Search blog.co.uk

  • Sex? Seriously, though...

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-04 – 19:21:34

    @ 2006-10-11 - 21:01:18 revised

    I came across Roger again at a meeting a few years ago.  He had put on lots of weight, and lost most of his hair and revolutionary fervour.  In fact I'm not sure I would have recognised him if someone hadn't reintroduced me.

    But in the seventies Roger was beautiful, in a saturnine type of way (do I mean satanic?), a leading light in the Troskyist Workers Party, an intellectual, casually promiscuous.  Rodge the Trot, or Trot the Rodge. He identified with the Working Class because he didn't have a regular job.  At dinner parties, he lectured  guest on the politics of domestic labour, while others did the washing up. 

    In fact, several women claimed that they became militant feminists as a result of their brief encounters with him.  Roger Xxxxx, an unwitting founder of the Woman's Movement.

    For him - although I can only relate this at second hand, from several witnesses - sex was brief and formulaic.  Enjoyable enough, but frivolous.  After he climaxed, (not particularley interested in female partner's state of arousal) Roger would roll off from on top and resume the conversation which he had interruped a few minutes earlier :  perhaps an exegis on Stalin's betrayal of Lenin, bourgeios revisionism, or capitalism's declining rate of profit; maybe some comments about football or an appreciation of Morecombe and Wise.

    So his routine after sex was to light a cigarette and begin,  "Seriously, though...."

    Options:
    Tags:

  • calling all half-nerds

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-04 – 12:56:34

    That is, nerds that can think, in human terms beyond their own superior technical knowledge.  That is superior to me, technicalwise.  ie more or less everybody.

    I have a crap mobile phone.  I lost the last last one and replacing in a hurry I got conned by Phones Phuck Off.

    The thing is, my thumb's too big.  And my fingers.  Plus I wear strong reading glasses.  So I need the buttons to to be quite far apart.  And other stuff that only the nerdishly inclined might know about.

    There are lots of facilities I don't need - Sky Sports, for example, because I am allergic both to football and small screen TV watching.  Sat-nav or the address of the nearest Pizza or massage parlour is unrequired.  I want something easy to use but not something that screams geriatric.

    I'm with U@ - reword - 02 at the moment, so I could splash out for a iPhone.  But is it worth it?

    Options:
    Tags:

  • My Saturday Off

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-04 – 10:52:05

    By now, if this were a normal Saturday for me, I would be about to arrive at Guildford station.

    But today I am not goint to see my mother.  In fact I'm still in my dressing gown, probably going back to bed.  Wonderful.

    This week, some of the trains I catch are replaced by buses.  My next visit is next Wednesday.

    My mother is upset.  She still has Maria to look after her, but - despite Maria's intelligence and good English - they never manage to strike up a long conversation.

    By contrast, I indulge her, conversationally.  And then she likes to cross-examine me about all aspects of my life - and, as has been the case for more than fifty years - not listening to the answers.  Needless to say, this drives me crazy.

    I have come to realise that nowadays my batle with my mother is, essentially, who is the child.  Traditionally, when our parents got old, we looked after them - essentially as they looked after us as children.

    Last time I saw my mother, I imagined she was actually twelve years old, and it made it much easier to cope.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • Con Your Way to Good Health!

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-03 – 12:36:01

    A new survey from Duke University has shown that, not only do placebos often work, but also more expensive placebos work better than cheaper ones.

    In other words, the more you pay for pills with no active ingredients, the more easily you are fooled into getting better, even though your original illness was real and not the result of hypochodria. 

    So, it's not the sugar in these pillls that does the good - it's how much you pay for them.  What's more these pills have absolutely no side effects (unless you are told there have)

    Following the publication of this survey, I am launching Alec-Con, a new medical corporation in tune with these post modern times, which is already guaranteeing it will sell the most expensive placebo tablets ever, with the prospect of super-succesful health results.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • hello to all that

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-02 – 22:32:11

    Welcome to my world.  Come and share a double overdose.

    After 10 day of feeling happy, the ghosts of self-hatred have returned.  I hope is it a flying visit.  I knew it wouldn't be easy to rid of all those years without a fight or two, and this is one of them I suppose.  My whole uppper body feels it's about to explode.

    Do you know what I'm talking about?  I do not, to be truthful.  But this is a journal besides anything else, and I need to record even my self indulgent confusion.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • Creative Genius Self Assessment Test

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-02 – 16:21:33

    Alec Weston:
    You sad, irritable bastard.
    Your personal life and filing system is a mess.  You are both indecisive and occasionally reckless.  You constantly promise things you are unable to deliver, at least in the timescale originally envisaged.  Although seldom physically agressive you have many violent fantasies, and your erotic desires lack focus.  There is tension in your character between, on the one hand intellectual arrogance and a determination to get your own way, and on the other hand a need to be liked or even loved.  You are reluctant to accept the inevitability of your own mortality.  Your spelling and washing up skills could be improved

    You are useless  fairly typical  a late-onset genius

    http://quiz.ivillage.co.uk/uk_work/tests/bullshit.htm

    Options:
    Tags:

  • Holes, now Moles. in Brighton

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-02 – 12:07:15

    I wrote about them the other day.

    The holes keep moving, and with them the temporary traffic lights and the places where buses can stop.

    But today at last, a clue to what's going on.  Usually these holes are a workmen-free area, but I spotted two at 10 this morning, having a meal in the cab of a van.  The van was marked "Complete Moling Soutions Ltd."

    As a member of the one person collective Hedgehog-is-Me, I feel a certain affinity.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • anger, uselessness of

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-02 – 03:49:52

    I have awoken in the middle of my night again.  And, as so often I feel angry again, in an ill-defined, grumbly way, which feels as if it's coming from my chest.

    Whatever.  Anger will get me nowhere. 

    I checked my old posts on the subject.  Most quite long, often convoluted.  Few very useful, except the last one a quote from someone else. anger

    Anger is energy that needs to be dispersed.  If I were Gladstone or Tolstoy  I would go outside and chop some wood...

    Instead, the best I can hope for is to go outside and dream about chopping wood.  Or Tolstoy, or Anna Karenina, or Gladstone picking up prostitutes and, apparently without availing himself of their services, lecturing them on the error of their ways

    Anger is so confusing.  Like this post.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • blank verse from a blank mind

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-01 – 23:25:19

    tic toc, tic, toc, tic, tic toc
    slowly, slowly ticks the clock.
    it needs winding up you stupid clot
    tic

    Options:
    Tags:

  • almost remarkable

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-01 – 22:54:56


    On the train returning from my mother's this evening I had a sudden, intense craving for rice someone else had prepared.

    Back in Brighton I go into a Thai restaurant I've never previously visited.  I order some egg-fried rice and couple of vegetable dishes.  Next to me a man is telling a woman, very theatrically, how wonderful he is, but I don't listen.

    When they are about to leave, the two-metre tall proprietor comes over and engages the couple in vacuous conversation.  He keep glancing at me in a nerovus way, but does not say hello. (bully for him; why should he?)

    he gooes back to the bar.  Two minutes later a couple join him at the bar, introducing themselves.  He shakes their hands, saying his name - Nick Leeson.

    Nick Leeson - the rogue trader who brought down Barings Bank 10 or so years ago, when it was really hard to bring a bank down.

    I looked round and notice the stylish, restrained pictures on the wall, appreciated the elecetic but cool music policy, noticed the boss was looking at me with shifty eyes again.

    Great story.  Unfortunately, when I got home Uncle Google told me it was a pack of lies.  Leeson, apart from giving he occasional lecture here, has no Brighton connection.  No one called Leeson appears to own a Thai restaurant in Brighton or Hove.  And Nick Leeson, who advertises himself extensively on his own label website - is quite short and quite podgy.

    So I must have misheard.  I let my imagination run away with me, again.  And no doubt you're pissed off with me for letting you read this far without providing a real punchline.

    The food was good, but.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • learning to be a bad sleeper

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-10-01 – 05:21:18

    I have been a bad sleeper since I was sent to boarding school at the age of nine.  One of the first thing I discovered was that we were not Meant to go and pee after Lights Out.  It wasn't a School Rule, just Frowned Upon.  It drew unwelcome attention to yourself.

    I was terrified of needing to pee - so I couldn't relax until I had.  I waited until everyone appeared to be sleep, the crept put of the dormitory and along the endless corridor to the lavatories.  By the time I got back I sometimes convinced myself I needed to pee again.  In one dormitory, I took to peeing out the window, until one night I imagined I heard voices below.

    Eventually, I was "caught" on one of my trips to the loo, and given a pot.  Soon I learnt how to slither out of the bed, and use the pot without making a tincking sound.

    I explained my dilemma to my French and Music teacher.  "Le peau sur la pot" he quipped (but getting the words' genders right, even if I haven't here).  Later, during a piano lesson, he put his hand on my knee and told me I was a beautiful person, but I don't think it went any further.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • Play

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-30 – 21:40:05

    I'm alone on stage - the only actor in the play within the play which the king and queen are watching in the play within the play withi The Play, which the pre publicity claims is going to take the West End by storm.

    I'm alone on stage and I'm about to forget my one line.  Not so much forget it as discard it.  Who in their right mind says. ...

    Options:
    Tags:

  • a change of my mind

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-30 – 18:46:13

    that is, I have decided that it is being a bit unrealistic, pretentious and draconian to ban all exclamation marks from this blog site.

    So what?

    Options:
    Tags:

  • Capitalist Crisis? What's happened to Socialism?

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-30 – 07:50:15

    "All that's solid melts into air..."  Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto.

    "Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay."  V.I. Lenin.

    So what's happened to the Marxist-Leninist vanguard leadership of the working class, then?

    (and by the way, nationalising the banks to save bankers is not revolutionary socialism)

    Options:
    Tags:

  • nipples

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-29 – 23:45:58

    Women often seem to like sucking my nipples, but I don't enjoy the sensation.  Men do you like to have your nipples sucked?

    Options:
    Tags:

  • Brighton Holes

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-29 – 21:52:26

    There are more of them every day - unless I'm living in some trippy fantasy - sometimes three long but shallow holes in a single street.  Usually they have the standard white and red railings round them, precarious and often moved aside by passers by who want to - well, pass by.

    Are the holes for gas, road improvement, telecoms, electric, drains?  There are no signs to say, no one to ask - for there are never workmen around, just a lot of machinery.

    Being England nobody asks whats going on.  Buses detour, traffic jams, tourists get lost.  But no one, least of all the evening paper makes a fuss or even notices.  There were holes being dug all the time where I last lived, but most of them seemed to being dug for a purpose.

    I suppose I should phone the Council.  They are bound to have a Hole Inspector, surely?  Or could I just go and dig my own hole, anywhere, undisturbed?

    My theory, though, is that is a post Damien Hirstian sculpture. (nb the Turner prize looks a bit dull this year)  An Artist (probably employing slave labour as an artistic swipe against political correctness) is digging the Brighton holes for no reason at all, except to contaminate the ground with cocaine nuclear waste and pigswill, then sell the land have  back to the Council at a fashonable exorbitant price.

    Of course I may be wrong.  For all I know, all the Artist may only want a double decker bus named after her or him.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • Tax Return

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-29 – 12:47:36

    This morning, I sent off my income etc details to my accountant so he can file my tax return, with necessary documentation.

    The accompanying letter has been sitting, nine tenths finished, on my hard disk, for three weeks.

    My "income" details are so simple I should be able to fill the form in by my self.  I have nothing to hide.

    So why does this annual process become such a big deal in my life?  Why do I feel now, almost as eleated as when I sent my novel manuscript off to the copy-editor on Saturday?

    Options:
    Tags:

  • Curb your enthusiasm

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-29 – 10:04:59

    Conservaties at their annual conference in Birmingham have been urged by their party leaders not to gloat or be smug.  They want delegates not to get excited, to curb their enthusiasm.

    I feel most of my reader, also, will be willing to adhere to this instruction.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • The Original Alec (again)

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-28 – 22:42:21

    I don't quite know why I'm republising this right now - but do I have to have a reason?

    The Original Alec
    by alecweston @ 2006-05-12 - 00:20:58

    I was named after my mother's most glamorous cousin, who was at boarding school with my dad. Beautiful, charismatic. Alec brought my parents together, which was a disastrous idea.

    "But if I hadn't met Your Father," my mother says, clinging on to her wedding ring 55 years after the divorce, 10 years after he died, "You would never have been born." It's a heavy responsibilty.

    Anyway, I think that, at school, my dad had a crush on Alec. In fact I know he had a crush. When he left school, he kept a diary. In it there are pages of lyrical peaons of adulation for several boys, deperate speculation about whether he would see them again. Alec was his favourite.

    What I don't know is whether the love was recripocated, or consumated.

    My father met my mother at a party at Alec's house. My mum adored Alec, too. They were both 21, both virgins heterosexually speaking as far as my dad was concerned. (Although, come to think of it, he may have visted a female prostiute and never told me. He told me a lot of stuff like that, see below)

    After they met the diary (which also includes a powerful account of his trip to Republican Spain in the Civil War - I'll blog about that some other time) - after my dad met my mum, his diary goes blank for several years.

    They got married in 1939. My father failed the medical for the army and didn't fight in the war. I was conceived in May 1942. The result, I truly believe, of their first fuck. Actually, that's what my father told me. Now, he was a strange man, not always capable of telling all the truth (his truths were so complicated) but not having sex with your wife is not something any man would brag about to his son. Surely?

    The day I was born, at two o'clock in the morning, he started writing his blog (ha, ha, Freudian slip) writing his journal again. He is ecstacically happy, obsessed with the idea of me. His passion is almost frightening.

    My parents agreed that Alec should be asked to be my godfather, and I should be named after him. A telegram is dispatched, via British Armed Forces, and he replies, delighted. The last telegram or letter he ever sent.

    Alec died in action a few weeks later.

    And my parent's marriage? I will never know if it ever lived at all.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • sometimes four minutes are enough

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-28 – 22:12:48

    at this time of night

    it has changed so much

    in the old days, alison...

    days and nights, Fridays especially

    alison was a tramp

    these days, the fructulating, the tramping

    I'm so sick of fructulation

    why can't we use sticking plaster?

    Options:

  • the moral of this story is

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-28 – 15:18:33

    I've been losing things - some of the for weeks, some for months.  The vegetable masher, a new Ordinance Survey map of this area, the TV remote - I haven't watched TV for about three weeks.

    Time to reorganise (yes, that's what I'm going to do after writing my novel - reorganising my life ¡).  The thing I've lost for the longest period (after my last mobile phone RIP) is my 2008 diary.  So today I bought a new academic year (August to July) diary.  And the first thing I was going to write in it was a list of what I had lost.

    Well, not quite the first thing.  I wrote my name and an appointment for Tuesday before deciding to change my jacket because today is turning out to be warmer than I expected.  But my wallet wouldn't fit into the inner pocket of the light jacket from the wardrobe.  The old diary is lurking there.

    If anyone can tell me where I will find - for example - the TV remote, I will be very annoyed I didn't think of the location myself

    Options:
    Tags:

  • I still can't quite believe it

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-28 – 11:10:37

    Two days ago I announced here, that I had at last completed the last revised revision of the revision of Low Life Games. 

    (skip this paragraph if you like)  Yesterday I sent a splellchecked MSWord file of it to my editor - that is the novelist who, over the last two years (?) has been reading the different drafts, giving encouragement and suggestions.  Of course, she could suggest further changes this time round, but I'm pretty confident there will be a need for very few.  Her main job is what would be done by a publisher's script editor - checking for literals (eg 'right' for 'write') incosistancies (his brown eyes were blue in Chapter 1) and punctuation  (she's even more hostile to exclamation marks than I am).

    Anyway - I am finding it hard to believe I have finished.  In fact, so far impossible.  I've been at it so long - seven years, with many, many traumatic upheavels and interuptions, decisions to abandon etc, etc - that saying "I've almost finished" to myself and others has been as addictive as my now abandoned dope smoking, or coffee which I yet to abandon.

    What will I do wih my life now?

    Naturally, I have dozens of ideas - and dozens of chores on hold, too.  But, at another, deeper, level, I haven't a clue waht i will do.

    As most of you regular readers know I'm self publshing (details will appear here) but just supposing Low Life Games is a success?  Could I cope?  I have spent so long imagining myself as a might have been.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • The pills are clive

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-28 – 05:10:13

    A jelly has-been is philandering, dancing with the clothes.

    Pigs shipping in the swill, drawn to upset the apple card.

    Such pretentious breathing.

    But where is Maurice?

    Toasting.  Doting.  Wilting for Gideon, the slut.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • A Confession

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-27 – 17:30:27

    I have an allergy, apparently rare, which is getting so bad it's beginning to interfere with my enjoyment of reading blogs.

    Before I started blogging, it was really no more than an intolerance.  As long as I didn't consume them all in one go, I could manage two or three a week.  And even now, if they reach me with genuine exuberance I sometimes don't notice.

    That's rare.  Usually, I sneaze so lod it frightens the cats next door, twitch a lot, vomit and yell, sometimes uncontrollably, at my LCD screen.  I have even been heard to utter meaningless death threats.

    Last week I tried acupuncture, before that hypnosis.  I'm willing to try a special diet, but nobody has yet suggested one that might work.  No treatment is permitted on the NHS. 

    I am allergic to exclamation marks.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • the sun shines the waves

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-27 – 15:03:01

    It's a brilliant day here, the low late September sun catching the tops of the waves and making them glitter, a cloudless blue sky, the light appearing to stretch the sea beyond the horizon - a marvelous sense of space.

    Unfortunately (from a selfish  p.o.v. ) the promenade is crowded, the pebble beaches packed.  On the other hand, the sense of Saturday bustle is energising.  A day like this reminds me how good it is to live here.  Brighton is never the sort of place to have to oneself.

    I'm hardly ever here on Saturdays.  This week, I go to see my mother tomorrow.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • I am a spy, in my sleep

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-27 – 10:26:46

    Dreams beget dreams.  Having blogged, in the middle of the night, about a dream I couldn't remember, I had another on, more memorable.

    I am close to being accepted for employment by the British Secret Service.  In the final interview, a line of men in dark suits are lined up to ask me questions.

    Then, standing beside me to my left, either Sebastion Coe or David Milliband begins to make a speech.

    Apparently, the speech is so boring it wakes me up.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • A dream to change my life

    by alecweston Pro @ 2008-09-27 – 02:59:44

    I've just had a dream - complicated, epic, vivid.  I find I am

    thinking "This dream will change my life."  I am waking up.  What

    was I dreaming about?  I can't remember the details... I can't

    remember anything about the dream, except my life was going to

    change because of it.

    Options:
    Tags:

  • Alec repeats himself

    by alecweston Pro