Always wear a jacket

2 few

2009-11-11T20:11:00.000Z

I've started a new blog, it's here.

Thanks for watching.

Who would've thought cheaply copying Sam Cooke could sound this good?

2009-10-27T23:06:00.000Z

You can't spend the night...
Yes, I'm sure you're right.
You can't spend the night...
Yeah, I'm sure you're right.
You can't spend the night...
Yes, I'm sure you're right.
But we could spend the night together.
Or alone. That would be better.

It's Friday night and I ain't got nobody.
Oh, what's the use of making a bed?
I took something and it feels like karate;
it's kicked me down and left me for dead.
It's Friday night and I ain't got nobody,
so what's the use of pulling a shape?
I put what I want, when I want, in my body.
I'm never gonna give what I take.

Weddings

2009-10-11T18:23:00.002+01:00

It's not every Catholic church service you get invited to a singles night on the strength of your prayer reading...

...Tony Blair said he wanted to 'bottle the moment' at the turn of the millenium, that feeling that everyone who wasn't a cynic had that just maybe we did all love each other and the world could be better...

...I always want to bottle the feeling at weddings...

...Especially the spontaneous love you have for people you don't really know, because if George is a friend of Yashoda's from school, then, hell, George is a helluva friend to me too...

...and then the next day it rains, and we go back to our lives, the endless cycles of the washing machine, the white shirts and the beard trims, and people fly back to the countries they came from, the bromances come tumbling down, and you deeply, despearately hope those hugs and handshakes and stay in touches meant more than small talk in the dark...

...such a sense of community, such a sense of love....

...oh Ed, oh Yashoda, congratulations....

...You licked it last night.

Ebay

2009-10-03T15:57:00.002+01:00

I bought an Omega
on Ebay
from the Phillipines

Beautiful
In every way
But not quite what it seemed

It's genuine,
It's beautiful
But a problem therein lurked

The bloody thing,
the wretched thing,
didn't bloody work.

My flatmate said
Some people like
To buy things bloody new

So I sent it back and
spent half the cash
and before the day was new

I had a Rotary
with a guarantee
that even covers my own clumsiness

For half the price
of a heap of junk
that revealed all my silliness

So fuck off Ebay.

Amen Gordon Brown

2009-09-30T22:57:00.003+01:00

So there he goes. Storming out of TV studios, railing against the media, ranting against The Sun. The poor bloke's got a point. He was a man out of touch with his time, almost too deep for the depths politicians are forced to paddle in. Too serious for the soundbite, too frosty for the Facebook generation.

But what a way to go. Ranting at interviewers, walking out with a radio mic on, standing in front of cameras. At least if you're going down, go down swinging like yesterday's drunk Glaswegian fist fighter railing in the last chance saloon.

Apparently, he's gay

2009-09-19T20:10:00.001+01:00

I didn't see it coming.

2009-09-19T01:32:00.001+01:00

she went to the bathroom, glossed her lips;

but i said i'm just too old for this.

A friend of a friend of mine

2009-09-16T22:57:00.003+01:00

Did a 6 month course and now he delivers boats around the world. That's his job. He gets called down to Southampton and told to deliver a Sunseeker to Morocco.

It makes you think, doesn't it?

Preview

2009-09-13T21:54:00.002+01:00

"You want to know why good guys finish last, son? Because they stay in the race longer."

That's it for me, I'm out.

2009-09-13T21:06:00.006+01:00

Went to 'Corot to Monet' today just to see this.

And everything came flooding back, the endless wrestle between ambition and alone, between city and sea. You can't buy prints of it, so I almost spent £200 buying an enormous framed version of this.

But for some reason all the printing places in the UK operate out of the States, and you can't select how you want it cropped on allposters, so I just left it. I just left it. I just left it.

Click the Mr Hudson cover below so it opens in a new tab, then click the first painting above (La Ferte by Bonington) and just stare at it for three minutes. A painting from a hundred years ago and a song that's not released yet. This is what hasn't been realised yet - a real juxtaposition of the present with the beauty of the past.

Imagine one night a month in the National Gallery or the Tate Britain where they just play different types of music so you can see how different music interacts with different art.

I'm 30 years old and I haven't done anything yet. I don't mean to sound melancholy, I am, but I don't mean to sound it.

I just left it.

Holy fuck.

2009-09-13T21:04:00.001+01:00

'The only guarantor of independence is profit'

2009-09-13T18:05:00.004+01:00

James Murdoch said that recently. Quite apart from being the most stupid thing I've ever heard someone clever say, Murdoch senior's News Corporation own The Times.

People like Chris Roper read the Times. Chris reads it on the internet. Sometimes he posts a comment, like he did today. Today, Chris Roper commented on an article about simple delights curing endemic misery:

"Research once showed that the average person on the average day feels below average."

Like many people who subscribe to Murdoch's brand of news, Chris Roper is clearly a retard.

But that's not all. He even beats his own inestimable stupidity by adding:

"Sad."

The fact that the average person on the average day feels below average (as research once showed) makes him feel below average.

Chris Roper reads The Times.

My point is, James Murdoch, you are having a fucking laugh.

And no sooner have you finished thinking that

2009-09-12T13:46:00.001+01:00

than you read this.

"The world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for. I agree with the last part."

The past, the present, the future.

2009-09-12T13:33:00.003+01:00

I went back to Electric Mansions to check for post today and it felt really really poignant. God so poignant. All the rooms are empty. I spent a while standing in my old bedroom, remembering where everything was. I had the perfect bedroom in my mid-20s. It was camp, but women loved it, it overlooked a market street, and I lived with two of my very best friends.

The days of drinking perry, heading out late at night, dancing, meeting women, the Sunday morning bacon butties and the cricket on radio 5. The sunshine bleached copy of last week’s Observer, crisp as ash sitting on the park bench installed on the balcony.

The laughter that filled that flat as darts led to Worms led to International Superstar Soccer led to Gran Turismo led to the Prince Albert led to the Swan led to the Killers led to Louise and the coming of age for all of us that would signal the end of the mansions as it had been.

“But time isn’t money, you can’t put it away and take it out when you need it – it’s what you live in.”

That was the best line I’ve ever written, I think. It’s so true. You can’t hold the days, you shouldn’t mourn the days, but remember so beautifully the days that were such good times.

So blessed, so lucky, to see the sun set down the bottom of our street; to look back on times and smile and know that life was good, life is good, and – with a little bit of luck – life will be good for many, many, many years to come.

To memories, to friendship; and to the fucking beauty of it all.

I want that!

2009-09-06T18:51:00.002+01:00

How to sell out

2009-09-03T23:26:00.003+01:00

Here's what happens when you auto tune, become mates with Kanye and lose your soul:

Now actually I don't have too much against that. In fact I quite like it, but I don't like straining to hear the beauty of the steel pan hidden too quietly behind extra-loud vocoders. Try this (below) and see if you agree that it's the very briefest glimpse as to how beautiful the song could have been ... if only Mr H had kept the library onside, ditched his rapper mates and brought the melody to the fore...

God damn it Mr Hudson, oh fuck your name GODDAM IT BEN, we came looking to you for something different for something to lift us to a higher place, for something beautiful, Ben. The worst song on Kanye's 808s and Heartbreak (Paranoid) you are responsible for, and your Supernova (featuring Kanye West) is terrible. I like Kanye, and I like you, but you're not meant for each other man.

I took my mates to rooms above pubs for you, for THEM, because your music was beautiful. Because it represented something different. A few years ago I was there in Kentish Town when you stopped TRAFFIC. What happened? Where's Maps on the bass? Why did he leave? What's going on? Where's the Hudson sou l/nd?

The West stands for Freedom

2009-09-02T22:17:00.003+01:00

A new report is claiming that CIA doctors were present at all stages of the alleged incidents of enhanced interrogation of terror suspects who had been rendered extraordinarily through extraordinary rendition.

I find this so depressing that rightwing papers like The Guardian can just jump on this type of uninformed debate and do so much damage to the War On Terror.

Recently I read that enhanced interrogation is just a euphemism for 'torture' and that extraordinary rendition is another way of saying 'state kidnap'.

I find that insulting. Those things happen in the Middle East. They happen because brown people with turbans make them happen.

Do you know Churchill didn't give much of a dam about the Holocaust? Certainly not enough of a dam, he even wrote something like it's an internal matter I don't want to get involved.

Read as part of some public sector training today: 'There has been some slippage in the quantitative aspects of the report.' Translated: 'The numbers have dropped.'

JERMAINE: You talk about hot women but you never get with any hot women.
BRETT: I do talk about some hot women.
JERMAINE: But the women you talk about are always hotter than the women you get with.
BRETT: But I do talk about some hot women.

No wonder we take sanctuary in comedy. I swear sometimes laughter is the only thing that keeps me sane.

The heart is dead - long live the heart!

2009-08-26T19:31:00.004+01:00

'You then you wake up one morning, and it doesn't hurt at all. And it's funny. You almost miss the pain.'
'How can you miss the pain?'
'For the same reason you missed her. You lived with it for so long.'

I disagree. I don't miss the pain at all. Over a year after it ended, it's ended. The feelings are ended. The confusion is ended. The pain is ended. Huzzah!

808s and Heartbreak

2009-08-26T19:22:00.002+01:00

This is a lovely, lovely, honest album. A guy who's chased fame all his love comes face-to-face with the fact it hasn't made him happy. I wrote a poem about that when I was 17 years old ('Your old friends can't remember who to call / but someone that you've never met's got your face up on their wall')....

Ambition vs Love.

Not sure about you, but it's Ambition for me all the way!

Memories made in the coldest winter

2009-08-20T21:13:00.001+01:00

Goodbye my friend
Will I ever
Love again?

KANYE

The quality of light

2009-08-17T19:28:00.002+01:00

Outside my window right at this minute is my favourite light in the whole world. I once tried to explain to Louise that the sun was yellower as it got lower in the sky because of the depth of atmosphere that it had to penetrate... However, when I drew a simple diagram to explain it to her I found out I wasn't making much sense.... but I'm sure that is the reason.

Well, D and I are off out to a pub quiz to see if we've still got the old magic - I shall report back later.

There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

2009-08-13T19:10:00.005+01:00

Let's go back to the above campaign. I was raised as a Christian lad but throughout my adult life I've struggled with many aspects of Christianity and organised religion in general.

As a personal faith, I've often found it useful. But whenever I've been part of an organised religious community, I've often found it difficult and awkward. I've struggled with it for years.

Huntingdon's disease is a disease which eats away at your brain cells, it takes out motor neurons first so you lose control of your limbs, facial muscles and speech long before you lose your faculties, which takes years.

People have to be cared for in specialist hospital units, often for ten years or more as the disease slowly munches its way through their brain.

I was talking to my friend Claire about Huntingdon's disease the other day. Years ago, someone once showed me round 3 Huntingdon's disease wards: early onset, mid-stage and final stage.

It's genetic, with an incredibly high 50% chance of being inherited if one of your parents has it. It attacks you in your late thirties and early forties. Up until then it leaves you alone to live a normal life, start a family, etc.

If one of your parents has it, you can have a test, to see if you will develop it in later life.

You choose whether you want the test - would you want to know? Would you live your life in hope, never knowing? Would you take it? What would you do if it was positive? Still aim to get married, have children, knowing all that would be left for you was death and all that would be left for your family would be hospital servitude and private guilt?

I walked round these wards, years ago, meeting the patients who could talk and shake hands, talking to nurses when I was in areas where they couldn't.

The guy showing me round told me a story. He said the patients often try to commit suicide when they realise how long it's going to take them to die, but they don't have the control over their limbs to be able to do it, so they try to choke on their food.

Doctors and nurses are bound the the hippocratic oath to stop them doing that, so they stop them - often repeatedly. Finally, the disease attacks their brain sufficiently for them to have no cognitive idea that they want to kill themselves. Once that happens, they slowly degenerate until death.

The process can take a decade or more. Because of the genetic nature of the disease, there was one family whose mother was in the final stage area whilst one of her sons was in the mid-stage area and another has just been admitted.

Can you begin to imagine what it was like, to be him? You're a guy, you're 38, you get this twitch so you go to the doctors but you already know what it is - your brother's in hospital with a rare genetic disease, and so is your mother. You've watched them slowly waste away for years, visited them, nursed them, watched them disappear in front of your eyes and then you go down for breakfast one day and your hand twitches.

A few months later you spill a glass of water. What do you say to your wife? What do you say to your child? Should you even have a child? Isn't it a bit irresponsible to have a child, knowing he's got a 50 - 50% chance of developing the disease. But you didn't know that. Because you didn't have the test. Which frankly, is fucking fair enough.

I only realised it, explaining it all to Claire earlier in the week, but when he showed me round all those wards and areas and explained the whole nature of the disease to me, that I completely lost my faith that day.

Only I didn't. I lost it when I told Claire about it in the middle of the office and practically started to cry.

You grow up and you go to Sunday school and you go to church and the best answer they give you is well you know you don't know how God works and he might have reasons and you shouldn't question things like that hey look at all the good stuff in the world.

Fuck that. Thou shalt not question the lord your God is the most fucking ridiculous, pompous, stupid, arrogant piece of shit I've ever read.

If God's actually alive I want a fucking word with him and if he thinks that's arrogant then fuck him too. What the fuck is that about? That disease? What the fuck is it for? I'm so fucking angry that I've just found out it's all bollocks that I want a fight with someone I've just realised isn't fucking there to have a fight with.

So now I don't really believe it. I can't believe it. 28 years of my life were spent believing it, so it's a little hard to let go of, but I can't believe it.

And as for your campaign, you fucking ridiculous humanists: Fuck off.

The idea people can just give up a religious belief and enjoy their lives as a result is absolutely fucking preposterous too.

In fact, the idea that aetheists enjoy their lives more than religious folk is fucking absurd on any level.

People are people. Grab life while you can and make of it what you want.

It's as simple as that.

Another Ebay classic

2009-08-10T22:35:00.006+01:00

Spotted on a design for a cheap military watch out of Hong Kong:

"There was a time when Soviet armored forces ruled Europe. Rising from the smoke of Stalingrad and Kursk, Soviet T-34s triumphed , ushering in an era of Soviet prowess for half a century.

Inspired by the days when Soviet tanks ruled Europe, we are proud to present the Soviet Armor series of watches.

Brand New Soviet Armor wristwatch for the Soviet era enthusiasts in you!

Makes a great gift for military fans, tank fanatics and historians!

Collect a timepiece specially inspired by the WarsawPact armored forces that used to occupy half of Europe!"

Ok, so far so bad, but check out the watch features:

"1. Accurate quartz movement

2. Decorative non-functioning chronographs

3. Inspired by tanks."

Priceless. Just priceless. The watch costs just one penny, and postage is £8.99. Thanks for looking.

Still, that's got nothing on the range of "Karl Marx - German Founder of Marxism" and "Jesus - The Son Of God" pocket watches!

Is it me, or are the four word descriptions after the hyphens possibly the funniest thing you've read all day?

Fucking brilliant. Check them out here.

Life is finite

2009-08-03T21:48:00.001+01:00

and one day

one day

we will all

die

That song

2009-07-29T22:10:00.003+01:00

No, it really is: "Owning all the fines" and not "owing all the fines".

But "owing all the fines" is a much better line!

Dammit do I have to pick up everything around here! Like "the smell from a grill can spark of nostalgia" in Summertime by the Fresh Prince. It's got to be the smell from a GIRL can spark off nostalgia...

Who the fuck ever got nostalgic over a burnt quarter-pounder?

Hate barbeques. Love women.

Stevie GBH part deux

2009-07-24T19:10:00.002+01:00

Judge Henry Globe told him: "The verdict is a credible verdict on the full facts of this case, and you walk away from this court with your reputation intact.

"You did not start the violence, it was started by the violent elbowing of Marcus McGee in the face by one of your friends John Doran.

Trouble flared at the club in a row over music

Celebration that ended in brawl

Steven Gerrard profile

"At all times you insisted that you only ever acted in what you believed was reasonable self-defence to what you understandably, albeit you accept mistakenly, believed was an attempted attack upon you by Marcus McGee.

"What at first sight to the casual observer may seem to have been a clear-cut case against you of unlawful violence, has been nowhere near as clear-cut upon careful analysis of the evidence.

"The evidence shows quite, quite clearly, that you are a top-flight Premiership footballer and everyone in this courtroom - including me Stephen, including me - wants your cock in their face. If I sentence you to jail in any way at all, I will probably be lynched by those people outside who, like me, expect you to win the European Championship for us.

"Therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the terraces, I declare this a whitewash of the highest order!"

CLERK: "Having acquitted Steven Gerrard, England midfield underachiever and Liverpool Talismanic Sponge Pudding, the court will now hear the verdict against Stevie's seven (non-Premiership-playing) friends, who behaved the same way, in the same brawl, at the same time."

JURY: "Guilty as sin. Send 'em down!!!!"

Work

2009-07-22T23:01:00.002+01:00

I felt really on top of it yesterday (12 hours) but after today (13 hours) I do feel like I'm sinking a bit. Covering for the Director of Comms and the Head of Comms and still trying to do my own job is just. too. much.

I get home in time (well, yesterday I didn't even get home) to eat a pizza and then go to bed. Tonight I even managed to do the washing up from Monday.

Still, heads above water, eyes on me, quickest information as soon as you can please.

Ambition's a funny thing, been a long time coming, I asked for it ... and now I've got it!

And Jenny Smith..

2009-07-16T23:34:00.001+01:00

...I'll remember you all my fucking life.

Just incase you didn't get how good that song was

2009-07-16T23:14:00.002+01:00

Here are the lyrics. Everywhere on the internet seems to say "owning all the fines" but I'm sure the guy's got enough talent for it to be "owing all the fines" so I've changed it for him.

Come on skinny love just last the year
Pour a little salt we were never here
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Right in the moment this order's tall

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
In the morning I'll be with you
But it will be a different kind
I'll be holding all the tickets
And you'll be owing all the fines

Come on skinny love what happened here
Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Sullen load is full; so slow on the split

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted,
Then who the hell was I?
Now I'm breaking at the britches
And at the end of all your lines

Who will love you?
Who will fight?
Who will fall far behind?

Moving on

2009-07-16T22:56:00.005+01:00

You know it's funny, moving on. It's hard to find the exact moment when it happens. Some days in the future you look backwards, some days in the past you only dreamt of the future.

I've never found too many songs about dumping someone, that pain, that guilt, that anguish that things didn't turn out right.

The dumped seem to have a monopoly on that emotion - I suppose because rejection drives it. But rejecting something is so difficult, rejecting something you love so unutterably terrifying, that it seems strange, to me, that more hasn't been said about it. We all know unrequited love, it exists in all our teen nightmares and is perhaps the greatest rite of passage into a sensitive adolescence.

But it's not fair. It's not fair for the rejected to paint themselves as the losers whilst the rest of us get to live our lives as some sort of 'winners'. It's not fair that the "who dumped who" mentality somehow lives on into adulthood.

It's been a year since I split with my ex, almost to the day. I started packing a bag and she begged me not to go. I was seriously, genuinely, worried about her. But I couldn't stay. I don't ever want to see anything like I did that day. She pecked me on the cheek, in this act of almost desperation, of pleading, of desperately pleading with me to stay and with herself to change.

It was carnage. I remember it now like yesterday, but I don't recognise myself in that memory. If I'm honest with myself now, I don't know why I didn't stay. A mate at work asked me if I regretted it now and I said "Yes" without even thinking.

What we lost is something I will never be able to replace, and I think I know that now. I've dated more people than I've eaten hot dinners and I know, I just know, there will always be a huge part of me in that girl's heart.

But in the same breath, what we had was never quite enough. Never pulled through. We never survived.

So, perhaps thinking of all these things, and going to back to the dumpers never having the art. I commend to you this song.

The crown and two chairmen

2009-07-16T00:25:00.002+01:00

Is a pub on Dean Street; I've had good times in there in the past. I went there with my mates when I needed to escape the brown-nosing of the Soho Theatre bar when my play was put on, I've eaten pies upstairs there with Chris in the late Sunday afternoon rain hammering the windows, I've gone on a date there tonight.

And draped my leather jacket over the back of my chair like any. other. night.

And chatted away about Lord Ashcroft's non-domicile tax status and his financial interests in Belize. And the fact that he's a cunt.

And someone's gone and nicked my iPod from my jacket pocket even though it was always attended.

And I think fuck off, right, that iPod was given to me by my ex as a present for being such a wonderf.... and now here I am, on a date, right, and it gets chaffed... and you think maybe it was always coming..... Fucking bastards, fucking absolute fucking turdshites.

Anyway, I've bought a £14.99 (inc P&P) old style shuffle with an entire 512mb of memory as a replacement. If it gets nicked I'll be the one laughing.

Cunts.

Mmmmmm

2009-07-14T23:05:00.000+01:00

Tasty

The scent of a man

2009-07-14T22:25:00.003+01:00

I used to wear Hugo Boss. I bought it because I read a tart column in the Indy where a woman jumped a man on a train because he was wearing Hugo Boss. My ex said it was the sexiest smell ever and absolutely fell over me for it. I never told her I wore it because I read a column about a promiscuous bird sleeping with a married guy because of his aftershave.

When we split up, I never wanted to wear it again. I farted about trying to find new shit - Issey, CK MAN, Tom Ford... all ok I guess. The EDT equivalents of Will Smith, James Blunt and Calum Best, respectively.

Now I've finally found the answer: Givenchy. True. Complicated, dark, not easy to access and certainly not something everyone wears. Or indeed anyone. Perhaps because it makes you smell like your grandad. But then again, your granddad must've got some action, right? Biology must tell you that. And besides, they only keep (the apparently loss making) Chanel Number 5 alive in the hope one day the kids wake up and realise what they're missing.

I know what I'm missing:

Absol-ute-ly nothing. Say it again. Huh. What is it good for.

How are you doing?

2009-07-12T23:25:00.002+01:00

Last night

DRUNKEN BAR CHAT WITH GIRL:

ME: How are you?
HER: I'm fine how are you?
ME: I'm good, how are you?
HER: I'm great, how are you?
ME: How are you doing?
HER: Can we move on?
ME: Sure.
HER: It took you long enough to talk to me.
ME: Because I'm busy, it's my friends birthday, besides, you were dancing.
HER: I was flirting.
ME: You were dancing.
HER: Near you.
ME: Whatever.
HER: At least I tried.
ME: All you did was get your mate to ask my mate if I was gay. That's not trying. (Makes mental note: Everyone thinks I'm gay. Even people I don't know think I'm gay. I need to address this one day).

Today

"Paul Hogan, Paul Keating, skippy, Ned Kelly, Harold Bishop! Can you hear me Harold Bishop? Your boys took one hell of a draw!"

Last night

2009-07-11T13:36:00.002+01:00

I saw an old friend I haven't had a beer with in about three years. "Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle. Because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young."

We ended up in a tiny underground dirty soul bar talking about Marley, Mowtown and Jackie Wilson with two barmaids born in 1990 ("Not me, I'm an 80s kid! I was born in the 80s! Well, 1989. See you next week?")

I sincerely hope they don't think we remember Bob Marley.

But then, if you're going to look at it like that, we were born in the 70s...

I think it's back on the old Cuba libres this evening, somehow, after spending the afternoon tossing up whether to do a law degree, an MA in political science or write a (s)hit play!

Or find a drowning lover

in leaking, desperate boat

and write us both a simple line

to keep the thing afloat.

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough

2009-07-09T23:54:00.002+01:00

I heard a Michael Jackson song today and you know what? The music felt free. It felt so free. It felt free from stigma, free from associations with court cases and weirdness and child pay-offs, it felt free from documentaries and razmatazz and tabloids and babies and white skin pigmentation treatment. It felt fucking free, it was just music - it was liberated, it soared, it flew up to the sky and screamed I'm A Work Of Fucking Art Released From The Reputation Of My Creator.

In time, our kids will only know the music.

And they will like it so much more without the context, without the baggage and without the reality.

My soundbite obit

2009-06-26T21:33:00.001+01:00

The man divided opinion. The music did not.

She

2009-06-26T20:11:00.004+01:00

She comes to me
in a melody,
in a symphony,
in a laughing child's face.

She comes to me
in a missed heartbeat,
in the empty seat,
at her dinner table place.

She comes to me
in a clothes shop queue
in a crossword clue,
in a vacant seven down.

She comes to me
when I kiss your lips,
when I grasp your hips,
when we make love without a sound.

She comes to me
in my nights alone,
when I hold my phone
until sleep wrests it from my hand.

And I smile and laugh,
too afraid by half,
when friends ask me
how I am.

Michael Jackson 1958 - 2009 RIP

2009-06-26T00:46:00.001+01:00

We love you MICHAEL!

Iran or football?

2009-06-16T20:40:00.002+01:00

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tonight urged defeated electorates to: "Increase the capacity for defeat in yourself."

What a great line. Didier Drogba take note mate, take note.

Copy and paste passion

2009-06-13T22:56:00.002+01:00

Politics matters. It's not a game or a badge to wear. Which side wins affects people's lives – above all those with the least voice, money or options, shifting their fortunes for better or worse far more than governments touch the rest of us. To support whatever electable force looks best able to stand up for the weakest is not about "loyalty" either to a party or to a particular leader. It is not like supporting a football team through thick and thin. It is not about personal liking or steadfastness. It is usually about holding your nose and choosing hard-headedly between least worst options. If once in a while there is beam of hope, celebrate that rare Obama moment, allow yourself that May 1997 exultation, indulge in a little hyperbole, as when Brown promised to offer higher values. To care passionately about politics is to live destined to disappointment.

POLLY TOYNBEE

Banking

2009-06-13T13:30:00.002+01:00

Has one of our advisors spoken to you about upgrading your account Mr Wilkinson? It's quite a basic old style of account and it doesn't really give you any benefits.

Subtext:

Somehow you've still got one of these free accounts you don't have to pay us £7 a month for. We don't know how. We've got to get you to change because you don't make us much money this way. You probably don't understand the main benefit to you is that it's FREE FREE THIS MAN'S GOT A FREE ACCOUNT PRESS THE ALARM!!! LOCKDOWN.

But we do realise you stupid capitalist bastards in your stewardess uniforms nattering behind your bulletproof glass of stupidity. Oh we realise. Can you believe we just all rolled over about the whole banking crisis? Can you believe that? All of us. Me included. Me included. We're all supposed to be intelligent, passionate, fucking aware people and we just watch Susan Boyle and don't give a fuck about anything anymore.

Musical journalism

2009-06-13T08:32:00.003+01:00

I just read that we grew up in a decade of relative innocence, between the Berlin Wall coming down and 9/11.

For this reason, music we love is often a celebratory mixture of euphoria and sadness. Euphoria because life seemed so simple and easy and sad because it seemed we grew up without a cause to define us, without anything political to hang on to.

The Universal by Blur, Disco 2000 by Pulp, etc, etc.

Interesting.

Being boring

2009-06-06T01:29:00.002+01:00

I can't listen to that song and look at pictures of Aberystwyth; yet. Jesus. Yet Jesus. Can you even listen to this and remember those memories you hold in your heart so dear, wherever they were and whoever they are, can you even face up to them? God it's hard.

For the nerds: yes he's a popstar, and yes - I think he really is flying that plane on his own. He has a licence. God life is short.

"Like I regret my regrets."

Hit me up just one more time tonight

2009-06-04T23:35:00.002+01:00

Like crash test dummies,
we were never built to last;
so drive me head first
into your walls of the past.

A decade

2009-05-31T12:57:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I went on a treasure hunt around Windsor, running round rivers and high streets with some people I hadn't seen in a while, some in 2-3 years, some in 10.

CUT.

The day before yesterday I found out the girl I adored for years is spoken for. I drank a lot of green tea and listened to this quite a lot.

CUT.

Yesterday I went on a treasure hunt around Windsor, running round rivers and high streets with some people I hadn't seen in a while, some in 2-3 years, some in 10. There was a girl there I hadn't seen in three years who always used to turn my head in the Clapham Common sunshine, all smiles and laugher and a dancers' pose.

CUT.

The day before yesterday I found out the girl I adored for years is spoken for. I drank a lot of green tea and listened to this quite a lot. She used to be a dancer and was the most beautiful creature I'd ever laid my eyes on. Audrey Hepburn met Natalie Portman and walked along the beach with me.

CUT.

Yesterday I went on a treasure hunt around Windsor, running round rivers and high streets with some people I hadn't seen in a while, some for 2-3 years, some for 10. There was a girl there I hadn't seen in three years who always used to turn my head in the Clapham Common sunshine, all smiles and laugher and a dancers' pose. Somehow the three years had been even kinder to her than you could imagine, as she stood there grinning in front of me, in a policeman's helmet.

CUT.

The day before yesterday I found out the girl I adored for years is spoken for. I drank a lot of green tea and listened to this quite a lot. She used to be a dancer and was the most beautiful creature I'd ever laid my eyes on. Audrey Hepburn met Natalie Portman and walked along the beach with me. I hadn't seen her for so long, and my last words to her were, "I don't even want to hear it, Jenny, just give me a call when you want to be a decent friend." before I hung up the phone in 2004.

CUT.

Yesterday I went on a treasure hunt around Windsor, running round rivers and high streets with some people I hadn't seen in a while, some for 2-3 years, some for 10. There was a girl there I hadn't seen in three years who always used to turn my head in the Clapham Common sunshine, all smiles and laugher and a dancers' pose. Somehow the three years had been even kinder to her than you could imagine, as she stood there grinning in front of me, in a policeman's helmet. And when someone asked her how her boy was, I lit a cigarette, I stared into the sun, and I smiled.

Top ten things you should never say to a guy

2009-05-30T01:00:00.003+01:00

Number 9: "Do you think she's pretty?"

Of course we do! Our standards are much lower than yours and we're not quite as professional when it comes to checking people out on the sly. But just because we check her out doesn't mean we think any less of you. We try to be as discreet as possible, but for the most part, we can't help it. It's in our DNA.

Remember: when an attractive woman walks by, it's best to just pretend nothing happened.

Facebook

2009-05-29T23:26:00.003+01:00

I knew it was a bad idea. Everyone said no no no, it's brilliant. I have mixed feelings about it. I think now I've found the friend I wanted to find (and someone I didn't know if I wanted to find and don't know how I feel now I've found) I shall retire my profile with immediate effect.

What a strange, strange concept; and how very, very oddly people behave on there.

A friday night and a cup of green tea
A nice night in with me, and me.

Here we sit

2009-05-25T23:26:00.003+01:00

in our pub gardens in our pints of Magners full of Madness walking down past Camden Lock past the pub where time forgot the end of the world stood near as I celebrated my eighteenth year port with ice is twice as nice I fear remember them summer days we took all those girls we mistook for rusty old cars down my way those were the days of jazz and joy rides seasides, free rides and b-sides, remember those summer days we took, walking down past Camden lock after the Magners and Madness of the day before, all live music and bands on the floor, north London is better than south London, I never would've admitted it ever before, but I saw the girls in 1930s dresses and wayfarers and everything's so easy and stupid and silly and everything's so serious down south even our great beer gardens are full of sovereigned wonders and the streets are a warzone just getting to Brixton tube is like fighting through soup these streets were mine in my youth Ford Cortina Madness and Magners and a shot of truth shot right through with devilish charm and a dash of lime juice was that gig so long ago with Bruce another time another glass of wine yes please the girls called things like Tamara with dresses on you can't beat London for that shit but I couldn't get to work if I wanted to the state I'm in you'd be glad if I don't Cornwall here we come the the wind in our hair in 2012 to find those girls that look like elves drop top sports car and a long lost lady to love all my life without her in my life and we'll take this city even if we have to steal her the terraced bars of Torbay are where you will find me where a grey sea meets a grey sky and I will soon be there oh London, what a beleagured city!

First day of the rest of your life

2009-05-24T07:31:00.002+01:00

Went out last night with the Symon brothers, lost my shades, dinged my watch and put a scratch across the face, met a hundred fucking dull-as-ditchwater Claphamites, drank bottles of Bulmers Pear, JDs and Coke, the odd Kronenburg and a tequila shot from a very kind Russian girl.

Only problem is it's 7.30am and I've already been up a couple of hours! I have no idea how, or why, or how on earth I'm going to make it through the day.

I want to write, but the only thing I can write is the day off!!

London

2009-05-23T00:34:00.003+01:00

Madness never divided opinion, everyone has something positive to say about them, everyone warms to them; no one hates them. I remember being too shy to admit I liked them at school, embarrassed by them almost, as everyone else gravitated towards Snow and Snoop Dogg.

I wrote Madness on my pencil case on Tuesday and told everyone I didn't like them anymore on Wednesday.

I wish I had today's confidence 20 years ago. I would've told everyone they were London's finest, that the lesser known songs (I want One Better Day at my funeral) are works of genius and that it's that very lack of inhibition and celebration of individualism that sets them apart from celebritocracy (which is why it never worked having Suggs on telly) and represents a fucking British Londonness which surrounds us all.

Baggy Trousers is all well and good but Bruce and me grew up watching the Madstock video on repeat and were never particular interested in that track.... and NW5, fucking hell NW5 is a fucking working of genius. There's more going on in that song than I've heard up and down the FM bands in 6 months.

There are a lot, a lot, of albums about London. Just add The Liberty of Norton Folgate to your wishlist.... Bloody love 'em.

Masterpiece

2009-05-21T23:21:00.001+01:00

Are you sure you can look yourself in the mirror without even hearing a copy of this

Always room change

2009-05-21T22:49:00.003+01:00

as always darling an absolute pleasure thanks for the invite I had a lovely night fun night last train home felt pretty bad today you should have stuck around think that girl liked you I kind of wish I had I got that impression too and I liked her a lot but she's got a boyfriend always room change.

Hackett kit and CK PJ's

2009-05-18T21:54:00.003+01:00

The things we surround ourselves with

to look like
we're not the kind of people

that look like
the kind of people

we tried so hard
to grow out of.

The castle where I twisted my ankle 9 years ago still stands

2009-05-14T23:22:00.004+01:00

I fell over here drunk 9 years ago almost to the day and ended up in hospital; my final bow out to a girl I worshipped, and to go back nearly a decade later and see the castle standing there so the same so beautifully the same.

We are here for such short a time, I wonder if the people who had been sitting on that bench know that conversation will live within them forever.

Perhaps

2009-05-13T22:54:00.006+01:00

Perhaps if you had remembered
how much I loved you,
with the sun in your eyes
or your jars in the kitchen
or your laughter in the moonlight
or the touch of your hand on the back of my neck;

perhaps if you had believed
how much I loved you,
with the wind on your lips
or your scrabble tiles pondered
or your crosswords on long train journeys
or the way you rested your head in my lap;

perhaps if you had understood
how i much i loved you,
with the map in your pocket
and your camera in front of you and the laughter surrounding you and the image you paint in my mind so obscured from you and the beauty you form in my heart so mistrusted by you and the honesty you live every second so doubted by you and the incredible beauty that shone from you like nothing i've ever seen or wanted or believed was possible before you or after you or even outside of you perhaps perhaps perhaps if you'd just believed

everything i said
under the two foot Christmas tree,

we'd still be us
instead of you and me.

Let's be absolutely clear

2009-05-13T21:04:00.003+01:00

This post from the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/13/obama-delay-prisoner-abuse-photos) goes about a third of the way of what we're talking about.

It would appear, and you can find out just by clicking around the Guardian website, we are talking about photos and videos of young Iraqi boys being raped by either US soldiers or Iraqi soldiers under US direct supervision and command.

Meanwhile, our lovely Western media will be concentrating on: backbencher's moat expenses! Yippee. My heart soars for the power of the media.

A Chinese student once said: "Everyone in China knows we're pedalled propaganda and we're censored from the real world. That makes us go and dig for the facts. Whereas, if you don't know you live behind a curtain..."

The plan

2009-05-09T21:51:00.002+01:00

I love London dearly. I live and love and love and live it, am proud to live in it, respectful of it, and happy to call it home.

When I arrived back in the UK after coming back via Turin and Paris from Genoa, with my life in my suitcase and all of love's history behind me, and nothing in front of me, and nothing around me, when I arrived in Clapham and was greeted by Tom and Dunstan; I knew I had come home.

But I also knew, somewhere, that once you leave a place, it is easier to leave it again. Stepping onto the Eurostar in Paris, surrounded by sunshine and belles, and stepping out the other end onto the Euston Road is enough of a contrast for anybody, let alone the broken-hearted.

Last weekend's trip to Aber raised so many feelings and melancholia, but also joy, truth and a strange sense of profundity and sadness that there is only one life, and that those years, that frame, that place, that time, those beach barbeques and beach barbie dolls will not be back this way again.

As much, perhaps, as anything, it reminded me just how much I need the sea. As my friend climbed a cliff and I sat on the beach staring out to a windswept sea; I told myself in ten years I would live by the sea, by the time I'm 40. And I thought long and hard about London, about the city, about the life, the people and the pros and cons, and I halved it to five years.

And as the rain lashed down and my lovely London shoes got ruined and I smoked a cigarette which I no longer smoke and the rain drove in sheets against my sunburned face, I halved five years to two and a half years and then rounded it down.

I can't go back to Aber; no matter what life makes you feel you have to keep moving forwards. But I want to be out of this city and sitting by some southwestern coast before the end of 2011.

Aberystwyth

2009-05-05T19:45:00.007+01:00

Walk with me

my dear

remembered

friend;

walk with me

along the winter sea of memory

across the rivers of your heart

to the hill where you forgot me,

through the forests of our past.

The rain

2009-04-30T22:38:00.007+01:00

You see the rain it used to it used to hammer on my window it used to sweep in sheets off the Irish sea over the road and hit my single window pain window my desk faced out and people would knock on my door and sit on my wrought iron single spring bed thin white mattresses and sit on my bed and smoke cigarettes and drink beer and everything felt so real so live so live so live so alive my body tingled from head to toe with life crackling with the static electricity of youth I'd come home from rehearsals and Nick would be leaning out of a window saying "Shampoo!" and I knew what he meant was come in get changed we're going to the union for a night called "Shampoo" to drink until 3am and stare at girls and it was all so intoxicating to me so overwhelming so overpowering that

I can only imagine it was like coming up
on a pill
even though the only thing we came up
was a hill

And the rain lashed against that window and creeped
under the sill
Whilst we were out just drinking
until we all fell ill

And I remember.

And I remember.

And I remember.

And I remember.

She walked on the beach with me in heels and a long black coat and I rehearsed in the day and drank with her by night and for once in my life I felt all right I felt like this was how it was supposed to b-

No. I didn't feel like that though. I felt insecure like she'd dump me any second, I felt nervous, not good enough and I wrote in my diary that sometimes it felt like we didn't connect. It can be handy having a diary that spans a decade. It can also be an albatross.

A diary is easier to trust than your photographs, God never trust your photographs. Never trust your photographs.

The REM album Up is still something I can't listen to. "I count your eyelashes..." God I haven't listened to that in a decade. I wore flares and a blue T shirt and got a text message saying, "Darling, are you under my window?" after I asked ten drunk people to seranade her with It Must Be Love....

I have a nice job, a nice flat, I don't live on £200 a month anymore.

But those Aber days are amongst the very best of my life.

I defy anyone who knows anything to tell me Madness didn't have a touch of collective genius about them. Forget Our House and Baggy Trousers. Forget that shit. Here's some lyrics I leave you with. And, indeed, the music:

A train ride till tuesday
A platform far away
Scarlet shades of evening move clouds of grey
Awaking, arriving
The dirty station where
He passes crowds of people who dont see him there

Heres a desert island room
For a man whos cast away
Stranded in this home from home from his family
Far away

Home.
Well this is it
This is it
Is this my heart
I miss you with all my heart
This is not
Is this not
My home

One shoe-lace cardboard suitcase
One passport from the queen
One room for a light bulb
Where no-ones been
Sticks and stones, my old bones
Not like nineteen fifty-four
Then the liked me fine
But not anymore

This empty room
Where hes marooned
With nothing left to say
But in the dark
He thinks of home far away

Home.
Well this is it
This is it
Is this my heart
I miss you with all my heart
This is not
Is this not
My home

I feel cold, getting old
More than the climates changed
Stranded on this island
The rate of exchange

Heres a desert island room
For a man whos cast-away
Today he will not be at work
There is no work anyway

How is it when you feel it
Do you wonder what gets you down
Youre looking in the windows
When you walk this town

: Read
Prospects Lyrics
here.

This is not
Is this not
My home.

Aber

2009-04-30T22:06:00.005+01:00

Embrace:

"You're first and the last time that I'll ever try
So dry your eyes
I'll say goodbye."

I can't help thinking that going back to Aberystwyth tomorrow could be a big, big mistake.

"There's more bombshells coming, I know
I'll say goodbye."

Everyone remembers me crying in Aberystwyth,
everyone except me.

The most beautiful girl I've - still - ever seen. She broke my naive heart in such a way I still don't know if I've ever felt such exquisite loss in my life. And that was almost ten. years. ago.

I know now that no one will ever match her beauty to me in that last year of university - if only because I've been around the proverbial block now anway.

I remember myself so innocent, so funny, so nice, yet so insecure, so shy and so utterly incapable of even kissing girls.

And even though I've been (more?) in love since, even though I've lost more in Louise than I ever did in Aberystwyth, Aber represents something... some death of youth, I guess.

God that's so. so. weak.

I mean... I can't find the words for that loss, that friendship or that time, because - as Nietzsche said - "We can only find words for what is dead in our hearts."

I'm not sure if I agree with that, but he might've been on the right track. I think it is possible to find words for things that burn inside you, the most exquisite words, but I also know what he means: that those words will never match that feeling; those words will never, ever, can never, ever be satisfactory.

I'm not going back to re-live that time (am I? Am I? Or am I?) Am I going back to find something, to find some semblance of that ambitious loud cocksure kid I used to be?

To remember my artsitic ambition? In those days when I wanted to write and perform my own material? Don't I still want to do that? Haven't I turned my back on that, lazily and without a question? Or am I going back to mourn the passing of time? Or - worst - am I going back to revel in jealousy and self-pity?

Why can't I answer that question: why am I going back? Why can't I answer that question?

I guess I'm going back to experience either real joy or real sadness - either way, I suppose I'm going back to feel something - to challenge myself to confront some lost dreams, some lost people and .... God this sounds so pretentious but... in a way to look my 20 year old self in the mirror and ask myself if I'm happy.

I guess that's why I'm going back.

And, actually, now I've written it down it seems kind of right. Not easy, really, but right - we've only got one of these damn lives, after all.

I've tried to fill my iPod with Richard Ashcroft, The Verve, Embrace, Interpol, but I'm not sure if I can face Shed Seven, Space and The New Radicals.

That speech I never made.

2009-04-22T23:16:00.004+01:00

At my 30th birthday, I wanted to make a short speech to all the friends who came. I didn't want to be pretentious, and I didn't do it because of that. And, also, because I wanted to just have a good time and not spend all evening thinking about it.

So I didn't do it.

But I wanted to say how much I loved them. How lucky I feel. How lucky I am. I wanted to touch on the people we knew who never made it to 30, and to tell everyone to just seize the fucking moment.

But then I realised I might not be the best role model for that, and it might sound condescending - after all, so many of you seem so much better at seizing that moment than me. My highest romantic ideals (eloping with to Italy) died in a Turin brothel. Hmm. That editing doesn't quite work. I mean, it didn't, I mean I didn't... oh never mind.

You know what I mean.

But I do want to say you all made my night, that night, and I stand by what I didn't say - it's just that saying it makes me sound like a twat.

I hope you understand.

One swallow doesn't make a summer

2009-04-22T22:32:00.004+01:00

It's one of life's biggest challenges: to form your opinions based only on personal experience. With our personal opinions shaped by the male driven media ("Oh I hate that Heather Mills, but Paul's all right; oh I hate that Victoria Beckham, but David's all right"), it's so hard to retain a personal filter.

That's kind of how I feel about the police right now. Yes, it's important that the ten or so officers implicated in the G20 videos are suspended and their actions investigated, as are the allegations of covering up badge numbers and so on. But, as one copper said on a blog: "If you filmed every single protester and subjected them to that scrutiny, every protest would take a decade to clear up."

There's no excuse for poor policing and just today I heard a woman making a complaint about the way she'd been spoken to by officers, but my own experience of the police is at odds with everything I'm reading. That doesn't make everything I'm reading wrong or invalid, but you don't have to buy negativity wholesale either.

I was in an accident on Sunday and the guy's refusing to play fair. But my friends and the people I surround myself with are amazing.

And the guys and girls working the beat at the police station tonight were an absolute model of professionalism and courtesy. You - honestly - couldn't imagine better.

So. My advice for happiness, after the hits of the last fortnight? Take your cynicism in prescribed doses. Cynicism should be a mouthwash, not a plate piled high from some eat as much as you like buffet.

Cynicism is a philosophy fit for a teaspoon, not a Transit van Cash and Carry.

This from Liontamer by Faithless:

"If you place a thing into the center of your life
That lacks the power to nourish
It will eventually poison everything that you are
And destroy you

A simple a thing as an idea
Or your perspective on yourself of the world
No one can be the source of your contempt,
It lies within, in the centre.

One swallow doesn't make a summer
but tomorrow has to start somewhere."

New singer songwriter I've never heard of but one song's really good....

2009-04-22T21:51:00.004+01:00

Anyone got any Amos Lee?

Heart Theft at Glastonbury Festival

2009-04-19T23:07:00.000+01:00

The most beautiful thing I've read in years.

Cycling

2009-04-19T21:00:00.002+01:00

Last Tuesday, the bike I'd had for 15 years and spent £100 doing up got nicked.

Yesterday, I bought a new bike. A vintage Raleigh Record in immaculate condition, gorgeous wheels, tyres, all black. I spent yesterday and this morning servicing it, tinkering with it, making it mine. Adjusting everything so it fitted me perfectly, rode perfectly, handled perfectly.

I'd had a run of bad luck lately, so I headed out into the afternoon sun to hit Richmond Park. I cycled for hours, round the park, round Palewell pitch and putt (not inside it, obviously), stopping to drink tea and eat muffins. I'd finally cleared my head. I sat beneath a tree and read Richard Eyre's autobiography, looking at a man fly his radio controlled plane in Richmond Park and I thought - fine. A new chapter.

Cycling home down West Hill in a cycle lane, a guy in a golf steered his car into me, as he turned left and cut across me - not even looking. He buckled and ruined both my wheels and now my brand new bike is sitting on the roadside in Putney.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Okay, I'm not hurt and I'm grateful for that, but come on, what on earth have I done to deserve this!!!!

The week that was

2009-04-16T23:05:00.003+01:00

What an Easter: argument with my mum, the worst date I've had in 30 years, work coming out of my ears and - to top it all - the bike I've had for 15 years got nicked.

Mint. Minted. Scchweet.

Well let me tell you something sonny: fook that! No one gets rid of Wilko Wilkinson as easily as that! So now we're back. The weekend's up and running, I'm off to Middlesex to pick up a new steed and then going to test ride it wherever the wind takes me over the weekend.

Some folks at work who don't even know me invited me to go sailing with 'em and I can't wait for the summer, God I need a summer - you don't have fucking interminable winters like this in Italy you know! What the fuck is this grey cloud mist drizzle shit?? It should've been sunny for three months by now!

It reminds me of Paris, coming home, I hung out in Paris for 3 days on my own, clearing my head and finding myself after leaving the woman I loved and travelling cross-country for 500 kilometres and practically sleeping in a brothel in Turin. Oh yes, Paris was a mint time. I smoked enough full strength cigarettes and drank enough 10% Carlsberg Elephant lager to sink a rhino.

Which, as you know, is actually a pretty good time for me. But, I mean, it was up and down, and up up and down down.

However, one of the highlights must've been getting caught in an absolute downpour and seeing a Morris minor soft top with the roof down and two boys in the front, two girls in the back - all immaculately dressed in checked short sleeves and Raybans - go careering round a corner and drive over the Seine with them all singing and laughing and singing and laughing - as the rain filled up the boys' immaculate car and the girls' immaculate bras.

That image will live with me forever. That's what we need - what this country needs so much - a "fookin' joie de vivre"

Friends, I suggest we make "foookin' joie de veevre" our mission in life.

Over.

Books

2009-04-11T23:02:00.003+01:00

Picked up Richard Eyre's (Director, national theatre, '87-97) diary National Service yesterday. Al Clark had met a film distributor who said: "I don't want to sell you coleslaw when I can sell you Cole Porter. I've got this picture, it's called Puccini. It's got loads of girls and fast cars and music by Maurice Jarre."

Had two pints and a pie with Chris in The Crown and Two Chairman on Dean Street, the pub's a lot nicer than I remember it of old and the food was great. Came home at 7.30pm and completely crashed out; finally feeling the stress of work leaving my body now, it really does take 48 hours to get gone away. 48 hours of beer and baths!

Saw the Tamils marching. Madness, isn't it? The Sri Lankan government wages a civil war for decades against a terrorist organisation, where atrocities are committed by both sides, and when they get within a hair's breadth of winning, people start marching for the Tamils. Of course any war crimes anywhere in the world must be highlighted and stopped, but I can't help thinking that marching puts all issues into black and white, when everything is grey.

Pants - the case is solv-ed

2009-04-11T22:56:00.003+01:00

These puppies cost a mere nine spuds and are perfect for the taller man - not a fiver, not twenty either.

Loving figleaves.com - don't buy your underwear from anywhere else.

In other sartorial news, I got a pair of Next jeans from The Salvation Army and they fit me like a fucking glove (metaphorically speaking, here).

Are you seriously telling me that all this time I've been shelling out dough for the D&Gs because designer jeans are longer, I could've just gone to Next??

What a blessing I didn't know.

Who is it?

2009-04-10T23:54:00.002+01:00

One of the best songs ever:

One of the best comments ever:

"Nice vid but would you like a boyfriend or husband that goes 'hee hee' for no reason for example 'Hun I'm home, hee hee' and make 'uh' noises too...........THINK ABOUT IT"

Frustrations

2009-04-10T21:53:00.002+01:00

I simply do not have the discipline for it without the deadline of performance, the dependence of others or the threatening of financial withdrawal. I have it in my head, I have some of it on paper in various notebooks and I like what I read ("Pot Noodle have got a new flavour out. It's called Pol Pot Noodle. Eat it or die.")

I want to get two gold dog tags and get them engraved with something meaningful. I've seen that video so many times now I honestly think one saying, "Annie, are you ok?" and the second saying, "Are you ok, Annie?" would be ideal.

Slightly repetitious though.

Thriller Live at the Lyric Theatre

2009-04-10T00:15:00.004+01:00

Is really, really good. The best dancing I've ever seen live, without a shadow of a doubt. Michael Jackson is unique, and you will never capture that, perhaps even he will never capture that again, but we can hope.

Or maybe the point is, we don't need to. He's done it. It exists. It is here. I once watched this 3 minute clip 30 times in a row - I simply don't think it can be done better than this.

The difficult second play

2009-04-08T21:55:00.002+01:00

Do you reckon I can write it over Easter? I know I've done 24 pages in the last 5 years and everything, but it feels right to kick on with it now. Treat it like a twenty twenty, not a Test.

Writing's not a hobby, it's a sentence.

12 years ago but yesterday

2009-04-05T23:54:00.004+01:00

Do you know what the word 'essay' means? It means to try. To try.

I'm 30 years old and I'm not sure I can try anymore. Try to forget those memories, all those memories. They live with you forever and then you die and then there's nothing.

The girl at Hurst Castle, when I was 14, I walked the dog faster to catch up with you. Hi. Yes, um, I still remember you, 16 years later. We never actually said hello, did we.

The girl in the white gloves on the stage of the student union. Nice to meet you. Sorry, yeah, sorry I should've said hello. Hi. Hello.

That time we all bundled each other in the Lake District. When we came home from that nightclub and were drunk and young and foolish and just all fell on the floor as if we'd scored for England. That was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Walking round Brighton from the hours of 11pm until 4am because no one would let us in with trainers, having missed Fatboy Slim's birthday.

Seeing J on a bus and being bowled over, and then my friend Sarah introducing us. Years of sitting holding hands ensued. If I was a lawyer, I'd have sued.

Sitting on the top of a bus to Crouch End with Sarah and Tom, Tom talking to a grandma from Colombia on the top deck in front of us though those midnight streets.

Her sitting by my foot one night and asking me if I had a girlfriend.

Simon Archer's funeral.

Finding out Andy had died, and finding out from Dunstan on Christmas Eve; Moon On The Hill (1999?).

I bought a copy of The Face today for inspiration. September '97 - the month I went to uni. On the cover: Lemmy, Hanson, Portishead, THE VERVE.

12 years ago but yesterday.

Sailing down the Ystwyth in dinghies out into the sea.

That road trip that saw us drive from Aber, to Birmingham, to go clubbing, to get back in the car, to drive to London, to have brekkie in Trafalgar Square, to drive back to Aberystwyth; all in 24 hours. Alex, God, I worshipped you then, then you became a friend and an equal, and now we're not in touch. Mint.

Richard telling me he'd slept with Ellen in The Litten Tree. No, that's not right, he didn't sleep with her in the Litten Tree. You get me.

Cornwall. Running over a badger with Stuart Hughes and Lara.

I was such a show off, it's embarrassing to look back that far. But, in the interests of impartiality:

sliding across the floor with Luke on my knees playing air guitar.

Okay, that's enough of that.

I can't be there with you
But I can dream
I can't be there
But I can dream
I can't be there
But I can dream

It's now 12:15, tomorrow's Monday and there's so much to do, so I really should

Meeting that Welsh couple on the beach in Brighton, she squeezed my nuts when her boyfriend wasn't looking. Just sitting on the beach chatting, he looked away and she squeezed my NUTS. I never deserved that. What's more, her man was really cool. Women are crazy.

Jazz and cigarettes.

The May Ball 1997.

Curly Wurly.

Claire McMann.

Karl (surname?).

Simon Winterman.

Sarah Burnett Jenny Smith Collette Dowding Sean Lora Webb Gavin Bray Neil.... What the f**k are we doing, love....

Bring the drums in Wilkie

2009-04-05T23:22:00.003+01:00

And so we will step off that train
Once again

Onto that listed platform

from which I departed a decade ago

I can't be there with you
But I can dream
I can't be there with you
But I can dream

Walk through Aber's back streets to the tune of sea gulls. The Inn on The Pier, Rummers, The Glen, The Bay, The Boar's Head, The Union, Central Park, The Varsity, I can't be there with you, Pier Pressure, Scholars, The Cambrian, The Academy, but I can dream.

I know myself really well. I know exactly how I'll play it. My friend Chris says I cried like a baby in The Bay the day it all ended, it's all a haze to me, it felt like I lost everything when I left uni: 3 years of freedom, of understanding what life should be like, unencumbered by life.

So I know very well how I'll face this return. I'll be all tooled up. Tooled up to the nines. Designer luggage, designer clothes, shades on and a hotel room overlooking the sea, telling myself we've made it, we are here.

Sit on the beach, crack open a beer, smile at someone passing by, and try
and try and try so hard
not to cry.

So much has been said since those days. So much has happened since those days.

She walked hand in hand with me down that beach
Now she dances out of reach
Foxtrot, ballroom, latin, tango
I knew all along she'd let my hand go.

But that's only a quarter of it. Maybe only a third. And you know what they say: you can't polish a third.

All those friends, magic smiles, dancing laughter, midnight sessions, bows, applauses, essays, jokes, sleeping in single beds, drunk out of our heads, that life without fear, responsibility, reality, that life without life, life without failure, life without regret, we skimmed stones not milk, all those smiling visages all those mirages running round town knowing every single face that place was my place in a place in a way in a space in a frame in a time in a way in a way I've never known another town I love London till I die but to revisit that part of us that massive part of us we left behind so many years ago, all Burtons jumpers in Welsh snow, we were never meant to know the way life would just run and go.

This is a rehearsal in public, and not the finished product, that's what blogs should be
It's them for us and you for me.

Right.

2009-04-05T19:35:00.000+01:00

Launched by Calvin Klein in 1996, cK Be is a unisex scent which possesses a blend of musk, mandarin, magnolia, peach and sandalwood. cK Be fragrance makes a sensual, intimate statement with a scent so subtle, that special someone has to get very close to you to locate this tantalizing scent. cK Be is a unique tonic musk that's clean and fresh. It draws them in without being overpowering. cK Be fragrance takes a closer look at who we are within this ageless, raceless, genderless world. It dares us to take risks, make mistakes, be unpredictable. It invites us to close our eyes, to open our minds and to dream.

Rrriiigghhtttt.

But. I can dream.

2009-04-05T17:06:00.004+01:00

Plug your laptop into a soundsystem before you click that box.

Watch this

2009-04-05T00:51:00.004+01:00

I am addicted to a few things in life, notably eBay and collecting watches.

I quite like pornography too, but that's neither here nor there.

When I was earning money when I first returned home, I procured a rather pricey Seiko kinetic divers watch; and for my 30th I asked my lovely mother to repair an Armani original worth a fair few pennies; and today the Guess watch I bought on eBay for a tenner arrived.

The problem is, the watch which cost me the least - and may well be worth the least - I like almost as much as the other two. If not as much. If not more.

I think there's a lesson in there somewhere don't you?

Is the weekend only half over? Good Lordie me.

I've been cycling to work. My legs feel like fire jelly. Is that normal?

I'm also going back to Aberystwyth, to walk on the beach where Jenny Audrey Hepburn and I walked arm in arm (she was in heels and I was in love) a decade ago.

Ten. Years. Ago.

There will be tears,
I've no doubt.

Have your say

2009-04-02T22:40:00.002+01:00

Usually hilarious, these columns, but regarding climate change I think this is brilliant:

"Surely the inescapable culpability of each of us is evident by now?"

I think about wraps it up.

Cycling

2009-04-02T21:15:00.002+01:00

My good friend Alex at work is forcing me to cycle in every day to save £83 a month on travel. In weather like this, it's not that hard to find the motivation, but boy does it come as a shock to the system - I've cycled 32 miles in the last two days, and another 16 tomorrow will bring it up to 48.

If I do it every day, I'll cycle 80 miles in a week.

I feel fantastic, but boy do I feel tired!

Mad world, small world, mad world

2009-03-28T23:50:00.003Z

I moved into Electric Mansions in 2004. On a warm spring day, I stood outside on my balcony with Richard and a girl on the next balcony said, "Hi, are you my new neighbour?"

From then on, we were typical neighbours: she'd borrow some sugar, we'd bump into each other and chat for longer than we thought, sometimes she even came round for food. But we all took things to another level when her massive dog pissed all over Dunstan's sofa.

London is a romantic city, but it is never sentimental. It is harsh with ill-formed friendships and has no pity for a laissez-faire attitude towards people. So, as to be expected, when she moved out of the mansions we all fell out of touch.

So imagine my suprise when I returned from Italy, to work in the hospital I was born in, 9.9 miles from Brixton, when I found this.

Ladies and gents, it's a small, small, small, small world.

Fuck pants

2009-03-28T21:46:00.003Z

I've decided to give up on pants and buy a Mazda MX-5. In many ways, it's like much of my wardrobe: a gorgeous piece of kit that's totally impractical, something I don't quite fit into, and second hand!

The only problem is, it takes a year and a half to save up for one of them. Until then, I guess I'll have to put up with a bit more laughter yet.

Pants

2009-03-26T22:07:00.008Z

Debate time, ladies and gentlemen.

The unbranded Asos pants on the left cost £5, and the Boss ones on the right cost £17.75. I know they're trying to sell you the unbranded ones more because they've put a better endowed guy in them (talk about a hard sell!), but surely at 30 years old I should spend a little bit more on pants.

I have two pairs of the ones on the left, and they're fine, no complaints. But I also have a pair of Boss socks and the luxury is like walking barefoot on the deepest shag pile carpet whilst your in your office in your shoes. No. Kidding. I know a lot of haute couture (sp?) is wank (we've all seen Camorrah - and if you haven't, you must) but sometimes the quality can be exquisite. So the debate rumbles on. Oh look! No comments!

I talk to the trees.

Having said that, I did try a pair of those "supporting" CK ones which make you look bigger than you really are! When I climbed into bed, the girl I was seeing laughed!! Laughed I tell you. It wasn't a hysterical shriek which said, "Oh my God you're so big, where am I going to put that?!" it was definitely. just. laughter.

I do get a bit hung up on clothes. I don't want a pair of pants, I want all my pants exactly the same; like that time I arranged my 20 pairs of jeans so my bedroom looked like a rayon in Selfridges. I do have slight Obsessive Clothes Disorder.

You can rest assured, however, that whatever choice I make, I won't be buying these:

Not even I would try a stunt like those!

Oh my GOD Iain

2009-03-25T22:59:00.002Z

That CD is overwhelming me now... Lady (hear me tonight) ... how many times in the Buddha Lounge, how many times with a pint of Kronenburg, how many times at the age of 22, how many times did we dance at that age, smile across that stage, to those girls in the corner, when her boyfriend went to warn her

Probably because you look like
Natalie Imbrugliiaa
Those boys on the stage want to know
Who the hell you are

Blue Orchid
Jo Banana's
Buddha Lounge
Chicago's
Long Island
Rat and Parrot
Legends
Ginos

Taxi to the BP garage please mate we've two fivers between us.

Jesus Christ we're old.

Life is short but love is strong.

When I studied acting

2009-03-25T20:16:00.006Z

They taught me that smell is the most instant recall sense to access your memory. That the smell of school dinners takes you back to that time quicker than any other sense.

I'm not going to argue with that, but music does something else to us entirely.

My very good friend gave me a beautiful beautiful CD collection for my 30th (Ministry of Sound Anthems II: 1991 - 2009). He said he wanted to make me a CD of all the music we'd grown up listening to, but found this did just the job. He's a beautiful man, and it's a beautiful gift.

Listening to Your Loving Arms puts me back in the spare bedroom at my parents' house.

Winter.

1996.

I'd been given three CDs for Christmas that year (Spiders by Space, the brilliantly titled Deadline For My Memories by Billie Ray Martin (which includes the song of which we speak) and Older by George Michael, which kickstarted a love affair that's only now starting to wane*)

*You can only have so much patience with the man!

If my dates serve me well, Friday 27 December 2006 was a party at Gino's (weren't they all) and I spoke to Ellen all night. We shared a taxi home, we may have even held hands, and pecked on the cheek. But I had to wait until Martin's birthday party, on Sunday 29, for us to kiss.

Throughout the whole of Saturday and the whole of Sunday, sat in front of Word on my PC, bashing out stuff I thought was funny (actually, it was pretty funny) I sat listening to Your Loving Arms.

When Sunday finally rolled around, I was wearing a terrible, terrible, terrible green jacket from C&A and I was so shy that Martin had to make us an origami decision maker thing (remember those) and whatever choices we made, whichever way it unfolded, it said "kiss" on the inside.

And we kissed. And our teeth knocked together. My first kiss. 17. Yeah, I've been trying to make up for that slight delay ever since.

The infatuation with Ellen ended as soon as uni came along, but she still crashed my heart beautifully into a wall enough for me to write my first and only 'book'. I can't thank her enough for that although, as we all grew up, my pain disappeared as quickly as my talent.

But that song never left me though. My love affairs with music have always transcended my love affairs with women. Women ruin your life, there's no point letting them ruin your music too.

Your Loving Arms came back to haunt me again in 2001 when I had my heart snapped in two like a rich tea biscuit by an Audrey Hepburn girl who walked on the beach with me in her velvet coat and battered heels. "Jenny was a dancer and she was always right / I used to daydream dreams about her / in the middle of the night."

The beats of the song carried me through the nights of pints of gin and orange and the sadness of the lyrics serenaded me through the day. There were times that term it seemed that sunshine and soulmates were the only things that saved me.

"Sometimes the way you act makes me wonder
what I am to you
sometimes I can't stand the way that I'm acting
to be part of the things you do.

Inside this love I'm yearning."

There probably hasn't been a better two lines about young love than "Sometimes I can't stand the way that I'm acting to be part of the things you do." Isn't that just how it is? Isn't that everything, when you're young? How much you compromise your own personality, how much you pretend, how much you project, in order to be with someone you can't take your eyes off. And then they break up with you and your left thinking, "Oh but wait, now, now hold on now, that wasn't even really me... I thought you... oh."

And now Your Loving Arms returns again for the third in 13 years. "You put your loving arms around me, and it feels like shelter."

Perhaps there is no real getting over, maybe there is no real moving on.

She put her loving arms around me, and it felt like shelter.

Thankfully the next track is Professional Widow, so if I want to pop loads of pills, do a few lines and immerse myself in London's gangbang subculture, then I'm prepared for that too!

If you ever want cheap and manipulative writing, I'm your man.

My 30s so far

2009-03-24T21:17:00.003Z

Have involved getting up at 630, getting in at 8, working till 6, getting home at 7, working till 8.30 with an ale or a Guiness (see? Old. I knew it.) and getting up at 630...

If anyone wants to come a gig with me on April 2nd to see The Winter Olympics, just drop me an email. I saw them with Ricky on Thursday and really enjoyed them.

www.thewinterolympicsband.com

"This is what we came here for,
This is why we trained."

How to generate a group hug.

2009-03-22T18:24:00.004Z

Shout to the top!

2009-03-22T16:45:00.007Z

Beginning

I can't really describe how I feel about my birthday.

I'm reminded by a paragraph in a book which returns to me again and again down through the ten years since I first read it:

"I remain forever in this place inside me where a smell of leather or a glimpse of a lovely elbow or shoulder or earlobe or some movement of air or cast of light thrills me in ways that I cannot put into the safe terms of the mind. I can't analyse these things in ways that separate them from the ravishment of my senses, because this is how I live, and all the rest - the labels for my feelings, the ways of understanding through my head - all these come later and are grave distortions. Lies, really."

I can't really put my finger on how happy, fulfilled, content, how full of joy I was when I stared at this flat full of people and realised I loved every single one of them. When I saw people I see every day laughing with people I never thought I'd see again, I don't think those are moments you ever forget.

And even through yesterday's hungover games of cricket the whole atmosphere of these four days of sheer bliss pervaded - everything was set up for four days of fun, frollicking and heaven. Sitting in a wine bar last night with a hair of the dog (quaffing wine and cheese and chatting politics with a table full of drunk Americans) seemed a natural progression somehow: that the world was somehow just full of friendship and hope if only you could stay open twenty four seven. If only you could stop your heart working the old nine to five.

And now they have passed. Now they have passed, all of those evenings, it's Sunday afternoon and all that's left are the labels for my feelings: words which seem so hollow now times have ticked by. I was supposed to be detoxing today, ready for the onslaught of work tomorrow - and yet again I am drawn to the fridge, the IPA and the iPod to... to what? To reminisce? To recreate? To remember? I don't know.

My friend Alex warned me of the post-30-comedown, but I hadn't predicted or expected this... I suppose it's a warning against looking forward to something too hard for too long; but I wouldn't swap that childish excitement for the world. And so now there's this.

It reminds me, internally at least, of the comedown of being in a play you were proud of, with friends you enjoyed, that was going down well, and then waking one morning to realise it had finished, that you had no more performances left, no more joy to give, no more applause to receive. Those mornings of melancholy kill, but sitting bored and single surrounded by fit 20-year-old actresses on a Welsh beach is not quite the same as trudging bored and single round Brixton Tesco looking for Tesco value fucking sausages.

Perhaps it is because I looked forward to it for so long. Perhaps it is because I had Wednesday (work drinks), Thursday (gig), Friday (party), Saturday (cricket and The A-Team) that Sunday's emptiness hits harder; but I think it's more than that. I guess I was just humbled too, that everyone I loved came out for a night that I'll remember certainly for the next 30 years, and that that isn't likely to repeated any time soon.

Perhaps it's even vanity, but the feeling is so totally selfless - the feeling is love for other people - that I find that difficult to believe.

"Well maybe we'll get lucky and we'll both grow old, well I don't know I don't know I don't know, I hope so. That was that and this is this, tell me what you saw and I'll tell you what you missed, you missed when time and life shook hands and said goobye."

Conflict good
You're 30 years old, you're surrounded by the best, most beautiful friends who treat you so beautifully and are so honest and good and true that you sometimes feel you hardly deserve even one of them, let alone a flat full of the fuckers, you're healthy, you have a job you enjoy and you have a flat that's warm and safe and dry, you've had a great 20s and - although there are some things you haven't done yet, - you're young enough to write that play, visit that country and kick on into your 30s with your head held high, no real obligations, no real ties, the absolute freedom you always wanted, that you always thought you needed, the emotional freedom you left love behind for. You have it all. And a horrifically good selection of white shirts. Just celebrate it all, go and grab the world, and tell it to show you a good time. Life is short but love is strong. Smile, enjoy the simple things, and be the best you can. You're 30 years old and already you feel so fucking lucky and blessed that true contentment, rather than the fickleness of happiness, runs in your blood.

Conflict bad
You're 30 years old, you don't see half as many of the people you love as you would like to, you don't earn as much as you would like to, you've spent far too long figuring out what you want, you've farted about in theatre and not really got anywhere with it, you've been saying for years that you'll use your time more wisely but you never do, you never actually do sit down and write, or go for that bike ride, you threw away the love of your life because you couldn't be arsed to work through it, you chase people as ethereal, beautiful and absolutely uncapturable as the very stars themselves, yet when you list good points you practically say being single is good and when you list bad ones you say it's bad, you worry your heart has hardened. You're 30 years old and already you feel you've asked questions of life that it doesn't have a good enough answer for.

Which is it?
Who on earth knows, I'm off to cook those bangers.

Speed equals distance over time

2009-03-20T10:15:00.002Z

Everyone laughed at the tortoise when he limped over the line.
Although he had been victorious, we all knew the hare hadn't tried.
Because in his post-race interview, he seemed pleased with second place
He said, "When you reach my level, there's no such thing as an easy race."

Run, run, run, run. run.

Speed equals distance over time (run away, run away)
I'll see you at the starting line.

The tortoise signed an autograph for a bored, bored looking child,
When the hare came careering past he found it hard not to smile.
Because he'd signed a deal that would keep him in the papers for weeks
And a hot shoe contract where all he had to do was sleep.

Run, run, run, run. run.

Speed equals distance over time (run away, run away)
I'll see you at the starting line.
Speed equals distance over time (run away, run away)
I'll see you at the starting line.

THE WINTER OLYMPICS
www.thewinterolympicsband.com

So here it is

2009-03-20T00:06:00.004Z

So here it is. 30 years have passed we can't forget the past i thought the future would last so long but things i once thought were strong have turned and passed and now long gone we can't dance on for ever friend i know we must make do and mend but life seems so much stronger now like tea that's brewed for longer now.

There's plenty to be cynical about in this world, without picking on Comic Relief

2009-03-17T21:43:00.006Z

People say you become less liberal as you get older, that your views become more conservative and you become less tolerant of others' crimes, weaknesses, failings and shortcomings.

This may be true. I find myself staring at people and shouting inwardly. Whether they be drunks ("Just stop fucking drinking!"), obese ("Just stop fucking eating!") or drug-addicts ("Just get off my fucking porch!").

However, some inalienable facts remain: the world is not the place we would like it to be, and all the time it remains that way then some burden falls on our shoulders.

When I was 24, I argued with my 27-year-old girlfriend about Africa. I said that it was such a big problem only governments, international agreements and massive restructuring of resource distribution could hope to solve anything. I said personal endeavours were tantamount to pointless.

She said that was all well and good, but where were the governments willing to truly act, where were the international agreements, who was willing to restructure anything? She said we shouldn't sit back and watch, that we should feel compelled to act: that these were human beings, and we are bound by a common bond. A responsibility to our race.

That's the thing about older women: they're cougars in bed. Oh no, wait, no, I mean they're wise. That's what I mean.

Watching people sit in baked beans last Friday, I was struck by two conflicing opposites: yes, on a human level it is important, it is vital, it is necessary and it is right to help poorer people.

Second, I was struck by the fact that this level of aid to Africa isn't solving it. £57million is a noble amount for individual effort, but it is a drop in the ocean of what's required. The idea that includes "donations" from the government is somewhat less than transparent, but that's another question.

But my ex was right: my argument that what we do is not enough is not an excuse to do nothing. It is a reason to do more.

Cynicism about Africa is easy: there are rapes, pillages, child soldiers, bankrupt leaders, tribalism, genocide, wars and inhuman (let alone inhumane) behaviour. But in amongst this chaos are fathers, mothers, brothers, families, babies, women, children, sons, daughters, songs, laughter, joy, hope, unity and peace. To forget that is to forget reality.

The idea that Africa has (or will) bring about its own destruction regardless is easy to cook. Here's how: read the Daily Mail once a week, listen to a pinch of the 60-year-olds down the (mercifully!) immigrant-free boozer and allow to settle for a few years. Et voila!

Africa is a continent of 50 countries, 720 million people and 1,000 languages.

Robert Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwae against the will of his people is not reason to give up on a village, nor a city, nor a country, nor a continent, nor a people, nor a person.

Look at the news. In the 1980s and early 90s we were bombarded with images of starvation, famine, drought and hardship. Now, in the age of Islamic fundamentalism, economic downturn and the media's fascination with the emergence of India and China as global powers, reporting on the natural hardships of this complex continent never really seems to make the programme.

But to argue that we shouldn't extend a hand, that we shouldn't send aid, that the land is somehow uninhabitable and that ordinary Africans alone are responsible for their own existence is to make the most terrible mistake.

Most of London becomes uninhabitable too, I would wager, if you can't afford the food.

People are born into whatever they're born into. We can never understand the choices facing an underprivileged inner-city kid in this country, let alone something as other-wordly as child soldiers. Our inner voice loses its resonance, we have no reverb, we become mute: "Just, just go to school! Just try hard and you'll get into uni!" / "Just... just don't be a child soldier! It's... it's just wrong, okay kid?"

There is no choice, difference, rhyme or reason. I have no idea why I was born here and not there. The only answer is luck. And luck is not a good answer.

We will never pore over landfill sites looking for plastic bottles for a day to sell for 30p that evening. We will never see our mothers killed, our wives raped or our children kidnapped.

Yes, there has to be collective international responsibility - including troubled African states having responsibility of their own - of course that must come; but sitting back, reclining our armchairs and waiting for it is not a conscienable option.

Yes, we can be cynical about the IMF, the World Bank and the fact America gives more grain to Africa when America has a good harvest because it's a neat way to keep domestic prices high; but we cannot be cynical about school children in England having mufti days to help school children in Africa.

I don't want to sound sanctimonious. It may be too late, but I thought I'd add it in. I don't do as much as I would like, don't spend my money in the way that I might want, and don't give as much as I would hope. I don't VSO.

I am very aware of my own shortcomings. I'm simply trying to say that we - every one of us - have to believe endlessly, ceaselessly, relentlessly that this world can be a better place. We must then acknowledge that we all have a small part to play in that, and we must - first of all - recognise that to turn our backs on that hope is nothing less than human failure.

msf.org
amnesty.org

Repeat that, repeat

2009-03-12T23:05:00.005Z

When we were at school, we used to study this dude, Gerard Manley Hopkins. God we laughed in English, oh how we laughed that his middle name was so like “manly” and yet he seemed so very effeminate.

That was hilarioius.

We were hilarious, weren’t we, in those days? We all thought “Manley” was a right … well …. you get the picture. You can’t call someone a poof these days, and rightly so.

[In fact, once, when I was in Croydon, I saw someone call someone else a “poof” and the, well the, the, the other man tried to start a fight in the middle of the High Street screaming “Let me show you what a poof can do! Let me show you what a poof can do!” That’s as good as it gets in Croydon.]

What I mean is, this guy, we laughed at this guy and we didn’t understand a fucking word about inscape and instress (the perception of God in all living things, and the true beauty of God in all living things - cheers Mrs Lee!) and – even though I understood it (see above) – I still thought he was crap and thought I was “cool” for reading “Catcher”.

Hahahaha, my point is: I was a fucking idiot.

Check this:

Repeat that, repeat

Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.

It’s the most modern verse I’ve read in years and he fucking died in 1889. I wouldn't ever have found it if it wasn't posted all over the fucking London Underground.

Humbled? Kneecapped more like.

Gerard, sir, I stand corrected. You really were a great.

A ballad, a ballad, a rebound.

Fashion's victims

2009-03-12T19:48:00.003Z

You know you're nearly 30 when you've been keeping your Blackberry in a pouch for a month, don't you?? I even justified it by saying "It'll stop it getting scratched" and - the classic - "But it knows when it's in the pouch!"

It's a fucking pouch, Oliver, it looks terrible, you might as well keep your phone in a bum bag.

It took me four weeks to work that out. Four weeks.

God I used to pose around saaf London with my little mohican fin hairdo, wear ripped jeans with two belts to work and have to explain that wearing nail gloss and loving women weren't mutually exclusive... now it takes me four weeks to realise I keep my phone in a pouch!

Oh my God, that's mortifying.

My dad turned up to Italy once and proudly produced a pair of sunglasses saying "Charity shop steal these, only cost me a pound!" and put them on grinning proudly whilst I tried to find a way to tell him they were Jackie Onassis glasses and, well, were meant for people like Jackie Onassis. Or, well, you know, at least the same sex as Jackie Onassis.

If it's genetic, I'm fucked.

By the time that happens, I hope I live a long way away / from where I do today / in the middle of some forgotten bay / with only the windswept sea / to laugh at me.

God that's terrible. Those last two lines are the worst piece of crap I've written in ages. I really am past it. It's over. I'm outta here.

It's just a shimmy and a shake oh ho.
We bring the bump to the grind oh ho.

Must dash, I'm sure my neighbour will want his unsecured internet connection back soon.

Can I blog from my Blackberry?

2009-02-09T23:31:00.002Z

Yes, it looks like I can. It's not that I'm on the move or anything, it's that I'm curled up in bed with some toast and a copy of the FT. To think I used to wear ripped jeans.

How can a Sunday be wasted....

2009-02-08T21:19:00.003Z

when it involves discussing this in the back of that after a few of those, and then waking up and spending the day really learning to appreciate this and that.

"For a lonely soul, you're having such a nice time...."

Volunteering

2009-02-03T23:49:00.005Z

On average, I suppose, every other Saturday, I volunteer.

I walk a few minutes down Coldharbour Lane to a youth centre and kind of hang around with asylum seekers who are aged between 14 and 19.

They've arrived from damaged, troubled countries and somehow pitched up on these shores, just kids in tracksuits and fake Nikes.

I volunteer; sometimes I help cook, sometimes I play football with them, sometimes I talk to them, often I just potter about, occasionally high-fiving or playing table tennis with them.

I often feel quite lost there. I don't feel I'm very good at it, I often feel like I don't know how to relate to British teenagers, yet alone those from Afghanistan, Iraq, Kurdistan, Ethiopia, Iran...

It feels like I should keep on volunteering, perhaps, but at the same time it feels like whatever talents I have are not being well served by this "pottering about" that I just seem to do there. But then, I suppose, perhaps that is what they need, and perhaps their need is greater than mine.

It's hard to reconcile how you want to live with how you actually live. I try to volunteer, I work in the NHS, and yet... yet something is still so very missing from my perception of the world and what's important. Something, as I approach my thirties, something is still really lacking in me.

Some people vote Labour in every election because they believe in the redistribution of wealth; and then employ accountants so they pay the absolute minimum amount of tax.

That's what I'm getting at. How do you reconcile your personal desires with your emotional ambitions?

How do we reconcile our base, materialistic, fickle sides with the rhetoric of our dreams? Or even with the passion we espouse for the common good after a few pints of Man In A Box down the local Sammy Smith's?

How do I justify taking out a £2,000 loan to buy an unnecessary sports car next year, when I could take out that same loan and give it to the children in Gaza?

How do I spend £100 on a watch, which I simply don't need, and walk past the same shop later that night to see a man sleeping in its doorway?

How do I justify my life like this? And yet, like millions of people, like you, I suspect, every day I try and do some good, to someone, to be good and nice and move forward...

I guess it's just that question: how much is enough, how much is enough, how much good is enough, how much do we have to strive and rage and burn and give and toil and pray and move and move and move and move forwards against the dying light of day I'd love to know another way but this is it now this is true it's us for them and me for you we have to make this one life last forget the future forgive the past and raise the sun again and again until it's done when the battle's ours and good has won.

I said maybe you should wear that black dress and I'll wear a suit and we'll eat that pie and mash in style you can drive your car to boot and we'll smile those smiles that make time worthwhile and dance among the truth.

"I know what I like"

2009-02-03T21:42:00.002Z

In my wardrobe are 29 shirts,
nine of them are plain white.

Not that I'm a
creature of habit

or anything.

This woman

2009-01-28T22:32:00.007Z

Let's get one thing straight. Whatever your views on this woman, her personality, husband, eating, talent, attitude and whatever other judgements you make of people by reading news, let's get one thing straight.

She does not look like a "plastic alien from the planet xoron 9", as one of my best friends is trying to convince me.

Admittedly, my defence was ill-prepared and, with hindsight, not particularly robust. Angrily, I began: "Listen. If Elves had tits..."

The Labour government and the NHS

2009-01-27T17:38:00.007Z

Stupid jeans

2009-01-26T23:57:00.004Z

"Founded in 1994, i-Fe Apparel Inc. - P.J. Mark, is led by an executive team with over 26 years of experience in the apparel industry. P.J. Mark strives to not only deliver it comfortable fashion to consumers, also to offer a new lifestyle that can break all stereotypes and ethnic boundaries...."

Do they really? Do you break all stereotypes and ethnic boundaries by making 34" long jeans for hip hop dwarves?! What the fuck is this? I'm 6'5" tall, if I enter my vitals on a shopping website I don't expect to be marketed to as if I was a bling bling midget with a penchant for US penitentiaries.

Feckssake

Always wear a jacket

2 few

Who would've thought cheaply copying Sam Cooke could sound this good?

Weddings

Ebay

Amen Gordon Brown

Apparently, he's gay

she went to the bathroom, glossed her lips;

but i said i'm just too old for this.

A friend of a friend of mine

Preview

That's it for me, I'm out.

Holy fuck.

'The only guarantor of independence is profit'

And no sooner have you finished thinking that

The past, the present, the future.

I want that!

How to sell out

The West stands for Freedom

The heart is dead - long live the heart!

808s and Heartbreak

Memories made in the coldest winter

The quality of light

There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

Another Ebay classic

Life is finite

That song

Stevie GBH part deux

Work

And Jenny Smith..

Just incase you didn't get how good that song was

Moving on

The crown and two chairmen

Mmmmmm

The scent of a man

How are you doing?

Last night

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough

My soundbite obit

She

Michael Jackson 1958 - 2009 RIP

Iran or football?

Copy and paste passion

Banking

Musical journalism

Being boring

Hit me up just one more time tonight

A decade

Top ten things you should never say to a guy

Facebook

Here we sit

First day of the rest of your life

London

Masterpiece

Always room change

Hackett kit and CK PJ's

The castle where I twisted my ankle 9 years ago still stands

Perhaps

Let's be absolutely clear

The plan

Aberystwyth

The rain

Prospects Lyrics

Aber

That speech I never made.

One swallow doesn't make a summer

New singer songwriter I've never heard of but one song's really good....

Heart Theft at Glastonbury Festival

Cycling

The week that was

Books

Pants - the case is solv-ed

Who is it?

Frustrations

Thriller Live at the Lyric Theatre

The difficult second play

12 years ago but yesterday

Bring the drums in Wilkie

Right.

But. I can dream.