A New Leaf

I need to focus. My scattershot approach to writing has left me penniless and lacking in even the tackiest of awards.

My policy has always been to squirt out as many thoughts as possible, and then root around in the filth for nuggets of gold. But I need a more deliberate approach. No more abandoning ideas half way through. Commit, commit, commit.

Discipline is the way forward. No more dilly-dallying. No more coasting. I've got to get my head down. And my pen down.

I've got to get my pen down onto my (already-down) head, poking me in the scalp, reminding me that I'm supposed to be working.

If I can just concentrate on one thing, I'll make enough money to pay for a life of idleness.

Chasing money for its own sake is immoral, but chasing it to give yourself a nice long lie-in is the noblest thing any man (or merman) could ever hope to achieve.

I vow to you that I will have written a whole opera by the time you've finished reading this sentence.

Damn.

***

Mood

Anxious, but not unhappy. Do ever feel that there's something terrifying but exciting just out of reach? I feel it sometimes late at night - as though a breakthrough is just over the horizon. But you can never reach it because it fades when you look at it. Like trying to remember a dream.

Lucy once described that struggle to remember something as having inspiration at your finger tips. But your awareness gives you long talons, and as you try to extend your reach, you're shredding the very idea you're attempting to grasp.

She's clever. I'm glad I remembered that talons thing. I might steal it and put it in my opera.

Listening to

I've had this song in my head all day. I'm not really sure what it's about.

Damn. I can't find the Phil Ochs original. It's called Miranda. This cover will have to do:

Reading

I read a good piece about Scooby Doo and its relationship with rationality and superstition. You can read it by clicking on this word.

Books are for sissies.

Watching 

Art of America

A BBC Four documentary on... well, the art of America. It does exactly what it says on the tin engraved with the title of the documentary.

Anyway, it's presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon, who is amusingly intense. It's a combination of art history and general history (he did previous series on Germany, Spain and Russia) and is hugely enjoyable. I don't know enough about art, so I like to sit around the learning tree (television).

This series seems to be him taking great pleasure in puncturing American myths. This is proper BBC programme making - the kind of thing that only they can do properly. Every time someone complains about the license fee, I want to sit them down in front of this programme and then club them to death with a poisoned knife.

Playing

I've been playing the piano in an Off-Broadway play about a wise-cracking piano. It's called Get Your Fingers Off My Keys, You Shit!

Eating

Jaffa Cakes. They're like natures clementines. Not quite as good, of course. What could be? But they are quite tasty.

Also: clementines.

Drinking

M&S chocolate milk. It's like normal milk, but browner. Imagine a cow that had been sweetened in some kind of terrible explosion. I'll give you some time.

...

Right. Imagined it?

Good. Now imagine its milk.

(Or just imagine chocolate milk, if you're familiar with it from your own life)

***

As you can see, it has been a madhouse here. Patients, padded walls, therapy, highly trained professionals, state-of-the-art facilities. It's extremely well run, but we have to keep calling it a 'madhouse' to fulfil Oxfordshire County Council's quota for inappropriately named buildings.

The local rail station has been renamed "the ghost train", even though all ghosts were removed in 1998. As were the trains.

But seriously folks, you've been great.

I hope wherever you are you're at your desired temperature. If you're cold, throw another blanket on the fire. If you're hot, pour yourself a nice glass of special cow milk.

Your welfare is very important to me.

True, you haven't been particularly attentive. I could certainly do with some more comments. But as long as you're OK, that's the important thing.

I'm fine. I really am. Don't worry about me.

As long as you're enjoying your PERFECT heating and your DELICIOUS drink, don't worry about old Pilgarlic here.

I'm enjoying myself.

***

But enough of this. Time to knuckle down. Get those knuckles right down, with the head and the pen.

There's work to do.