Ponce!

Today myself and a work chum ventured to a new place down The Cut near Waterloo called dressed2kill (www.dress2killgrooming.com). It’s essentially a place that sells bespoke suits and coats for men but it also has a barber shop in the basement. And it’s a barbershop that does hot towel wet shaves with shiatsu massage.

Now this may sound terribly poncey and not at all the sort of thing that a rugged, hard-drinking, pool-playing, ass-kicking Yorkshireman would ever do. Never. Ever in fact. Fortunately he didn’t turn up and it was the chilled-out, latte-drinking, metrosexual, would-be writer version who visited instead.

For 30 minutes of pampering it was £20 and (outside of women, books, drugs and the odd good play) it was possibly the best £20 I have ever spent.

Now, though, I am feeling the need to let the other version of me loose because the gentleman playwright side has been indulged far too much of late.

But he’s currently being caged by nice-smelling things from the shave. For the time being anyway… Probably until the next pool tournament.

Which is Saturday. Oh dear…

Righteous Babe…

Currently I am very excited as I’ve just bought Reprieve, the latest CD by Ani Difranco.

For those not in the know, Difranco has been affectionately dubbed the ‘bastard daughter of Woody Guthrie’ and her fusion of folk-punk-political guitar music remains an ever-evolving joy.

She started to make her name in the early Nineties when her eponymous first album wowed college campus after college campus in the States and her constant touring and gigging have since secured her a large and loyal fanbase. I hooked onto her by accident in the mid-Nineties and I almost instantly bought up all her back catalogue.

A Yorkshireman spending money. She was that good…

I’ve also seen her live several times over the past decade or so and she’s a brilliant performer. And, even though she’s become more contemplative and less rocky over the past six albums or so, her music certainly hasn’t lost any of its power or heart.

She’s one of those rare artists that continues to evolve and produce interesting, thought-provoking and inspiring work. She’s also constantly refused to sign for a major label and instead has seen her own label, Righteous Babe Records, grow into a major force of its own.

Anyway she’s rather good and, not that she needs help from me, she can be found at www.righteousbabe.com

Bad Apple!

My ipod gave up the ghost yesterday after about 15 months of careful ownership and I got very arsey after various attempts to reboot it, recharge it and connect it to my laptop failed.

I mentioned this to the missus and she pointed me in the direction of Which? Magazine, where I read a report on several disgruntled Apple customers who had bought their ipods and were stunned to find out they had a shelf life of a mere 18 months before they died for good.

Apparently under the Sales Of Goods Act it is reasonable to expect an expensive product such as an ipod to be of ‘satisfactory quality’ so there is a strong argument for getting a refund or for having the thing repaired at their expense if it just dies.

This, of course, depends on how much you are willing to shout and rant and in my current Hapkido-induced state of general mellowness I’m not sure I can carry this off at present.

Lots of people who can, though, can be found by googling ‘I hate apple’ and the like and some tales of disgruntled customers are really quite appalling.

Bizarrely about 20 minutes after my bid to bring my ipod back to life had ended I went to bed where the missus was watching TV and there was also a news report on dodgy Apple laptop batteries causing potential fires.

And guess which laptop I have…

When the fuckers aren’t trying to rip me off they’re trying to kill me!

The Wedding...

One of my oldest friends got married at the weekend so myself and the missus had a few days away at the posh country hotel where he and his now wife were tying the knot.

It was a fantastic bash and the bride looked stunning, the groom and his ushers scrubbed up well and the speeches were genuinely funny. The missus, too, looked fantastic and it all went off like a dream.

It was very much a pool wedding as the married couple are essentially the Posh and Becks of the Surrey pool scene, although she’s prettier and much brighter and he’s genuinely funny and charming and doesn’t bonk PR girls (or any other girls for that matter) who then go on telly and masturbate pigs.

The comedy note of the day happened during the service when each of them had to say ‘I give you my ring and I also accept your ring...' Both started sniggering at the obvious double entendre here and the rest of the assembled throng soon joined in.

As my pool commitments are being wound down at present it was also a great chance to catch up with old faces from many years ago and we had a real blast. It was a day of continual laughing and drinking with a tremendous vibe.

The only sour note was the arrival of another wedding party at the hotel at about 4.30am who decided to get gobby with the groom. Cue the obligatory wedding punch-up, or so I thought, until the other lot suddenly realised they’d bitten off more than they could chew when several of our party started raring up and preparing to let them have it.

You could almost see the penny drop as they realised they’d picked a fight they couldn’t win and they promptly tried to drag away the two of their own group who had instigated the proceedings. Bless them, they then even asked for permission to walk past us to get to their rooms. From aggressors to cowed in about one minute. Brilliant…

It was also a stroke of luck, though, as I didn’t fancy phoning my missus and explaining that I was spending the night in a police cell with the groom’s family on assault charges.

But even that near-fracas showed a real positive from the weekend as there was a time an incident like that would have just gone off. Maybe – rude sniggering aside – we’ve all just grown up a little bit more now…

Anyway, my married friends certainly looked the part on Saturday. And not that they’ll need it, but good luck to them…

Flat Out!

I made my second visit to our local laundrette today. I went clutching a massive bag of family washing at 7.30am to ensure the place would be open and that old Ninja laundry lady would be present.

I walked through the pouring rain to reach the place and on arrival she was sat behind her counter and the place was empty. Excellent, I thought, as I'd be able to get in and out and would be done in no time.

I greeted her with a cheery 'Hello!' as I walked through the door, then as my wet foot hit the slidy laundrette floor surface I flew arse over tit up in the air and crunched down onto my back.

I checked I was fine. I then saw the woman looking over her counter. I assured her I was OK. She smiled. It may even have been a laugh but I am sure that the Ninja laundry lady now thinks I am the comic relief.

Prick!

I went to a clinic to be allergy tested today and it was a jolly odd experience.

For a start I was feeling very crappy and drowsy because I was ordered not to take the industrial strength allergy spray and tablets I’d been prescribed for three days before the tests. So I arrived at the clinic looking like death warmed up.

I was then stamped on my arm with a long rectangular stamp that had various initials marked in ink. These represented a sample of each element I was getting tested for and a droplet of each element was then placed next to the corresponding initials on the stamp markings on my arm. Finally I was pricked near each sample liquid so my skin soaked up each of these droplets and they could see what reacted and what didn’t.

It turns out I have developed hay fever and something called non-allergic rhinitis over the last year. It’s a pain as it means I’ll be on medication for a while…

The comedy news, though, is that the temporary ink tattoo isn’t coming off so it makes me look like a death camp survivor. And secondly the pin pricks are all nicely welled up so anyone who sees me looking like shite then notices my arm may well mistake me for a junkie.

Brilliant…

The Idiot...

The washing machine finally gave up the ghost last weekend and, as our new one doesn’t arrive until next week, I ventured to our local laundrette as soon as it opened to do a few loads.

The sign at the place said it opened at 6.30am so I arrived at 6.25am to find the door closed and locked. Fortunately I was feeling quite chilled (I actually imagined myself to be some type of UN missionary doing a good deed for needy folk plagued by dirty clothes) but as the clock passed 7.00am and nobody else was still present I started to imagine hurting whoever was delaying me getting to the washing machines by not coming and opening the place up…

Then a little old woman hunched over a shopping trolley came slowly pootling towards me and enquired if it was open.

‘No. It’s shut…’ I offered as way of explanation as to why I’d been sitting on top of two large bags of dirty washing.

Then Ninja-like she struck the door near the locks and it flew open. I looked stunned.

‘It sometimes gets stuck…’ she offered as she pootled in.

In my defence it never occurred to me that the door was on a timer and it could be opened with a firm shove and that it could also get stuck.

Sadly all I could hear was the voice of the missus as I filled the washing machines while Ninja-laundry woman looked on.

It told me I was an idiot. And I wouldn’t disagree…

Enter The Dragons…

Dragon’s Den is either one of the best shows on telly or a huge ego trip for its five filthy rich resident dragons funded by the licence payer.

If the latter is the case we should hunt everyone connected with the show down and kill them. Like dogs. Dogs who have already had their legs sawn off and can only move by involuntary spasms in their bloodied trunks.

But sadly it’s actually quite good.

The basic premise of the show, for those who haven’t seen it, is that five multi-squillionaires sit in judgement as a selection of small business folk, budding entrepreneurs and wacky inventors show off their ideas and try to secure investment from the super-moneyed quintet.

The five business mogul Dragons are Richard Farleigh, Deborah Meaden, Duncan Bannatyne, Peter Jones and Theo Paphetis. This lot are good value and each brings their own quirks to the show: Aussie Farleigh looks like a hobbit groomed by Harvard, Meaden resembles a matronly whiplash fantasy, Bannatyne is a largely grinning and incomprehensible Scot, Jones is simply smugness personified while Paphitis actually seems quite normal.

It’s now in series three but what makes the show really work this time out is the fact the show’s researchers have quite obviously decided to have a bit of a laugh and populate each episode with such inept cash-hungry entrepreneurs that you start to sympathise with the dragons as one idiot after another is paraded around after their cash.

Last night’s shows featured a picnic bag, a bizarre motoring website, wellies with patterns, a chair exercise system and novelty sex toys. There was one business proposition that got through, namely a truck wash system, but the rest of the folk were so far out there and so ludicrous that the purpose of the show is now nothing to do with the dragons but clearly to mock idiocy with ambition.

The show is fronted by Evan Davis (above). He’s the BBC’s Economics Editor and you know something’s wrong when even someone with a strait-laced job title like that starts having a sly grin when he’s interviewing all the rejected clots.

But the premise of the current series is genius. Which is more than can be said for most of its contestants…

The Fury!

My martial arts training in hapkido is one of the real joys of my life.

It keeps me relatively fit, it helps me calm down and focus on objectives much better, and I can sometimes look pretty tasty throwing punches and kicks around. Well, sometimes…

It also ensures I drink much less than was once the case as I’d now rather wake up and train than wake up with a hangover the next day.

So I was quite chilled and relaxed after two hours at the dojang this morning before work. Then somebody rather innocently mentioned Rupert Murdoch and I went off like a rocket on a two-minute tirade than included at least three f***s, two c***s and a few b******s.

I ended it with ‘…and when companies belonging to the crooked Ozzie shit pay taxes in this country then, and only then, will his newspapers have any right to voice opinions about what goes on in this country!’

My friend looked at me. Perplexed. He’d only wanted to discuss Sky TV…

More Mail Pride…

After getting a very bad letter from a theatre when I got back from holiday I got a very good letter when I got home late from getting booted at pool by several of my county colleagues last night.

The most important sentence reads:

‘I believe that this play is worthy of attention and the author should be encouraged to do another draft.’

Obviously this means nothing and it’s no guarantee of a production but it’s better than outright rejection. And it means somebody has read the play (that nobody else apart from me has liked) and totally got it.

So consequently I’m quite happy at the moment.

And the moral of the story… When things turn to shit go out and drink and play pool and it will all be better.

Mail Pride…

I’m back from holiday and I’m now back into the swing of family routine and work and coming back in normality is not a bad thing. It’s familiar and it’s comfortable…

Sadly the first thing that greeted me on my return home, apart from the cats, was perhaps one of the most critical and brutal rejection letters I’ve ever received from a theatre company who’d read a play I’d submitted.

The script reader had done a real hatchet job on it and clearly didn’t like it, even though several of the questions he raised were answered in the script if he’d bothered to read it properly.

This majorly hacked me off for a day or so as it’s a play I have real confidence in and still have, but sadly everybody who has read it has universally disliked it.

Rejection is, of course, any would-be writer’s lot and, even worse, it feels I am now further away from achieving my goal of getting anything on at a decent theatre than I was two years ago.

I cheered myself up, however, with the thought that rewrites on one play are going well and I have a few more ideas for new projects. And I am also back training at hapkido. And I used the rejection letter as a taunting toy for the cats and they ripped it to fucking shreds.

Petty. Moi?

Portugal: Week Two Continued Even More…

Day 12-14: I’ve been a very busy boy over the past three days and have nearly finished rewrites on Touch, my play about the breakdown of a marriage that I need to resubmit to a potentially interested theatre company. I am also preparing to do a major overhaul of Trust, my play about local politics and it is because of the latter I figured I’d take in King Lear on my iPod.
I directed the play when I was 19 and I have always thought the play itself (rather than my direction of it) is a truly marvellous achievement. In my humble opinion (prepare for pretentious statement here) it is the Bard’s defining work, but for current purposes it’s a play about two old men who are betrayed and lose power and go through major trauma because of it.
This fits in quite well with Trust as it’s not only a play about local politics but about the tragedy of two old men who lose everything through a combination of betrayal and their own folly.
Listening to Lear again after all this time opened up all sorts of ideas and I’d now definitely like to add a storm scene. But the delights of Trust will be truly pondered when Touch is done and dusted. And that may be another two weeks yet…

Day 15: Planned to go the famous (well, for the Lagos area anyway) Gypsy Market today but in the end we decided we couldn’t be arsed. This was because rather than have hundreds of stalls selling ethnic jewellery and Romany clothes and Portuguese nick-naks it was actually a few hundred stallholders selling fake La Coste, pirate DVDs and knocked-off trainers. Like Wembley Market but with better weather.
So we bought custard tarts and pottered about while packing.

Portugal: Week Two Continued...

Day 11: The missus has read my previous day’s entry and is not amused.
‘People I know read your blog and it makes me out to be some kind of harridan.’
‘But I only write the truth…’
‘Well you can’t because I never said “Of course…” when I mentioned you were my second husband.’
‘You did!’
‘I didn’t!’
‘Well you meant to. I could hear it bubbling under the surface.’
The missus smiles. This is sometimes not a good thing.
‘What I meant to say was that I married a blithering fucking idiot. And don’t include that either!’
‘I won’t…’

I lied.

Portugal: Week Two…

Day 8: The woman next-door neighbour and wife of Bigot Cop has a pair of binoculars. She stands in the doorway of her balcony and watches people on the beach. She does this a lot. I am convinced Binocular Lady also has our apartment bugged. Just to be on the safe side. In case anything interesting happens…

Day 9: I am about to embark on Stephen Smith’s Underground London, which as its title suggests is a book about what goes on beneath the feet of Londoners and which bits of the capital are hidden from view and form part of the buried history of the city.

Day 10: The missus is talking to Binocular Lady as our balconies are next to each other. It’s like listening to two chess grandmasters trying to outwit each other and see who can trick the most information from the other.
The missus is well in the lead by my reckoning because Binocular Lady has had to sacrifice big pieces of information (years married, number of kids, the fact her daughter is a major disappointment, etc) to kick the exchange off. But this seems to have worked as the missus is now countering with her own gems. Then I hear my wife say the following:
‘Of course, Paul’s my second marriage...’
So I am now part of the ongoing exchange of information. I am now part of the data being sacrificed in order for my wife to grasp more information. I am a commodity in conversational terms, a piece of linguistic meat. I feel cheapened.
Then I realise there was an ‘Of course’ in the sentence too. In other words it’s as if I am part of some ongoing collection, I may be number two but number three will be an even better improvement. The finished model, perhaps.
I spend the rest of the day preparing myself for the inevitable marital deletion…

Portugal: Week One...

I could bore the arse off anyone bothering to read this blog by going into minute detail about two weeks in Portugal’s Praia de Luz but here are the potted highlights:

Day 1: Cab from home to Gatwick and that was the last reliable transport we saw for 24 hours. The Monarch plane was buggered, the trolley carrying the suitcases was wonky and the coach that took us to the overnight hotel because of the plane delay took an hour to find us. It was a transport black hole and my family could have become part of a seething mass of 370-odd passengers! Remarkably, however, we remained quite relaxed about it all. Even the missus – and she can go off over me brushing my teeth too loudly. Honest…

Day 2: The plane finally takes off to cheers of relief from our Gatwick-stranded mob then lands three hours later to more cheering. Inbetween a very nervous but polite pilot pleads for the passengers to be nice to his cabin crew. ‘It’s not their fault you were delayed…’ he simpers. We arrive at the place. It is very sweet but populated with ex-pats. Like a posher version of the Costa Del Sol.

Day 3: The beach starts 10ft from our apartment. The sea is 60ft away – and it’s sodding freezing. It’s off the Atlantic and not the Mediterranean. But when I observe local children putting up with it I see it as a matter of national pride that I venture in and stay, remarking as often as I can that ‘It’s not as bracing as Cleethorpes in March!’ People stare. Oddly…

Day 4-5: We find a quiet pool nearby. We stay here under a kabana, read, swim and relax. Sadly, somewhere during this time I manage to burn my legs to buggery. My head and shoulders are brown, my body is white and my legs are bright red. I look like a Dulux colour chart. ‘Here’s fiery red flesh but he doesn’t like albino white because he’s got his eyes on sultry brown.’ I suffer in silence…

Day 6: Met the older retired couple next door who are our neighbours. I was training in the private courtyard area outside our apartment, which their apartment overlooks, and they offered to lend me their copy of The Sun.
‘That’s very kind but I don’t like the paper. Thank-you for the offer, though.’
They looked a little perplexed but I later got talking to the guy who’s a former Army chap and retired policeman. He told that he didn’t like Scotsmen running the UK, he didn’t like socialists and he didn’t like immigrants. I very politely told him I had no problem with Brown as Chancellor and that I was pretty much a socialist.
I then offered the view that immigrants prop up the National Health Service and all manner of other UK industries and that perhaps if we didn’t go around the world exploiting already impoverished countries and making them even poorer then perhaps so many people wouldn’t need to come over here.
He hasn’t offered to lend me his paper since.

Day 7: The boy provided the comedy highlight of the week so far when we were on our way back from a meal out and we passed an English pub having a quiz night. The question “What was the one-word spin-off series from Buffy The Vampire Slayer?’ and as we walked past the door the boy screamed ‘Angel!’ We walked on but I did catch a flicker of the entire pub turning round to see where this disembodied voice had come from which was now echoing around the narrow street.

Read All About It!

Rather fantastically I have had nothing much else to do on holiday apart from read and swim and one of the literary highlights of the past fortnight in Portugal has been Banana Yoshimoto's novella Kitchen.

It's a love story. Of sorts. Its a bit adolescent, a bit magical, a bit brooding and it's pretty bloody splendid.

Mark Thomas' As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandela, which is part-expose and part diary of his experiences exposing the iniquities of the arms trade, is also a good if at times disturbing read. And Rupert Thompson´s thriller Soft is also compelling stuff. I will be buying everything else the latter has written on my return.

The holiday so far has had many other highlights, all of which will be documented on my return...