Too Much To Declare

Well, that's April done and dusted... I was expecting more... but also less (excuse the riddles; for once I am feeling secretive and coy)... Anyway tomorrow, I may well... On the other hand, I have promised myself never to be an optimist, trust fate etc, so I won't commit to blog what I hope will happen tomorrow.

(and they're not even my own lyrics)

Remember when you ran away and I got on my knees and begged you not to
leave because I'd go berserk?? Well...
You left me anyhow and then the days got worse and worse and now you see
I've gone completely out of my mind.. And..

They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa
To the funny farm. Where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be
happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!!!

You thought it was a joke and so you laughed, you laughed when I had said
that loosing you would make me flip my lid.. RIGHT???
I know you laughed, I heard you laugh, you laughed you laughed and
laughed and then you left, but now you know I'm utterly mad... And..

They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa,
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa.
To the happy home. With trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket
weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!

I cooked your food, I cleaned your house, and this is how you pay me back
for all my kind unselfish loving deeds.. Huh??
Well you just wait, they'll find you yet and when they do they'll put you
in the ASPCA, you mangy mutt!!! And...

They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa.
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa.
To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy
to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're coming
to take me away, ha-haaa!!!
To the happy home, with trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket
weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haa!!!
To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time... (fade out)

Hey, buddy!
Yes officer..
You a head?
No, but I'm catching up, ha ha ha....

original recording by Napoleon XIV

Brighton's Hole-in-the-Road virus is out of control again. It's only a matter of time before a local journalist links it to the spread of swine 'flu.

Holes are drilled and bored - and then left empty until local businesses (eg my local newsagent) go out of business.

This week the virus has spread to the road and pavement along the seafront. On Tuesday, the buidling site (aka promenade) was deserted except for two guys holding flipround Stop/Go signs for motorists (Pedestrians at your peril - Sprint or Fall).

Today, though, the site is positively bustling with boring workers, apparently (under orders from unseen management of course) intent on drilling a maximum number of holes before the next holiday weekend.

Every worker wears a wasp-like safety vest. The back of each one proclaims the unlikely message D.J.DANCE.

Sad. They don't even seem to be moving in time to the beat of their own pneumatic drills.

Meanwhile, I have finished The Shadow of the Wind, and I have to say I do agree with someone commenting on my previous post on the novel who said he felt a bit disappointed after finishing it. And in my view, he settles for the wrong girl. Still a great read...

What hit me, though, was the way Reader's Group Notes had been added to the edition I read. They start without a pause and for a moment I confused the first page of Notes with the last of the story.

Anyway, I didn't appreciate my enjoyment being undermined by being asked what passages in the novel showed the authors sense of humour or what did I learn from the book about the Spanish Civil War.

I imagine soon, novels will be written only to satisfy the demands of Reader's Group Questionaires at the end. Maybe I should produce some Readers Group Notes of a novel I have yet to write and submit them for a publishing advance.

Anyway, I have now moved on to Daphne du Maurier's classic Rebecca - and have a horrible feeling there is a series of discussion point questions lurking at the end of the edition I have just bought. 'Twould have been better to have found a secondhand or library copy and be spared the pseudo gloss.

Today I completed a year of Pilates in Brighton - a year of one-to-one tuition. On grounds of economy I did intend, after a few weeks, to switch to classes here (as years ago I used to have in London), but I have got so much out of the personal attention - and Pilates is all about attention to muscular detail.

Also I get on well with my teacher.

And the cost? Think of the money I'm saving by not drinking booze! I mean not being a two-bottle-of-vodka a day alcoholic. That thought helps me finance most of my different therapies. Well, not actually finance them, but kid myself.

I have just come back from seeing Amando Ionnucci's bitingly funny In the Loop, which is about Anglo-American chicanory in the build up to the Iraq war, though fictionalised and confusingly set in the present day.

In fact I was crying with laughter so much the time I lost some details of the plot - a good excuse to see it again.

It has to be the best Britsh film for years and years. And, of course, it has James Galdonfini playing a Pentagon general.

I didn't take my usual sleeping-medicine yesterday, and had a brilliant night's sleep last night, not awake until 8 o'clock. The best night since - the last time I did not take the powder to help me sleep my Ayurvedic doctor gives me. It is also meant to promote the digestion but seems to do so in the middle of the night.

So now I have had several months on the changed diet she prescribed, probably I don't need any night time potion. And perhaps I don't need the Ayurvedic doctor, either.

Most of us, seeing a friend hanging on to the remains of a rotten, destructive relationship, want to tell them to move on.

However, most of us, at one time or another have hung on to the remains of a rotten, destructive relationship - and resent it if a friend even gently suggests we move on. We either dream of reliving the relationship (either idealising in our faulty memories, or telling ourselves this time round it will be different) OR we dream of revenge.

Revenge can be fun to dream about, but usually turns out disastrously in practice. And even dreaming about revenge uses so much energy that could more contructively employed on other things.

So - here's some advice I'm giving myself - LET GO. MOVE ON!

(whether, of course I take my own advice is another matter entirely)

It is sad, though, to lose the will to live - even metaphorically. Sad and uneccesary. A little throwback to the world of self hatred and of my Inner Grandad, that I have pulled myself from so recently.

I can be in charge of my destiny. I can be kind to myself all the time. I can be sad, if the mood takes me. I can be.

Whenever I tell myself I must spend part of the day catching up on bill paying, filing and replying to officious communications, I lose the will to live, until that part of the day is over.

Readers of this post have broken the law and should send me the statutary £10,000 fine without delay.

Perhaps, the marriage contract should be limited to be exclusively between two people of the same sex.

"So," said Blogs, coming back through the cat flap. Outside was apparently not to his taste this morning. "You've finally dumped me."

"I haven't thought about you for weeks. It seemed only sensible to take you off the strapline..."

"Strapline! How do you expect a cat to know a word like that? Mind you I'd prefer a dog lead to not existing at all."

"Very funny. Strapline is the description of the blog below Too Much to Declare."

"Of course I knew that. By the way, can I have a last wish? I want my balls back to I can fuck the cat from number 22."

I ignored him. If I am going to make up sex scenes, they will be for myself. "'Wild Imaginings'. That could be imaginings about you if I happen to have them."

Blogs prowled up and down, trying to imitate my voice for sarcastic effect. As a literary device, an imaginary cat has definite limitations.

"Food" he demanded. "Food." So predictable. "Food." "FOOD."

When I had fed him he jumped on the kitchen table, just so he could show he could break the rules. "Miserable bastard," he murmured before falling asleep and disappearing completely.

...plus happy, fabulous dreams.

I had a short, spontaneous, almost tuneful but very LOUD scream in the shower that released a lot of emotion and got me breathing better. I'm looking forward to a deep, beautiful sleep.

...perhaps I'd better withdraw or rewrite the previous post before it gets too firmly into the googlesphere. I don't want visits from lawywers or metal-helmeted goons.

Oh, I'm digging an even deeper hole now. Alec, shut up.

As some of you may have seen reported today, the richest man in Britain (look up his name) has lost £17b of his £28b fortune this year. But there is quite enough left to go on hiring sex workers for regular parties for him and his friends. Vanessa is one of them. Apparently he doesn't pay very well.

She told me this last time I saw her - and expect ever see her - when she got me to pay a tea and cake at Fortnum and Mason's, having - a few years earlier - persuaded me to give her, a few thousand at a time - my worldly fortune.

When I spend a day with indigestion and low energy (see previous post) the last thing that occurs to me is that I might be trying to repress grief and rage. But, until I started dealing with my bully voice inside - and this only began to happen two months ago, after tea with Vanessa in Fortnum's - I had repressed all these feelings. (It's all there in the 'Vanessa' tags to this blog, from the very first post in October 2005). I tried to get the money back, but I never felt I deserved it. I was too keen on beating myself for being a man...or whatever (one post is not a full length autobiography),

But how - up until now - could I value myself so little? How could she (and other girlfriends before her in a far, far less specular way) mistake my generosity of spirit for being a mug? How could I ever believe it was worth selling my Picasso for example (it turned out to be a fake) to finance her profligacy? How could I have so little self belief that she could convince me my temper tantrums were at fault when I objected to spending £7000 one afternoon at Ralph Lauren?

And after all this time how dare she treat me two months ago like a trivial version of a steel billionaire sex-client - and not even offering me the sex? (I'm too nice - and I wouldn't have taken up the offer, but even so)

Most startling of all, though, is that when at last I break the spell of bossy self hatred that has so held me back and in Vanessa's thrall, I still find it surprising I have bouts of sleeplessness and indigestion. Because after all, until I experience my grief and rage and, yes, rightousness, I will never be able to move on.

I had plans for today.

I would write! I would hike! At the very least I would see a movie, make lists and decisions.

My body has had other ideas. Bad sleep. Indigestion. Aching Muscles. Grumble, grumble.

Everything combined to make me feel miserable, until I gave in, aquiescessed to a day of indolence, agreed to be slut.

All these changes I am experiencing at the moment, the disappearance of my inner bully, the transformation of my leopard spots... it's so exhausting. And what's wrong with a day of rest?

Chuang-Tzu (I am reliably informed by someone who knows who Chuang-Tzu was or conceivably is... I'll start again)

Chuang-Tzu, awake after dreaming he was a butterfly, wondered if he was in fact a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang-Tzu.

On the hand, I could be dreaming all this right now. I do need the sleep. But will I ever wake up?

Just because
I am awake
in the middle of the night
doesn't mean I have reason
to beat myself up.
oh dear.

Most Saturdays, like today, I go and see my mother. I get back about this time, log on here - and feel an outsider.

Ridiculous, of course. For a start, here we are pretty well outsiders to each other. And twelve hours absence from blog is a twinkle of an eye - recently even I have often been absent for much longer, and it doesn't feel as it does to me on Saturdays, that I've got to start here all over again.

Ridiculous - but many of feelings are, at first sight, ridiculous. They have little reason, but lots of force.

On the other hand, all this positive being, all the good things happening to me - it's incredibly emotionally exhausting.

For a moment putting aside the sardonic, world-weary pose I often adopt here, and ignoring my fear of Pride Before A Fall (my middle name is Hubris) I would like you all to know that I have been feeling a lot happier and more together in the last six weeks or so.

A couple of friends not given to (excessive) flattery have spontaneously remarked I look less stressed out. Indeed younger.

One of the things I have noticed is that I feel a lot less impatient when things don't go the way I'd like. My Irritation Threshold is definitely far higher - in fact I barely ever reach it. A lot of people I know seem to be quite put out that I no longer rant, rave - or even whine very much.

Of course all this could change. But for the moment it feels rather wonderful - as if life around me is moving in peacefully slow motion.

From Babes In arms
Lyrics by Lorenz Hart, music by Richard Rodgers

This was sung by Frank Sinatra on the first LP my dad ever gave me. As far as I know he never listened to it.

The sleepless nights,
the daily fights
the qick toboggan when you reach the heights
I miss the kisses and I miss the bites
I wish I were in love again!

The broken dates,
the endless waits,
the lovely loving and the hateful hates,
the conversations with the flying plates
I wish I were in love again!

No more pain
no more strain
now I'm sane but ...
I would rather be gaga!
The pulled-out fur
of cat and cur
the fine mismating of a him and her
I've learned my lesson, but I wish I were
in love again!

REFRAIN 2
The furtive sight
the blackened eye,
the words "I'll love you till the day I day"
the self-deception the belives the lie
I wish I were in love again!

When love congeals
it soon reveals
the faint aroma of performing seals
the double-crossong ps a pair of heels.
I wish I were in love again!

No more care
no despair
I'm all there now
But I'd rather be punch-drunk!
Belive me sir
I much prefer
the classic battle of a him and her.
I don't like quiet and
I wish I were in love again!

I bring you the disturbing news that fewer yachts are being rented in Cannes this year than last.

A Policeman has won a prize for writing "the perfect blog."

Hmmm. I give up (and refuse, on principle, to link to his perfect site)

(This is getting to be quite a wide-ranging exam paper)

Can Vampires be gay?

There is nothing more destructive of others than a marriage where both parties hate each other but refuse to fight each other, or split up.

I can't be more specific without restricting this post to Friends.

Once upon quite a few times there was a mistaKe,
which led to a genetic mutation
- and, eventually to
a whole new species.

So why is it, that when I make what I think is a misTake
I mentally (and sometimes, by default physically)
beat myself up?

My one and only ex-wife disappeared from my life a long, long time ago. We had no children. Sometimes though, I am curious to know what has happened to her.

But even nowadays with Google and Facebook, Friends Reunited, she has proved impossible to trace. I think I heard she got remarried to somone whose name I don't know.

First she had her father's surname, then mine, and now... who knows.

Another friend I know got remarried - to a guy called David. Uncle Google gives me nine million possibilities.

If I were a woman, I think I'd like my own name, apart from any man's

I'm reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron. It's one of those addictive books I can't stop reading. In fact, why have I broken off reading to tell you about it?

Probably because breaking off for a moment will delay reaching the end. I have no idea if the novel has a sad ending, but having no more to read will be sad.

Does everything stop at this time of night?

Should I be watching television?

All afternoon I have been trying to get my new Yamaha micro-recorder working with the supplied Cubebase software. This is an essential component of my podcast project. Blah, tech, byte, blah.

So far, all I have achieved is what I call a Technical Headache - a low intensity throbbing which hits the left of my forehead, along with neck ache and mouth dryness, plus general grumpiness and need for exotic flavoured ice cream - which always comes on whenever I try to implement the commands in a computer-software manual without anyone to help or complain to.

Know what I mean?

Back after a three week break. (Failed my intention to get into yoga in the meantime).

Apparently, I've got lazy glutes.

A pain in the arse.

Just sleeping for a few hours, now restored.

What has happened to my desire to blog?

Fight for local independence!

Andorra has a population of 85,000. By that reckoning we in Brighton and Hove could enter three songs for the contest - and have 36 votes to distribute, some presumably to other newly independent towns in Britland.

The fact that we could also opt out of Westminster politics, and have a democractically accountable police force (no that's far too utopian) would be a useful byproduct of my Eurovision-winning strategy.

You look pale, son. You better go and suck some blood.

I'm not a vampire, dad.

Don't try and be clever with me. It's in your genes! Your mother and I have always been regular users, as you well know. It's all we've got in common.

That doesn't mean....

Oh, shut up you silly veggie-pandy! It's dark now. Why don't you fly down the road and get your fill from the Robinson girl? It's rhesus positive.

Rhesus what?

Or whatever. I was never good at blood groups and stuff. But it does taste good.

Please link to this post.

This is so incredibly subtle even I don't know what it's advertising.

...I tell myself, every time I fulfil my self-promise to spend 20 minutes a day, sorting out stuff from my past.

But it's hard, throwing stuff away. My head begins to buzz. I need air.

Take my old novel scripts, for example. I have written (at least) three unpublished novels before Low Life Games. I am unlikely ever to offer them for publication, but there are passages are might use, it's a matter of pride to have a record of my old writing - and it's not contained in computer files...

But I only need one copy of each. The final draft...

It takes time and energy to work out which that one is.

I regret not doing all this sorting out two years, sixteen months ago before I left London, where I had some more space...

But I didn't.

And letting go of all this stuff, all my sentimentality about this stuff... is so important. Moving on...

My head hurts. 20 minutes well up.

I still haven't succumbed to Twitter

(37 characters)

(well, 110, if you count all these words in brackets)

Frederick Handel composed a lot of music. Radio 3 have been celebrating commemorating the 250th anniversary of his death. Last Monday they went live at 8am to his London house - the exact hour of his demise. Conviently Handel died nine years after the calendar skipped 10 days to bring it into line with Eurotime. But did the BBC take British Summer Time into account?

I imagine Handel's last thought: "I better die now before I lose Radio 3's Breakfast Show timeslot in a quarter of a millenium's time."

Yes, these days even Radio 3 has a breakfast show. One of the presenter's quite good (desn't talk too much) and I usually enjoy her choice of classical music. But too much Hallelujiah! already even before this week's avalanch througout the schedule. He's such a major key, unsubtle composer, definitely pre Freudian.

As the Handel days pass, I'm getting more and more into Wagner. Oh, and Urban Cuban.

"Moods, good or bad, can be caught like a disease, especially from our nearest and dearest. In other words they are viral" he said. Something like that. I wasn't really listening. Gustav's girlfriend Sonja was making eyes at me across the table.

If I'm serious about finally moving on from my negativity and escaping and Inner Bully and self hatred yadiya etc & etc then it might be time to have a clear out of my real life friends.

Luckily most of them don't read Too Much to Declare.

It feels shockingly ruthless, to dump friends, especially as we're not talking about partyloads of mates or anything. Frankly, they are in short supply.

Maybe it's more of a matter to stop a couple of them in particular from almost-crying on my broad shoulders quite so often.

Both of the women concerned have every reason to be depressed. I just wish they would carry their misery in a more, er... Russian way - with violent moodswingings between laughter and deep despair instead of the grey, monotone defeatism so common in this Sceptered Isle (though, in fact niether ofthem are 100% Brits; maybe they moved here just so they could stay permenently Average White Miserable.)

I think I have got to a new stage in my life when, even in my friendships, I need fireworks and opera.

Not the premliminary day of a cold after all, I've decided. Rather that, with all the progress I'm making at the moment - a rapid, exhilerating journey from the world where I hated and bullied myself so much that there was very little room for creativity or hope - I have hours, sometimes a day or a night, of panic.

It feels like fear of death, of debt, of failing. But really it's more a sort of nostalgia for all the bad times and feelings I've had over the years. I've lived with this shit so long I still can't quite believe I can let go. It's like beating an addiction.

I once bought a hotted up Ford Anglia from a prize-winning film editor at the BBC. I had been sceptical at first - what one earth did he know about hotting up cars? But he had a mews garage off the Goldhawk Road, and an assistant he looked and spoke the part. They gave it to me for a good price, with three month money back guarantee.

Vroom, vroom. I drove it up the M1 and drove off for fuel at Newport Pagnell. There was an AA man, accosting drivers waiting. "I've been meaning to join," I told him. He frowned, unused to such an easy sale. I joined, drove on to the pumps, filled up... and then the sooped up Anglia's engine failed.

The AA quickly tore up my original application, and issued me with another one, saying I had joined at the service station down the road. "This way it looks less suspicious," he explained.

His colleagues arrived, got the car started again, and it spluttered on to somwhere near Nottingham... then Sheffield. Eventually the AA towed me the last lap to Leeds.

Did I ever get back my money back from the film editor? My memory hazy on this point. It was the seventies. I know his name was Roy and he won another editing prize.

He fell asleep before anyone else in the dormitory, and almost every night, almost immediately, he began to snore.

Sometimes you could tell he was having dreams. His head moved from side to side, he muttered.

Once he suddenly sat bolt upright. "Daddy! Stop! You're backing the Jaguar into the tractor!"

His name was Paramour. Alistair Paramour. I promise, Paramour.

I wonder what happened to Paramour.

I have woken with a is-it-isn't-it-a-cold feeling - the pre-cold depression that sometimes doesn't turn into the full blown thing.

I'm due to see my mother on Sunday and take her to her second cataract operation the following day. But I don't fancy travelling, seeing her or risk her catching this bug (if I have one). There are other people who can look after mum, it's just that she prefers me.

Or my sister - who is into In Your Face Martyr mode. "I had a cold last week and I looked after her," she ponts. Well, I thought that was a stupid risk at the time... and anyway I'm not going to compete with her in Sacrificial Guilt Stakes (or is it Steaks?).

Of course I may feel perfectly okay in an hour or two. And colds can be light or heavy. (I'm not a Man Flu Man). But the caring-for-mum situation is so precarious, and my sister near-hysterical in her determination to keep her out of a Home, that the anticipation of a sniffle is enough to take a wheel off the Family Apple Cart.

Do any of us want Britain to be like this? Here's yet another story (from the Guardian website today) of the police behaving as if they are above the law, able to criminalise almost any activity

Like most visitors to London, Klaus Matzka and his teenage son Loris took several photographs of some of the city's sights, including the famous red double-decker buses. More unusually perhaps, they also took pictures of the Vauxhall bus station, which Matzka regards as "modern sculpture".

But the tourists have said they had to return home to Vienna without their holiday pictures after two policemen forced them to delete the photographs from their cameras in the name of preventing terrorism.

Matkza, a 69-year-old retired television cameraman with a taste for modern architecture, was told that photographing anything to do with transport was "strictly forbidden". The policemen also recorded the pair's details, including passport numbers and hotel addresses.

In a letter in today's Guardian, Matzka wrote: "I understand the need for some sensitivity in an era of terrorism, but isn't it naive to think terrorism can be prevented by terrorising tourists?"

The Metropolitan police said it was investigating the allegations.

In a telephone interview from his home in Vienna, Matka said: "I've never had these experiences anywhere, never in the world, not even in Communist countries."

He described his horror as he and his 15-year-old son were forced to delete all transport-related pictures on their cameras, including images of Vauxhall underground station.

"Google Street View is allowed to show any details of our cities on the world wide web," he said. "But a father and his son are not allowed to take pictures of famous London landmarks."

He said he would not return to London again after the incident, which took place last week in central Walthamstow, in north-east London

(Remind me I put it in the sock drawer)

Yesterday I bought a tiny solid state portable audio recording/data storage device, which can dock intoa USB port.

(I'm beginnning to sound like a technobore)

It's got brilliant recording quality, will be just what I need for the sort of blogcasts I want to make, etc, etc.

The trouble is the Yamaha Pockettrak 2G is so small (13 cm x 4cm) and weighs less than a mobile that it is kinda easy to lose. In fact I took me one panicky hour to find it this evening. I suppose I could put it in a garish coloured cover, but I will never be able to phone it up and listen out for its ringtone.

The only answer is to wear it on my belt all the time... No, I will leave it resting for the moment in... where did I put it? Where's the fucker gone?

After all the slowdowns, complications and mishaps, publication of my novel appears to be moving forward again. We are having to put the launch date off to May, but it will, it really will, happen.

I feel very good. Lots of things feel possible to achieve that even a few weeks ago were hard for me even to imagine happening. Of course I panic occasionally because I'm so used to the old, down in the dumps ways.

This may read back a bit airy-fairy, but for the moment I don't want to get distracted by specifics here. For now it's enough to say I feel happy and - to answer the question in the post below - happiness is the opposite of panic.

Several years ago I visited a psychic. He said my life force was split between panic and... panic and... panic and... and...

Every time I try to remember his full message I... I... panic, I suppose.

A shame.

"If you were a genius, darling, wouldn't you be a better speller?"

rowtheboat asked a question in a post last night that has bugging me a long time - Why do so many of us hate ourselves so much?

I can, of course, only speak for myself. (But please stay with this post to the end - I'm saying a lot more than what's in the next paragraph)

When I hear a bossy, bullying, disparaging voice inside me I can hear my mother, and beyond her, my grandad, her own father, who constantly put her down (and maybe physically, even sexually abused her) and often frightened me as a child... But then there was his mum or dad, and theirs.... and theirs. Bullying has a long tradition which in itself explains very little.

Lets take my grandad. I have spent most of my life hating him alive or dead that I never thought to think about he had gone through in his life, and particularly the First World War. I have only just questioned my aunt about what little is known of his experience in the trenches and the Egyptian desert. One of his best friend was killed within minutes of my grandad being relieved by him on sentry duty. Later grandad went AWOL and was persuaded by another friend to return (desertion was usually punished by death).

He left for Flanders just after my mother was born. I don't think there was any home leave in those days. The next time he was home it was 1919 and his daughter was four years old, unhealthy and needy.

Before he left he used to read poetry. For all the rest of his life he never opened another book. And he barely spoke about what he had gone through. I keep being reminded of the song from Oh What a Lovely War: "We'll never tell them." And all his unimagineable grief and sorrow and anger got buried in his surly bullying, particularly of my mum.

And she in her turn - my mother is so bossy when she is sad or upset or in pain. She always has been, though it's worse now. She won't cry - she is still upset about the divorce almost sixty years ago, but has never let the feelings out, just a lot of pious self-righteousness. Instead, she snaps, bosses, quotes from her rigid 50's Catholicism...

What about me? My own self hatred? Sometimes my feelings are so buried and don't know what the loathing is about. But far less so than in the past.

During the last few weeks (working this out with a therapist, and friends) I have been so tearful, suddenly sad (not self pitying, which is different) about so much of what has happened to me, and between and to my parents, and to my grandparents... There is no need to believe in reincarnation to feel deep links with the past.

Is anyone still with me? At the beginning of this epic post I said this was a story of my self-hatred, not everyone's. You will all have you own ghosts, denialss, hidden pains. What I have said may not ring any bells with you. But I do think most of us repress so much, and hate ourselves for not repressing it better.

(from the BBC, so it must be true)

An Amazonian ant has dispensed with sex and developed into an all-female species, researchers have found.

The ants reproduce via cloning - the queen ants copy themselves to produce genetically identical daughters.

This species - the first ever to be shown to reproduce entirely without sex - cultivates a garden of fungus, which also reproduces asexually.

The finding of the ants' "world without sex" is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

In your own, personal, opinion: will you burn in hell?

Blogs has disappeared.  Nowhere to be found. I haven't set eyes on him for days, possibly weeks.

Maybe he'll come back. Maybe sooner or later he'll be useful again as a rhetorical device.

I feel so ruthless.

Destroying. Unimagining.

"Don't you be so sure," says Blogs, suddenly inside his box. Like the quantum physicist Shrodinger's cat - there and not there at the same time.

(don't ask me, ask wikipedia)

This afternoon I am going out to buy a small solid-state audio recording device, part of my podcast plans.

At the same time, I'm finding Garage Band software a little overwhelming, now I've decided to be creatively ambitious. None of the onsite videos fit my exact purpose. So I hope I can find someone to give me some quick tuition.

Alcohol screws up my guts as well as my head - I haven't drunk for years.

Dope made me paranoid and confused - and haven't touched the stuff for 11 years.

Sugar rushes aren't my thing

BUT

I am mighty bOred with being sOber all the time.

Over the weekend I saw Let the Right One In, a newly released Swedish horror movie (that deserves a more arresting title). If I described the plot it would sound absurd, but for a film about vampires it is strangely convincing.

Anyway, it struck me I had missed a trick here. I could describe my affair with Vanessa in terms of the myth of Dracula. When I bought her an expensive present her face lit up with a glorious smile like a vampire momentarily sated with blood.

Making the movie A Vampire in Bond Street would be a much better way of explaining my humiliating obsession with Vanessa than the literal truth, so often described on this blog.

As I said here in a post long ago, a Blogging Friends list is like having a party where the guests can only see the host.

A lot of my Friends on BCUK are Friends to each other - some may have met on my blog, or I have met them on the blog of another Friend. Others have yet to meet. Lots appear to have dropped out. And many would not get on at all.

It's easy to forget this. One of my Friends has written today that they visited a certain place where one of my close but temporally silent Friends lives. the two of them would have very little in common. I can't help smiling imagining them passing unaware in the street.

Is this bad luck?

"Take care of your mother," my dad used to tell me, "because I don't love her any more." Well he didn't say the last bit out loud, but that's what he meant.

He was always criticising mum's coldness, her literal mindedness, her ability to find a cup full except for one sip to be half empty. He'd left her because he couldn't stand it any more (and he's thought, ha, ha, he'd found an easier woman) yet he expected me to look after her. At the time he gave me these instructions, though, I felt in awe of him.

My mum said nothing like that. But her eyes and pursed lips told me never to mention my father in front of her because she'd feel upset and probably have an attack of lombago.

One of the most annoying things about reading an American novel is that all the characters wear pants instead of trousers.

Days getting longer. Even with ever-cloudy weather, I went for a walk on the Downs behind the Uni of Sussex at about 5 o'clock. As I walked the near-deserted campus (it is Easter) came across a window filled with a hand scrawled sign SAVE LINGUISTICS.

So another university department under threat because it doesn't attract business money. The subject may sound obscure, but it's about unpacking the idieology hidden in our language.

Thank God, I thought somewhat patronisingly, on the poster they have spelt Linguistics right.

I posted this on one of my side-blogs the other day, but, hey,  I think it deserves wider attention:

"I am Big
And I am Strong.
I have Muscles
So I Can't be Wrong.

Yes, there's a gentle adverb in my heart,
But expressing that's the hardest part.
We as Men just do and fart.

We are Male
And should be Strong.
We have Muscles
So we Can't be Wrong."

Right now I am doing far too much of it.

Easter Sunday. Half of Brit is still pretending to be asleep.

But for hours I have been thinking deep, and long and convoluted.

Not good for my soul, maybe. Certainly not good for my Britishness.

Enough thought, already - and for the rest of the weekend.

Does a peanut butter and jelly sandwich involve bread as well?
Do they exist outside American novels?
Aren't they revolting?

I have expended a lot of energy over the last couple of weeks not producing a podcast.

In fact I've planned to launch podcast for some time. I have now bought a good, outboard, microphone for my Mac. The (Grageband) software is in place, I have done some test recordings, thought (it seems endlessly) about what I want to say in the first 'cast... but I can't bring myself to start.

Why? I'm bullying myself to do it (beating myself up when I delay), and whenever I do that, my little frightened inner child throws a wobbly resists. So I'm having to take the project very slowly, take myself by surprise.

The above paragraph may not make sense to you. Oh, +++++*! I wish I wasn't so complicated.

What was question 9?

My Inner Sun is shining.  In my heart, I feel good, happy, prepared for adventure, serendipity, delight...

Outside the Weather says No.  It says low cloud.  Gloom.  Whatever.  Slow death by boredom.  It is damp.  It is grey, windless.  It is nothing.  It is English.

Do you remember baby last September,
How you held me tight each and every night?
Well whoopsi daisy baby how you drive me crazy,
I guess it doesn't matter any more.

Now you go your way baby and I'll go mine,
Now and forever till the end of time,
I'll find somebody new, and baby
We'll say we're through,
And you won't matter any more.

Last night, I felt shocked when my mother, a loyal Catholic, wished me a happy Easter. Surely, for a Christian, the happiness can only begin with the celebration of the Resurection on Easter Sunday?

And as for the non-believer, the expression is pretty meaningless. Only a joke would we say "Happy August Bank Holiday".

When I was a Christian, Good Friday was the most intense religious day of the year -and also a day I bonded with my father. We went usually to a different Church of England each year for the contemplative, almost meditive, three hour service commemorating Jesus Christ's crucifiction. It was intense, calming experience, but not 'happy'.

Oh, well. I've long suspected that my mother doesn't believe in Catholic Christianity any more. She's just terified and pious.

Following a Comment discussion with brockendownangel relating to my recent post "upstairs", I have decided to devote a portion of my time and energy to develop methods of sexual cpngress and climaxing that are cleaner and less messy than current accepted norms.

Or in plain English, Fucking without Fluids.

If anyone reading this has any suggestions to make, or would like to participate in my practical research programme, please get in touch.

There are a lot of heavy footsteps in the flat above me tonight, the occasional audio blur of youthful conversation.

It's the first time there's been any significant noise up there since a twenty minute bout of sexual, apparent boy-girl bumping, whimpering, ahhing, and writhing over six months ago.

What do young people get up to nowadays? In this quarter of Brighton, it appears, not very much very often.

At University, I had a lecturer who didn't seem to like me at all. He had doubts about my talents as an essay-writer, and one essay of mine (I had to read it aloud to him, as was the tradition in my unversity) he seem incapable of understanding my argument. As I explained it to him, and a second time more slowly, he became mre and more irritated. "Don't you be patient with me my boy," he said, tight lipped. "I'm being desperately patient with you."

I am often reminded of this incident when my mother is asking me to buy a particular flavour of carton soup. When I tell her no such a soup (or lemon desert, or whatever) is sold by Waitrose, she repeats the list of desired ingredients slowly, as if the first, second or third times I hadn't heard.

I must have been in a particularly strange mood last night when I wrote that I had never managed to be an optimistic.

In fact the future is bright, even the sunset. My sister and mum hate me for feeling this optimistic way, and - once in a while - I find I'm speaking their hyper-downbeat language. but it's a smokescreen.

Yes, here, there is a certain male blogger who misses few opportunities to dub me a Misreable Bastard. But as he, a Friend, has also compared me to several mass murderes, he is not to be taken seriously. Murder, like blackmail, is something that never gets beyond my daydreaming stage.

And one more confession. No teacher at school ever told me to be an optimist. I made that up. Last night I had dozens of things I could have blogged about, and instead I told a porkie.

Will you ever forgive me?

"You've just got to learn to be an optimist, Weston," one of my teachers at school advised me.

But I have never learnt.

Anyone got any suggestions about what to be optimistic about?

We are, we are, we are the Engineers.
We don't care a damn
For any old man
Who don't care a damn for us.

I remember very few good things about my stepmother, but she taught me this ditty, and today I can't get it out of my head.

If life is meaningless

- how come you can read this?

I'm feeling angry, thwarted, frustrated

(same, same old)

but

(and this is startingly new)

I'm not beating myself up, putting myself down. My anger no longer seems to need self punishment.

It's almost as if I've discovered another country.

I am waiting for my mother to come out of her cataract operation. She's been miserable, insultingly scornful of her carer, suspicious of me and all around her, anxious because the operation has been delayed for 4 hours because of some technical hitch.

My sister is in Sevilla, hae a great time being paid by the Daily Mail to write bland nonsense, but guilty she's abroad while our mother is "suffering". My phone rings in the lobby of the Private Eyecare Centre (Motto: You needn't go blind if you are quite rich) - it must be my sister, worried...

No.

"Mr Weston, This is GasGen and I need a gas meter reading. Hello? We need you to supply us..."

"A meter reading! I'm in a hospital..!" In Guildford, my meter's in Brighton. And why now? GasGen have fucked up, big time, that's why - and that makes them Bossy. Like my mum when she gets scared, really...

"Did you hear me? You need to supply me with a GAS METER READING. Hello? Hello?"

No such luck about deep sleep and sweet dreams. The night was full of indigestion (wrong food choice eating out with a friend) and repeating and unmmemorable images.

I'm regretting my rash offer to stay with my mother for two days, taking her tomorrow to have a cataract operation. My regret is compounded by the fact that I'd discovered the first leg of the journey will be on a bus-replacing-a-train.

Nevertheless, I have a more relaxed attitude to the whole mother thing at the moment. My Inner Bully is at bay.

I visited that strange, twilight country again last night, but can't remember anything about it.

Hope tonight, some of you will visit me, gently, there.

It's stupid not to make use of some juicy, damaging information I have been harbouring for years, but I'm a novice at this sort of thing...

I am thinking of blackmailing an old aquaintance, and am wondering if anyone has any experience, any advice of how to go about it, for least hassle and maximum profit.

Er?

I must have written a post with this title once, because it came up when I typed "sincerely." But I can't track it down.

What was I on about?

What was I on?

I had all thes ideas for blogposts in my head.

Then I started having a good day. I spent hours being sociable and happy - and now I have forgotten what I was going to write.

Damn.

Misery makes me so much more productive.

"We do not issue instructions on not touching the queen," sniffed a palace spokesperson yesterday. Or rather the Queen, to give her appropriate status.

You are instructed, though, not to speak without her addressing you first. Or is that Her?

At last, in his third year at Art School, the dragon was able to draw his teeth.

Mine are a rum, odd lot. At parties they don't all mix with each other. They claim different parts of me to relate to. And almost all of them have annoyed me at one time or another. As I'm pretty sure I've annoyed each one of them once in a while.

All of us (that is you reading this, as well) are on occasion, tactless, unreliable, preocupied with things that at the time seem more important. Or we get the wrong end of the stick, or take the side of their (ex) partners. Even, unforgivably, slept with them.

Except that in friendship, nothing is unforgiveable. (although it may not be forgiven) We are not married to friends. There is no need for them to know absolutely everything there is to know about you... the best friends are for life, but sometimes on has to accept it was only for a holiday...

This evening I have spokemn to 2 different friends who I'd had a slight falling out with. And in both cases we were soon back on track. It would have been esay to make high opera of our small diagreements. But friends are not for high opera.

I have been thinking about my mother's father, who I have always thought of as a shitty bastard, and his time as a soldier in hte trenches during the War to End all Wars 1414-18. These lyrcs are from Oh What a Lovely War:

Gassed last night and gassed the night before,
Going to get gassed tonight if we never get gassed any more.
When we're gassed we're sick as we can be,
'Cos phosgene and mustard gas is much too much for me.
They're warning us, they're warning us,
One respirator for the four of us.
Thank your lucky stars that three of us can run,
So one of us can use it all alone.

Bombed last night and bombed the night before,
Going to get bombed tonight if we never get bombed any more.
When we're bombed we're scared as we can be.
God strafe the bombing planes from High Germany.
They're over us, they're over us,
One shell hole for just the four of us.
Thank your lucky stars there are no more of us,
'Cos one of us could fill it all alone.

Very soon, I shall be back there, I sense it - the shapes, the covers, the politics, the silent music, the atmosphere will the same as last night. The slow movements, the way everything fits together. I shall fall asleep and return.

Some of the plot twists will be different - they always are, even in the most recurring of dreams. And I doubt there will be that interminable after-party at the BBC after the Awards. Yet now I have written it down, I may be wrong about that. Or this time I will hear the speeches... or... or...

The Unconcious always wins.

Very soon...

Despite the setbacks described in a private post, the novel I have written is millimetring forward to self-publication. I cannot give an exact publication date yet, but the remaining problems are getting sorted slowly.

This evening I had a sudden impulse to show the author as Alec Weston, as opposed to my 'real' name which currently appears on (the electronic version) of the cover. But I think it's too late to change now without major disruption.

I am feeling serene.

I may be April-fooling myself, but I feel happy.  The very, very weird and indeed disturbing phase of my life is over, or at least in abeyance.  The bully has retreated (He admits to no feelings; once I dared to get in touch with some of my grief and sadness, the poor guy had nothing to offer.

All is calm, the sun is shining.  Pilates and Cranial Mysteriess to look forward to.  My cat is sleeping - dreaming and - of course imaginary.