Find and kill and find and SMASH

So, given to bouts of anxiety as I am, I thought I'd drag my tensed-up carcass to a meditation class tonight. Since I came across the leaflet last week, advertising the start of the course with plenty of time, in the chip shop I rarely visit - I figured it was ser-en-dip-it-tuss and that. Only as it transpired, fate did not want me to attend after all. For fate intervened in the form of a football, erratically kicked by a small boy, straight through my flimsy lounge window.

The dog had been peacefully snoozing on the chair and barrelled into the hall with the end of his tail so far between his legs it almost outran his head. Judging by the unholiness of the atmosphere in the room now, I can only conclude he had a small accident along the way. (Oh it's in the spaces between the old wooden slats I shall have to move immediately.) The noise was like someone dropping a crate of empty wine bottles down a short flight of stairs, SMASH bump SMASHASH tinkle tinkle tinkle. The image was so fixed in my mind that as I ran down the Corridor to see, I was actually thinking "Did I leave a large collection of empty wine bottles somewhere?" Ah, l'idee fixe or whatever.

So, yeah, glass everyfuckingwhere ranging from flakes resembling proper posh sea salt sprinkled on the sofa to big ugly semi-rectangular guillotines scattered all the way across the floor and propped on the radiator. It's just as well I hadn't settled in to watch The Simpsons on the sofa with my left cheek about six inches from the window. Brrr. I am genuinely interested to see how my skin ages, thank you.

A nice man who was passing stopped to say he'd seen a boy run next door. The child of my nice neighbour. Turns out the little bugger just sat down to tea and not a word said not a peep the little swine. Within half an hour (after phoning for a proper cockney, who came round all bald and took out the giant daggers of glass from the frame with his bare hands) she'd marched him round to apologise. Apparently it hadn't really sunk in until Nice Neighbour explained to him that the lovely Beast could have got glass in his paws. It was all sort of charming, really, in spite of the ruined evening and the meticulous sweeping and traumatised dog and all. Quite sort of 1950s. High jinks. Boys playing in the street and scurrying away when they break windows. A quaint domestic mishap. Beats violent burglary.

It was all very 21st C. on Friday, though, as it was my birthday and there was polite end-of-evening naughty debauchery at 3am. All a very welcome surprise. Previous to that there was a long and pleasant evening on some leathery sofas and fighting over jukebox and the like. I don't know why I'm so surprised when an evening goes well and everyone is happy and all is full of love (and substances), but it keeps it fresh, I suppose.

I had lots of things to write about on here (I will not use that cursed new verb!) but of course not being a proper blogger, I haven't. They included

- Something unforgivably glib and superfluous (probably) about the Virginia Tech massacre and America's bone-deep gun culture. Guns do seem to foster this forgetfulness, absent-mindedness or sense of unreality, about human life - because it must be so easy to just shoot someone. It takes very little physical energy and you can do it from a distance. It must be not quite like actual killing. There's no point even discussing gun control because that's not going to be the issue, the gun lobby's too powerful and guns are right up there with free speech in the US in any case, and people will still say that if he really wanted to he would have set bombs to kill just as many people, etc, etc.

You just have to hope that if something has to give, it's neither the race issue, nor the mental health one. Ostracising anyone for any reason is only going to lead to more of the same, and sectioning anyone who writes bad plays isn't going to help either and is just going to pile misery upon misery and ignorance upon ignorance upon fear upon bullshit - but then, this is always going to happen, especially in America, and so... given the options, they should probably do nothing but brief their police better, and encourage people to be a bit nicer to the weird kids. Perhaps have actual background checks for gun purchasers, rather than making it easier than getting a credit card. Try that. That wouldn't infringe on anyone's God-given right to own an instrument of death, would it?

His last eBay purchase was 37 rubber duckies. It's not funny, not sad, just... nothingy. Which is sad, I suppose.

- Something about the BRMC gig. But then I still have to write up that other stuff on them if I'm going to bother, and so I should incorporate it in there or something. I smoked a cigarette. It seemed only right and natural. I did enjoy it. Maybe I could start smoking and then quit on July 1st when the ban comes in, and do a crappy psuedo-journalistic programme about my nicotiney adventure for BBC Three. It'd be less dangerous than those awful rampantly unethical things where women try to get to size zero by eating their own earwax for a fortnight.

Anyway, they were just as they always were and I was quite beside myself.

- Something about this Cutting Edge doc (don't read that, it's shit, and they can't spell 'eke' and should be fired) about foxes in Stoke Newington, just like me old mucker done did. (He done the VT thing as well. Oh he is better than me. Tsk.) Some sentimental old middle-clarse fools put food out for the foxies and gave them unimaginative names. Still, at least they put chicken livers out, and not Swiss rolls like some asshats did. Some younger and louder middle-clarse fools kept chickens in a coop made of string and fairy leg hairs in their vast Islington-lite back garden, and were infuriated when foxes kept getting in and killing their birds. This was fucking up their shit, and apparently the shit of the world at large, because as they constantly said, they were "trying to be green". How awful - think of the acceleration in the melting of the ice caps every time Foxy crunched down on a chicken neck. The family were all haughty grumpy exasperated about all the sentimental idiots in the area putting food out for them and treating them like ickle flufflies, but even more pissed at the foxes themselves.

The thing is, as was explained to the family, it ain't no good snuffing the pests because as long as the food supply remains, others will come. Others will come. It's like Field of Dreams, except with a rubbish chicken coop instead of a nice baseball park. Regardless! the man of the house hired a fucking marksman to come and shoot the beasts. They had to lure them by leaving meat out in the garden for several nights. A pregnant vixen was dropped first - they really did drop, then stretch a bit, it was horrible, but you can't deny it was quick - then her mate, who'd heard the shot, and screamed, and came to find her. Eerie little bastards, they are. No wonder people anthropomorphosise them. They do people stuff. (Elephants have 'funerals', you know. But anyway.)

So that was that. Except for the fact that it wasn't because as had been patiently explained to them, others came. It was a beautiful illustration of hypocrisy; knowing that shooting the foxes was futile, they went ahead anyway, which makes it an act of revenge, which means they were attributing human qualities and drives and motives to animals... which makes them every bit as noxiously sentimental as the dickheads they derided who think foxes really like cake.

Actually, it was hardly about foxes at all. It was about how awful and poisonous that fat hostile self-righteous posturing and thoroughly ignorant streak of the middle-clarse is. I love Stoke Newington - oh the pretty restaurants and sexy houses and the wondrous cemetery that's in the new Amy Winehouse vid - but it may be some kind of Bermuda Triangle for human decency. It may!

Other than that, I am reading A Round-Heeled Woman. It is not very good. Sorry. It's not. Shame because she is great and it's a good story. It's a month till The Book is out. Erk. I am listening to LCD Soundsystem (yes but I can't be arsed to find a link, it's true). It is very good. I saw John Carpenter's The Thing at the weekend. It was excellent. I am tricking myself into writing something. It will either be brilliant or shit. That's how it goes.

Oh, and this is the best headline... ever. They must have had some kind of moment of perfect shiny enlightenment and inner peace as soon as they thought of it, before screaming and running through Wapping naked. Even if they weren't in Wapping.

Duracell Minus

This week I has

* talked late

* sat up late

* curtain-twitched

* made hamstrings complain

* not done enough

* learned the child sign language for 'pig', 'tiger', 'sheep' and 'biscuit'

* signed up for a screenwriting seminar

* gone "aaargh" with regards above

* partly because of the £

* interviewed one of favourite bands in a sort of shock last-minute who'd-a-thunk-it scenario

* gone "wheeeeee" with regards above

I can witter about that one now (and don't think I won't) but I'm planning to write it up on here properly and interminably, in a way that no sensible editor would print. Which will be sort of emancipating. They've done that for me before anyway, making me break free from the shackles of supposed creative endeavour that's actually like a prison of the mind, man. When I used to go and see them and jump about and shout and smile, all the other nonsense I was embroiled in that had to do with seeing bands and writing about them and trying to talk to them when they just wanted to go back to bed seemed utterly superfluous.

I suppose I wish I'd had the balls to interview them when I had the chance for one of the mags I used to write for - which I might have linked but there is no trace online of its brief life except mentions of its demise. I might have been able to write about them in the way I wanted to, but then again it would probably have turned out bad. I almost don't want to write about them at all. It spoils it somewhat. I have to start justifying myself - which is hard in this case as they're almost a guilty pleasure - and it's just a lot of bollocks. But yes.

But yes! It's not often you feel like you get the chance to tie up a very long sort of shoelace-thin but trailing loose end like this. I probably couldn't have done it a few years ago. My problem with interviews - well, one of the many - is that I can't bear to come out of them thinking I came across as a knob. It's a pretty sterile environment, these days, and I'm uncomfortable and awkward. The whole 'never meet your heroes' thing implies 'because they'll be crushingly disappointing and boringly human and not like they fell out of the sky at all', but it's so much more likely that you will disappoint them... and they have no expectation of you to start with. You can feel utterly negated by a dismissive glance from someone you admire. I know, I'm too susceptible to the whole myth of it all, but then I always wanted to be. Like a stupithead.

Fortunately, I came out with most of my dignity intact; and as immature as it may be, with the hint of a sense that they could actually have fallen out of the sky still in place too. It wasn't a very good interview, I don't think, but things were said into dictaphone, and although they

* got up and wandered about the room occasionally

* sniggered

* sighed deeply

...somehow it didn't seem personal.

Almost anything you build up to be a big deal is stunningly prosaic when it happens, but I never find that disappointing - it fascinates me how that works, as if your brain dumps a load of calmative chemicals to enable you to deal with it. This thing had spent years deflating in any case, but it was still kind of special. I never thought it'd ever happen, and that always gives you a bit of a celebratory feeling, giving rise to noisy TWU-bothering singing upon getting home. The staggeringly normal feeling of the moments you think will be otherworldly is actually sort of lovely. It's uniquely pleasant after the anxiety that precedes it. I think it's the element of surreality that you get with it. I don't know. But I did sit there and smile like a fool. Part of my pleasedness must have come from the fact that I do care a tiny bit less now if people think I am a fool. A tiny tiny bit. They aren't as important to me as they were, but they were important enough that they'll always have that resonance for me. So... yeah. It was daunting, but they were fine, and I was so relieved I was nearly giddy.

I got them to sign something - I've only ever got one other autograph for myself, because he was such a thoroughly amiable bloke. This - I don't know, I'm strangely unmoved by the thing that's now stuck on the wall by my desk with three absolutely illegible signatures on it, even as it pleases me to look at it. Oh - no I'm not, I am a bit moved. I just thought about what it means, and what it would have meant if I'd had it four years ago. I suppose it is a belated sign-off on a part of my life. A really good part. In parts. A sign of happy times.

They're playing on my birthday, in a venue I've seen them in twice, which is soon going to be turned into offices torn down. Good God. I will need wheeling home.

Once I've transcribed the thing and finished kicking myself for how terrible I sound and the questions I didn't ask, I'll write it up here. I suppose I should try and use it as some sort of line, marking the end of me writing sentences like the previous one, but those sorts of lines tend to be a load of unrealistic arse, like some genetically-modified monster of an ultra-new year resolution. Maybe you're just supposed to come to terms with your own imperfections. Man.

Ugh. What a thought.

Black holes, not revelations

I was just about to email someone I vaguely know to point out that there's an amusing typo on a relatively important bit of his website. But then I thought - no one cares. I've thought this before but have usually swatted it aside as heresy or at least something unhelpful. Of course this being two hours into New Year's Eve, my sense of acceptance of the essential pointlessness of what I mostly do for a living may be false. You always look for things that point to stuff being Different in The Future at this pestilent time of year. There's probably a gene for it. A gene with a timer.

Anyway - I don't know, perhaps I should just crack down on my tendency to point out people's oopsies to them thinking they'll be grateful, and then work on the flinch I get whenever I see the twitching corpse of what could, in the right hands, have been a sentence. Especially since I am very far from perfect on that score myself. In any case, it's just not sexy. Maybe good English just needs its own Nigella, but I'd need a few years, some hair dye, some elocution lessons, bigger hips, and to sleep with several BBC Four commissioners (the ones that could still manage or appreciate it).

So there's a late night revelation. Other recent ones include:

1) It is physically impossible to tire of that Scott Matthews song with the video with all the beds.

2) 'Stranger in Moscow' is the last good song Michael Jackson will ever record, but it is still better than ooh, so much other stuff.

3) It's very handy to have Film 4+1 as well as Film 4 and a remote control handset, but it tends to result in watching the same film in an absolutely batshit order.

4) 'Spirited Away' is really very amazing but the ending is rubbish.

5) Cheese shops and delicatessens and the like have yet to reach this end of the tube line. Nearest thing is a posh sausage shop but that only sells posh sausage. However, this is bound to change. This place is going to be the new Stoke effing Newington and I'm going to be outclassed and outpriced before too long.

6) It's wonderful to really feel committed to a belief that you've wavered on and picked to bits for years before settling on one side. Even if it's ultimately depressing to hold the belief. This I realised today when I heard with some shock about Saddam's execution. No personal sympathy for the guy well obviously well of course, but you can't just have some new category of Eeeeevil that justifies officially offing someone. It's not the mark of a good democracy. At least that's one thing we no longer do here. Though you might not think so from Margaret Beckett's mealy-mouthing about him being brought to account, but er cough we still don't really kind of support that sort of thing, but then it is Iraqis' business and we don't want to interfere with their fragile emergent democracy, even if... yes. Cough.

I think justice is like freedom or perfection or any other absolute ideal - something you can and should strive for but can never completely achieve. And are a bit batshit if you genuinely believe it's possible. People tend to get very hoity-toity about justice having been done in the event of an execution - the absoluteness of it seems to appeal to that desperate need for closure that we can probably blame Oprah for creating in all of us, or possibly 'Friends'. But the equation just doesn't make sense to me. Above all, lofty as it sounds to me, I don't think it is our place to mete out death as a punishment. Ever. I don't think there is any higher power whose place it is to do it, except perhaps the ghost of Darwin. Who is a bit like Jacob Marley but maybe with, like, little bones hanging off his jacket or something. The Darwinator. That guy. But just because there isn't a higher power doesn't mean we should act in lieu of one.

Obviously many people who do believe in a higher power condone the death penalty, which is odd because you'd think they'd let God kill 'em all and let er, God sort it out. But He seems to be good at delegating when it comes to that sort of thing.

Incidentally - when the Iraqi Prime Minister said that Saddam faced his death "like all tyrants", did he mean that as some kind of backhanded compliment? Bloke went to the gallows if not defiantly, then at least with a certain obstinate demeanour from what I've seen. I suppose most tyrants don't go to their deaths blubbing for mama and begging forgiveness, but then to many people that sort of stubborn scowling thing would be taken as admirable dignity. As befits, y'know, a martyr. So... that's not really what you want from your tyrant's death, is it?

It'll be interesting to see how many people are actually sacrificed to the dead tyrant, and if it'll really be recognised as such, and how many people will insist that it's got nothing to do with Saddam's execution - or if it has any connection, well, it was worth it, because the fucker had to die. As if he actually had to. As if he hadn't already been neutralised, but like the mad Russian blond guy said in Die Hard, "I don't wan neutral, I wan dead." (He's dead too, that bloke. Ho hum.) And as if he didn't have so much more to be held to account for.

I think they just couldn't bear the thought of another eight trials for other atrocities. There may not have been enough lawyers in Iraq to get through it. Buggers were getting assassinated as fast as they could glean the salient details of the case.

7) Power cuts like the one our street experienced earlier this evening really need to last longer than ten minutes for that full childish glee effect to descend. But I did meet my new neighbour after we both stuck our heads out of sundry apertures in our respective dwellings, waving torches around.

8) It's a uniquely awkward situation when one estranged member of your family (presumably) gives another your mobile number. Erk.

9) I know Steve Irwin did remarkable and genuine and lasting good things for animals overall, but I still can't watch footage of him poking snakes in the eye and bellowing "COR HE'S REALLY ANGRY" without throwing things at the telly. Sorry.

Defying SOCPA means never having to freeze your tush off. Oh wait.

So after all that fannying about, I sallied forth to the demonstration in Parliament Square this evening. I spent the day labouring under the misapprehension I was still going to be less than legal, because I hadn't had my special Willy Wonka golden ticket yes-you-may letter from the police in the post. When I discovered from Rachel that a) it's sort of like a driving licence in that you don't have to actually physically have it on you, kind of thing and b) the police, when she phoned to ask after the progress of our permission things, were outraged by our insane interminable loiter last week, I was gratefully disabused. And a bit disappointed, obviously. Robbed of my amusing coda.

The plan was to hold a mass lone demo (as has happened every month since August), completely and humbly legally, from 6 till 7pm, then move a few yards over and have a rip-roaringly non-legal and naughty carol service. And that's what transpired. I hate to say a good time was had by all, but I think it was. It was a good thing to do so although you're supposed to be selfless, I think you're allowed to feel a bit pleased. I have limited experience of demonstrating, and so am irksomely analytical about it, but one of the distinctive things about a demonstration like this is how blooming jolly it is. Jolly and very British - peaceful but not po-faced, a bit daffy without ever losing the sense of enormous importance. This sort of humble gaggle milling about under the looming, gorgeous, other-gold-looks-like-Ferrero-Rocher-wrappers-next-to-this opulence of Parliament. Parliament is an absolutely intimidating place, representing power in one of the most effective, criticism-rebuffing ways you can imagine. You feel very small next to it, and obvious as it is to say, your voice and presence as a defiant citizen in the face of such an impassive and significance-fraught structure feel infinitesimal.

But everyone deals with that overwhelmingness and gets on with it. I love the absurdist convention of these demos - the bonkers notion that you could be arrested, if you didn't have permission, for waving a placard saying 'No more smelly cheese', and of course the silly things themselves perfectly satirising the silliness of the relevant sections of the Serious Organised Annoying Little People Who Probably All Live On Quorn And Are Malnourished And Wrong In The Brain Act. I went for the double-pronged assault of 'ASBOs for apostrophe abuse' (two people asked me if 'ASBOs' shouldn't have an apostrophe; I smote them) and 'Better grammar for placards' (at least no one questioned the spelling of 'grammar'). This was an agonising decision which meant that my favoured campaign, 'Hide Daniel Craig's clothes', had to be sacrificed. Next time, however, as it is a matter of grave import that we strive to bring about a state of perma-nude Bond.

Gathered there all giggly and shivering, we held our placards (and in one spectacular case a pink Christmas tree, decorated grotesquely with laminated images of the casualties of illegal war), circulated and chatted, unwisely went in the road, waved at passing honking cars and mopeds, and were cold. There must be laws and constants about public demonstration, many of them things you kind of don't want to admit to yourself because you're supposed to be being totally selfless and above this sort of thing, like, say

Trundle's Law: Adversity of weather conditions is directly proportional to sneaky sense of righteousness.

Beanamble's Constant: If you demonstrate and no one gets arrested or questioned or stopped or otherwise interfered with, you feel if not a sense of actual failure then certainly a sense of anti-climax.

Fossingberd's Wotnot: Beanamble's Constant is inevitably followed by a sense of horrified guilt over sense of anti-climax. Etc.

I don't know, perhaps that's just me being a git. It sounds pretty beastly when you put it like that - you don't want any martyrs in this, and I know how dedicated people are and how little they let anything like that interfere - but I suppose it's because it's just mind-boggling to break a law or breach it or circumvent it or however you put it, in front of the seat of government, and to have nothing happen at all. When you're actually doing it, it's quietly surreal, and the lack of consequence is equally surreal given everything you ever learnt about right/wrong and legal/illegal. Plus, the whole issue we were protesting was the right to freedom of speech (by extrapolation), and although that only really means the right to be heard, dammit, you want to be listened to. Even if the representatives whose attention you attract are not receptive, you want to be acknowledged, just as you are implictly when you go and vote. Seeing that you're not being acknowledged makes you feel - not personally, but really as an average example of people of your country - neglected. Which in turn makes you angry. I suppose if you protest regularly you get over that, but for a novice like me it makes for an unpleasant aftertaste.


As expected, there were no police - no journalists to speak of either. There was a Liberal MEP, though, which was very something. The only police visible were the ones usually propping up the Parliament gates, looking cold and bored in their fluorescent jackets. Brian Haw had a little passive-aggressive pop through his megaphone at one point, and people laughed nervously, but no one came over and demanded to see papers or anything. It's another layer of surreality - before SOCPA people would protest all the time there and be ignored by politicians, but now we have to apply for permission to be ignored. It's like being not there at all, being negated on some official level. (I went to the rally in Hyde Park in early 2003, remember the excited hollers of a million on the streets and felt so roused, and then so furious and impotent when those million marchers were eaten up in a soundbite and swallowed away like a bad taste. It sticks.) Like hanging around a police station, shouting "ooooo-ooooo" at distant officers who register nothing of your presence. Anyone who's ever given or received the silent treatment from a lover, or opted not to respond to criticism, knows the immensity of the power of silence, and now I suppose the government have figured it out too.

Rachel gave a properly rousing speech, reminded us that "it is the duty of all citizens who give a stuff" to be here, to acknowledge what's going on and challenge it. I watched the cars going past (Parliament Square is a very daunting and almost inaccessible island, you feel like a rabbit dashing across the lanes to get there, and it's another thing that gives you this sense of 'you are not supposed to be here', but I digress), observed the gawping or mildly interested or blank or smiling faces of passing drivers, and wondered how many of them actually know about SOCPA. The form of a small demonstration is pretty standard, and in London people can easily tune it out like they tune out a hundred other elements a day - it seems far enough removed from usual life, aberrant and irrelevant enough to not pay attention to. But this is the sort of issue that attracts people who do give a stuff, but don't often feel the need to actively go and stand in the cold about something - like me. This is something that really affects everyone, however much it may seem to affect only a small pocket of placardy people. So I stood there and hoped that some of the people going past were thinking about what was going on.

At 7 some of us shuffled to the corner for the illicit carol service. It's such a perfect concept - it was held last year and will probably be on next year, and the police are never going to interfere because imagine the front covers if they went in and arrested the bejesus out of a lot of rosy-cheeked warblers in the middle of 'Silent Night'. They dismiss it for this reason, and I had to pause for a moment to get my head around the idea that it was breaking the law, but it is. It's an organised demonstration. I went last year and wrote about it in typically one-foot-out fashion (I know, I annoy myself) - this year it was a smaller gathering, and colder, and altogether less political. There was a gallant, slightly wobbly saxophonist in lieu of missing solo trumpeter, and there was giggling and competitive caterwauling during 'The Ten Days Of Christmas', and swigs of hip flasks and mulled wine (did I mention it was really very bastard cold indeed because if I didn't that would be a grievous error and would imply that we did not suffer for our noble cause). We didn't do 'Little Drummer Boy' because that was a terrible heap of bewildered pa-rum-pum-pums last time. We learn. And we missed out all the juicy Satan stuff from 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'.

We held a minute's silence as the traffic rushed by oblivious. Nothing does the same thing as silence, as I said - maybe next time we should stand in silence for an hour in the square. One protestor covered her mouth


and there's not really any substitute for that either if you want to declare your outrage that your right to say things is being curtailed. People tune out milling, chatting, politely whooping protestors. If we're being silenced, and being met with silence, maybe silence is the way to strike back. It would certainly signal disgust. (There's always mooning for that, of course, but let's put that on the back burner, or the back of a bus full of drunk rugby players.)

Brian Haw said some brief, typically passionate words, but he was more subdued than I've seen him. He tends to be a human foghorn, but not this evening. Last year we made much out of the fact that we were defying the law - this year Brian did an amusing little "I'm breaking the law right now, la la la" into the megaphone, and Tim gave us a round of applause and we all joined in, but we were quieter about it. The positive spin on this is that we all knew why we were there, in the effing cold and friz, and we simply defied rather than banging on about our defiance - it's no big deal, we could do this every day, and maybe we should. The negative is more along the lines of - we are tired and weary and helpless and we do not know if this is doing any good at all.

I would go with the positive, though, with only the usual little niggly doubts and cynicism around the edges. There will be at the least a steady trickle of people prepared to defy SOCPA in this way for as long as it's in place, and although it's hard to cling onto the belief that it will do good, it's of symbolic importance to keep doing it, to counterbalance what is an insidious, craven and terrible symbolic gesture on the part of the government.

I suppose this now means I'm obliged to go and get frostbite again sometime soon. Thank you, Tony, because of you I will have to buy stupid thermals. Ooh, I could get a onesie, like the ones in old Westerns where the sheriff is rousted out of bed at night by the posse and he comes out in his hat and boots and a onesie with buttons up the middle and his gun. That'll do nicely.