Back after a long absence

11:07:2003
and in all probability before another long absence
I can't believe how much --m eats. He's not even two but I can hardly pick the little bugger up. My friend ----s has a little boy even younger called ---l (nice name, don't you think?) who is so heavy that ----s fucked his back trying to pick him up and had to have a spinal tap or something.

Some good news for the 'Mr Thomas' fan out there. I've worked out quite a good way to end the story. It looks like it will take a few more chapters and might even be novella-length by the end of it but the conclusion to the story, with some big twists and welcome explanations, will be satisfying.

If I ever find the time to finish it, the 'Mr Thomas story' (which will have to be renamed something snappier) will make a good middle-brow read and I might try to get it published in paper book form. I say 'if I ever find the time' but if truth be told there's always time. What I need is a good periodical kick up the arse to spend the free time writing instead of ----ing (insert any verb other than 'write').

I saw a documentary about the great Bruce Robinson a few years ago. He wrote and directed 'Withnail and I' amongst other stuff. He wrote (and may still write) on an old electric typewriter and just above it he has sellotaped something by Joyce : "Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?" I met Bruce Robinson once. He was doing a talk for a literary festival and I was helping out at the venue. He was a real gent- even when he got pissed towards the end. He signed a book for me but was so tanked he had trouble writing his name and had to cross it out and do it again. He is on my very short list of people I have unreserved admiration for.

Anyway, I got my 'kick up the arse' the other day when I opened the paper and saw an article about an old friend who was doing very well in his chosen profession (no clues*). Generally I don't enjoy opening newspapers and reading stuff like this. I shouldn't have felt guilty, jealous or bitter as he had chosen a field which I have neither the inclination nor the patience to succeed in, but it did give me a nasty existentialist shock.

I've just tracked down the Joyce quote. It's from Giacomo Joyce, a novella he wrote but which was never published in his lifetime. Here is the full quote: Youth has an end: the end is here. It will never be. You know that well. What then? Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for? . I'm not one for declaiming Joyce - in fact despite four years in Dublin I've never even read anything by him- but those two lines speak very loud to me, as they must have done to Bruce Robinson.

In fact Robinson was talking in the same documentary about his friend Vivian who was a permanently sozzled aspiring actor with whom he used to live when young (and on whom the character of 'Withnail' is obviously based). He said that Vivian used to say to painters 'I don't paint, but if I did I'd paint a fuck sight better than you' and to writers 'I don't write, but if I did I'd write a fuck sight better than you' and so on. Anyway Vivian died not too long ago of a bust up liver- never having made it as an actor, painter or writer, and I'm not sure why I mention him now.

Maybe instead of writing all of the above I should have been writing the story, but I think I needed to get this lot out as otherwise it would have come out in the story and messed it up.

I've just realised why I mentioned Vivian. I think I felt something similar to his 'fuck sight' pronouncement towards the old friend I saw in the paper, and realised the futility of it. No more existentialist pronouncements. the only thing to do is that which I am a fuck sight better at than most other people.

I'm going to write my way out of this.

But first I'm going to watch some TV.











*ok one clue, but it's really well hidden.

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