quandary

So, the quandary is like this. We (the band) got asked to play a gig in London three months ago by a promoter who was incredibly keen and promised to cover expenses. It was our first gig. We went and it was underwhelming – low turnout, poor publicity. He said he’d pay us the expenses within the next few days (alarm bells). He still hasn’t paid us. I’ve sent him several MySpace emails and he’s finally replied, saying that each night has to cover itself, that he doesn’t have the money (even though he’s promoting other gigs) and that we wanted too much anyway (£60 for four of us to London and back). It’s partly about the principle of somebody ripping us off, but it’s also about the money. What’s the best strategy? Start posting comments in the cyberworld? Appeal to his better nature? Compromise on the amount? Any suggestions welcome. I’m off to spit somewhere.

Haircut

I go to a barber’s round the corner from my mam’s. It’s part of a local chain in Belgrave. It’s cheap and friendly, but there is sometimes a bit of a language barrier. Either that or the barbers are playing chicken, taking it in turn to cut my hair shorter and shorter with increasingly severe clippers, waiting to see if I snap. It’s a bit strange, but they do a nice line in head rubbing. Until today, when they took the stiff brush to my scalp. I’m not sure what that’s about. Perhaps next time they’ll start to beat me about the head with some sort of fish. Well, as long as it feels invigorating I’m all for it.

The F word

Yes, forty. Not yet, but soon. I realise I’ve started dancing like a dad. I realise I don’t care about this as much as my older kids do. For those who may be interested, yes I do remember what it was like when [insert appropriate example here], and it was a lot better and it was a lot worse. It cost less too, apart from the things that have become relatively cheaper in a general way rather than being a rollback price in Asda.

Incidentally, how do Asda manage to roll back the prices on items that have only existed for a couple of years, like DVDs? There’s a complex construction whereby they roll back prices beyond the existence of some items to a point where the price would have been if it had already been invented back then and the price had already come down to the level it would have been at today if they weren’t rolling back the price. I suppose that the price is ‘rolled back’ to some point after decimalisation, though, or they’d be selling microwaves for £3 2s 6d.

Thinking about it, if things get cheaper over time, perhaps Asda et al should roll prices forwards so we see the benefits of economies of scale from the future. Microwaves might then cost about 3p, depending on how big you see the benefits being. Disposable fridge for 25p, that’s Asda price. Organic carrots still at premium rates though. Bah humbug.

Fat Lad

In the manner of F U Right Back, I was wondering how it would be to get someone like Sharon Stone’s character in Basic Instinct to record a companion piece to Mika’s Big Girl with lyrics like, ‘Fat lad, most people think you’re a bit of a minger but, you know, I reckon you’re probably allright/Don’t try to be like those other people that are considered to be good looking because you’ve got personality/I mean, I don’t fancy you myself, obviously, but then that makes it OK for me to make these sweeping presumptions about you and everyone else/Yeah’. Obviously this doesn’t scan, and would need polishing in order to be patronising enough. Was thinking of adding a looped sample from something like Ernie, The Fastest Milkman In The West to give it some retro cred. Could be a goer.

I have too much time on my hands this morning.

Death

Yes! My short story ‘Death’ has been accepted by the lovely people at www.neonbeam.org, a new free-to-read ezine that will have Issue 1 available from June 14th. Apparently, Death is ‘imaginative, well-written and darkly amusing’. It feels like a good, positive step, so thank you Neonbeam. I’ve also got two quite big new stories on the go that I hope will be finished within the next fortnight. Feeling productive! Enjoying the fact that I’m dealing with my own writing for a bit, too.

Getting it off my chest

I performed this the other night.

The problem with writing performance poetry at the moment

is that at the moment I don’t give a fuck. Not about wars, the Tories, making people laugh, the homeless, the reckless, the feckless or the royal family. I have no interest in scoring small points off big targets in order to gain favour with a group of people who sit there in front of me expecting to be entertained with a quietly smug faith in their own alternativeness playing – if playing is not too strong a word – over their bland faces. There will be no revolution and anyone who claims to be leading one is patently lying. I have no desire to associate myself with self-promoting, self-aggrandising, one-trick-pony, I-am-the-resurrection-and-the-light-and-get-this-I’m-local persistently-local Eminem wannabes who maintain that poetry is still due to be, despite all evidence to the contrary over the last few centuries or so, ‘the new rock’n’roll’, and who only maintain this because their own observations are neither common enough to work as comedy or deep enough to be worth reading on the page. I have no wish to assume a faux-spiritual take on the universe, at the forefront of which would be some mantra/mission statement involving the words ‘peace’, love’, ‘light’ or – god forgive us all – ‘oneness’, the appreciation of which requires the same slack-jawed, wide-eyed, chin stroking reverence and lack of critical awareness found in lab monkeys the world over, and which contains the kind of jackdawed together credo of shite new age platitudes that serves only to put the user or listener deeply within the ‘look at me I am your brother/sister and I am better than you, albeit in a passive-aggressive way’ category and which should in itself be reason enough to take said person outside for a kicking, just to see how far the theory is put into practice, and which, furthermore, as any jury in the country will tell you, makes the phrase ‘gassed like badgers’ entirely justifiable. And poets who write poetry about their poetry and their writing of said poetry not to mention problems with writing it need to get over themselves. There are no exceptions. This does not make everything else allright. Enough said.

It felt good.

Compelled. Terminator. Alley.

I don’t think I’m a compulsive blogger. It’s just not in me. I am a compulsive reader though. And I’ve developed a web rut, a routine of sites to check in a very un-interactive way. It’s a kind of security I think, like walking the same way to work. It’s not always healthy to have such a routine, I know. So I always know what the Guardian football page is saying. Ask me every ten minutes or so when I’m online if it’s changed and I’ll probably be able to tell you. Maybe a bit of a blog will help to blow away the cobwebs.

I was talking to somebody yesterday about broadband connections and he was telling me that Sky are looking at satellite connections. Six years until we’re looking for John Connor then. Bagsy the big gun.

I’m also stopping the running of the open mic gig at the Alley Cafe in Nottingham. The last event is on the 21st of this month. Five years and out indeed. It feels like the right thing to do. Perhaps I can concentrate a little more on my own stuff rather than hosting other people’s. Lots of regulars have asked me why I’m stopping. I’ve said it’s someone else’s turn now. Some people look a bit blank at that point. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been great fun – mostly – I’m just tired of being asked to host stuff and having conversations where it feels like someone’s talking to the gig. I seem to have partly lost the ability to distinguish when this is happening. Perhaps I’ll go to someone else’s poetry night now. After a break, natch.

Days like vodka. Days like whiskey. Robertson Davies.

I think we all have them. I was talking to a friend the other day about working from home, and I said I thought it felt like having an afternoon of leisurely drinking with friends where you think you’re perfectly compus mentis until you actually talk to someone else and you realise you’re trollied. Like drinking vodka. Or whiskey. Actually, especially like drinking whiskey and ending up two worlds to the left.

This is one of those days. It’s like when you’re looking after a small child and you see no-one else. When you run into human company, you’re practically foaming at the mouth, you just don’t know it. Hair matted, bug-eyed and hopping all over the jungle, but you think you’re talking like David Niven. Simile, simile, simile. Dennis Hopper.

Which doesn’t really take us seamlessly into Robertson Davies, but there you go. I’ve been reading The Cornish Trilogy and it’s fantastic. Intelligent, wise and very human. I’d also recommend the Deptford trilogy – nothing to do with London and exceptionally good. Gets me off the Rebus for a short time. Stops me playing Pro Evo.

Must have a haircut.

Irregular is the new regular

Everything is the new nothing and you are the new me. Cliche is the new cliche and park benches are the new mozarella. Surrealism is the new laziness and sloth is the new cool. Old is the new new and new is also the new new. This post is my new post. Make of that what you will.

I am currently counting off the poetry gigs I host like an emotional doomsday clock’s second hand. (Six to go, max). I am also trying not to sound like I’m trying to sound like Raymond Chandler. I was a grain of sand on the desert of oblivion. I am going to see Alan Moore talk in Leicester in a couple of weeks with my very good friends Michael and Leo. This makes me very happy. Someone else’s gig. Bliss.

I find I’m liking having a beard more nowadays, even though it’s getting more white and wiry. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Is that a good thing?

Glasses

I have lost my glasses. So I’m finding it hard to work. Actually, the two things are related in different ways. Maybe it’s the weight of different pressures that is sending me running for a displacement activity. In all honesty, it isn’t very unusual for me to find that happening.

I’m surprised to find that I am actually concerned about the fact of not having my glasses. I only got them last June. Prior to that I hadn’t had any for a couple of years and I was getting on fine. Driving? No problem. Using the computer? Pah! Easy! I don’t wear them all the time, but I took them off the other day because it was raining while I was out and the world became blurred. Not just a bit blurry. Full on what-am-I-looking-at? I’m thinking that this might be tied in with the little noise I sometimes make now when I’m putting my socks on.

On the positive side I’ve been booked to do a gig. In London, no less. It should be fun. Must sort out the travel. I’m sure there’s washing up to do too.