Too Much To Declare

Michio Kaku, a distinguished American scientist has resurfaced on guardian.co.uk in an article written over four years ago. Is he mad?

"Perhaps, also, a Type III civilisation, which can harness the Planck energy, will open a hole in space and tunnel through a wormhole to a parallel, warmer universe. There is no other hope. Either leave the universe or die with it. If the wormhole is microscopic in size then we may send a nanobot that can reproduce itself indefinitely and create cloning factories to recreate the dead civilisation through it."

Right now, somewhere else in hyperspace, my clone is doing the washing up.

I want to go to Blah, on the Downs.

Never heard of it. Jump in.

Well, how will we get there? I believe it's quite a well known...

I'll ask my supervisor, mate.

I'm sure one of the other drivers know where it...

It's not on Google.

Sorry?

The supervisor says he can't find it on Google. Sure you wouldn't prefer to go somewhere else?

It's on the site of an Indian War Memorial. Thousands of Indians were cremated there in the First World War. You're not listening are you?.

(To supervisor) It's meant to be a war memorial or something... (to me) The only one's on the sea front.

Well, I've just managed here to find Blah here on this Ordinance Survey map.

Let's have a look... This is out of date! How old is this map?

No, it's not. Perhaps you've never seen a map printed on paper before (some of these remarks I only thought)

I have put it into my Satnav. Now I can see it. Wonderful things Satnav. You don't have to think.

I should think for someone like you that is absolutely essential.

You're not from around here, are you? Here we are, that's £16.20. Do you want a receipt?

People often ask would you live your life all over again? I asked a similar question here a few weeks ago.

I have always answered, yes, yes, Yes! What I know now mixing with the youthful energy I had then - no contest.

But it has occurred to me that if I rewound my life to say age 22, it would mean my father would be still alive - indeed healthily middle-aged. So I would have to go along with all his stuff, or face his disapproval, or make a clean break with him.

We were so close until I got my girlfriend pregnant - he saw this as some form of betrayal, although he pushed us into marriage. My second "betrayal" was, aged 28, to leave the BBC, which I found stultifying, and my dad regarded as my perfecr career...

My life would only have turned out to be different if I effectively disowned both my parents (they broke up when I was five). And, even second time around, I wonder if I would have the courage.

Perhaps I'd need to return to teenage, and this time round rebel against them instead of school.

...through rose-tinted spectacles does nothing to improve their smell.

(this is a highly metaphorical post, and will be explained some time soon, possibly tomorrow)

There's a new BNP supporting blog on this site. The writer seems to be careful to keep well within the law. But there's no need for the writer to spell out the British National Party case - the racism and the threat of violence is implicit in all the self satisfied we-are-the-martyrs prose.

http://sunnycreativesworld.blog.co.uk

Should we just ignore this blog? beseige with comments? Try to get it banned?

I often get back from mother's this time on Saturday and find myself wallowing in tiredness mingled with a sense of anti climax.

Usually I'm full of indignation and anger about some events of the day (recently it's been more about my sister than my mum). I either try to blog about them too intensely - too much detail, too much unresolved, unmediated, passion. Or I don't write anything at all, and perhaps go into a little sulk that frequently lasts all Sunday.

And why do so much fewer people read this blog on Saturday than any other day of the week? Partly, it's because I haven't been behind a keyboard writing stuff. But surely, earlier, I could have produced something killer that made people "love" me more? Then I could forget about my mum and my sister and that young woman who put down the phone on me a little too quickly - and bask in blog approval.

How sad.

Who minds waiting?

Read more!

On Thursday I fly to Vienna for two days, before moving eastwards.

I feel a bit daunted. It's one of these places I've heard so much about, and has so many associations, from Beethoven through Freud to Harry Lime, and yet I have scarcely no knowledge of what to see.

I've forgotten. I went there with my wife in 1965. We were on the way to Greece, changing student trains, but it turned out to be the best part of the trip and, effectively our honeymoon. We stayed in a pension at the end of a long tram route that ran up a hillside through fields.

In fact I hardly remember Vienna itself at all, except having coffee and cake in a building that looked like a palace, with an ornate high ceiling.

A parcel containing 50 copies of Low Life Games has just been delivered by DHL.

I can barely believe it.

Now, the small matter of selling them. So far the publisher hasn't set up a credit card facility.

But all things in good time. I need to get some wonderful, sunny, fresh air.

Builders arrived on time. Have gone out again.

Post arrived at usual time. Included Special Delivery of travellers cheques from my bank, sent yesterday and to be signed for. (Thank you First Direct for using Royal Mail)

Have downloaded Introductory Course to Polish on to my iPod, eaten early lunch, phoned my mum... etc.

No sign of DHL. Am told parcel is somewhere in Brighton. Allegedly.

At last! DHL are meant to be delivering a parcel containing fifty copies of my book today.

All I have to do is not leave home.

I have a reference number. The DHL website cheerfully tells me to enter another. What I think it means (is imputing meaning to computer software being unscientifically athropomorhic?) is that in addition to the parcel reference number I need an account number.

And I do not know the account number of the sender, or any any immediate way to get it from him.

So I will just have to wait.

And wait.

I sought out my local Mac computer store today. It's hard to find among the Brighton Lanes. I must have been muttering because a woman asked me if I were lost.

"It's just round the corner," she said. In a pedestrianised square. "But you'll find it's closed because last night someone drove a van into it."

Sure enough. Plywood instead of most of the glass. The sound builder-business, electric drills. iNothing to be seen.

Perhaps god was giving me a sign to delay purchase of a new printer.

Are you nuts?

"Hello," I told my reflection in the shaving mirror this morning, deluded. "You look pretty damn good."

Why was sleep invented?

This evening I have been arranging bits and pieces for my holiday, including travel insurance.

"Any criminal convictions?" asked the pleasant telephonist, Kirsty from Perth. (Hello, Natalie!)

I wondered aloud whether anyone ever answered that question with a "yes", without hesitation.

Recently, she said, she had a guy who admitted to being convicted of football hooliganism. No policy for him, then.

But I have no criminal record and I didn't admit to kirsty that I had stolen those BBC envelopes 35years ago, so my application was accepted and I have been overcharged in the traditional way.

Ross Coates, an ex-Tory candidate (it is alleged in an Employment Tribunal being held in Bury St Edmunds) told a colleague "All women should be sterilised".

Of course, these days Smirky Cameron would not tolerate the expression of such opinions. Still, I can't help feeling it is a pity that Mr Coates' mother did not anticipate his alleged advice.

Could someone be so rich and powerful that we did not know they existed?

Sorting through some stuff this evening, I came across a folder full of unused buff envelopes marked in red with the old BBC logo. I must have taken them from my Broadcasting House or TV Centre office 35 or more years ago,for use at home.

Damn. A skeleton in the stationery cupboard. There goes my chance of being elected an MP.

I'm suddenly unsure it's going to work out. As I sometimes do, I have made things too complicated.

Flying to Vienna and staying for two days is fine. I'm looking forward to the train journey across Hungary and Slovakia. But the health resort a Polish friend helped in chose for me is in a small spa town miles from anywherw. A beautiful mountaneous spot, but... what will I do all day? Will anyone know English?

It all seemed so blissful a month ago. Now I'm in panic.

Still it's cheap enough, and I have only paid a small deposit in advance. If the worst comes to the worst I could escape...

Tomorrow the world.

It's clouded over again, but I've got another excuse to have a pause in my intensive housework campaign.

You can do it to. Simply click on to http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/default.stm and watch the French Open live.

When Nadal is playing I always think - why is his opponent being so cack handed? Rapha nearly always manages to place the ball just beyond the other guy's reach.

Andy Murray yesterday looked very impressive, too. His style is deceptively casual. It looks surprising that he has hit the ball at all, let alone working his way a winner, time after time. He's a Brit, for goodness sake, I can barely believe it.

Roger Federer, who is playing as I write, is doing fine - but at the moment he doesn't seem in the same class

Dreadful weather to begin with. Slept well for a change, awoke without nagging from superego (aka Inner Mum, Inner Grandad, Inner Nuerotic Sister. Bank Holiday, so no pressure to perform...

Result - a great day for doing those household and office-type chores I have been putting off for months.

And it's going well. Although I have discovered it will cost more to buy a new container for my blender than buy a new one, and that my Magimix - although the motor is still under guarantee, the bowl is no longer available. So food processing will continue to be a messy affair.

Now the sun's come out. So maybe the housework isn't so important after all.

Talking of dreams (as I was in the previous post) I checked which of the 44 posts I have tagged "dream" has been - according to BCUK - the most read.

Er, well, this one from the second half of last year.

I am the MP for Inverness and Invergordon.

I absail in the House of Commons from a nearby mountain, jumping from a high balcony into my seat next to Peter Mandelson.
It's hard to leave the chamber without the receipt from my formal entry pass, but when I manage to charm the hard-bitten female seargant at arms to let me out, I skip with happiness along the corridors. "I'm an MP" I sing. "I'm an MP!"

In my dream, that is. In one of my dreams in a feverish sort of sleeping-waking-sleeping kind of night, dreams that followed a post here to ask for dreams to sort out my trouble conscious.

In my dream, I see Tim Henman in a hotel (is he making his bed?). I know he is playing an important match tomorrow - although awake I know he has retired to the commentary box and unimportant exhibition games). He looks listless. Eventually I pluck up courage to talk to him.

We get on well. He tells me he has mumps, and that (the details are obscure here) it's his manager's fault. I'm worried, because I'm feeling ill myself...

Later, he lends me a racquet and we are about to play tennis... but then something happens...then something else... his manager, shadowy, other guys chatting in the lobby... oh, so many details I have forgotten...

Still, something appears to have put me in a good mood - which, on a Sunday, my friends, is unusual indeed.

Woken all sweaty peculiar. Dreams? Don't know. And look at the time!

I'm sick and tired of gritting my teeth.

Not for the first time, I long to be shown a new direction in my sleep. I don't want a dream that explains everything; there really is no need to know. It would be nice to recall what happens why I awake, but maybe that's not essential. What would be good - a few signposts, a few encouraging smiles, undulating landscape and some scintillating music.

My sister has a very condescending attitude to me, which I become more and more aware of now at long last I am pulling myself together.

There's nothing like getting rid of bullshit in your own life to clearly see the bullshit in those 'close' to you.

Poor, poor Alec. No money. Failed, flawed talent. A faint carbon copy of Daddy who let's face it was a failure himself. Poor pathetic Alec. At least he hasn't Lost his Temper recently.

That's what my sister thinks. Sometimes I believe there is some dark family secret (perhaps some lying, libellous story about me) that no one will ever tell me - or my mum for that matter. Lies on my father's side.

Paranoid nonsense, possibly. I'm tired.

Let's write a sonnet.

We'll climb aboard that sentimental cloud,

Hitch a tinted ride to Hollywood.

Lock into each other's blinded eyes

And see our own, fluorescent.

This is a by-numbers parody of love,

In nursery rhyme identical.

But better this than feel more dangerous -

To find all we have in common is

An itchy, inconvenient lust,

Earthbound, shabby, profound

Only in the way it's selfish.

A lust which might sanitate and dry

If we use big words about it.

I have a bad habit. If I'm not sure I let BCUK Friend's Invitations accumulate - no time to check their blogs out now, they've just begun so there's no way of telling. & etc.

Weasel logic.

In the last half hour I have gone through a list of 8 accumulated invitations dating back to January. Rejected the lot.

Oh, yes. Sometimes I like the feeling of being a ruthless bastard.

An MP (Tory or New Labour? My attention wandered) has been accused of buying three loo seats on expenses. Or was it four?

It's gross - but it's all so trivial. MPs are minows in the sewer, compare the alligator bankers who have robbed us collectively of billions and spend each day destroying more and more peoples lives.

I'm not defending our professional politicians. They caught the greed bug good and proper. But in the carnival farce of late capitalism they are no more than a rank and ragged chorus who find it hard to sing.

Woke over an hour ago, at five forty five. That's late-ish for me since I moved here.

I long to go to sleep again. Another hour, two hour's sleep each morning would be so, so nice.

Possibly, I am about to implode. Or maybe cross the species barrier and become an owl or similar.

This could be a good thing.

(recycled and revised)

I have several, early memories - of dreams; - of time spent with my dad; - my earliest waking up in my cot, alone in a room, when I was eighteen month's old. But I can barely remember my mother at all, except in the shadows.

But there's one good memory I have - although, when you read the story, you may think I'm being macabre by caling it good.

I was about three and a half year's old. My mum took me around to have tea with my Great Aunt Louis (Louise, surely, but it was never pronounced like that). She was my father's father's elder sister - not related to my mum at all. She lived somewhere near the Thames, probably in Kingston or Hampton Wick.

Aunt Loius made the tea and we sat in her living room drinking it. I couldn't understand what she was talking about, though I don't expect it was particularly profound.

Then my great auntlent forward to do up one of her suspenders, gasped, had a heart attack and died.

My mother rushed me next door to a neighbour who had a phone. (This was 1946) Of course I didn't realise what had happened, but somehow took it all in my stride. My mum seemed to have behaved so calmly - so unlike her usual panic. And that reassured me.

Mum was six month's pregnant with my sister. I remember her driving me home in a open-topped Hillman, which she had hardly driven before. She had acquired a driving licence before the War, before the time you needed to take a driving test. I felt sad for Auntie Loius - but also, strangely happy.

I realised today that I have been writing this blog for only a few months less than the length of my marriage.

Indeed, it won't be long before Too Much to Declare has outlasted the First World War.

Sometimes, to quote Cole Porter, I wonder why a little.

I'd like to introduce you to a new blogger, a new Friend of mine -moonlightonskin...

http://damselindistress.blog.co.uk/

I love the way she is so spare with words, uses short words, yet conveys so much.

Here's a 3 year old post I'd forgotten.

"Was" is the ugliest sound in the English language. To me it sounds like endless, drizzly rain.

A limp little word, past imperfect. No beginning, no end. Unspecific. A sign of slack writing, if used too much. A symbol of lack of things happening, of stuckness.

There are over 3.3 was's listed on google, excluding references to the World Aquatic Society.

Anyway, I've got to the "de-wasing" stage of revising my novel. If I unpick the reasons I've used used the word too much, I find extra little scenes I can write, to make the story more vivid.

For example,
He was determined not to put up with it any more
Well, how does his detemination show? Does he grit his teeth? Make a list of things he'll do in order not to put up with it? Did his determination come to him at a particular moment? Or creep up? Or did he just feel he ought to be determined?

And so on.

He was leaning against the lamp post.
When did he start leaning? What made him lean? Or perhaps it's a Becket play and leaning is part of his existential condition? Hasn't he got anything better to do?

etc.

So, budding writers, my 101 advice is - avoid the Was Word as much as possible.

Follow my words and not my writing. I have just checked. There are 704 wases left in my manuscript. Almost five a page.

To hell with it! I was going to sit in front of this screen all day, but now I've decided to go on a long walk. Even posting about was has given me a headache.

"Does global capitalism contain antagonisms strong enough to prevent its indefinite reproduction?"

In other words, are we stuck with it for ever?

The first 100 copies of my book were printed a fortnight ago - and have disappeared up the arse of DHL.

They apparently made an attempt to deliver the parcel to the designated address, but as no one was there... well, I don't know what has happened since, because - I've been told - they won't respond to e-mails or phone calls.

These endless delays on publication ar becoming surreal.

No that's not right. I was driving a Porsche at the time - a car and house swap with a guy in California, 1979 or '80. Well, he got the better house, in London.

The details are blurred. We were staying with some friends of friends for a couple of nights, somewhere north of LA. It was the first time I had ever slept on a waterbed - the old type that made you feel seasick.

The friends of friends lived in a cul de sac. Casually they pointed out the house at the end. "That's where Janis Joplin used to live." 10 years earlier, while she was, allegedly drinking herself to death with tequilla.

Janis Joplin! Wow!

They claimed not to be interested in someone so negative. Our friends were Scientologists I seem to remember.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjD4eWEUgMM

Actually life's pretty good for me at the moment. I could moan for hours, list all the chances missed, the years gone up in smoke. But most of the problems I now have are ghosts.

Of course there's my mum - she doesn't even know I'm going on holiday yet. But the power she has over me is ghostly, not real. Doesn't make her reproachfullness go away, but puts it in a bit of context.

So smiles to all my friends and passers by.

On the whole, narcissists have weak arms. They need someone else to hold their mirror.

We might as well mark the anniversary today. It's hard to work out from last year's post exactly when I gave up smoking dope (plus tobbacco - although I have never smoked a straight cigarette in my life), becuase I hid my every day, half-a-lifetime habit from hyperspace until, somehow, I broke the habit.

It has, in some ways, been remarkably easy. The fact that my indulgance was so solitary meant I had no regular smoking buddies to break with. But the fact that I had used hash as a way of escaping problems and compensating for my loneliness, means that those problems have come to the fore, and that loneliness has ached even more.

Everything - including new friendships - seem to be changing for the better since January - my hernia operation, followed by cranial-sacral massage with a remarkable local theapist. By February the cloud of dopey confusion at last retreated from my head - the hash had really gone on affecting me that long.

The only time I really miss the stuff is when I am trying to write - but less so, because nine months ago even writing a long post like this one would have made me jump up and down with thwarted craving. Now it only happens when I make my umteenth attempt to start my new novel.

The only thing that has changed in my life beyond the obvious (scoring, burn-holes in tee shirts etc) is that I barely ever watch TV any more. Doesn't seem worth it without being stoned - although Eurovision on Saturday was surreal enough without halluciginans.

"Hi Alec!

Are you sure you wish to send this e-mail? It is full of crude words and, it appears, abusive language. Of course it is your right, within the law, to say what you like - but we like to encourage you to produce the best and most effective e-mail product possible!

Perhaps you should reconsider the wording - and get us to do it for you, with our TruBland software program. Meanwhile we have placed your original message in your draft messages folder.

Have a nice day,

URStupid.com "

On Wednesday, I bought a ticket on line from Air Miles. The sotware seemed incapable of rectifying an obvious mistake (2 tickets on the same flight in the same person (my) name with identical birthdates. I tried phoning the "Help" line but every time I chose an option (1,2,etc) theie line disconnected.

Three attempts to contact them by email have so far failed. If they don't reply Air Miles have committed fraud. If they do this to everyone in a similar situation, it is a criminal conspiracy.

Still, passing on:
Today Southern Water accuse me of not paying their bill. (Red ype, veiled theats) I check with my bank (First Direct use human beings) and indeed no money has been paid to them. However, when I come to fill in the online form, my computer already knows my Southern Water reference number - but suggests it is still 2008. In other words, the evidence points to the fact I set the DD up last year and that they have mislaid it.

Naturally I would like talk to someone to sort this out. But all the phone lines listed are automated.

So, arising from these cases and others I let go of to prevent a heart murmur, I suggest a new, post Crunch rule. If an organisation does not offer a phone line with a human being at the end of it to sort out problems, the customer is not liable to pay anything (including Air Miles) for the transaction.

We'll get round to fining companies for playing lift music and repeating "your call is important to us" recordings later

title="Wordle: Dance"> alt="Wordle: Dance"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"/>

I'm looking for one, prhs a couple of CDs to dance to each morning.

I love dancing and it's the only way I'm going to get sweaty exercise.

The trouble is I'm more or less still stuck in the early nineties. Massive Attack, for example. And, initially, I want to dance to tracks I haven't heard much before.

So,I like some suggestions. Stuff that's come out in the last 2 years. (And no piss taking, Dad Rock, MOR or Paul McCartneylike please)

Had a real, hot, bath laced with Hops and Valerian Oil. Feel much, much better. Cancel last post

Despite the Gong Bath, and other nice things that happened to be earlier, I am now stuck in familiar Sunday paralysis, with not the slightest enthusiasm to do anything on my to do list, and feeling far too uptight to doze off to much needed sleep. Perhaps someone could start an argument with me and I'd begin to wake up.

Perhaps not.

This afternoon I had a gong bath.

title="Wordle: Spoiling"> alt="Wordle: Spoiling"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"/>

I remember little about my father's brief second marriage, although flashes sometimes come back.

M. already had two kids with her first husband, although he had died (winning the George Cross) in the War before his daughter was born.

My father had me - and my sister, younger, who was seldom around.

He said that M was always spoiling her own children - indulging them with gifts, I think he meant although I have entirely forgotten. Letting them stay up late, talk through the night.

She said my father spoilt me rotten. I think it was because he listened to what I had to say. Once he brought me a hot drink at night, after I had been left uncollected from a routine hospital appointment and had to beg my bus fare.

But, for all I know, I may have forgotten inconvenient facts.

Does anyone talk about 'spoiling' children any more? Were you spolit as a child? Do you spoil your own chidren? Grandchildren?

Does 'spoiling' do any harm?

I went to Covent Garden yesterday, to Stamford's map shop. Covent Garden was packed, Stamford's seething with shoppers, the queue for the till right across the ground floor.

Oxford Street was chaotically crowded, busier than some days before Christmas.

So, is the crunch over? Are we back to spend, spend, renta-spend? Was it all a bad dream?

I reckon we are a living in the twilight of the gods.

He's obviously one of those 'friends' from school, who were no such thing.

He came to me, voice only, just now as I dozed of into a paranoid fantasy:

"The trouble with you, Weston, is when you stop being neurotic you're just a bloody bore."

1 That I had a voice that could fill the Eurovision stadium without singing flat.

2 That Andrew Lloyd spontaneously combusts on stage when the UK entry wins and is sung again at the end.

Tomorrow, when I have got through this bout of IBS and dealt with a whole lot things that are bugging me, I'll start living in the present - from moment to moment...

Ready or not, this is the present, now.

...well that's all, really.

Oh, and let it out again.

Then repeat.

In the Surrey village where my mother lives, the Catholic church building opened for business (was sanctified?) 50 years ago this month. By rights my mother should be at the heart of the local celebrations, as she is practically the only surviving member of the original congregation to live nearby. But, for reasons I have yet to establish (maybe it's because she hates being in large groups of people) she is not involved.

But, 50 years ago, before the church opened my mum was the centre of eveverything. Mass was celebrated each Sunday in the corrugated-iron Community Hall opposite our house. And between Sundays, the Sacrament of the Mass - and, for all I know, a saint's relic, indispensible in any Catholic altar as well - was stored under our stairs.

So the Holy Sacrament was being stored just beneath the Nazi staircarpet which I mentioned yesterday. (Question ot theoligians - was it bread or Christ's Flesh at this point?)

And while stamping up and down on the interlinked swastikas (should I have realised their significance)could be taken as a symbolic rejection of all things National Socialist, my father would have been far more alarmed that we should be so close to relics of Roman Catholicism.

Because - as long time followers of this blog will be aware - three Court of Appeal judges had decided that, although our mum had Custody of my sister and myself, she should not bring them un in the Roman Faith. If, before turning 21, I had wanted to become a Catholic, I would have had to have gain the Court's permission.

Anyway, my dad, aware of the dangers, whisked me away to good Anglican boarding schools from the age of 9. And boys are expected to go to baording schools, aren't they? So my mother didn't object.

But in the holidays (and my sister all the time) lived in a house haunted by Popish relics, and swastikas.

I suppose it's my Inner Camp Side. Whatever. I do enjoy reading about Eurovision (and I guess I'll be watching tomorrow).

The Greek singer, Sakis Rouvis, 37, is - I am told - "blissfully unburdened by self doubt." Wouldn't it feel terrific, to be self-doubt free? Or perhaps, dear reader, you, like Sakis, are already unburdened.

In which case, please tell me which drug I should take. I promise never to enter Eurovision.

As often happens after a few hours awake in the night, I eventually fell back into troubled sleep, a bit delirious. I was following Barak Obama's election campaign.

But who was the other guy, the Republican running with Sarah Palin? I'd forgotten his name, yet I knew in my heart he was going to win.

Then, as I pulled myself awake, just before I remembered it was mid May not early November and it all been a dream, I saw the name of the Republican candidate, the next USA President after George W - his brother, Jeb Bush.

Why am I awake? Indigestion for reasons I can't fathom. For an hour, I was tossing/turning, beating myself up for all sorts of things - but the ball in the stomach came first.

If I'd stubbed my toe, I wouldn't blame myself, yet that would be more 'my fault' than this.

It's strange and frustrating how my IBS takes on this moral dimension, especially at night. I haven't done nothing wrong. I've been eating well. No drinking, drugs, nonos. Now if I go back to bed, try to sleep again, the nasty bullying voice will be as loud as ever.

It's almost better not to sleep at all than have that.

by Hans Christian Andersen, amended

There was once a vain and stereotypical prince, and he wanted a princess, who must be a real Princess. He travelled right around the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. There were plenty of princesses, but whether they were real princesses he had great difficulty in discovering; there was always something which was not quite right about them. So at last he had come home again, and he was very sad because he wanted a real princess so badly - the ghastly little snob.

One evening there was a terrible storm; it thundered and lightninged and the rain poured down in torrents; indeed it was a fearful night.

In the middle of the storm somebody knocked at the town gate, and the old King himself sent to open it.

It was a princess who stood outside, but she was in a terrible state from the rain and the storm. The water streamed out of her hair and her clothes; it ran in at the top of her shoes and out at the heel, but she said that she was a real princess.

'Well we shall soon see if that is true,' thought the old Queen, but she said nothing. She went into the bedroom, took all the bed clothes off and laid a pea on the bedstead: then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on top of the pea, and then twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses. This was where the princess was to sleep that night. In the morning they asked her how she slept.

'Oh terribly bad!' said the princess. 'I have hardly closed my eyes the whole night! Heaven knows what was in the bed. I seemed to be lying upon some hard thing, and my whole body is black and blue this morning. It is terrible!'

They saw at once that she must be a real princess when she had felt the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. Nobody but a real princess could be such a narcissistic prima donna have such a delicate skin. (This was in the days before Hello Divas and the Cult of Celebrity)

So the prince took her to be his wife, for now he was sure that he had found a real princess, and the pea was put into the Museum, where it may still be seen if no one has stolen it.

Now this is a true story, but it is not recorded if the couple lived happily ever after.

Would you like to live the last 10 years of your life again (posssibly in a different way)?

I have just had a massage that was meant to be a sculpture. Very soothing.

The cooker repair man has arrived on time - at a time I specified, which is contrary to official service contractor's policy.

He's cheerfully mending the cooker as we speak. He admits, despite Which?'s recommendation, it's not a particularly good cooker. He found (and gave back to me) a two pound coin when he pulled it out from the wall. That's only about 2% of his firm's fee. Still, it's nice to have a contractor in the house who doesn't spur me to fantasies of murder.

"It's not going to bring back that poor child to life, is it? If I go to the police. What was it doing there on the pavement, anyway? If I go in front of a magistrate it's not going to help anyone. They are bound to take away my licence! And my standing in the community would be shot. How could I keep my job if there's been all that hysterical stuff in the tabloid press? And would the child's mum be better off with me in prison? Really? Wouldn't it better if she learnt better parenting skills so she protected her other two kids - or maybe she hasn't got any. I really don't have time for this."

I bought my ticket for my holiday today - a PLUS though the gangsters at Air Miles fined me £30.60p for no longer collecting airmiles and charged me twice for the ticket.

I had a good Pilates class, ahoulders more relaxed, glutes working better which is a big PLUS.

Then I met the man who has a sound studio on the same floor as Pilates who is very open and helpful and next week he is going to help me master the sound recording software I've been struggling to use on my own, which is a DEFINITE PLUS.

BUT yet another day has passed without any copies of my book arriving which is DOING MY HEAD IN. By the time they actually get here, I will have forgotten what plans I had made for a marketing campaign, LOST all momentum, enthusiasm and most likely THE WILL TO LIVE.

I have certainly already lost any desire to tell you why there has been such a ridiculous delay.

But first things first. TKK asked me which was my favourite post on this blog. This one, over three years old, took ages to find, the tags (eg 'nazis') strangely missing from my cloud. Actually, the reason I am drawing attention to it now is because later I want to tell you what was kept under the stairs - something I had forgotten.

http://alphamin.blog.co.uk/2006/02/08/the_story_of_a_stair_carpet_no_wonder_i_~545998/

Easily my popular post in the last year (well, except for spoof rave review of a Nokia phone, which TF people have now at last stopped checking out) is http://alphamin.blog.co.uk/2008/05/11/two-sad-true-stories-about-young-love-an-4161063/

Every single day, at least two bloggers seem still to check it out, one year after I wrote it. In fact, according to BCUK statstics, about 250 in the last 30 days.

Frankly, rereading it today, I don't find the first story quite as sad as I did last year. (I think 10loves10 made a Comment among those lines at the time) Maybe, in the last 12 months, I really have grown not to be such a sentimentalist.

Sweat could save me - and save you from being faced with so many neurotic blogs.

An hour's sweaty exercise a day could transform me in an optimistuc, acheiving person...

Well, it's easy enought to say. In practice, though, I get come with a heavy lethargy whenver I think about strenuous physical exercise. I enrol in classes, but never go (except for Pilates which is great fun and good for me, but not about sweat). I hate gyms, am self concious at running - and often even find it difficult to start that long hike - which always begins to make me feel better about 20 minutes along the way. In fact, after a long walk I feel terrific.

I bully myself to do hard physical exercise - and with me bullying doesn't work.

Perhaps I need to find away of approaching silently from behind and nudging myself forward gently.

I have just discovered this, tucked away on my other blog. Apparently I wrote it about Christmas time. My memory is gone to rot:

After four and a half hours lying awake on the longest night of the year, Damien Wardrop for the first time faced up to the inescapable fact that his mother was immortal.

So you can imagine his shock when the Nursing Home rang the next morning to break the news that Mrs Wardrop had just choked to death on her breakfast cornflakes – although it was several days before they admitted the precise circumstances. “She passed away peacefully,” the nurse lied at the time. “Such a sweet old lady.”

“It depends what you mean by immortal,” one part of Damien’s brain repeated, while another part of his mental system concentrated on arrangements for the funeral. He couldn’t imagine it would be a popular occasion because his mother died a week short of her ninety sixth birthday. All her known friends had predeceased her, so there was just the family – Damien himself (although he would have gladly skipped the occasion), Aunt Freda – who had not talked to her sister since a falling out over a young pilot killed in the Battle of Britain, and of course Uncle Phil, currently visiting one his sons in Perth, Australia. He returned by the first plane and insisted the coffin was re-opened so he could grieve properly.

“Are you going to sue the Home,” Uncle Phil asked on the phone, “about the cornflakes?” Damien couldn't think what to say. Up until now he had not been allowed to take family decisions.

"•
Well, I suppose you could call it corrupting, but that’s rather a grand word, don’t you think? I am going to fuck a load of guys who pay me. Is that really so bad? It could be fun. Actually I’m told a lot of men will just want me to suck their cocks – is that less corrrupt in your view? Sure I’ll get bored sometimes and sore, but then I can take a night off. Oh, for crying out loud, it’s my body, I can do what I like with it.

And why is sex the only thing that corrupts? What about those false smiles you wear to work? Laughing at the boss’s feeble jokes? Lieing to a customer, kidding yourself the firm you work for has integrity. Or for that matter, telling fibs to your children when daddy is off on a dirty weekend. Pretending to yourself you still want him they way you did when he still had that glint in his eye.
•"

Amidst all the motes (& moet?) in MPs' eyes - and the moat we all helped pay to clear round a Conservative MP Douglas Hogg's house - you may have missed this story of what really matters to our Prime Minister:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/11/gordon-brown-make-up

What can cellophane wrapping do that plastuc wrapping can't?

(...and not a Bank Holiday)

Monday - I can get on with things - from the trivial (get shoes re-healed, glasses recoated etc etc.) to arrranging to collect a whole load of my books tomorrow, and persuade my guy to have it listed on Amazon. Probably have to push him about it tomorrow.

Yesterday (Sunday) was, as usual, mostly a day for introspection, depresssion and despair. The better I get in myself (eg less hard on myself), the more I seem to brought down by spending time with my mother each Saturday. If I could learn to take Saturdays a lot seriously, as if they were some kind of surreal performance, I would feel a whole lot better for the rest of te weekend.

A bot appears to be ripping through Too Much to Declare ("crawling" seems too weak a word for the speed it's operating) 6,400 pageviews already today, all but a few in the last hour.

Anyone else "suffering"?

... a five and a six!

Of course I could throw again, and add the scores up.

But I think tomorrow is a good a day as any to mark the anniversary, and I think I'll have the time.

May 11 is more or less right.

Everything's more or less.

My attempts to get a podcast off the ground are turning into farce. I need someone to callaborate with - not a his 'n' his/hers voice, but on the production side.

Similarly I have a couple of potential writing projects which would be better if they undertaken with someone else.

And I would like to get back into acting - even if it meant travelling up and down to London for a bit.

I'm not such a loner as some of you might think.

I have now emerged from a deep trough of depression that I've been sunk into for most of the day. It's almost as if that depressive state is the only real bond remaining with my-mother-and-sister, and I feel guilty not to be down there.

Anyhow, now I feel fine - a bit like when I've just had my hair cut.

Life is not nailed to the floor.

Even the leopard can change his follow spots, by prowling to and fro across the stage. Some would call it dancing.

Eh?

My ex brother-in-law is an unpleasant bullying, self righteous, arrogant, spectacularly right wing, intellectually rigid, humourless, reputably impotent human being - oh, and a hopeless cook. But he's very good at keeping a kitchen spotlessly clean.

That's where he's superior to me.

I know who you are, because Uncle Google has told me.

There is still time to make amends.

Thanks for all the good vibes today, by the way. I think they stopped arriving around 6pm, West Surrey Standard Time.

What happened after six could be described hilariously, if I were in the mood.

I am not.

On the other hand, I'm not in the mood to yell and scream either, which is good.

So maybe tomorrow I'll amuse you with an account of how my day with my mother ended. Meanwhile, lets change the subject. Any ideas?

I have been getting into even more than my usual state of uptightness about my weekly visit to my mum today, following her tears and the lover's tiff atmosphere last Saturday.

So general good vibrations in the general direction of West Surrey Semi Suburbia would be welcome. Especially welcome, vibes directed towards her bedroom circa 5pm, when I am finishing filing her banks accounts etc, under mum's supervision.

She is terrified of losing control of course - and death is the final loss of control. Fear is contagious (especially among family and friends) but can cross "species boundaries" - aka my fear can be about other things entirely...

...

Oh to hell with the virtual! You could visit me in Waitrose's Godalming carpark around 2.45 and give me a physical hug.

Tonight I intend to fall asleep inventing the character and plotlines of a new detective who will make my fortune. I will probably reach the land of nod before he finds the first body. In fact the last time I played this game, sleep arrived even before I had decided whether he's a PI or a Policeman.

They are having sex upstairs for the first time for nine months.

Of course, it may be a different "they".

I remember recently writing in a Comment to - I seem to remember - Soy when her computer broke down just out of guarantee that products were nowadays designed to last 368 days.

Well, for cookers I discover, it's 372 days. Yesterday, not at that moment in use and no one in the kitchen, a cracking noise announced the hob of my Indesit cooker, bought because Which? recommended it on 30th April last year, had broken. A nasty glass gash across the hob.

Parts are still FREE FREE FREE so I will "only" have to pay the call out charge of a few pennies under £100 - a third of the cost of the cooker. And I'll set another day aside for waiting. (I also had to told 34 times that my call was important this afternoon. But hey, that's not even a record.)

a new post will appear here shortly

Yes, very much a day for headless chicken and their abandoned eggs.

It's strange to think I'm on no drugs at all, except my own, fractured, confusion.

1. Cancel.

2. Start again.

I exaggerate. I generalise. I have changed my mind, cleared my ears - and dusted off Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young and lots of bum notes and audience appreciation. (And what on earth was I doing peddling Country Joe last night? Some good lyrics, but musically...)

Musically, mainstream LP music - a hell of lot of whiney white male voices and strummed guitars. It seemed great and portentous at the time. No wonder I took up smoking dope, to make it all sound better...

Just because I'm an oldie who lived through it doesn't mean I have to be sentimental about this shit.

Why am I always so reluctant to peel the cooking apples?

I live on my own; no one else will do it.

On other matters I'm not lazy in the kitchen.

I like eating stewed apples. I don't like their skins.

So?

I visited Dr Sigmund Freud's house in Swiss Cottage the other day, but there were no clues there.

Up to london with my laptop to learn how to use some graphics software and apply it to my www.lowlifegames.com website and transfer some data. L, my designer friend, methodical but not in the first instance a computer person is very good at explaining the I-Web software.

The publisher still hasn't got round to providing for the book to be paid for by credit card, or get it on to Amazon. Some copies of the book were printed yesterday, so that's something.

Thanks to some nice Polish friends, I have now booked a fortnight's holiday in June at a spa hotel in the countryside near Kracow. Luxurious, but inexpensive.

I will now begin making a symbolic effort to learn Polish.

My dreams are sweet and deep - then I wake, after an hour that seems forever - into a nightmare panic, filled with the deamon of despair, mocking with the prospect of old age or death.

It's nice to find two supportive comments waiting, that feel like love and a reponse to this silly daemon, this avenging angel.

Or maybe it's more straightforward than that: I feel I don't deserve it.

I have been pondering for half the day - overthinking it. Maybe someone else has some better ideas in the subject - which is fear of success.

Some people (mainly Americans) argue that all anyone has to fear is failure.

However, I have this feeling that I myself am often blocking, sabotaging, reversing away from creative success. It's not laziness that blocks me. Or failure-fear; if something doesn't work out I'm almost comforted, back on familiar ground.

Why do I find the fantasy of success so terrifying? It's not as if I get as far as imagining an Oscar award or the Booker prize... it's... maybe it's fundamentally that I fear not being critised any more... I fear growing up.

Ah! Country Joe and the Fish. "Don't give a damn/next stop is Vietnam". If I were less lazy tonight I'd give you a YouTube of Sexist Pig ("another notch on your cock"), but here's a link to all the audio, including that little number - http://www.countryjoe.com/jukebox.htm

It is my sister who insists my mother must never go into a Care Home. It sounds a selfless insistence, and she does far more than my one day a week looking after her.

Yet sis relies on my one-day-a-week, and me doing the jobs like the paperwork that she hates, for the system to work. If I said I couldn't take it any more (for me, it's the emotional strain, not the hours worked) she would be hard pressed to keep the whole thing going.

My mother has live-in care, but Maria takes the weekend off. There's backup care some hours of the weekend too (which my sister pays for to shield my mother to facing up to economic realities - there's no question of mum ceding finacial control). But all this care isn't enough. She want us, kith and kin.

But back to my sister's "selflessness", her frantic driving round southern England, constantly doing things for mum, but seldom sitting down. She admits that she hates to sit down next her, and one of the reasons she is opposed to the Care Home idea is it would involve a lot more bedside sitting. And, come to think of it, my sister has just moved to a smaller house - no longer room to build a granny flat. She is forever feeling guilty she's not doing enough - but, perhaps, in another way she is being just as selfish as I am, me trying to cut the knot...

I know I've said most of this before, but I need to set it out in b & w in one place and see I can come, for once, to a sensitive but honest plan of action.

PS. My mother is not limitlessly wealthy. Eight, ten years in private a Care Home would be about her limit. She will be 94 in July, but definitely trying to live for ever.

PPS. My sister is very different from me. She is terrified of facing her demons.

Last night, I slept without the socks -
But come to look, the night is still proceeding.
I fell into a trough near death, dignified,
And now this dreadful poetry.
The worse is, awake, the masculine's returned,
So witless, unthinking, oneup sumzero -
Tone death, cocksure.

I have been out all day, ever since I blogged Election Now? In my head I had prepared a follow-up post, with lots of brilliant observations.

All forgotten.

I have dreamt up a whole load of brilliant new ideas, though. Too tired to write them down.

And, somehow I doubt if I will remember them tomorrow morning.

It would be nice if my brain could be downloaded to hard disk.

I have nothing to say in favour of smarmy, say-anything, ride-a-bike-and-hide-the-butler, blue-is-greed, black-is-blue David Cameron, but with our ridiculous electoral system and hysterical miilionaire owned media, it looks as if his eventual election as Prime Minister is all but inevitable.

Apart from the cancelling of the Idendity Cards, the new Conservative government (unless forced into a colation with Lib Dems) is likely to be pretty bad for ordinary people.

But is there any gain to anybody - except a few narcissistic politicians and journalists - for "New Labour" to stagger on for another year? The project, intellectual dishonest from the start, always a hall of distorting mirrors is in its deathrows.

Maybe there will be a miracle - or, slightly more likely, a genuine positive, progressive transformation in British politics. In any event, lets get the general election over and done with - and hold as the same time as the Euro elections, the first week in June. Then, at worst, enough people might abandon the Labour Party for good and start organising for something better.

But - you never know, An election now? Smarmy chops Cameron might be taken by surprise.

Shameful, isn't it, bring single?

Longing for the long weekend to end.

I know weekdays are hard for those of you who nine to five it. But for me they are days I can arrange to do things (like last Friday, wait in for a parcel delivery, okay...) Sundays, Bank Holidays are days I usually forget to arrange even social things, days I sink into self pity about my lonliness, days I...

But what the hell. It's Tuesday tomorrow...

The Brighton Festuval. I got a stand up comedy show, not realising the audience would be so small, and it would be held in a pub. Three women comics. Lots of vagina jokes. Wish I liked drinking alcohol - never felt so conspiciously sober in my life.

•
Just emerged from the world of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (in the 1930s when chain smoking has no connection with cancer, and it's really cool to drink and drive).

At first my reading was shadowed by Hitchcock's 1940 movie with Lawrence Olivier, which I must have seen some time without remembering. At any rate, I could each line of dialogue spoken in clipped, upper class pre-war English. I couldn't shake the "hero" Naxime Winter from a cod Olivier in my head. It gave the novel a sort of mannered falseness (I have never liked Olivier's acting style)

But as I read on, I began (as it were) to make a new movie - post modern, I suppose, ironic on the edge of farcical, but very dark. And who better than to play Mr Winter than Richard E Grant - desperately on the knife edge of discovery and madness? An over-the-top version would have him turning, al a Groucho Marx, to camera and saying "Thank God no on has invented forensics yet". But there would be no need for this: Grant could convey such a thought in every muscle of his face.

I haven't cast the female lead yet. Suggestions welcome. Oh, and do read the book.

A quiet day, but I did discover I can see much more clearly without wearing my rose tinted spectacles.

See warts and all.

I so need to worship you, darling. Please play by the rules.

As far as I can tell, I'm invisible today.

Are we to thank the first person who forgot to turn the lights off in a hen house?

This evening, when I left my mother's for the long return journey home (see previous) she was in tears. I was treating her badly, apparently, by not appreciating how much she appreciated how much I was doing for her.

Madness. It felt like the worst kind of breaking up from a love affair that should never happened.

What can I do? She is such a control freak. She wants me do everything for her in precisely the way she wants while she watches. And enjoy what I'm doing!

For example, one of my many Saturday tasks is to do her filing. But no chance she will let me get on with it. The files are kept in the wardrobe in her bedroom (no other place to put them). So she lie on the bed and watches the filing - most of it useless (does she really need a record of her building societies' interest rates since the start of the century...).... Any sarky remark of mine is treated as a sign of adolescent neurosis.

She is coming up to 94. She wants me to help her get a new driving licence...

Will she ever, ever, ever die? Oh, God, I will believe in you if you give me some life after her death.

In prospect - another Awayday to my mother's.

The slowest part of the journey is waiting for connecting trains at Gatwick Airport station. No cafe to sit down for breakfast, dozen of stalls selling the same bready things.

The way back in the evening is the same. Last week I complained to a member of the station staff about the lack of trains that didn't stop at every station (to pick up noisy teenagers on the way to Saturday Clubland).

"That's your fault," he said, with a complete absence of humour, "for living in Brighton."

Life's too short for chess -

- except, I am told during journeys on the Trans Siberian Railway.

Life is too precious for self-reproach -

- and there are no exceptions.

Sad that one of the most popular posts I wrote last month was entitled You are forbidden to read this post.

http://alphamin.blog.co.uk/2009/04/27/you-are-forbidden-to-read-this-post-6019897/

Ten, no five minutes after I blogged the previous post, the first copy of my novel was at last delivered to my door.

*Roll the drums*

It looks great, if a little slim.

I have been out celebrating (remember, tho' that booze 'n' drugs, except coffee, are off my menu)

www.lowlifegames.com/low_life_games/low_life_games.html

At the moment, there is way of no paying by credit card. Be patient. I have been.

I am waiting for a parcel to be delivered. As it happens it is the first copy off the presses of my novel Low Life Games, which should have been published 2 months ago, but has been delayed through no mistake of mine. Water under the bridge... all I want is to see this first copy now.

I need to check it before the printer runs off a hundred or so more to put on immediate sale.

I'm waiting.

Just one copy. It could have been sent by first class mail and posted through the door. But that's not thrusting enough fro the printers. Thwy could have sent it by Royal Mail parcel post, and if I missed its arrival I could visited the local sorting office, two minutes walk away. But that would be supporting a state enterprise.

Allegedly, it is arriving today by courier. Tomorrow i'm not here, it's a long weekend, Tuesday I'm away for half the day...

I'm waiting.

Of course I could phone the thrusting courier service which is meant to be delivering it. May be I could bribe them to put it through the letter box or hold it in their office while I get a txi there.

I could do that if I knew which courier company it was. Somebody is meant to be ringing me back. I am waiting for someone to phone me back - or email with the wayleave number.

I'm waiting

The person who promised the email is not answering their phone.

I should make myself busy. This morning, as I waited, I sorted my emails into mailboxes. A whole years emails. I houseorked. I made some importnat business calls.

I'm waiting

But I have run out of all desire to be busy. I have run out of all desire. I am so fed up I have almost lost the desire to kill.

Still waiting

It could, apparently, become bigger than Uncle Google. Remember you read about it first here on Too Much to Declare.

(After mid May) you'll be able to ask the new site Wolfram Alpha questions in standard English - and it will be able to answer, as long as your queation is scientific or about pop stars or films.

Prof Wolphram says it works by stripping away the "fluff" of our normal language. Fluff like slang, allusions and metaphors - building blocks of culture that Prof Wolfman doesn't intend to have his software answering questions about.