I want to fuck all the computer breaking gods in bins.

So I’ve come to Mallorca to write a book, a hare-brained fuckfaced scheme if ever there was one. And there was one, last year in fact, when I came to Mallorca and failed to write a book after failing to write three books in Paris. Prior to that I spent a decade not writing books in lots of places. There may be something wrong with me – something terrible. Wonderful, yet terrible.

So I’ve come to Mallorca to write a book. Naturally, I’m not writing a book. You probably knew that, knew it before I did. This non book writing isn’t down to laziness, a lack of moral fibre or shrinking inspiration. Not really. The gods must have been smiling at me because they beat up my computer the minute I arrived.

“The hard drive has gone,” explained the man in the computer shop.

“Oof,” I said, playing along. “Tricky.”

“Yep.”

“Does that mean it can’t be fixed?” I said, hopefully.

“No, no, I can fix the hard drive,” he said, as I started to go for his throat, “but the fan has gone. And this bit here” – I looked at that bit there – “and this. You need a new machine, really. It’s not worth fixing this.”

“But I can’t buy a new machine,” I beamed. “I mean computer. A computer machine. I can’t afford it - I HAVEN’T GOT THE MONEY.” And off I danced, like a maniac.

So I’ve come to Mallorca to write a book and have ended up building flowerbeds and spreading clay on tennis courts. I have no idea how this has happened, but am delighted by the turn of events. Who the hell wants to go around writing books? Not me. Not yet. I want to be building flowerbeds and spreading clay on tennis courts.

Where does this leave us? I mean, it’s been a while. (In case you’re wondering, the air conditioning unit is still there, still whirring away.) Well, I write things now and again and have managed to drudge up a weekly column every week for the last six months. That’s something. And if I somehow manage to summon up a computer from somewhere then I suppose I’ll have to write that book. That’s something, too. And once I get tired of building flowerbeds and spreading clay on tennis courts - tomorrow, probably, or Monday - then I’ll no doubt have the appetite for writing for a living again.

Good this, isn’t it?

Bones vs. Slugs

Imagine there is a field with eighty bones in it. A hundred dogs are sent out to get those bones. Most dogs go away happy, most dogs get a bone – some may even get two. The unhappy dogs are the ones that aren’t very good at sniffing out and digging up bones: if there had been a hundred bones in the field they still would have struggled. Poor bastards.

Now, imagine that instead of eighty bones in the field there are just twenty. And instead of there being a hundred dogs, there are two hundred. Starts to become a problem, doesn’t it? And not only that, but there are more dogs on the way. Dogs that have been studying bone collecting at university for three years. Fresh, hungry dogs that haven’t spent the last six years bone hunting. Dogs that are finishing up their NCTJs.

At one point I thought I was going to become King Bonehunter. Now I’m not so sure. Now I sit at the side of the field with the slugs smoking roll-ups and I think, You know what, these bones can go fuck themselves.

A bone, earlier.

Later, I go to see my GP.

“This may sound unusual,” I tell him, “but for the last fourteen months I’ve had the sound of an air-conditioning unit in my head.”

“That doesn’t sound unusual at all,” he says, as if every other person who comes in here is half-man half-air-conditioning unit.

“Really? Because it feels unusual saying it.”

I’m not sure my doctor is a doctor; he looks more like a cleaner.

“I think it could be stress-related,” I say, wanting to tell him about the bones.

“Are you under much stress at the moment?”

“Yes.”

“It could be stress-related.”

Wow, I think, he’s good. No wonder he’s got so many bones. He’s probably got bones coming out of his ears.

“You’ve probably got bones coming out of your ears,” I say.

“Sorry?”

“I said: YOU’VE PROBABLY GOT BONES COMING OUT OF YOUR EARS.”

“Have you thought about cognitive behavioural therapy?” He asks me later.

“Yes. In fact, you referred me to a cognitive behavioural therapist a few years ago.”

“And how did you find it?”

“It was excellent.”

“Well, take this leaflet…”

I take the cloying, over-friendly leaflet and begin to stumble out.

“The toilets could do with a mop,” I say, and I’m gone.

An ear bone, earlier.

Later I decide (not for the first time) to take to my bed. I’ll stay in bed forever, I think. No-one can stop me, I think. And if someone did try to stop me then they would probably try and help me too. That would be good. I’m buoyed until I realise that I don’t have a bed. Homelessness is not as glamorous as you might think.

At night I walk around in the rain with my shirt off drinking whisky. The slugs are illuminated by artificial light against the brilliant white wall. I swig whisky in the rain with my shirt off. The slugs are oily and black and sinister and marvellous.

“Hi again slugs,” I say. “I’m ready to join you now.”

“MMMMURRRGGGHHHHH,” go the slugs.

“That’s right. I’m going to get all oily and black and sinister and marvellous and bed down with you. I’ve got a sleeping bag that I’m going to dip in tar. Won’t that be something?”

“MMMMM” go the slugs.

“And you will call me King Slug.”

“You can’t be King Slug,” says one. “He’s King Slug.”

He gestures to King Slug.

“Oh yes, of course. Well, I’ll just be a slug. An ordinary slug.”

“MMMMURRRGGGHHHHH,” go the slugs.

And off I go to search for that leaflet.

A slug, earlier

In Praise of Homelessness

Apologies for the protracted absence, I’ve been busy doing things. What things I don’t know, I tend to forget easily. Things though, definitely things. Ah, I do know one of those things: playing poker, lots of it. I’ve been playing poker (a lot) and winning (a bit) and writing about it for my new weekly column which has somehow managed to limp into its eighth week without me being fired or arrested or set on fire. Other things have been happening too but those things have all been choppy and bleak and I’m beginning to hate things – things happening to me, things consumed by me, things thought by me, things other people out there are doing. Things. We’ve all had enough of things, haven’t we?

I’ll tell you what else we’ve all had enough of: Me being homeless. Haven’t we all had enough of that thing by now? I certainly have. Since splitting up with my wife two or five or ten years ago (or, indeed, in July 2010) I’ve been officially homeless. Oh, I’ve lived in places but it’s been a blur of Finsbury Park, East Horsley, Dubai, Mallorca, Boscombe and my Nan’s dining room. Now although that’s a blur, it’s not a heady blur. It may well seem like a heady blur, but it isn’t. And the appeal is beginning to wear a little thin. There are things about homelessness that I like – living on the fringes of society, working in cafes, sitting on benches, occasionally feeling like an animal – but the things that I like are being kicked to death by the things that I don’t like. It’s gruelling. The main thing I don’t like is being scattered all over the place. I have toothbrushes and socks and bits of paper where I’ve written ‘Is everything going to work out?’ floating around the south-west of England. This I can handle. What is less easy to swallow is that bits of me have been scattered around: skin, clumps of hair, bits of my mind. It’s not easy living like this, when you’re living in several places at once.

You’ll be delighted to hear there’s a point to all of this – and an uplifting one, too. None of it matters. Not really. I know I pretended it does, but it doesn’t. All that matters is this book that I’m writing, everything else – socks, homelessness, bits of skin that have fallen off – comes second. I was reading about an artist the other day who  lived by the maxim ‘Paint first, starve later.’ His wife, his children, what he was going to eat later that day, what his hair looked like – it all came second to painting. I’ve had to adopt a similar attitude to my work. ‘Write first, starve later,’ I go around saying to myself and although it’s slightly awkward when people stop me in the street and ask “Did you just say, ‘Write first, starve later?’” I can live with such awkwardness thanks to my new-found mantra.

I’ve gone mad, haven’t I? Again. Jesus, why can’t I stop going mad all the time? Or why can’t one bout of madness cancel out the previous one rendering me sane again? Who knows? Who cares? Write first, starve later. The writers among you out there would do well to remember that.

In the meantime, I’d be very happy if you wandered over and took a look at my latest poker column and let me know your thoughts. Thank you.

http://bet.unibet.com/poker/poker-strategy/2012/04/18/idiot%E2%80%99s-guide-poker-i-may-be-falling-love-you-poker/33

Flapping Up vs. Not Flapping Up

So, my piece about writing out The Great Gatsby has been filed and pronounced ‘great.’ I’ve just written the fourth of my weekly poker columns and they’ve been described as ‘the best thing on the site.’ My book is being written and it’s going swimmingly. I’m not as homeless as I used to be. My face doesn’t need combing as much as it once did. My drinking has plateaued and the amount of alcohol I consume at the moment (still lots) appears to be doing wonders for body and mind.

You know what this means, don’t you? It means that everything is going to fuck up soon. Or does it? Perhaps if I preempt it it will. My whole Pitching the World life to date has been taped together by me saying, “Things are good, now watch me go and flap them up” and then invariably going and flapping them up. You could say it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or you could say that my life is generally shambolic and inky and determined to do me in no matter what I predict or don’t predict. Who knows? But we’ve had enough now, haven’t we, of all that “Hahaha, I’m going to balls my life up.” Haven’t we? Haven’t we (and this is the royal we here, not you. You’re not complicit in this. You’re rather fetching, in fact. I like you) grown a bit tired of all that caper?

So watch me not fuck things up for a bit. Or, perhaps, watch me fuck things up to such an extent that it renders this particularly slender post the most prescient and banana-minded thing I’ve ever written.

Do you want to see a picture of a banana? Or a bunch of the things? Of course you do.

A sort of banana orgy, earlier. 

Boscombe Revisited

So, I’m back in Boscombe. Of course I would end up back in Boscombe:  Ialwaysend up back in Boscombe. You probably knew I was coming back here before I did. What am I doing here? I’m working on a book. I’m drinking. Occasionally I read. That’s all I do.

“It seriously is though,” I was telling my brother over breakfast sometime last week. “I do nothing else: I read and write and drink and that’s it. Other than that, nothing. What else is there though? What else can I do? Canoeing? I wouldn’t know where to begin. You don’t even see canoes anymore do you? Or do you? Do you see canoes anymore?”

I could tell my brother wanted me to go on. I went on.

“What’s troubling is that this – here, now, over breakfast – is the first time that this has occurred to me. I’ve never realised before that I don’t do anything. Isn’t that odd?”

“You’ve told me all of this before,” said my brother. “Twice.”

“Really? Even the canoeing?”

“Not the canoeing.”

My thrilling ‘I do nothing’ speech was taking place in the restaurant of a London hotel. Later that day I headed down to Boscombe. I was hungover when I left and drunk when I arrived. How fitting, I thought. But I wasn’t drunk enough so proceeded to get drunker and the next day I was more hungover and so I got drunk again and this inelegant series of events continued quite possibly until sometime on Monday when I read and wrote and thought about canoes.

And that’s pretty much all I’ll be doing over the next eight weeks whilst I work on the book version of Pitching the World: read, write and drink. You know what, I may even curb the drinking. I suspect the drinking isn’t doing me as much good as I once thought. It helps with the pressure, of course. The pressure of distilling a few years of your life, career, marriage and so forth into eighty or ninety thousand words. The pressure of knowing that if you screw this up, if you fail to write a remarkable book then that’s it, you’ll probably give up writing and have nothing to fall back on (you do nothing, remember). Thrilling, though. The pressure, I mean. Perhaps I thrive under pressure. Will I thrive under pressure? Watch this canoe-shaped space.

 

 

 

Pitching the World vs. The Great Gatsby. UPDATED

I’ve been busy today. Mostly, I’ve been busy being ill. Oh, I’m excellent at it now: two weeks of illness and I show few signs of getting better. In the shop I’m known as ‘The odd man who buys Ribena and notepads.’ That’s all I do, buy Ribena and notepads. It’s no life. You should see me in the shop though. You’d like it. I’ve had so little contact with other people over the last couple of weeks that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to interact with other human beings. I’m no good at it anymore. I go in there, pick up my Ribena and notepads and then completely over-egg my personality when it comes to the exchanging of money and pleasantries. I grin loudly and fizz and crackle and make small talk that makes me appear madder than I actually am. Like I say, it’s no life.

But I’ve not just been busy being ill, I’ve been busy doing other stuff too. Today I began work on my book, a book loosely based upon Pitching the World. This involved putting all of the posts to date into a document and marveling at how I’ve managed to write 90,000 words about not pitching magazines. It’s quite something. What is also quite something is The Great Gatsby, which I’ve been writing out for a feature that I’m working on. All afternoon my words, then Fitzgerald’s. Mine, then his.

His are better, aren’t they? His words. Better. But are they? I have to believe that mine are better than his, better than anyone’s if I’m going to write this book. So, I thought I would put down some extracts from The Great Gatsby and some from the archives of Pitching the World and have what I suppose is a quiz. Or a competition. Or something. Certainly it’s fun. Can you tell who wrote the following: Me or Him? There might be prizes if you can.

1. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction – Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.

2. That’s what I do with my friends: Fuck them in bins.

3. I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon.

4. I desperately want to become Barry Manilow.

5. “Your eyes have gone weird. What’s happened to your eyes? You look mental.”

6. “It’s a bitch. Here’s your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it.”

7. Somehow, I’ve found myself in a situation where I’m living in an expensive house on top of a hill looking after cats. I don’t know how many. Two? Ten? A number of cats, anyway. And a dog.

8. Never think that anything is either untouched or promising.

9. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

10. I’ve flapped around and fucked up everything I’ve ever tried and I’m not going to flap around and fuck this up.

How did you get on? I told you it would be fun. I had lots of fun. Answers tomorrow. Or perhaps Wednesday. Who knows? Who cares? You’re probably not even reading this bit and if you are you probably want to stop.

Until tomorrow, then. Or Wednesday. Thank you.

AN UPDATE: It’s Wednesday, so time for answers. You’ve all been waiting for this moment, haven’t you? What do you mean you haven’t? Frankly, I refuse to acknowledge the lack of appetite for the above quiz and will stagger on with the answers regardless. Here goes:

1. Fitzgerald, obviously.

2. Me, obviously.

3. Fitzgerald.

4. Me. (and it’s true)

5. Me.

6. Fitzgerald.

7. Me.

8. Me.

9. Fitzgerald.

10. Me.

And that, thank God, is that. More quizzes tomorrow. In fact, quizzes every hour from now on until people agree that it’s a good idea.

 

 

Witness the Sickness

On Friday I shaved off all my facial hair, head hair and body hair. Then, for the remainder of the weekend, I lay in a cold bath with just by head peeping out  pretending to be a seal. I didn’t really. I nearly did though, I certainly wanted to. I’m really on the edge out here in East Horsley. Self-imposed isolation in Surrey isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

But I’ve been sick. Terribly sick. If life has taught me one thing, it’s that if you’re sick – terribly sick – you shouldn’t spend all weekend in a cold bath pretending to be a seal. Frustrating though, this sickness. Frustrating that I couldn’t pretend to be a seal, and more frustrating that I couldn’t get on with all the work I feel like I should be getting on with.

What work? Well, there’s a weekly column to get stuck in to, a couple of features to write, an idea for a column that needs to be refined and pitched, work on at least two books and a load of other stuff that I’m not too inclined to think about because if I do think about it, I really might end up in that bath yelping away. Still, I can cope. Since quitting this ridiculous business of trying to pitch 642 magazines, my head has felt considerably fresher. Cleaner. No longer do I have to think of feature ideas for Electrical Review or Ships Monthly or Slim at Home. No longer do I have to periodically take out that stinking book and glaze over as I try and work out who I have and haven’t contacted. No. Now I have the mental freedom to actually chase after and conduct the sort of work that I should be doing.

With that in mind, then, earlier today I wrote to 79 publications listed in the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘This man is a riot. This half-man half-seal is such a wreck that he can’t even quit properly. He fails at quitting. Fuck this, I’m unsubscribing.’

Is that what you’re thinking? Don’t. It was a one-off. Well, a 79-off. It’s just that I’ve half-heartedly sunk two and a half years into this beast and I wanted to be sure, you wanted to be sure, we all wanted to be sure, that by quitting I was doing the right thing. And I figured that if I contacted another string of magazines with my usual bullshit (‘I’m broke and homeless and possibly a seal looking for freelance work’) and they responded with their usual bullshit (‘We like you, we like your work, we don’t have any money, leave us alone’) then I would feel nicely vindicated in my quitting.

And that’s what’s happened. Sort of. Most of the publications who have replied today say that they have little or no budget for freelancers and only one or two have said they would like to me to write for them. If I do write for them, it won’t be under the Pitching the World umbrella. It’ll be under something else.

Excuse me. I’m heady, aren’t I? It’s okay, you can be honest with me. I’m sick, still. But I do have one piece of good news before I drift off for the evening. A kindly benefactor has emerged from the shadows and offered to financially support me whilst I write a book about Pitching the World. Special, isn’t it? Brings tears to your eyes, doesn’t it? I’ve no idea why I’ve left this slice of news until now. Surely something as welcome and flattering should have been shoved up to the top of this post. All I can think is that for some reason I wanted to tell you about pretending to be a seal first. And I wanted to show that persistence pays off. You’ve got this far. Well done.

So there will be a book about Pitching the World. It will be about persistence not paying off (but also paying off), and borderline homelessness, and the state of journalism in the UK, and alcoholism and writing and some other stuff – loads of other stuff – that I haven’t even begun to mention over the last two and a half years. Will you buy it? I hope you’ll buy it. Even if you’re not going to buy it, I hope you’ll pretend to me that you are going to buy it. Thank you.

A seal (not me) in a bath, earlier. 

Dead Pitchers Society

Three hastily cobbled together reasons for quitting, which should serve as an explanation. Of sorts.

1. APPEARANCE

See this? This is me, shortly before starting Pitching the World.

Me, earlier. 

Wow, what’s going on there, I wonder? Gazing out into the distance, a mysterious half smile playing on my lips. You’re probably thinking I’m an actor or something. I’m not though. I’m a writer. Perhaps up there I’m thinking about deadlines I’m going to conquer and features I’m going to write. Look at me: look at how happy I am. And mysterious. I’m certainly mysterious.

This was taken a little under two weeks ago, at some threadbare house party.

Me, less earlier. 

There’s no mystery here. See the pain? There’s a lot of pain there. See the wine rack there? There’s not a lot of wine there. My eyes look like they’re about to fall out of my head. I wouldn’t blame them. This was during a time when all I wanted to do was get fucked. Certainly I had predilections towards alcohol and abusing myself prior to starting this recently abandoned project, but Pitching the World definitely led to them blossoming.

2. CORRESPONDENCE

I can take a ‘No’. I can take silence, too. Over the last couple of years I’ve had to deal with hundreds of ‘No’s and silences after sending pitches. What I found most frustrating, however, were the times when I would deal with an editor and he or she would say ‘I think we might have something for you’ and I’d say, ‘That’s great, I’d love you to have something for me’ and then they would appear to not have something for me after all, so I’d have to chase them up and ask, ‘Do you have something for me? If not, I may have something for you’ and then give them a list of ideas. Again, this was greeted with silence. This happened dozens of times and became very frustrating.

Or they would say, ‘We like you and your work, please send us some clippings.’ So I’d send them some clippings. They wouldn’t let me know they had received my clippings. ‘Did you get my clippings?’ I’d whisper to them a week or so later. ‘Yes,’ they would say, ‘we got your clippings. We liked them very much.’ ‘Splendid, I would say. I’m glad you liked the clippings. What am I writing for you? Here are some ideas.’ ‘We got your clippings’ they would reply. ‘We loved your clippings.’ ‘Oh well that’s just great, I’m glad you liked them…’ This little dance would continue for a million or so years until the whole exchange became too surreal and boring and Beckett-like for all those concerned and eventually would just kind of peter out.

3. PITCHING THE WORLD

It became all consuming. I realise it might sound paradoxical to say I quit Pitching the World because of Pitching the World, but I think it’s an accurate summation. In March 2010 I was lying in bed next to my wife, Dr Celia [redacted], and I thought: Wouldn’t it be good for Pitching the World if we split up? I could be homeless and mad and boozy and entertain my readers with stories of trying to fuck bits of pavements. Four months later, we split up.

Okay, another one. Last year, I tried to pitch Commando magazine with a story of a grizzled marine being stuck out on some islands in the Pacific Ocean. I say ‘tried to pitch’, but I did no such thing. I drew some funny pictures and wrote some funny comments about said pictures and posted the whole experience up here. I never seriously thought I could successfully write for Commando. I just wanted to be entertaining on here.

A floating carrot and some palm trees, earlier. 

The whole process took a day. See? Do you see? Although I did enjoy doing that drawing (and it is very special) and although I’ve kind of enjoyed doing a lot of these things over the years, I’ve not done them really for the end result, more so that I can write about them on here. And that never figured among my reasons for pitching all of these 642 magazines.

What a deeply flawed explanation for things.

And now? And now it’s all over. I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.

 

More Conversations With My Agent

Earlier today, I sent this email to my agent. If you’re at all interested, I’ll still be updating this blog – and quite possibly with more regularity – but I’ve decided this project can go and make love to itself. Thanks very much for reading.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

To: Matthew Hamilton, Aitken Alexander Associates

From: Pitching the World

Subject: The End

Dear Matthew,

A week or two ago I promised to send you an email that would be “the best email you have ever read.” This may well not be it. In fact, it may well be thoroughly disappointing. Sometime in the middle of last night, you see, I decided to quit Pitching the World. For real this time. This ghoul of a project has caused a lot of misery and hardship over the last couple of years. It’s led to divorce, poverty, a hairline that can best be described as misplaced and atrophying limbs. I know I always bang on about it causing me to go broke and mad and bald but it really has. As it stands, I’m in a borrowed flat in Surrey with no heating, no ability to pay my raft of creditors and enough food to last until the weekend. Once that goes, I’m screwed.

Screwed, but happy. I’m massively relieved to be abandoning this ridiculous thing. And I have ideas. One idea, is that there could still be a good book to be found based on my experiences over the last two and a half years. It could begin here, in East Horsley, broke and alone and drying out. It could be a cautionary tale about freelance journalism. Or a cautionary tale about seeing things through. I always thought it would be a brave and noble achievement to see Pitching the World out to the end, no matter what. Last night, that thought struck me as foolish. I’d be foolish to see this thing out. The brave and noble thing to do would be to quit now and put it down to experience. Surely that would be a better, more representative book: embarking on something and failing miserably. I quite like that. Plus, I’m not a journalist – certainly not the type of journalist who could have made Pitching the World a success. I’m a lot of things, but that type of journalist isn’t one of them.

So, where does this leave us? Hopefully somewhere not too grim. I’ll still continue to write for a living and have a weekly poker column starting next week. We’ve discussed the possibility of me writing a book about poker. If you still want to represent me, we can discuss that further. It occurred to me last night that I should be writing about the things I enjoy doing. I came up with a list: Drinking, Smoking, Gambling and Making Dinner For My Nan. I can’t see a book in that last one, but I can see something in travelling the world living in developing countries trying to make a living from gambling and the stuff that that involves. I can also see a column along those lines. Once I’ve sent this email, I’m going to spend the night trying to get one commissioned.

Hopefully this email hasn’t led to you smashing up your desk. It’s definitely the right course of action to take though. Isn’t it? Not smashing up your desk, more me giving up. I’m not and never was the sort of man who could successfully pitch to and write for 642 magazines. In fact, I’m going to get that book now and go and burn it in the forest. Or I might just throw it away. If my phone had any battery I’d ask you to call me, but hopefully we can speak over the coming weeks.

With best wishes,

Pitching the World

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

A bear going to college, earlier. 

Not sure. “Fuck This?” perhaps.

“I have a pretty much inescapable deadline that will see this project wrapped up. At the end of January, Pitching the World will be no more.” – Pitching the World, December 2009.

Ambitious, wasn’t I? Bold, wasn’t I? Wrong, wasn’t I? Still, the following year it seems I continued to be wrong.

“On Friday I will take Pitching the World down, never write another entry, and go and work on the bins for the next decade or two.” – Pitching the World, August 2010.

Seems that I was marvelously tough back in August 2010. Couldn’t leave the house without getting into a brawl with some fishermen back in August 2010. ‘Go and work on the bins.’ Wow, watch out. And not only work on them, but work on them ‘for a decade or two.’ Yeah, that’ll show them. That’ll show me. That’s what people who live in their nan’s dining rooms go and do when things get tough: they go back to their roots and go and work on the bins.

“This, I fear, could be my final post. I’ve had enough. Enough of being a writer or a journalist or whatever the hell it is I’ve turned into and I am on the verge of quitting. The reasons are too numerous and complicated to go into, but let it be known that I’ve had enough. Enough enough enough. You know what the worst word in the English language is? Hope. I’ve had it with hope. Me and hope used to be pals; I used to take hope round the back of supermarkets and have sex with it in big bins. That’s what I do with my friends by the way: fuck them in bins.” - Pitching the World, June 2011.

Bins again. Threatening to quit, again. What’s the thing with bins? What’s the thing with quitting? I wanted to quit again this morning. From now on, unless I say otherwise, always assume that I wanted to quit again this morning. You know why I didn’t quit? I don’t have the balls. I don’t have the guts. Do you know what Marlon Brando said? He said – and, while we’re at it, are all these questions pissing you off as much as they are me? – this:

“Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It’s a bum’s life. Quitting acting, that’s the sign of maturity.”

Me, earlier

Swap acting for writing and that’s pretty much how I feel at the moment. A bum’s life, but one I don’t have the guts to quit. Do you know what I’m doing at the moment? I’m writing out The Great Gatsby. Once written out, I’m going to write about my experiences of writing out The Great Gatsby for a writing magazine in the US. Beadier-eyed readers will note that at this precise second I’m writing about writing about writing out The Great Gatsby. A bum’s life.

It’s okay though, I’m going into forced exile in East Horsley on Friday. Nothing bad ever happens in East Horsley. Just you wait and see.