Sunday 16th
September 2012
Jenni woke up from a dream about pamphlets just
before I started my morning pages. I wrote rough ideas about characters for
stories that will either present themselves to me or be completely impossible.
We ate apple pie for breakfast then had chicken ‘hoojie-woojie-boojie’ (jalfrezi) in a can for lunch with rice. Watched a bit of the Great
North Run coverage on tv then went out to Scratch club.
I hadn’t planned to take part and were it not for
the torrential rain would probably have just gone book browsing and reading
music mags in WH Smith. Pleased I stayed though. Me and Jenni co-facilitated
one of the groups that included newcomers while Kirsten worked with the other. A
relaxed session giving feedback and practical advice on spoken word, I did two
pieces from last night’s JibbaJabba. Keep it in the Family and CABBAGES!
Brilliant piece by Claire Cummins that totally blew everyone away. Some funny
stuff from James Wilkinson. A new piece about duping political voters from Ian
Waugh. Another epic from Chaz Angel. Great piece about ‘voice’ by Amabel Craig.
Jeff Poots with more intense and zany stuff. Newcomer Asa did two strong
pieces; and Amina with political piece. Other newcomers were great as well.
Nice of Joe Price gave us some feedback. Afterwards people left fairly early.
Me and Jenni sat in Eldon Square
bus station waiting for the 45. Jenni wanted to come to Consett to edit work
but I’ll be busy, busy, tomorrow.
Sheila rang me tonight. Logistics for the launch
next week. Tomorrow is Lamplight Open Mic and then back to Waddy on Tuesday.
Good day today. 11.50pm.
Monday 17th
September 2012
It’s a great day on Devastation Street. The rats are bored.
The wheelie bins haven’t been filled for a few days now. The gutter man is ripe
but isn’t still enough to get a decent amount of flesh from. It’s going to get
out fine and the blood is going to fill the gutters. And all the fathers and
all the mothers will weep for their bad choices and all the offspring will sing
songs of dissent and all the law enforcers will be torn between serving the
people or slaughtering them for the slightest misdemeanour. And an angry god
will lose patience and send a monsoon to wash the filth away for a while. And
the world shall know famine. And the world shall feel pain. And the great unwashed
shall drown or scorch under the electric acid rain. Gather ye tribes, gather up
and pray. Coz it’s a righteous motherfucking bastard of a Monday. And without a
miracle, there’s not much you can do to better yourselves. Nothing more to say.
8.02pm.
Many thanks to everyone who came out to Stanley last night and
made our first Open Mic of the season one of the liveliest ever. Lots of
artists crammed into a full-on evening featuring short stories, poetry, stand-up
and song. Mark Speeding trying out poems with keyboard backing. Grame Bruce
Fletcher on guitar. Rare visit from Lorna and David Windham and Charles
Gardiner. Great to see Kate Fox trying out some new comedy routines alongside Dean
Humphry and locals such as Andy Oates and fiction writer Rob Moran. Lil' Jenni
Pascoe versifiying with style as ever. A story from Marcus Bobble Smith. Ron
Dodd and Jean Laws on fine form. Really pleased to have Aidan Clarke back in
the venue and Jeff Price. Always blows me away when the region's finest choose
Lamplight. Thanks also to the staff of Lamplight Arts Centre for setting up the
space. Brilliant evening. Keep it going!
Entertaining
ride back to Moorside with Mark Speeding as well. Told me all about his job
interview at Emmanuel
College and his run in
with a Christian headmaster. Also told
me about The Psychopath Test. And John Cooper Clarke gig and seating
arrangements upstairs in London Forum.
What
a great start to the season at Lamplight. 11.44pm.
Tuesday 18th September
Good being in the beige room again. With no tv on,
no music, just the wind blowing down the chimney. Don’t really know what’s
important. The bus journey on which I feel asleep, the baked potato with
scrambled egg and salad dressing. The uploading of video stills from last
night’s brilliant Lamplight gig. Or the humour in our storytelling session.
Tonight I read some essays on journaling and notebooks. I’m sick of A4. I want
a smaller page, wider lines. Something that looks a publishable size. B-format
paperback or A5. Anyway, it’s supper time. Should be in bed soon. 10.28pm.
Wednesday
19th September 2012
Had lunch with Ali, Steve, Gill, Nicky and Joan
and the conversation came round to 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. Opinions were mixed. Nicky
said I should read this BDSM novel and tell them what I think. I checked a
couple of pages in WH Smith and felt pathetic looking at porn in a b-format
black cover. And what a ridiculous amount of spin-offs with similar titles
packaged up the same way. There’s a campaign to ditch tabloid page three coz
it’s degrading but twenty million want to read about sexual domination? Never
mind.
Went to a monologue workshop at Settle Down café.
Didn’t enjoy it. Wandered down to Head of Steam and picked up a few copies of
TURPS magazine. They published an extract from my Confessions of an
Isolationist. Really must get that book edited next year. Nice to see Jenni in
town this evening. Walked home from Benfieldside instead of Consett for a
change. I’m not a fiction writer, I don’t give a shit. 11.10pm.
Thursday
20th September 2012
He sits in the seat up from the step and although
drowsy earlier in the day, decides it might be interesting to take an
alternative route back to base. His duffel bag is a lot lighter since he gave
all his grievances to the man in the moon a few hours earlier and so what if
the streetlights run out soon, but so long as you’re wearing stout boots and
have some memory of the mud track you should get through to the other side
without twisting an ankle.
The bus pulls up at the stop outside the now
derelict school. For a slip second he feels a bit of a fool alighting when he
could be riding tight another and right into town then mildly saunter down the
main road between villages but that’s just plain boring. And who in the hell
wants to do boring every day of their lives. He remembers crossing the road
here every day for the first three years of his school life. A busy road with
buses, lorries, traffic of all persuasions. A shop of convenience and a little
post office. But there’s no old church now. No high wall with dangerous things
behind, no gravestone on its side. No pub on the corner by the hill where
accidents were regular, particularly in winter. And with the sun in your eyes
you couldn’t see at all. Mr Lollipop Man, can you work longer hours now. The elderly
on pension day require assistance.
He crosses by the steps and walks straight across
to the car park, all tall trees surrounding now the sloped tarmac where he used
to skateboard and ride a bmx bike. Supposed to be for church patrons only but
you never see a vicar on a Haro Freestyler or getting radical with the old
ollie kickflip on a brand new Kryptonics Denny Reardon deck. Cars? Fuck that,
the cool kids ruled. The cool kids were the outsiders, the rest were fucking
muppets. Go over to the football pitch if you want to get dirty, take a rugby
ball as well and rough and tumble with your own kind, this park is for
performers – tricksters with real style.
He realises he’s been walking faster than normal.
And not because he’s timing himself. How many times has he wanted to try this
route after an appointment but didn’t want to find it put him way behind
schedule. He passes the off-licence on Pemberton Road and keeps pace up the hill. A D-ring on his holdall
is squeaking. That’s what his joints will be like in a few years time. There
isn’t a single person out here. He could sing at the top of his voice and watch
all the lights go on. No, maybe that’s a stupid idea. Just keep walking. And as
he reaches the top of the hill he remembers, zero streetlights on the other side.
9.17am.
My mouth is in a bit of an uproar at present. Big
ulcer on the underside of my tongue. Hope it goes away by next Wednesday when
me and Jenni are in London
for our Jawdance gig. I haven’t rehearsed my pieces in a while so I reckon I’d
better go through them all lots of times before we hit Shoreditch. Intended to
sit reading this evening but might end up watching a documentary on You Tube.
Sometimes it’s good to just be cocooned in your little den doing little but being
still, thinking and plotting and scheming. Really want to make a chapbook.
Friday 21st
September 2012
Sometimes you just can’t say No. I saw a link on
facebook to ‘Silver’ the 25th anniversary double DVD of The Mission
reunion shows and decided to buy it. Hope I earn some more money this autumn.
Seem to be spending a lot of time listening to old BBC recordings of original Mission line-up on Spotify. Wish I was at an eighties Mission gig down the front at Tiffany’s or the
Barrowlands. Wish I was wrapped in a swirl of dry ice and losing myself in the
music, dancing with the dead boys and girls in their silver bangles and black
cloaks, their backcombed crimps and naivety. Now I’m just rotting in front of
the computer screen remembering how it was. Mission were great recently but the
audience weren’t the same. We all grow old and some of us lose our hair, but
even the youngsters looked a bit mainstream. We used to see some of the most
fantastic looking creatures at gigs in our teens. I guess you have to go to The
Batcave, Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, or Whitby. And a lot of
those children of the night won’t be youngsters. A bit of nostalgia to make my
Friday night go okay.
Hadn’t heard from Jenni for a couple of days so it
was good to talk on the phone after tea and get some messages tonight.
There’s a quote printed at the bottom of this A4
WHSmith diary page: “One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the
knowledge that they need no answer” – Byron. 11.33pm.
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