James Joyce and a stream of Doritos

Tonight I find myself wondering about streams of consciousness. How easy would it be to write down the first thing that came into my mind? Could I become the next James Joyce or Virginia Woolf, and would I be duty bound to throw myself in a river. Or was it a lake?

It becomes clear to me that I don't know much about how Virginia Woolf died but I'm sure she drowned herself. This makes me think of the swimming underwater scene in Iris; mainly because Kate Winslet was naked. You remember things like that. More so than the older Iris scenes where Judi Dench is losing her mind and bowel control with Alzheimers. I had a friend whose grandfather had it. Horrible disease. He would open the gates to let the cars in where there were no cars.

History has been kind to Joyce even if Ulysses is virtually unreadable to my mind and Finnegan's Wake more so. It's hard to write down the first thing that comes into your mind without thinking too hard about what you are going to write. It's hard not to think of the tart with the cart, or cockles and mussels and Molly Malone. But there - I thought of the clock tower at Culzean Castle and how I got dizzy on a sunny day and my mother had to take me down while everybody else went to the top. And hot and cold rushed in and out of the old stone walls and I stood at the bottom in the manicured gardens and watched them all at the top and I felt so left out.

Have I felt left out ever since? Have I felt that people get to the dizzy heights and I just watch them. But I wouldn't like to climb with crampons and an ice axe because there was a show on this week about two climbers on Mount Rainier who fell down a crevasse and one died and the inexperienced one had to climb up a 70 foot sheer ice wall. It took him about six hours and it was miraculous in a way, more so than those shrines where statutes are seen weeping blood or milk and you stand and watch in awe clutching a packet of Doritos.

I was a weird kid in more ways than one. For weeks I never spoke to other kids. I just made faces. I moved schools a lot and felt dislocation. I could never get in with the camaraderie. I complained once to the teachers about kids making noise during break time and I was reprimanded.

I spent a term running around the playground with my arms whirling around because I believed I was a helicopter. I was a weird kid. I was phased by things mainly Aldibonkers, the head master who taught us times tables using a barking method he picked up in the army. I was easily distracted and when I heard some kids outside the mobile classroom, I turned my head and watched them. Suddenly a shadow fell over me, and he was there, in my face; 5 foot 4 of undistilled anger, his nose purple and transparent, the veins dancing a frustrated waltz.

"Pay attention boy," his hands shook as if he wanted to beat me. He was a repressed beater. His wife never gave him any.

He bawled at me to look at my tables book and I buried my head in it, so deeply that I wasn't coming up for air. Suddenly the light was cut off again and I realized in horror I had missed the cue to put my book down.

"You boy. What are you doing? You are cheating boy. Cheating."

If I had known how to think it, I would have thought 'oh shit'.

But the playground was a bleak place too. Acres of concrete. For years, it seemed, I talked to nobody. I just looked at the spiders in their beautiful silver webs in the undergrowth beyond the wire. My childhood was like the Wall.

Of course at university we watched the Wall. It was Clara's idea. She was the most depressed person I knew. And I knew a lot of depressed people at university. For a while she'd invite me round her room and cook for me or ply me with Tia Maria. But on the night it was supposed to happen, I passed out. I didn't know how depressed she was at that time.

Of course, I was jealous when she started dating my best friend but ultimately relieved. Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction had nothing on Clara. Your bunny would be salami on the first date with Clara if you said the wrong thing. After my best friend decided to finish with Clara (Brits call it packing in, but this term confuses my boss), we were on 24/7 suicide watch. For a while every time we went out, Clara would try to throw herself in front of a car. It was most trying.

I still can't account for that time in Leicester.

Still it's hard for me not to think of James Joyce without thinking of my teacher Mr. Brown. That and Doritos. Mr. Brown was such a fish out of water in a comprehensive school, with his clipped hair and clipped manners. He had studied classics at Oxford. He was probably gay and trapped in a sham marriage, not to mention suburbia. Everyone called him Brassneck. Sometimes they would hide in the bunker at the school mini golf course and shout it out. There'd be big disciplinary action because it was a serious thing to say. I still don't understand what it meant but I felt his clipped, fish out of water pain. I read his fantastic poems and realized he was trapped. When we studied Gerard Manley Hopkins, I wondered if Mr. Brown had chose the poet because he identified with him.

I liked most of the teachers who nobody else liked. Mr. Macintosh seemed a decent bore, even if his stale coffee breath could knock a horse dead at 10 paces. I steered clear of Mr. Annetts following stories he'd kicked Kevin Rider in the balls.

In saying that I found solace in the simplicity of the Stevenson's Screen and the way it was painted pure white to reflect the sun's rays. I loved its little thermometers. I thought if I could be a weather man when I grew up, life would always be pleasant and professional. I'd cast a discerning eye over graphs, look at fronts coming in and make official sounding broadcasts wearing a tweed jacket.

But I am distracted by fronts, I confess. Even since Mr. Partington (known variously as Rodriguez and Pugwash) due to his resemblance to a Spanish pirate, shattered the sleep of an afternoon geography class when he said: "And this is where the warm front comes over."

Except he didn't say front. He said a word that rhymed with it, and the class howled for hours and hours. Somewhere in some Godforsaken place one of them is probably still howling at the thought.

Inspirationless Friday

Inspirationless Friday is the day when you pay a visit to the ideas store and realize it's almost dry; apart from a couple of packets of Ramen noodes on the shelf.

This is not a good thing when your whole existence involves generating ideas and writing them down.

I blame officials and too many meetings; too much talk and too little action. I was at a meeting this week when I had been reliably informed a certain item would be deferred. I had written up a story on this pretext and was smugly sitting there at 8:45 p.m. waiting to push the send button.

Then I got concerned because the conversation started to take a negative tone. It suddenly appeared as if the whole policy would be ditched. My laptop started making a low battery bleeping tone. When one of the most verbose council members said: "I will try to make this brief" I knew I was doomed.

The policy was thrown out 15 minutes later but not before my laptop had died on deadline.

The daily grind can make us die too; inspiration can easily wither away and be replaced by worry.

Should I be consumed with worry over the fact that if the person who's viewing the rental house today doesn't sign on the dotted line we are headed for Default Towers?

Yes but not, really. There are people dying in flood waters in Brazil and Australia.

When in need of a massive withdrawal from the inspiration bank I have a habit of opening the nearest book and pulling out a random quotation. Here goes....

"Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughtered; to relate the manner,
Were on the quarry of these murdered deer,
To add the death of you."

OK here's to giving the random quotation bank a miss. And here's to a Friday when no castles are surprised.

Wishing away winter

Christmas may be a pagan mismash but at least it sprinkles a little stardust on the dark days of winter.

But while the holidays can revive December, there's no equivalent to January which always feels like the longest and dirtiest month of the year.

In these dog days of January we toil under leaden skies with little sign of respite. Snow has already lost its novelty factor and the cold seems to have been seeping into our bones for ever.

And, I'm not sure if it's just my imagination, but my bosses seem less tolerant than usual. We endure long hours of techiness under artificial lights and we disappear within ourselves. The beach is a distant memory. The swallows flew long ago.

One day I will visit the southern hempisphere where the seasons are turned upside down. But for now, I endure and think of other times, the past and the future - anything but here.

And the people for whom all hope has gone who are waiting to die.

But when the sun comes out on crisp mornings January can be pretty in an austere, blue kind of way.

I have a new route to work and recently I pulled off the road to check out a nature trail. I'd driven past this place on many occasions but never stopped. But this morning I walked through the quiet of the marshes with the towers of the city, distant oblongs smudged out across the river.

There was a copse of high trees and peaceful white lines in the sky. There were pleasing boardwalks across the freezing waters that the sun cast symmetrical shadows on. So I took pictures and for once realized I was no longer wishing away winter.

For a collection of winter poems see my poetry blog Rhyme and Reason.

Remembering red phone boxes

I always find it strange how red phone boxes have become an iconic motif for Old England abroad. They pop up on all sorts of tourist brochures these day as well as on the covers of guide books.

And while they don't normally taste as good as Yorkie Bars, unless it has been a particularly heavy night on the Boddingtons, they are certainly as asthetically pleasing.

The classic red phone box was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and there were actually a whole family of models from K1 to through to K6.

Although red phone boxes are a powerful symbol of Britain, they were actally phased out with the privatization of British Telecom in the 1980s when cheap, plastic-looking replacements started to appear, although the classic red boxes have survived in places such as conservation areas and some parts of London like Covent Garden where Brits like to hoodwink visitors.

They are apparently red in most places, including Gibraltar, with the exception of the city of Hull, where the council was allowed to take them over and paint them cream. If you are unlucky enough to live in Hull, you probably lack the intellectual ability to realize your phone boxes are a different color than those in the rest of the country.

It seems strange to me that red phone boxes have become this cutsey emblem of Harry Potter England abroad. When I grew up they invariably smelled of cigarettes from all the butts crushed into their concrete bases and urine from drunken passers-by who would use them as improptu toilets.

Normally someone had spray painted a few anarchy symbols on the side of the boxes and knocked out some windows and, if the phone book was still inside, it would have been half ripped.

I have lots of quaint teenage memories of spending 20 minutes to pluck up the courage to make a phone call to a girl, only to find the receiver had been smashed in, or somebody had taken part in the contest to see how much chewing gum could be crammed into the coin slot.

In the 21st Century, when just about everybody over the age of 10 has a cell phone, these relics of the past are rather irrelevant.

But prostitutes still have to put their calling cards somewhere, I guess.

Gabrielle Giffords and the trail of tears of America's gun culture

When I became a U.S. Citizen last September the guest speaker, a local Republican delegate, gave a speech on how my fellow new citizens and I were lucky enough to now be able to embrace the right to bear arms, telling the story of a rape victim who would not have been violated if she'd owned a Colt 45.

I thought thanks but no thanks. I've only been in the U.S. for five years but I've stood outside enough crime scenes, including those where small boys have blown out their brains with their parents' guns, to know the downside to the glorious right to bear arms.

So here we go again. US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords fights for her life after receiving a bullet to the head in Arizona. Another six people including a nine-year-old girl are dead.

For Arizona read Virginia Tech, Columbine, Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, McDonald's restaurant in San Diego, Red Lake High School in Minnesota and so on.

Just last week at the opening of Congress, Giffords read out the First Amendment.

It would have been a lot more ironic if she had been asked to read the Second.

I don't want to get all stuck up and British about this. The U.S. Constitution is superior to the ad hoc British system in so many ways.

With the possible exception of the Second Amendment, which gives the right to any random nutjob such as Jared Lee Loughner to be given their few minutes of bloody fame clutching a firearm.

Or maybe, as many people tell me over here, I am being over simplistic in my approach and argument that, rather than protecting people, guns make us less safe. I should stick to the safer territory of warm beer and fish and chips.

So I'll retreat into the black and white world of statistics, before moving on to the next blog that I promise will be in primary colors.

Homicides 2009

London, UK - population: 7.5 million; homicides; 130

New Orleans, USA - population: 288,000; homicides: 173

Go figure.

Justin Bieber eclipses Guest Blogger Week

So that's it all over now. Guest Blog Week seems to be over before it's even started. We have taken a final bow and the velvet curtain has brushed our shoulders.

Now we're out by the bus stop in the drizzle with a cold breeze tugging at our coat tails, the smell of the grease paint already a distant memory as we eye the baleful lights of a fish and chip shop far across the wet highway.

Well not in America we aren't. You can't get decent fish and chips here for love or money.

Although pesonally I normally find money's a more effective way of getting fast food than offering the server my undying love.

Well thanks to all of you who sent me entries. I could have dusted off the thumb screws to squeeze that 10th blog out of the blogisphere, but my OCD isn't so bad yet that I need symmetry and an even number.

And thanks for the altruistic messages and all that, but Guest Blog Week also meant I could...

A - Be lazy

B - Get up my blog views by posting more often.

In a way this woked. Tuesday was a record day for Brits in the USA, when I secured more than 250 views. Congratulations too to Rapunzel whose Tales from the Tower was the most viewed guest blog with more than 70 views.

The rather sobering news for all you guest bloggers is the majority of my hits came from a blog I wrote a few days earlier in which I made a passing reference to, ugh, here goes...  Justin Bieber.

For some reason that I can't fathom hundreds of folks, mainly from Brazil, hit on this retarded looking school boy.

Does this mean I will have to bite the bullet that all Americans are meant to have in their homes in case their kids demand a second pop tart, and actually listen to my first ever Justin Bieber track, having just realized he wasn't the kid in Home Alone.

I fear it does.

Guest Blog #9 - Zombies - Paranormal Pursuits

After the crazy week I've had that has slowly turned me into the undead, signing off guest blog week with a post on zombies is apt. Paranomal Pursuits is a bit out there; it's paranormal to say the least and it's writer Alyson is one of the co-founders of North Ohio Paranormal and has been investigating sites all over Ohio for the last three years.

Right now zombies are everywhere. Or at least it feels like it. TV,movies, the radio, books… you just can’t seem to escape them. They are slowly taking over, just as zombies should. So what’s our great fascination with these things? Essentially, they’re just hungry humans. Hungry humans that want to eat other humans. So why is everyone so obsessed with them?


Honestly, I think part of the appeal is that we know we are superior to them. You can’t help but watch a zombie movie without planning some sort of brilliant escape or zombie attack plan. For the most part, they are easy to kill. Who doesn’t like an easy target when you’re holding a rifle (or bow, or flame thrower?) It’s fun to try and outsmart a monster and zombies aren’t too difficult to outsmart.

They also give us an easy way to excuse otherwise gratuitous violence. I had to chop his head of or he would have eaten me mentality is totally acceptable. And fun.

Zombies make us feel fast, because they are soo slow. They make us feel smart because they are so unintelligent. And they make us feel good because they are so bad.
 
http://www.paranormalpursuits.net/

Guest blog #8 - She Was My Friend - A Chronicle of Dreams

Rek's blog's only a couple of months old but it's already receiving a lot of interest. I found this post very touching. Thanks to everyone who has submitted material for Guest Blog Week. Ideally I'd like a couple more to round it off. Send to maccaz17@hotmail.com


Tears roll down her cheeks as she checks the obituaries...sure enough that smiling face she can never forget staring back at her, sadly accusing,"you never visited". Proof in her hand of the grim reaper and his sadistic taste for young lives...


The breakfast turns cold, untouched as was dinner the previous night. Her mind taking her to a nostalgic journey more than a decade old. She had just graduated when they met for the first time as interns at their auditing firm.

She liked her on sight...Nita as she softly remembered.. Nita was different : ambitious, intelligent with no qualms in flaunting it, a dreamer, eccentric even. Maybe that was the reason for the contempt that the other girls held for her. It was part jealousy and part groupism - the odd ones always ignored or mocked.

Nita spoke of her family, her work, her dreams, her fears...she was just a sweet girl trying to make a mark on the world but when have narrow minds seen a person for what they truly are?

Audits with her were never boring, intelligent conversation, work, fun, sharing filled the days. Nita was a reflection for all that she stood for and may be that's why they got along so well. When others in the office would ask how she could bear to be seen as friendly with the "weirdo", she simply smiled and replied "Birds of a feather flock together".

As time went by, as it has for aeons, she moved to other projects, other jobs...they still kept in touch, met occasionally but not as before. Life went on, job, marriage, problems, responsibilities but she still thought of her . They met a few times more, at her marriage as Nita's parents was friends with her in-laws (small world, she had thought back then) and a couple of family functions....and then for quite some years they lost touch completely...

She looked at the damp paper, thinking of the bear hug and the huge infectious grin with which Nita greeted her(the surprise element at her wedding) and between guilt ridden sobs wished she had reached out to her when Nita had been on dialysis (she had never known, the secret kept till her last days), when Nita had got her promotions and had few genuine friends to celebrate it with, when a speeding car knocked her dead as she crossed the highway to her office a week after her 31St birthday.

.......Its been five years since Nita moved on to a painless, hopefully better place but the sadness and the ache of regret still lingers as fresh as ever...you see, this story is close to my heart, for Nita was my "weirdo" friend and a small part of me wishes that I had, had a chance to say my goodbyes.....

(Real names changed to protect those left behind and respect the ones who have moved on.)

http://achronicleofdreams.blogspot.com/

Guest Blog #7 - Learning to Swim - Vodka Logic

In the beginning, to misquote some famous book or other, there was vodka. Vodka Logic was one of my earliest followers back in the day when my blogisphere resembled the hollow surface of the moon. Let's face it, there's a logic to vodka. Just not at this time in the morning when I find myself implausibly awake.

Learning to Swim-A true story



I was learning to swim,
At the age of eight,
Back in the summer of '68.

The water was clear,
I didn't think I was ready,
Mother reassured, and kept me steady.

The old castle had fallen,
The water it's moat.
Would I be able to stay afloat.

A fortnight we stayed,
In Wales on holiday.
In a Roman home made of stone and hay.

I finally jumped in,
With inflatable swimmers.
And closed my eyes to the waters glimmers.

Afraid at first,
I splashed about.
Trying to be brave and not shout.

Mother stands close,
And my sisters cheer.
The other shore didn't seem so near.

I kept on trying,
And stayed in the water.
Wanting to swim, the youngest daughter.

The moat and me,
All through the day.
And by sundown......I was swimming away.

http://snickerbaraddict.blogspot.com/

Guest Blog #6 - New Chapter, the Naked Redhead

The Naked Redhead is always a good read and it's still not porn. This is a recent and very poignant posting on moving on and all that....

New Chapter

Yesterday I officially closed a chapter in my life and began a new one.


I moved into an apartment all by my lonesome for the first time in my life...sans husband, gay roommate (the best kind), or boyfriend. The place is a disaster, but it's mine, and I already feel at home, despite an outdated kitchen, rickety floorboards and horribly drafty windows.

I went ahead and painted my bedroom a bright fuchsia...not necessarily because I like fuchsia, but because for the first time, I don't have to consider a male's perspective on how I decorate.

Because kids, let's just face it...I have a bad serial monogamy problem. I have a very, very bad "fixing" complex. And I have a super horrible habit of neglecting what I need to do for what I perceive others needing me to do and be.

I'm not complaining. I'm really not. "It's better to have loved and lost..." and all that shit. That statement is something I believe (although, if we're being honest, I do have moments where I wonder if I've missed my shot. I've had more love in nine years than some have had in a lifetime. Maybe that'll be it for me. I guess I should feel lucky, but sometimes it reeks of loneliness). But I also need some time to be free. To be me. To explore my full potential...to be stupidly busy, to put my nose to the grindstone, to work, to find out what I'm truly made of.

And you guys? It's already been so fruitful. I was contacted last week to do work for a dream gig of mine, I've booked more speaking engagements, I've made some of the most wonderful friends I've ever had, and I'm tapping into places I didn't know existed. You know, inside. Of me. And whatnot.

Ahem, anyway.

This new chapter has not come without pain, but it's a story with a happy ending. And I cannot wait to tell you all about it.

http://www.thenakedredhead.com/

Guest Blog #5 - Tales from the Tower - The Good, the Bad and the Serial Killer

Rapunzel's from Manchester, England, a city where dating may be difficult if all of the men are as happy as Morrissey. I'm posting this blog on the condition she isn't a Man U. fan. She says of the post "This is one of my first posts which seems to set the tone for the rest of the blog - single girl failing miserably in her search for her Mr Right!"

The Good, the Bad and the Serial Killer


When you have 20 unopened emails it all seems so promising...


I'd put up my online dating profile after much deliberation (a male friend advised me my first one was crap and then the dating site itself didn't approve the second one - I didn't write enough about my hobbies seemingly! Maybe cause I don't have any? Note to self: must get some hobbies.)


I'd chosen a photo that hopefully gives a true idea of the way I am (after being told the pet hate of men on these sites is meeting up with women who look nothing like their photo. It was quite hard to find one that shows my size, height, my hair, dress sense as well as one that shows I love X-Factor but hate mushrooms.)


I'd waited a bit to see if I was even going to get any mails and then had paid up in order to be able to read and reply to them.

I was now good to go. With 20 mails to read I was bound to have struck lucky...

Opened number 1. Looked like a serial killer. He even commented on how evil he looks in his photo, like he was proud or something.

Number 2 had no photo so could have looked like a serial killer.

3 had plenty of photos but unfortunately they were all just of his torso, showing his muscles.

At last! Number 4 sent me a nice funny mail, his profile is nice and so is his photo. Things are on the up!

Number 5 is 50. And yes, by 50 I mean years old. Does my photo suggest I'm looking for someone closer to my dad's age than my own?

Question my choice of photo again at number 6 as he states in his profile that he 'abhors TV.' I'm sure my photo clearly suggests I love X-Factor, Greys Anatomy, Home and Away and many other quality programmes.

Number 7 tells me he's only looking for 'no strings attached.'

Number 8 likely to be looking for the same as he asked if I would be interested in someone well-endowed. Does well-endowed ever mean tall cause his profile says he is 6ft 5. Nope? I didn't think it did.

A nice normal guy for number 9. Feel slightly better...

Number 10. Aged 56. Appears that I spoke too soon...

Number 11 is a bit of a contradiction...funny mail but really serious looking guy in his photo.

12 has told me I seem 'elegant'. No-one has ever described me as elegant before. Probably cause I'm not. Definitely need to change my photo.

13's message to me consists of 'lol' this and 'lol' that. Now with only six more messages to read maybe I'm not in a position to be fussy but I'm just not a big fan of lolling.

Number 14 says he can be a 'perfect gentleman or semi-thuggish depending on the needs.' At least if I feel like I'm need of a slap I'll know who to contact.

15 is 5ft 5.

16 is aged 59. I think I'm going to cry.

17 has sent me an absolutely hilarious mail...hurrah! Then I look at his photo...Good Lord no! He looks like the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I don't think I need comment on number 18. I'll just let you read his mail...'wow--you have done something to me with just a picture--what kinda voodoo do you do when you do that thing you do--hot damn--what in the hell just happened to me--can you please email me--we need to chat--and i am far from crazy--but you...wow- no--really--i don't know what just happened, but i have to chat with you--what did you do to me--lol--'.

Number 19 lives in Birmingham so says he isn't expecting a reply but just wanted to say hi.

And finally number 20...nice enough but all his mail says is hi and how are you? A bit uninspiring. And I'm not sure he'd really like my answer at the moment. How am I, number 20? I'm in disbelief that I've just paid over £40 for this....

http://www.talesfromthetower.co.uk/