Monthly Archive for February, 2001

Met up with JC last night, at long last. We were intending to go to a BIMA Soho Talk on WAP, but found a bunch of design lecturers hanging out in the same building and thought they might be more interesting. We schmoozed long and hard, accepting Natalie’s kind and frequent offers of wine and sushi, and discussing… can’t quite remember what. There were quite a few offers of wine in particular, I seem to recall.

Back to JC’s flat, which is awesome – a penthouse on the corner of Wimpole Street. In the days when I worked just North of Bond Street tube, I used to gaze into these huge ornate houses, mostly wasted as doctors’ and accountants’ offices, and wish that I could own one. Inside was even better than expected – huge rooms, a kitchen to die for, windows “full of character” and an unrivalled view across genteel urban sprawl. So of course we crashed and played Tekken. Some of the old moves were still there, but I just couldn’t get Yoshimitsu to do his sword thang.

Slept on a very comfy sofa in a very comfy sleeping bag under a very comfy duvet. Dreamt lots & lots & lots, losing all but traces the moment I awoke. No… hang on… there were some kids came to the door, kinda trick or treat… had to fetch them a drink, but we only had water… wierd activity going on around the side garage… some kinda inflatible thing… paddling pools in the garden… nah, it’s gone. I remember having a dream argument with Niina as well. Trying to imagine how to describe Niinality, I would let her do it herself and it would go something like this:

Dan: Niina, how would you describe yourself?
Niina: Why do you want to know?
Dan: Just answer the question, will you?
Niina: Why do you want to know?
Dan: OK, I’m just putting together this explanation of what you’re like. So, will you help me do it?
Niina: No
Dan: But, if you don’t then I’m just going to have to make it all up myself, and that’ll be far worse. So waddya say, will you?
Niina: No, why should I.
Dan: Oh, go on, you’re such a killjoy.
Niina: Fuck off.
Dan: Asshole.
Niina: Fuck off.
Dan: Asshole.
Niina: Fuck off.
Dan: Asshole.
Niina: Fuck off.

…etc. This can, and usually does, carry on for hours, days even.

Shit – I just posted loads here about a wonderful dream I had, swimming inside a wooden
stepped-pyramid, performing acrobatics in sparkling blue waters, chatting through sky-lights
in the dark brown pyramid, sleeping on town-centre benches and protecting my possessions
from passing opportunists. But Blogger seems to have crashed and lost the whole bloody lot.
Sorry. Your loss.

Blogger tells me:
Error 103:java.sql.SQLException: java.sql.SQLException: The log file for database ‘pyra’
is full. Back up the transaction log for the database to free up some log space. [more info]

David’s flat (where I usually stay when in London) had a visit from the TV licensing people the other day. He gave up watching TV a year or two back, which is such an unheard thing to do that anyone dumb enough to try it is pestered by the authorities forever more. Reminds me very much of the Ray Bradbury story “The Pedestrian” (which I read some 20 years ago, but seems to stick in my mind like nothing else) where a future inhabitant, in an age where teleporting units can take you directly from house to house, decides to walk somewhere instead and reacquaint himself with the outside world. He finds the experience wonderfully refreshing, but then is rudely interrupted by robot police who, unable to compute his excuse that he is walking because he feels like it, arrest him for lunacy.

Anyway, back to today’s England, this is pretty much what happens to anyone who doesn’t like watching TV. The TV licensing forms have to be filled in whether you have a TV or not, and in the unbelievable event that you don’t you must answer a question which goes something like: “If you believe that you do not require a TV license, please state here the laughable reason why you think don’t need one, you lunatic”. No “please tick this box if you don’t have a TV”. No “please tick this box if you believe that TV is an inane, stultifying waste of time”. Just … oh, grrr… I don’t even want to write about it any more.

But I do want to write about the reason I started writing about what I am now writing about (or at least will be once I finish all this writing about writing about, or meta-writing about, if you prefer). I turned up at the flat one evening… first a word about David’s flat, without which none of this will make much sense. The front door has a sticker on it – an outline of a fish, just like those fishy-outlines you get in the back of neat Vauxhall Astras owned by smug Christian families. Only David’s says “SATAN” in the middle of it. He also has an assortment of decorations hung around the front door – sheep bones, half-melted dolls, a dried toad, that sort of thing (he had a dead crow there for a while, until the neighbours started to complain about the hygenic problems this could engender) … (hang on, I can see you’re already starting to think that the TV licensing people may have a point about him being a lunatic, but he’s no more of a lunatic than any self-thinking brain-working member of society, and anyway, bear with me). I opened the door and on the mat, found an envelope from the aforementioned TV Licensing people, which they had dropped through the letterbox (immediately below the satanic fish) on finding nobody was at home when they called. The envelope had the usual inane form to fill in (the one with the pointless question mentioned above). And scribbled on the envelope were the words “Jesus loves you regadless!!!!” (there were that many exclamation marks and there was a spelling mistake in regardless, although I don’t remember whether it was exactly that one). I mean… well for a start, the very idea that someone (and a TV licensing person, of all people) scribbling down that Jesus loves him is going to make him change his views in any way is just laughable. Which makes me think that this guy (or woman) scribbled it to save their own soul. And secondly, the idea that this organisation that already intrudes too much into peoples’ lives is now doubling up as some kind of evangelism service just makes the blood boil. Or do you think perhaps they’re paying Jehova’s Witnesses to do a bit of TV-detecting on the side?

Grrrr….

I’m writing this while travelling up to Sheffield by Midland Mainline train. We leave St Pancras station, and are soon moving through the flattest countryside known to the human race. I’ve always thought that flat equated to uninteresting. But with the right eyes, everything can be beautiful. The gravel pits between Bedford and Wellingborough – sunken mud-flats, vast puddles providing a home for every type of water fowl. Huge open fields reflect the huge open sky, blue with a smorgasbord of cloud-types. The flood-plains of central England, fields turning into marshes turning into lakes. A road dips underneath the railway and my eye is drawn along the line of the subsequent bend until it rests, several metres from the road, on the burned-out wreck of a crashed car.

At Leicester, there is a subtle yet immense change in the environment. Nowhere do North and South nestle closer than in this mid-midlands city. The fields change from toothcomb-ploughed and decorative to thick-furrowed and functional. The towns change from neat showcase commuter retreats to rambling accretions of industry past and present. This feels like M John Harrison country, where grim relentless people do their best to ignore the lashings of a cold wind and every town’s name begins something like “Stour”.

On a recent early morning journey from Sheffield down to London the countryside had been crystallised: every field, bush, tree and fence completely white and brittle with a coating of ice. The train entered Leicester travelling through this albino landscape. Immediately beyond Leicester station the white dropped away, and the countryside on the other side of the city was regulation green and brown. Nature could have found no clearer way of highlighting the North-South divide.