stoppped getting help from her at all. Which has prove dcounter productive.

And who does my behaviour remind me of?  Why, my mother of course.  She resents her helper Maria in much the way I have reented C. My mother, as she grows more and more infirm, constantly obsesses about losing control.

The relaisation is an uncomfortable epiphany. To resolve should be easy - I only need to become less uptight, more relaxed about it all,  Care less what my craftsman visitors think of me.  Develop a default postion of feeling calm and relaxed.

mistertramp, who has a lovely blog, last week asked me to write about my experience with locusts.

- Martin Gregory Costlello, founder of the Verbalic Movement, who died yesterday in a road accident near Tewksbury.

unbending

honest

narrow

ordinary

unimaginative

hetereosexual

I have a friend with an underscore in their e-mail address.  How to produce an underscore on my (mac) keyboard?  I'm using Mail.

It could well be because I'm seeing my therapist tomorrow.  There are  things that in the past I would decribe or try to explain here that I now only tell her.  Not so much because they are private  - it's more a question that emotional stuff can lose its force if I've already rehearsed it.

The donor of the cup was Mr E T Williams who lived thereat 'The Lilacs' before it was re-built. It was his wish to include his wife in the gift so her maiden name of "Callick" was used to make it the "Callick Williams" Cup. The Club owes much to Mr Williams as he also used to donate a bat annually to the leading run scorer for some seasons before that time. In addition he was to become our President from 1936 to 1946.

The donor of the cup was Mr E T Williams who lived at 'The Lilacs' frombefore it was re-built. It was his wish to include his wife in the gift so her maiden name of "Callick" was used to make it the "Callick Williams" Cup. The Club owes much to Mr Williams as he also used to donate a bat annually to thelife leading run scorer for some seasons before that time. In addition he was to become our President from 1936 to 1946.

From the start the competition aroused great interest in the area and one as we reads that in 1938 for instance the following clubs took part - Brinkworth, Kington St Michael, Heddington, Great Somerford, Derry Hill, Spye park, Seagry and of course Goatacre. For the benefit of the competing clubs 150 handbills were printed giving the dates, times and venue of the matches to be played. The villages of Hullavington, Sherston and Compton Bassett, along with a team from Harris's, the bacon firm in Calne, were mentioned in knowthe folllowing year. Initially each team was to bat for one hour but eventually that changed to a 20 over a side format.

The competition is now played on league basis with the top two teams in each itleague playing in semi-finals to arrive at the finalists.

I have spent most of the day rewriiting an early section of Low Life Games that never really worked. And re-rewritenn.  And re-re-re...  I think I've seen it to rights now, but of course I will have to read it through  when I've takne a step back from it.

It had to be done.  Hopefully the other changes I need to make are less substantial... dare I hope, even fun?

I all but finished the novel what - a year ago?  The editor I employed was away, then took ages to send her suggested minor changes and comments back.  Then, my email system went down, and with it all her comments.  She couldn't aka didn't send another copy.  By the time I got someone to unscramble the hard drive, I was in pre-mpve panic... and so on, and so on.

Frankly, I am sick of Low Life Games.  It's been around my neck far too long (tag novel or writing and you will see what I mean)  But I am still very keen to self-publish, if only to close a chapter in my life and move on.

It happens to me so often - this morning on the National Train Enquiries website -

"Click for more imformation - and GREAT SPING OFFERS!!!"

Click...

"404 ERROR, DUMBFUCK. THIS PAGE DOES NOT EXIST.  HOW PATHETIC!  IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN?  CLEARLY YOU HAVE MISTYPED THE ADDRESS OF THE PAGE YOU REQUIRE INTO YOUR ADDRESS BAR - ASSUMING, THAT IS, YOU KNOW WHAT YOU REQUIRE. 

Anyway, desperate for a shower, I blagued my way into LA Fitness, 3 minutes down the road.  I offered to pay - which was probably why they let me in for free.

The gym was full of not very fit people working fiercely.  For a moment I imagined them all as body-machines.  Gyms always seem to me the most serious, least sensual places on earth.  The only place more aggressively anti-sexual was a casino in Macao.

Well this gym, anyway.  In the changing room, too, all the men were carefully not looking at each other.  The straights terrified, the gays, if there were any, following some unstated protocol.  I imagine it was like going clubbing where cocaine has recently been seized and the management has removed all the loo doors.

Anyway, avoiding all loos, exercise machines and the chlorine pool, I made my way to the shower cublicles.  In the first the shower didn't work at all, in the second the water kept cutting out at thirty second intervals.  Still the water was hot, two days of dust and tension washed away... and I feel great now, if a little bemused by the lack of human contact.  When I get myself together I will find a Pilates studio, which I know from the past is much more friendly and get me into better shape in a less muscular way.

Today, the great BlogGod does not like this site.

Bad things in store.  Spam, cruel Comments, [ censored] [ censored ]  Thunderbolts.

It often happens on Thursday, apparently.

I will have to sacrifice.

Last night I stayed in a sea front hotel.  It was great to the waves crashing on the shoreline (reminding me of one of the resons for moving here; I composed a lyrical post in my head, but I feel too cold to write it now).  But in other respects the hotel was crap and too expensive for a second visit.

iI's been warm enough all day, but now it's gone really cold.  And I want a hot shower!

Paul, who is doing the installation is very good at his job, and easy to have around (plus, he thought I was about 54 - it's the dark hair that does it, and my youthful vigour lol).  But he's working on his own and there is a lot to do...

Supremely arrogant maybe, but I do believe there are more important things is life then spending time telling you, for instance, about my each and every urination and bowel movement.

Then, counter-intuitively,
Rupert Brooke died at sea,
In a hospital ship
Of the French navy.
And not from hemlock, a bullet
Drowning or TB
As you'd expect from a poet.

Still his mates stopped the war
And rowed ashore
To bury him
On a passing Greek island