Important Men In Nappies

I was on my typical post work journey, taking the No.73 along Pentonville Road toward King's Cross on a blinding summer's day in my big, beautiful London.

Standing next to me on the bus, by the exit at the middle, was a big man in a nappy. He wore socks, a pair of loafers and a pork pie hat. It was the nappy, certainly, that glued my eyes to him.  I'd heard about this kind of man, but thought this manner of attire was restricted to the bedrooms of very strict mistresses who would charge presumably large sums of money, to let these depraved individuals into their house of a weekend, to sleep in a big crib, wear a nappy and to mother them. And doubtless assist in the release of varying amounts of seminal fluid from their big baby ballsacks.

He was shouting into his phone, as though he was surrounded by no-one in particular, exuding a general air of vital, if menacing, importance.  I wondered if the poor sod at the other end of the abuse would have found him quite as domineering had they seen him, the offensive weirdo.

I was trying not to look, instead considering the optimum moment at which to press the bell that I was guarding by holding onto the pole into which it was embedded.  I was getting off at the next stop and had to yet to go ding, despite the bus nearing it and slowing down. I enjoyed this kind of responsibility. You couldn't always trust others.

'Oi, Prick, come on, fucking ding ding!'

It was the man in the nappy, having ended his long distance ranting.

'Oh, right, sorry.' I dinged the bell and the bus pulled into the stop which it would have done anyway as there were 7 people at the stop waiting to board it. I really didn't need any prompting from this colossal pervert.

'Thanks a fucking bundle, mate. Weren't that hard was it?'

We stepped off the bus, side by side, my eyes still set to his big baby knickers.

 What you fucking looking at?'

'Well, I was...admiring the nappy.'

Vague and not the truth but a reasonable and inoffensive answer, nonetheless, and at least I said something and didn't laugh which I wouldn't have done because he was a big surly man despite the comical pants.  He was a younger man, in his thirties and I estimated that, if pushed, he would quite cheerfully clump me one round the face hole.

Anyway.

'You little fascist bully boy. You fucking are'.

'What, I'm not...'

I didn't think I was but the man had just caught me staring at his nappy and inferred (correctly) my prejudice at such.

'I mean, you wouldn't take the piss out of a muslim woman for wearing one a them yasmakintoshes now would you, eh? No, 'cause you'd end up in fucking stir, you miserable cunt. You're quite happy to have a giggle at me, though, eh, you little fucking mope'.

As one of the most bleeding heart liberals to spring out of the loins of alternative 80's culture, I took the most severe grievance with this. Usually I would let such a matter lie but the opinions of the diapered man had become a nagging brain worm that would not wriggle off until I'd said my piece back at him.

'Look, I'm as free a thinker as you'll find, but the sight of a grown man in a nappy on a bus is out of the ordinary, I'm sure you'll agree and admit? I imagine if I saw you in the correct and proper context I'd think absolutely nothing of it. Not that I'm likely to see you in the correct and proper context'.

'Which is fucking what, exactly?'

'Well, I mean, presumably some kind of suburban whore house'.

'Open your eyes, mate!'  At this he pointed to his eyes, which was confusing. If he was talking about my eyes he should have pointed to mine, surely? Perhaps he was using his eyes as a metaphor for my own. It is a detail that I didn't pick up on at at the time or ask the man to elaborate on, but I wish I had have done that as I am now totally obsessed with this trivial detail (as most people seem to think it is).

'This is something that's happening, you small-minded little wanker. Look. Look over there...;

I looked over there. Over the road was another man, wearing a a rather smart high street suit, only with the trousers replaced by a rather larger nappy.

'And there..'

I did more looking when following the pointing finger, and there was another businessman wearing a nappy.

'This isn't about sexual perversion at the weekend, mate, this is about a life choice. Right? This is why I came to London, to escape this kind of hostility and bigotry. I thought, London? You can do what you like in London, you can walk around wearing a fucking lampshade on your head and nobody'll bat an eye lid. But you fucking battered yours you nosy twat!'

'I didn't batter them, It was just the context and you being out of it!'.

'Well nobody else seems bothered, do they? Nobody else is saying stuff or looking with daggers?'

'Yes, because Londoners are polite, that's why. We're educated to not be rude about people's differences and to accept them. It doesn't mean we don't think you're odd. We're not all free spirits, blindly accepting any difference. We'll pretend not to notice. That doesn't mean we actually accept you.'

I didn't mean the majority of my outbursted sentiments and they were, for the most part, contra to my ideals, but this man had really got up my fucking pipe.

I didn't like him and thought he was a dismal fucking pervert and would like to take away his right to do what he wanted just out of spite, the stinking fat fuck.With his fucking belly hanging over his nappy, and his belly hairs embedded with biscuit crumbs and dried spunk. Which is what happens when you go out with no shirt on and dress like a baby. At least the man over the road had considered the matter and had dressed correctly around his ludicrous knickers.

If I was a fascist bully boy it was only for this one revolting specimen.

And yet, nobody else seemed to be shaken out of their routine by this man and his kin. Was I that out of touch? Was this a 'thing' that was happening that everyone else knew about and had accepted?

My attention was then jolted back to the nappy man, as he was, all of a sudden, splayed on the pavement, throwing his arms and legs in the air, having a proper infantile tantrum, and screaming:

'Nasty man made me do pee pee in my pant pant!' And then, screaming at the top of his voice, which gathered the attention that I felt he had been previously (and undeservedly) lacking.

'Ah, what's up with poor baby! What did the nasty man do to you?' whimpered a concerned old fuckwit.

A crowd had gathered around us, deep enough that those second or third back were standing on tiptoes to see the big baby on the floor.

He spoke, sobbing for effect: 'Nasty man's opressing me. Says I'm a pervert and shouldn't be allowed to wear my nappy and he said, he said he'd get me, without specifying any details'.

The crowd in that instant became a threatening mob, words from individual mouths joining into one aggressive, unforgiving murmur.

'What's wrong with you? Why can't you just let him be what he wants to be? What's it got to do with you? A young woman, wearing a badge that said 'Intern' in bold lettering with her name underneath, voiced clearly and loudly the opinion that the entire crowd evidentally wanted to make.

The Intern stepped out of the crowd and spoke to me directly. She was, I guessed, twenty-two years of age, and had never had her arm up a U-bend.

'Are you so jaded and corporate that you must take out your insecurities on an innocent baby-man? Such a concrete thinker that you do not recognise the choice of the individual to do as they please? You have created the conditions whereby a mob has formed and wish to do you physical harm. In order to prevent this I suggest you apologise to baby-man, shake his hand and accept, with love, his right to wear a massive nappy, as everybody else has. Well?'

This mob, that I had created, the only thing I had given any form to that day, seemed to lean in toward me as one unspeaking, threatening malignant mass.

'I'm sorry, I didn't realise that it was a thing. I'm such a bleeding heart liberal that I'm usually on the ball with these issues. Sorry everybody.'

They told me, variously, that I was a fascist bully boy and a cretin and that I didn't belong in or deserve to be in London. I perservered with my protestations of being a right thinking liberal, not generally given to prejudice, but they were not receptive. They fucking hated me, as Londoners always had, but this time with reason.

They helped the big baby man back to his feet, men wiping the tears from his face and women asking him back to their places to have sex, at least that is what I think was going on.  Certainly, one of them stuck a business card down the front of his, by now slightly yellowing, bum napkin.

I was encouraged to apologise and shake his hand, which I did out of confusion and the need for these people to cease castigating me.

'Sorry about that. I didn't know it was a thing. It's nice, really, I like it'.

The crowd dispersed, all parts of it agreeing that I had done the right thing. The nappyman just went about his business, disappearing into King's Cross Underground station, once again shouting important things into his phone as though nothing that had happened, had happened.

And what exactly had happened?

In the course of minding my own business, I had, once again, had my preconceptions challenged. Of course he had the perfect right to wear a nappy on a bus, out of the sexualised context of the suburban bawdy house. Even if he did appear to be nothing more than a corporate thug. Surely they have as perfect a right to express themselves as the leftist Hoxton arty twat? Of course he did.

I realised that I would once again need several years worth of therapy in order to correct my bad thoughts.

I then noticed, that where a luggage shop had once been (I'm sure just the day before) was a gentleman's ouffitters. At the front of the shop were diapers of all shapes and sizes, displayed in special arse shaped mannequins, and men standing in front of full length mirrors, with a woman at his side to either shake or nod.

A sudden feeling of sadness then descended, and an infantile longing for the past and I knew, at that exact moment, that I would soon be entering the shop and having a tape measure rolled around my groin.

The Indulgent Writing Diary. Part 1.

MONDAY, 11th FEBRUARY

It is Monday night at 10.30pm. I have just watched what is, apparently, the last episode of Lewis. I have 'all the feels' for Lewis. I'm sitting in my pants, in my big new room, listening to music that would, in the popular view, be regarded as an unmitigated racket.

I no longer live in the child's room, as I thought of it, in Streatham. This was the flat where I was bitten by a dog in the third in this series of blogs. If you recall I was bitten in the hand, in the hallway, by a Jack Russell, bearing the stupid name 'Tarzan'.

I now live in a large room, that I cannot afford, in Herne Hill. Or North Dulwich. Whichever you think sounds poshest. I've never lived in a room of this size and don't really know what I'm supposed to do with it. One thing I certainly have to do is to keep the door shut, otherwise the cats will, as the landlady helpfully informed me, 'piss on the bed'. Noted. The last thing I want is soggy bye-byes.

On 1st January this year, I started writing a novel, the date chosen specifically as a symbol of my  renewed creative intentions.

I did the exact same thing 10 years ago. That enterprise was begun, developed but not concluded. Abandoned, as real life issues took precedence, the rotten bastards.

There were, anyway, indulgences within that particular project, which would, upon any kind of completion, have led irrevocably and ultimately toward disappointment.

In the intervening 10 years, I have read some books. This has been useful and informative. And enjoyable, of course. I have discovered Orwell, Auster, Ishiguro, Lodge, Ballard, Wodehouse, Dickens. Proper writers, as some might think. I know this because somebody said it to me. I was reading an Orwell, Coming Up For Air, I think, in a rest room at one of my many proper jobs.

'What's that you're reading?' Enquired my colleague.

I showed her the cover.

'Oh', she said. 'Proper book'.



A Proper Book. Monday.

I have thought about that remark a lot since and have had two, simultaneous, considerations in regard to it. The first is that one must endeavour to rid oneself of the notion that there are proper books and otherwise. That we should consider instead, perhaps, that there are books with which we relate and those with which we simply fail to connect.  The other consideration was that I was actually quite glad to be thought of as the kind of person who might be reading 'proper' books. What a snooty, uppity bastard.


TUESDAY, 12 FEBRUARY

It is ten minutes to 11pm, and I have prevented myself from doing anything remotely creative (such as writing the novel I mentioned), instead watching 2 episodes of Doctor Who and also watching the start of Nathan Barley episode 1 on YouTube, which somebody carelessly tweeted a link to earlier.

Last night I made the mistake of trying to write as soon as I got in from the day job. As much I want to be disciplined and dedicated to this new cause of mine, I have to appreciate that sometimes I want two sausage rolls and a yoghurt and Wispa bar just that little bit more. And then a nap. These aren't displacement activites, they are necessary to my functioning as a sane, cognitively useful man. I did, however, make the attempt and managed two sentences, both of poor quality. Not the thousand words per sitting which I favour. They were the kind of sentences, which, had this been the 1970's, and a Cub Scout came round doing bob-a-job, and you asked him to do a bit of writing as his 'bobbed job', he would probably have written something of comparable quality, if not slightly more erudite and interesting:

'The helplesness of this individual is sickening, subbing out his authorial voice to myself, a simple minor. What am I to know of the mind and pretences of a lazy 45 year old tosspot. I doubt he'll pay me per sentence, as promised at the door. Pah, how I regret crossing that threshhold'.

 

I believe this is how the writer Terrance Dicks completed many of his Doctor Who adaptations during the 1970's. I have it on good authority that his 'Planet of the Daleks' was written, by committee, over a weekend's camping. Dib dib dib, Exterminate!

It's been a long time since I had the luxury of being able to write, fresh of mind, during the week day. There are challenges for the novelist, working around the day job, the tiredness and the inevitable desire to relax and be the recipient of pleasure.  These are to take it the project seriously and to apply oneself with a degree of discipline, without it becoming an unpleasant chore. To effect some kind of routine, without it becoming routine.

There must always exist the element of play, I keep reminding myself. Otherwise I might as well just punch in when I sit down at this laptop, because, before you know it, it is, as now, time to clean my teeth, put on my nightie and go to cat piss-free bye byes.

To be continued.

Not tomorrow, though, I'm going to see Kraftwerk.

3. Where Quigley is bitten by a dog, called Tarzan.

I used to be a dog man.

This is to say, that I was, formerly, a lover of man’s best friend and not that I was some bizarre (and now cured) semi-canine creature, given to such unfortunate, if not to say rather pointless, transformation. 

This changed, at 7pm on Tuesday, October 23rd, when I was bitten by a Jack Russell, whose name happens to be ‘Tarzan’.  Very close to the top of the list of things from which pet owners should be excluded, is the ironic naming of their unfortunate animals. Big dogs called ‘Tiny’ and  small dogs, laden with the epithet ‘Killer’, for example, may be the cause of some immediate, short term amusement for the owner, but this is, ultimately, an entirely shameful and useless exercise. Keep the naming literal or abstract, or take it back to the kennel, would be my heartfelt (and correct) advice.

At the time, I was living in a first floor flat, sharing a communal entrance hallway with the ground floor neighbours. I was taking a bag of rubbish through this passage, when the main street door opened, whereupon I greeted and exchanged pleasantries with the old lady from the downstairs flat. This was a sweet little old lady, whose remaining years can surely not be plentiful, and with whom I was never less than charming and amenable even though she had nothing of any value to offer, which I thought rather charitable of me.  My point being, that I provided no discernible threat to her.

Subsequent to this dutiful exchange, I proceeded outside to place my rubbish in the bin, like a good boy, and not like what most folk seem to do these days, which is to try and force it all through the letter box of the local Oxfam shop.

It had, however, been raining, and my feet were clad in the merest of coverings, my faithful, but not yet waterproof, socks. I therefore, understandably, returned indoors, in order to place my size nines in my sturdy Docs.

In the interim, however, she had, not unreasonably, opened the door to her flat.

 

 

 

I shall mention the hallway light, which is of singular importance in this episode. This light is set on a timer. Pressing it in with minimum force, the light will remain on for 20/30 seconds and then return the hall to the previous darkness.

The dog, Tarzan, came out to greet her, the light went out, I walked up to my door, at which point this pint sized Zoltan, growled and jumped up at my groin. He bit into my trousers, just at the left of the zip.

Instinctively, neither wanting a gnawed teste nor for a section of my penis to be removed, I put out my left hand, to protect that which is delicate from this insane fucking midget. At this point, he bit into me, in the fleshy bit where the thumb adjoins the forefinger.

I bled and I swore, a commensurate response, given that I’d just been bitten by a fucking dog!  Not something I’d had down on that day’s itinerary, as such. Cup of tea, episode of Breaking Bad, that kind of thing. Certainly nothing about my flesh providing lunch for a deranged and vicious pooch.

The neighbour was, rightly, horrified by this. Her concern for me, however, was slightly outweighed by that idea that her dog would have to be put down.

‘He was protecting me!’ she defended.

And so it was that as she reprimanded Tarzan (Bad dog! Mummy’s very cross. Don’t do it again. He’s a nice man!), I made my way to the A&E department of St. George’s in Tooting. Here I was tetanus jabbed, had my wound cleaned with a large squirty bag of iodine, plastered, bandaged and put in a sling. ‘Dog bites are very infectious’, I was informed, by a charming Doctor, ‘we sometimes keep dog bite victims in overnight, put them on an IV, get the antibiotics straight in’. I declined this kind offer, as it was not presented as an absolute.

I returned home, treading cautiously, but quickly through the passage of doom, to spend a sleepless night, mostly due to not having been provided any guidance on how to comfortably sleep with one arm in a sling.

 

 

The Aftermath.

From this point on, I acquire the, mostly unwanted, attention of a building’s worth of work colleagues, providing a variety of viewpoints and opinions, which I shall appraise:

1)  That I should sue. Give the dog a fucking good kicking, and sue. Give the old woman a fucking good kicking and sue her arse off. Take them for everything they’ve got. Kicking. Sue. Court. Kill the dog. Admittedly, only one individual was quite this litigious/violent in his response, but I thought it worth noting.

2) ‘What did you do to it?’ This was the most popular response, to see things from the dog’s point of view.  Not quite sure what these people thought I might have done. Bad mouthed it in front of other (better) dogs? Stolen its fucking bone? No. I merely existed in the same space as him, at a point in time when he was, apparently, ‘frightened’.

3) At least one wag did not believe it was a dog bite, as though those kinds of things simply do not happen. ‘No, what really happened?’ the giggling implying that the injury was somehow the result of excessive self-abuse or bizarre sexual injury.

4) That I should, rightfully, have been embarrassed to have been bitten by such a small dog, and that if I was to have been bitten by a dog, it should have been a much better and manlier dog.

‘Ere, lads, Quiggers got bit by a dog. I heard it was one inch tall and fucking bent!’

‘We fucking hate you, Quigley, you effeminate little ponce, and we’re going to stamp on you until you’ve been bitten by the Hound of the facking Baskervilles, you piece of shit!’

‘My Granddad got bit by a dog every day of his life and it never did ‘im no ‘arm. ‘

 

So, yes, I did used to be a dog lover. Over the years my family home had a procession of unloved dogs from the local pound, which we saved from extinction, loved and cared for.

Now I cross the street to avoid them. They know that I’ve been marked for life. One of them has tasted my blood, and he liked it. They somehow understand that my blood, flesh and, probably, balls, are theirs to devour.

Yes, a dog may be man’s best friend, but it’s worth considering, I think, that they don’t always share this point of view.

(And for future reference, it’s my right hand where I sustained my wanking injury).

2. How to write a suicide note.

Well we've all done it, haven't we. Toyed with the idea of ending it all. Popping one's own clogs, as it were. At least anybody with any notable sense has. And I'm not talking about actually or nearly going ahead and doing it, but just the mere inkling of a consideration that it might be an option. Obviously, I have not taken it that seriously, or I would not be here writing this kindly and informative blog entry.

One reason why I have not bothered the local sub-editors with my untimely departure is due to my failings as a writer. I would want to do 'it' properly and leave a top range, properly hand-written, suicide note. This, in itself, is a problem. We don't really write notes or letters these days, do we. It's all emails, Facebook updates and tweets, all lending themselves to the most basic of spelling and grammatical errors, not to mention incredible flippancy of content and expression. You know the kind of babble I'm talking about. I'm not going to waste my time satirising the content of Facebook or Twitter. Do it your bloody self. You're probably all busy self-satirising, as I type.

Suffice to say, nobody's life is so bad, surely, that they could fit all they want to say, as their last message to the world, in a 140 character tweet. Imagine the number of times you'd have to edit and rewrite that in order to fit in all the important facts, sentiments and people. Wouldn't be a terribly appropriate form, would it? eg. 'U all 8 me. I can't s& it ne mor'. Lacks the kind of warmth and sincerity that you should be looking to convey.

Plenty of guff out there about how to actually do yourself in, as such, but precious little about this important aspect of your self-aggrandising demise - your last message, not just to your loved ones, but the world at large. You are your brand and, as such, your last missive should be commensurate with this. In the absence of any official courses on the writing of suicide notes (and I shouldn't be surprised if there are some - there are, after all, courses available on blog writing. For fucks sake!), I thought I might detail a few well-meaning suggestions.

So, here is my advice, on the off chance that you should need to opt out in this regrettable manner. You may be too old and knackered to leave a beautiful corpse, but at least you can finally get things off your chest and, for once, get it right, despatching a curt, informative and amusing suicide note.

1) Please handwrite it. Your loved ones, such as they are, need to know that you mean it. Shaky (but still decipherable) handwriting on a tear stained sheet of thinly lined A4 is more likely to have the desired effect than a spell-checked word document. Besides which, a suicide note written on your computer would surely give rise to far too many confusing and unwanted decisions: What kind of font are you going to use? What size font? Do you emphasis by using Italics or underlining? And what if the printer runs out of ink, what are you going to do then? Suddenly cheer up and pop down to fucking Rymans? If you're going to do that you might as well just do a Powerpoint presentation, with graphs and pie-charts and whatever other bullshit you get on that. No. Just keep it 'old school', otherwise you'll lose focus and carry on living, like a berk.

2) Please use your best shaky handwriting. Whilst loved ones will eventually come to understand your despicable and selfish act, one thing they will not forgive is not actually being able to read your last words. You don't want people staring at your note with squinted eyes, saying 'What does "it all got too munch" mean?'

3) If in doubt, get it proofread. There are people you can pay to do this, unbelievably. (I should know, I once paid to go on a course. Not really much of a course, mind. All you get is a big book with their mysterious, and expensive, hieroglyphics explained, and their good wishes.)  It might be instructive to have an objective eye cast over the thing, just to make sure. The last thing you really want is to spoil the effect by putting in too many commas and them all tutting like a herd of grieving Trusses (Trussi?) This is your definitive life end statement and you don't want a load of moaning grammar heads picking little pissy holes.

4) At its best, a good suicide note should read like a disturbing version of a BAFTA award winning speech. Try and remember to include all the important and relevant people. You want folk to be sad, not merely pissed off.

And, finally, 5) Jokes. Any decent piece of writing is all about contrast. So at least one well-meaning and heartfelt quip would be appreciated. It doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. You should aim to leave the bastards crying and laughing and wanting more, and regretting that they ever spoke to you like such an unmitigated plop of putrefied excrement.

And before you all sit there, judgementally thinking how flippant I'm being, remember I have considered this course of action myself. Although to be fair, the furthest I got with this largely involved having a strop at teatime and trying to stab myself. The only effect this achieved was to cover my shirt in baked beans and make my dad refer to me as a 'daydreaming little prick'.

There are, ultimately, many reasons as to why I've never removed myself from this mortal plane: laziness, indecisiveness, poor planning. Dare I say, even being able to see a speck of hope in the distance.

The main reason, however, is the fear that I'd never be able to leave a definitive suicide note.

And this is why writing, writing anything, is so hard for me. Everything that I write is an aspect of myself, an endorsement of my brand and it has to stand for something.

And I'd just hate to be on my deathbed, drifting away, and think of a better definition or a more appropriate synonym. I'd never forgive myself.

1. In which the coward, Quigley, indulgently bares his soul for the hopeful amusement of an audience in single figures. (at least).

Somewhere, between aspiration and achievement, lies the reality of my battered, withered carcass. I am a wreck of a man, a 45 year old manboy, given to long and consistent periods of failure and resulting bad humour.

Aspiration can be considered a dirty little madam, implying the need for power, wealth and an assortment of grown-up shiny toys to play with. I'm not one of those. I've never really felt the need for a working lightsaber, for example. If I ever need a lightsaber, I'll be quite happy to effect one out of cardboard and paint and foil and I'll just have to accept the derision of the business lads, busy playing Darth Vader on my ass. For example.

My aspirations, then, have tended more towards the abstract, seeking to extricate myself from humble beginnings (ie. thick) through writing things that make money.  For certain reasons this has not happened: bad genes, environmental factors and poor quality fortune would all be examples as to why I have not converted aspiration into achievement.  Fear of failure.  And did I mention laziness? No? How remiss of me.



  



One area in which I have been terribly remiss, is in the area of 'general knowledge'. If I knew more 'stuff', would it make me more intelligent?  I've always considered myself like 'Sherlock Holmes' in this sense. Absolute genius at certain subjects, but ignorant of the content of entire other, possibly important, subjects. Geography, for example. Ask me to point out Estonia on a map, and I'll more likely sarcastically point at a cup or something. The truth, for me, is that I don't actually care. Ignorant, possibly. But I currently have no need for that knowledge. Rest assured if I ever go there, I shall attempt some rudimentary effort to locate it before travel.

In truth, as far as fictional characters go, I am more akin to Gordon Comstock, 'hero' of George Orwell's 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying'. This powerful and moving novel relates the failures of would-be writer Gordon, that most annoying species of writer, the writer who regards and defines himself as a writer, but without actually doing any of the writing, necessary to merit such a description. This unconsummated obsession leads to the rest of his life being compromised and unfulfilled.

                                       


I am Gordon Comstock. Nothing to be proud of. As far as fictional characters go, I'd much rather ally myself with Luke Skywalker, or possibly even Jabba the Hut.

A typical fault of the aspirationally unfulfilled is to blame one's background. And one shouldn't do this, should one, as there are plenty of examples of individuals who've succeeded  despite their humbleness. Instead, the biggest failing of those pursuing artistic pursuits lies in fault of temperament. Weak wills and a cartoon like showing of non-defiance. This will in turn lead to all other manner of hallmarks of the failed, chief amongst them being the God of all excuses, displacement activity.

Useful to a degree, to feed the artistic sub-conscience, for some, writing is 100 per cent distraction and nothing on the writing effort. Popular displacement activities include tea drinking, bath taking, shopping, housework, re-alphabetising CD collections, making lists of all the things you really need to do (eg. 1. Make lists; 2. Don't make lists, in order to free up some time for proper writing), re-pointing chimney stacks and terminal illness. All acceptable alternatives to the actual business of knuckling down and working.

So where does this leave me, apart from writing a fucking blog? (Not that there's anything wrong with that). Well, I may have aspired towards being among the ranks of the intelligent and creatively fulfilled, but have to accept,  now, once and for all, that I have failed. These are not 'my people' and they don't want me. 


Instead I must ultimately reconcile myself with the fact that my people are the failures, the freaks and the idiots. Retarded, remedial or just plain thick. The ill-informed. The disabled, the unwashed and the poorly teethed. The criminally inclined. The unlucky, the bemused, the suicidal. The directionless.  Lazy, bewildered and dull. The terminally fearful.

I should end my life accepting my place among them and seek solace and companionship with them, leaving behind a trail of burning books and pointless ideas.

If you can think of anything else, do let me know. Did I mention I'm also terribly submissive...?