Cracking time last night, catching up with Hugh over drinks in Notting Hill, and then over whiskey back at the flat. OK, so the whole “not going to bed ’til 3am on a work night” thing was a bit ill-advised, but still, very pleasant indeed.
Tag Archives: lifedump
Indian Summer
Have you ever noticed how life just utterly rocks?
I love this time of year. End of the summer, when the air cools, and I have some energy again, but the sun is still warm enough that I can get away with a t-shirt and a light jacket. Walking across Putney Bridge with the midday sun glinting off the Thames from a blue, blue sky dotted with white clouds, I can feel autumn coming in and all of it makes me smile. Transmetropolitan weather.
No, not the comic, the song that the comic takes it’s title from. This is weather to “kick up bloody murder in this town we love so well”. Yip-ai-ay, indeed.
Into The Ether
So, I had this long post written about why I write this thing, and then my browser ate it. (I write this straight into the browser – I know people who write what they want to say in word first, and then spell check it and generally tidy it up. Kind of seems contrary to the spirit of the thing, to me.)
So, instead, an irrelevant diversion: “Fame a la mode” (Polnareff, still) covered by Blaine Reininger is a fabulous, fabulous song. Seedy sounding, a kind of desperate glamour, weirdly kitsch. Ace.
Repeated Disclaimer
Oh, for fuck’s sake!
Does no-one understand irony any more? I love many of you dearly, but I am slightly boggled at the response to what I posted the other day. I mean, OK, several of you only know me through this, but there are a few of you I thought had a better handle on my character than this. Still, I have to do something like this every six months or so, so I suppose I’m about due for a new dose…
For the hard of thinking: I am a hopelessly soppy old romantic. I have no desire to be anything but. I see couples kissing in the street, and I think “Awww!” Most of my favourite songs are about Love. (Not Lovesongs. I’ll get to them another time.) The memories I hide inside when I’m feeling down are almost all romantic moments, because they cheer me up. I don’t share them with other people, generally, because, well, they’re memories that belong to me and my ex and no-one else.
Yeah, I am a cynic. What I’m not is bitter. Yeah, I think this is an imperfect universe. It’s also a beautiful and marvellous place, filled with enough strangeness and wonder to last me ten lifetimes. Yeah, I think that the human race is stupid and weak and small. But I also think that my friends are some of the most marvellous people on the planet, and y’know, they’re human.
How the fuck can I be bitter when I have a life like the one I do?
For the record, then: if I make a joke out of something nice, if I suggest that something is good and pure, and badly needs to be dragged through the mud, this is IRONY. It means that my actual reaction is “Gosh, I wish there were more things like that.” The more ludicrously over the top and nasty I’m being, the more likely this is to be true.
This isn’t always the case. Sometimes I’m feeling small and mean-spirited. But especially when it’s just a throwaway line like that, you’ll read me wrong less often if you assume it’s a joke.
Haul
Shopping yesterday, mostly because I got locked out of the house, and then discovered I had quite a lot more money in the bank than I thought did, and payday is in a couple of days. CDs: Birthday Party “BBC Sessions”, going cheap at HMV. “And The Ass Saw The Angel” – CD of readings and music by Cave, Harvey and Clayton-Jones. Also cheap at HMV. “A Tribute to Polnareff”, v. cheap at Tower. I’m listening to this right now. I have no idea of Polnareff is or was, but there are a lot of artists I like singing in French. It’s very good. Can anyone tell me who the fuck this creature is, then?
Also bought a couple of books and a DVD not going cheap, and then (and I’ll be smug about this for some weeks, I fear) bought a jacket for twenty quid that should have cost over 100. It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s not awful, and frankly, 20 quid for a nice black linen jacket is fine by me.
Ennui
I am bored as hell. I want to go out and do something, but I can’t think of anything to do. I was vageuly thinking of doing either Camden Market or Merton Abbey Mills, but the weather has fucked that. I’m kind of tempted just to go out and put myself on a train to somewhere random, but I don’t know where I’d go.
Bing
Geek moment: Something on my person beeped, and I had to check four different devices to find out what it was, and what the appropriate response was. I think I may need help.
Healthy
OK, I’m becoming faintly worried. Because I went to the gym tonight. See, when I joined the gym, it was my intent to go on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The thought that I’m enjoying it enough that I’m going on nights outside of the routine I’ve set myself is, well, scary. I mean, yeah, so I decided to put getting in shape ahead of everything else in my life, including my writing. But I didn’t think I’d find myself getting home at nine o’clock at night, and thinking “what shall I do now? I know! I’ll got to the gym!” For someone who, six months ago, would have torn your arm off at the shoulder had you tried to take my cigarettes and lard away from me, to find myself eating healthy food, taking exercise and not shoving any more toxins into my body that strictly nessecary, well, I’m forced to ask “who am I, and what have I done with the real Alasdair Watson?”
Oh, and before anyone says it: whiskey and coffee are fundamental to my continued ability to operate like a human being, and as such are absolutely required toxins.
Mind you, the glass of red wine I had after getting in from the gym wasn’t. Perhaps there’s hope yet.
GSF
Oh, fuck. I’m not good with conflict at the best of times. I don’t like arguing harshly with anyone. I’m told I’ve been known to look like I’ve been slapped in the event of people reacting badly in a heated discussion. But what I have even more of a problem with is watching my friends argue.
Most of the time, the Ninth Art staff get on pretty well. But just the odd time, there’s a bit of a blow-up. So, I surface from my morning’s work to check my mail, and find Andrew and Antony arguing. The latest mail I got was from Andrew, throwing what might be politely called a fit of the collywobbles. This is the second time in a month that this has happened. This time around, it’s oddly worse, because last time it happened, I was seething at the result – a day or two of my work went down the pan. I really dislike having my time wasted, you see. But I kept my gob shut about how furious I was, because I knew that everyone else had wasted their time as well, and I just wanted the whole think filed in the “dead” basket, and also because I’m not totally stupid or insensitive. This time, I’ve got no childish outrage to hang on to, and I just feel sick. Quite literally. I’m sitting here at my desk feeling nauseous. I’m not kidding about not being good at watching my friends argue.
But it’s starting to feel like we’re back at PopImage, except that frankly, this time around I could walk away with less of a sense of guilt – everything I needed to do at the outset is done, and the site could go on as it is forever, with minimal technical work (chiefly ensuring that a back-up of the database is done every so often, and in the event of disaster, restoring it). I quit PopImage because it was no longer fun for me. Sitting at my desk, feeling like I ought to head for the toilets and chuck my guts up isn’t a whole lot of fun, either.
I’m not going to quit, or even to mention this to the others. I’m not a two-year old, after all (even though I behave like one sometimes). But I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.
God
It’s 2:30am. The dinner party has just ended. Andrew’s in his bed, and Andrea is on the spare mattress in the lounge, and I know there’s no way I can sleep any time soon, which is irritating. My mind’s running nineteen to the dozen on all sorts of topics, and tonight’s top of the list: God.
Never the small ones that bug you at 2am, is it?
My relationship with god is a weird one. I used to be a Christian, until I lost both my grandfathers in the space of a week. Then, well, it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in god, it’s just that I hated him/her/it. Over time, that essentially teenaged rebellion mutated into atheism. But given my other half-mad beliefs, I actually find it currently impossible to disbelieve god, exactly. Oh, in an argument, I still take the atheist stance, simply because I think that living your life with an essentially atheist outlook, regardless of other beliefs makes more sense, and is a more useful thing to do, both for the individual, and society as a whole. But in terms of my belief god, it’s not even an agnostic stance – I’m a practising chaos magician, for god’s sake. If this shit works, and I have every reason to believe it does, then how can god not exist? Granted, I’m pretty sure he/she/it only exists because we believe it does, but still.
But I find that now, over a decade since my initial loss of faith, I no longer have hatred I did, expect on the most abstract level. I no longer have it in me to fight over people’s faith. Don’t mock mine, I won’t mock yours, that’s my view these days.
Odd thing, though: if I’d talked about this a year ago, I’d have been a hard line atheist, with a big old chip on my shoulder about how belief in god was unnecessary at this point.
What I can’t decide is if this change is for the better. It’s more mature, I think. It’s a good indication of the results of the work I’ve been doing over the last year, and they’re results I’m happy with. But I miss that white-hot certainty of unbelief.
Ah well. Time to get some work done.