A Stretch In Limousin – RSVP

A year ago, when I was possessed by Stan, I stayed in Sunderland for four months. I pretended Stan’s gran lived there and because his extended family had only recently been reunited, he was visiting the city for the first time. In truth, I was staying with my mum, whose husband – my stepfather – had just died, and rather than it being my first time, I was born and bred in Sunderland and had spent the first 19 years of my life there.

Frankly speaking, I’d always hated Sunderland. Or at least since I was 13 and first spent time anywhere else (Chatham, of all places). But when I moved back last year, I realised I had to somehow chisel the chip off my shoulder and attempt to look at the place with fresh, unjaded eyes. So that’s what I did. I got off my cynical arse and tried to find out what was going on. I figured that I could track down all the local artists, the comedians and writers – maybe I could write articles about them for the local magazines, maybe I could collaborate with them on whatever they were working on. I’d find out about local regeneration – what was happening to make the city more exciting? How could I get involved in that? For the first three weeks, I was excited to the point of actually believing that I could learn to love the place. I would become a part of it, I thought. I’d go back to Pennywell and talk to the people I grew up with. I’d make a film. I’d discard my prejudice. I’d re-adopt my old accent. I’d become Mayor. I think I might have drifted into a tiny flurry of hypomania if I’m completely honest.

But then it passed.

There were no comedians or artists. There were no local magazines. There was no regeneration and no hope for the future. All there was, all there is, is one soulless pub after another – they open, they close, they are replaced, they open, they close, they stay boarded up and become frightful fixtures of the urban landscape, like blackened teeth in a fading photo of a horrible, ugly grimace. Oh, there’s also a leisure centre. Sadly, over the years, they took out all the leisure.

By the time I returned to London in September, the chip on my shoulder had turned into a veritable sack of potatoes and I hated the place more virulently than ever I had before. However, still being Stan, I had to write about it as him. This is what I wrote:

‘On the whole, as I’m sure made clear, I didn’t enjoy my time up there. Although my sample jar – sociologically speaking – was clearly only partially full, I found it a suffocatingly small-minded place. I mean, actually like no other place I’ve ever been – quite striking in its negative incapability, with vast tides of the population seeming to exist in a state of almost intentional closed-mindedness, in a way that you just don’t see down here, not to that extent. In London, I think, people exist. Even if it’s often a rather confused, haphazard or accidental existence, forced by numbers. Up there they just drift through their soulless concrete cake-boxes like colossal graceless whales sucking up Greggs pasties and Bacardi Breezers, trading nods which sit firmly on the fence between suspicion and simple-minded friendliness; the men with their stone-cold, lifeless eyes, their giant elastic guts thumping through their football strips like they’re perpetually starting a fight, jutting thighward like enormous chin-pillows of flab; the women with their tiny pinched mouths and surly ashtray children, Brian tattooed fecklessly to each and every neck; and everywhere, harsh empty faces slipping apathetically down hollow skulls, like dirty wet rags in a raw, unforgiving wind.’

A few people picked me up on my rancour, quite rightly under the circumstances, telling me that I had no right to judge the place so harshly after having only spent four months there. Of course in reality I had spent, in total, over 20 years of my life there. And I was right.

Three or four months ago, my mum decided to move house. She’s lived in Sunderland all of her life (77 years now – imagine that). Then a month ago, she found somewhere in Mansfield, near one of my sisters. Last weekend I went back up to help her pack up her life, although she’d already done most of it. Tomorrow night I’m going up again, this time with my other sister. We’re going to help her with the final preparations and then drive her to her new home. I’m made up for her. I’m not convinced that Mansfield is a gazillion times better than Sunderland, having spent last Christmas there, but at least my mum will be nearer family again, and at least people in Mansfield call you ‘duck’. Which is nice. For a bit.

So, this weekend will be the last time I ever see my home town, and I have to say, this makes me very happy. It is after all – I don’t know if I’ve made this clear – a gargantuan shit-hole, hopeless and sad in the extreme. Weirdly, under the circumstances, it also makes me feel ever so slightly sad. I almost feel that I should commemorate it somehow – maybe by making a wicker man out of Greggs pasties and gasping as the natives fall upon it and devour it in the same way the vagabonds devour Grenouille at the end of Perfume – but I probably won’t.

Probably I’ll just listen to this song a few times, then come home.

Anon!

hours cycled :: 1

tennis matches played :: 0

football matches played :: 1

goals scored :: 3

percentage of goals scored which were own goals :: 33.33%

injuries sustained :: 2

hours in A&E :: 3

broken bones :: 0

enormously disappointing evenings of comedy :: 1

weeks of work remaining :: 23 4

I quit my job last week.

It was supposed to last till December 17th and allow me to pay off all my debts, but in the end I simply couldn’t bear it. So instead, my last day will be Friday 13th August and my debts will have to hang around for while longer.

Quitting is frowned upon, in general, but I reckon it’s got quite a lot going for it. Tolerance on the other hand – depending on the context of course – can be quite an overrated virtue. Just putting up with stuff because it’s the sensible thing to do. You know? I don’t approve. Life is short.

Almost all of the people I spoke to in the build-up to quitting were very encouraging, and I am grateful to them. One of them wrote this: ‘What do you want your memoirs to say? I’m guessing it’s not “I worked in a job that destroyed my soul but at least I didn’t have to worry about debts”.’ I’m particularly grateful to her because that was exactly what I needed to hear.

This photograph also helped…

Of course there is still a great deal of potential for it all to backfire hideously. If I don’t find any other work, for example, and I can’t pay my rent, let alone the debt repayments, then I’ll be buggered. But you know what? Fuck it. Even being buggered has got to be better than reading about lawyers all day.

So – it’s Yosser time again. I’m looking for three days of work a week so I can spend the rest of the time rewriting a novel and a children’s poem about an alcoholic trout.

I’ll be looking for freelance subbing work because I’ve found that’s a lot easier to land than writing work, which is what I really want to do and what I’m best at. Silly old life. Having said that, I’d be happy to do anything. Anything, that is, except teaching English to foreign types, which I did for 13 years (unlucky for some) and with which I became utterly jaded. Although it did become slightly more fun at the end. One of my last students was Roberto Mancini – check out his English here. Yeah, well, you should’ve heard him before I had a crack at him.

Also,  more change: my flatmate – the delicious Ben – is moving out in around five weeks’ time. I was rather hoping Gee might move in – mostly because he said he might like to – but then he changed his mind. The big flake. This morning in fact, he let me know that it wasn’t to be. Which is fine and all, but means I have to find someone else to live with me presto.

Not sure how to go about it really. I could start here I guess.

Do you want to live with me?

Oh, go on. I’m totally house-trained. Well, not totally.

It’d just be me and Imogen and a bunch of mice who live in the toaster, which I probably shouldn’t mention. Imogen is a classical musician and hardly ever at home – she prefers to spend most of her free time with her classical musician boyfriend in his lovely clean flat in a fashionable part of town. Can’t think why. But when she comes home, she fills the flat with delicious smells and noises. In many ways, we are polar opposites.

I’m really not selling this, am I? Um… it’s cheap!

Send me an email if you want to live with me or know someone who might. Then we can do the Shallow Grave thing and a few months later you can beat me up in a public toilet.

In other news, I went to see Chris Addison at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Saturday and in my most humble opinion, he was unutterably awful. No disrespect intended. The problem was that the whole 90-minute set seemed like comedy from around ten years ago. He did routines about going to the gym, people who wear Ugg boots, the tendency of the English to complain about everything, how bad he is at sex, and Daily Mail readers. Actually, the Daily Mail stuff seemed like comedy from around 30 years ago, specifically Jasper Carrot railing against Sun readers – except it was probably relatively fresh when Jasper Carrot did it.

So there we are. Roll on August 13th.

I hope you’re well, and feeling as lovely as you smell.

Anon!

hours cycled :: 0.5

cycle accidents :: 1

RSI symptoms :: 3

tennis matches played :: 0

tennis matches watched :: 1

days without tobacco :: 3

weeks of work remaining :: 24

scabs :: 2

grazes :: 1

regrettable acts of insensitivity and carelessness :: 1

mice observed :: 4

mice trained :: 0

donkeys rescued from skips :: 1

cats sat :: 2

For the past five days, I have been cat-sitting. You may remember Cedric. Stan blogged about him back in the day, when all this was gospel. Cedric is old. His owner, Mr Paddy Tumnus, is under the mistaken impression that Cedric is about 14 years old. Cedric is in fact 29. And so he moves like yesterday’s news, seeping into oblivion, crying out in constant sorrow and occasionally wetting himself. He even has a saline drip now, which thankfully I didn’t have to administer, and apparently the vet has said that his days are numbered. Poor little fella. I’m very grateful, however, that he didn’t shuffle off over the past five days. NOT ON MY WATCH. Because of course Paddy would always have wondered if maybe his beloved Cedric’s death could have been prevented by proper care. And I would always feel guilty for putting ketamine in his tuna.

Cedric has a friend now. Cedric’s friend is called Hector.

Hector doesn’t appear to like Cedric and Cedric doesn’t appear to like Hector, so perhaps the term ‘friend’ is not wildly appropriate. In fact, they pay one another no attention whatsoever. It’s quite strange really.

Hector is old too, but nowhere near as old as Cedric. He can still get up and down the stairs without you worrying that his front legs are going to give way at any moment. He can even get up on a table if he so chooses.

Hector moved in with Cedric a couple of months ago. Apparently at first there was animosity, then gradually, that was replaced by complete indifference. Now they move through the same space pretending that they simply can’t see one other. In Cedric’s case, this may be true. He’s definitely deaf already, and his eyes have no colour.

Hector is probably disgusted by Cedric. He probably sees his own demise in the sightless grey of Cedric’s lifeless eyes. Also, Cedric is annoying. Sorry, Paddy, but he is. He just bleats constantly – not just when he wants feeding or demands attention, but also all the rest of the time that he isn’t asleep. He just mews. Constantly. He’s like an old man wittering on about his aches and pains or all the friends he lost in the Great War.

Cedric made me feel terribly sad because when he’s not befouling the air with retch-inducing cat-gas, he’s actually very sweet and can still purr and rub and appreciate the love of the humans in his life. But also, he’s really very depressing. He’s a constant reminder of the torment that – if we’re lucky – awaits.

On Thursday I went to the annual Harper Collins summer party. It was very lavish, held in the grounds of the V&A. There were tiny exotic nibbles on silver trays carried by exquisitely attractive women who looked Eastern European but were actually probably from Surrey. There were also celebrities. Phill Jupitus was there, looking like he may have eaten one too many of the exotic nibbles – as well as at least two or three of the waiting staff. Nothing wrong with that of course. Good for him.

Peter Mandelson was also there, looking – essentially – evil. Unsmiling, unpleasant (according to someone who had to speak to him on official business), and, to all intents and purposes, inhuman. I really didn’t care for him, I have to say. He seemed every inch the self-serving swine I’d always suspected he was – and I observed him at length. I had a great urge to pelt him with vol-au-vents. But I didn’t. Live and let live. All that. He might actually be a nice guy underneath all the thick glutinous layers of pure evil.

And then there was Penny Smith. I first met Penny Smith when she interviewed me GMTV. I had a bag on my head at the time. So when I saw her last week, I felt I had to say hello, and when I did, she was absolutely lovely. We chatted about this and that for a few minutes and then, rather politely I thought because I really didn’t want to, I left her to it. Penny Smith. Who’d have thought it?

But apart from all the excellent sausages and alcohol – and apart developing a crush on Penny Smith – I met a lot of publishing types and quite a few writers and I realised yet again that I really have a lot of work to do and – relatively at least – very little time in which to do it. And that made me rueful.

Meanwhile, life goes on, and work goes on, the latter eating into the former like a Hollywood version of the Ebola virus. Something, therefore, has got to change. I’m working on it. I’ll know more on Wednesday.

And here is the donkey, which when it was tossed into the skip like an old cat, still had Parma Violets in its belly.

It cheered when Spain won.

Cabron.