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October 31, 2003
Happy Halloween! I don’t know about you but I’ve can’t stop thinking of pumpkins! The little people are coming tonight to trick or treat me, but I’ve got a small surprise awaiting them!
I think I’ve got an early edition of the Guardian today as my feature didn’t appear in it. If you read the Guardian and you spotted it do let me know!!!!
It’s lonely and frustrating sometimes, sitting in a cold flat eating porridge and trying to write about tender emotional stuff what happened before.
Miss ------- I do hope you got my card. That was a couple of days ago now and you still haven’t written back to me. I want you so much. I can’t stop thinking about you.
Keep those emailing coming people! Don't be shy! Please.
There’s a Pamela Anderson movie on tonight.
"The rhythm of my heart, is beating like a drum
with the words 'I love you' rolling off my tongue"
P.S. Ten minutes after I wrote the above I got a call from Dave. Sorry Dave I was in the bathroom. Thanks for the message though. Not sure about the last bit though. It sounded like you said you had "a face to face with Mr Hyman" this afternoon. ???
October 30, 2003
I filed this report late last night to the Guardian. It will probably be in tomorrow’s paper.
IDST (If Destroyed Still Tory)
A few seconds is a long time in politics!
One, two, three and Duncan Smith is no longer leader of the Tories but someone else be. No-one enough backed up him and with famous like Portcullis and Clerks not supporting him and him being let’s be honest, boring and bald he was never going to be the next Margaret Thatcher. That’s Tony Blair.
He was a Euro-Septic but liked poor people and that may have given him a chance in the poles.
So what now for Tory amiss? To Venus and Back. They need a leader, a leader, a leader of the pack and most conservatives are hardly likely to take it up the Gary Glitter. Apart from Mathew Parris.
It looks like we’re going to be dancing to the Howard’s way tune in future. Ann Widdecombe said he had something of the night about him.
If she looked less like an out of date blancmange that had been bruise-thumped by a scarecrow and then stuck by lightning while having her voice box run over by a rickshaw, then she might have a point.
October 29, 2003
Why do we dream?
It’s not always easy to unpick the meaning of them and work out their significance is it! For example, last night I dreamt I was on a train sitting opposite a beautiful dark haired woman, but I was in a straight jacket and my mouth was stopped up with a giant cork.
When I tried to get close to her she shot me with a big gun. What could it possibly mean?
I also had a dream about going for a job interview in a giant cheese suit.
Thank you for all the emails you’ve been sending, especially to the inspirational Amanda. Also hi to Ed I enjoyed your mail – let me know when you reach Babylon. Also thanks for the very kind message Schwalbe, although I suspect you’d had a little drink when you sent that.
Finally thanks to Hugh Jassoll for the horse pictures.
It’s raining again.
JG
October 28, 2003
America’s on fire I see.
I think I’ve put too much tea in my mouth today. My tongue seems sweaty.
Last night I managed to deliver my invite to the house of Miss ------. It’s funny how everything looks different in darkness.
Even her house looked somehow taller and more imposing reaching up in to the blue black dark night sky. Deed done, I decided to shoot off.
In my warm house there are still buckets of potatoes.
Seeing as I’ve got less money than Leeds United at the moment I decided to sit on my own at home creaming them in front of Prunella Scales dressed up like Queen Victoria.
I wasn’t dressed up like Queen Victoria!!!!!!! She was!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve never dressed like a Queen!!!!!!!!!! Or a King!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or a Lord Protector!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I did once dress up as Harold Wilson.
Thank you for the encouragement about my book Amanda.
“I’ll show you my Harold Bishop
If you show me your Madge”
October 27, 2003
A regular reader of this diary who shall remain nameless (It’s you Amanda) emailed me to express concern about the rigour of my last entry.
You will be pleased to hear that I swallowed your advice about women liking to be wined and dined and I’ve offered to take Miss ------- up the Shaftesbury Avenue.
I’ve done it by hand, the invite, and will drop it round this evening under cover of darkness.
“Dear Miss -------
I have been watching you. I want to take you up the West End. Would you like to come with me to see ‘Why The Wales Came’? It starts on 10 Dec at the Comedy Theatre.
An Admirer
P.S. RSVPB to this address: --------, --------, --------,”
Obviously there’s a real address not a load of lines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What do you think?
Hello to Eddie in Baghdad as well. Of course I remember you with your ‘tubular hat’!!! Hang in there; I’ll see what I can do.
Do keep these emails coming, it’s nice to know that I’m not the only mental one!!!
[smiley face]
JG
October 24, 2003
It’s odd how blood tastes metallic.
Last night I decided to pay a visit to Miss ------ and capture her rapture. I hope you don’t think it strange that I took a camera with me.
It was about 7.30pm and quite cold and dark. I managed to insert myself in between her outside foliage and I sat and watched.
The upstairs light was on and I could just make out a shadowy figure behind the glass. Shapes flitted across the window. A light was turned on in the room next door.
It was her. The unmistakable shape of her hair and those graceful shoulders. She was staring in to the mirror doing something to her face.
Suddenly she moved to the next room *removing the shirt she was wearing*. With shaking hands and short icy breaths I manoeuvred the camera in to position. As I pressed the button, I heard the gate creak and a low voice intoned,
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
A mass of scratches and flash as I scrambled out of the hedge. The voice spoke again “Come back here. Hey!”
A strong arm reached out to grab me but I clawed it away with my nails and made a dash for it.
Breathing heavily I pounded down the pavement as fast as my legs would take me. I could hear shouts and a siren but I kept running, my precious camera swinging by my side.
As I turned to look behind me I stumbled on the pavement and the world came crashing down on me. I had hit the deck with some force, shattering the glass in one lens of my spectacles. Blood poured from my nose. I collected myself and with still-stinging hands hobbled onward.
I have one precious image in my mind. I’m developing the film today.
“It's so cold yeah, it's so cold.
What is this feeling called love.
Why me, why you, why here, why now.”
October 23, 2003
Yesterday morning I popped out for a moment. I was soon back in, hands covered in newsprint and smelling of bacon.
I can’t stop thinking of Miss ------ Every time I close my eyes or open up my Mac there she seems to be winking at me with her deadly green eyes.
I will see her again.
I’ve got writers bloc. It protects sensitive skin against the glare of computer screens.
I spent yesterday evening at home listening to the darkness (I’d lost my muse).
“Can't explain all the feelings that you're making me feel
My heart's in overdrive and you're behind the steering wheel
Touching you, touching me
Touching you, God you're touching me
I believe in a thing called love
Just listen to the rhythm of my heart”
October 22, 2003
I was up with the cock this morning. I dreamt of my elven princess.
Last night 'Arts Whole' the Covent Garden based cultural review magazine asked me to visit the new William Blake exhibition at Goldsmiths. It was a very contemporary affair all Tracey Emin and reflective of the soiled and sordid state of Modern British Art. It was called 'Thongs of Innocence & Experience'.
I’m tired and hot now. I’m worried I’ve been burning the candle at both ends. There’s wax on my trousers and a wick on the carpet.
I can’t stop smiling.
“Like the flower and the scent of summer, like the sun and the shine
Well the truth may come in strange disguises, send the message to your mind.
Acintya bheda bheda tattva, TATTVA”
October 21, 2003
I saw her! I saw her!
I’d been in bed for the past four days with a sort of cold. It’s not flu it’s just every morning when I wake up its grey and cold and what’s the point of getting dressed? What’s the point of eating breakfast?
But I had to post a parcel and when I finally staggered out of the flat there she was! Her green eyes gazing out of a scratch scarred bus window.
She got off in front of me.
She smiled in my direction.
I dropped a parcel.
I gazed after her as she walked away down the pavement. God I’d like to take her up the aisle.
She was a hundred yards away when I found myself slowly tottering after her. They say love is blind well I saw the light.
It was a twenty minute walk to her flat in North London. Twice I nearly lost sight of her dark blue coat, but I managed to catch up with her.
O rapture! O joy! When love finally lands in your heart it feels like everything is sharper and more betterful. Bang!
We reached her house and she fumbled for the keys. In, in she went as I dived in to the hedge. Her bush is beautiful.
I crouched and waited. And waited. Painful jabs of hedgerow sticking in to me. Still I waited. I felt like David Blaine but without the eggs.
It began to get dark when the door finally opened. It was a large man. I leapt out of the bushes!
He asked gruffly who the bitch I was. I explained that I was from the charity scope. You must be mental he said. I didn’t understand. I explained we were selling things for charity and did he want to buy my watch. He said okay then.
I left at twenty to seven all stiff from crouching, with bruised shoulders and pricks all over my body. I also didn’t have a watch.
I did have this though – a letter addressed to the house! I managed to pick it up and stuff it in to my pocket when the large man wasn’t watching.
Now I know her name AND her address. Miss ------ I love you.
“It's there in the eyes of the children, in the faces smiling in the windows.
You can come on out, come on open the doors, brush away the tears of freedom
Now we're here, there's no turning back, we have each other, we have one voice
Hand in hand we will lay the tracks, because the train is coming to carry you home
Come dance with me, come on and dance into the light, everybody dance into the light.”
Heaney? Shakespeare? Kipling?
No.
Phil Collins.
The Lyric Laureate, the poet of pop.
I walked home bruised and smiling; it’s a wonderful, wonderful world.
October 16, 2003
I’ve just been reading the August issue of Cosmopolitan in the loo.
There are ten easy tell tale signs that a man fancies you. I wonder if they work in reverse.
Been to the grocers five times today. She wasn’t there at all.
Potatoes for dinner.
October 15, 2003
The Snooks are on holiday in Mexico at the moment so I’ve got the run of the flat to myself.
It’s funny, but when you live with people you spend the whole time wanting to be alone and suddenly when they’re not here it seems very quiet.
Last night when I ate my beef meal I thought about her. It was M&S.
A ready meal for one and I was sitting at the table pretending she was there. We had a glass of wine and I even lit a candle.
This morning I went to the grocers again. She was hardly likely to be there again. Lightening never strikes twice. With me it hardly strikes at all.
I was panicked in to buying more potatoes.
Writing is going very slowly today. Can’t seem to concentrate.
On the plus side, you can find out which wife of Henry VIII you are here:
Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?
this quiz was made by the groovy ghouls at Spookbot
October 14, 2003
I’ve met the most amazing person.
A beautiful green eyed girl with charcoal black hair and an elfish smile.
I nearly dropped my potatoes.
I was in the grocers and there she was. Stuffing dirty parsnips in to a bag. It was see through.
I am in love with her.
She paid with loose change and smiled at me as she walked out.
I want to marry her.
October 13, 2003
Well that was a long tomorrow!
Sorry for the delay in logging up but my pipes burst! The sh*t hit the fan. All my plumbing mess went everywhere.
It even sploshed on my ‘Front Bomb’! My computer is covered in the stuff- I’ve got a dirty Mac.
Luckily for me the plumbers arrived and fixed it down with a spanner. A spanner in the works is not always a bad thing!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!
My writing has been much delayed by this, but I’m writing some bits and boobs for the Highbury Gazette and hopefully the Guardian are interested in some of my sports writing journalism.
I watched a programme about Henry VIII on the telly last night starring Ricky Gervais as Henry (I think).
I’m glad I’m not married to Henry VIII!! He’d probably have chopped my head off too! Then he would have had seven wives.
Reheated Friday night’s takeaway. There’s still some left.
P.S. The answer was George.
October 06, 2003
It’s not easy being a writer. I think it was Tom Watts who said that.
No, I don’t mean Tom Waits, I mean the bloke who played Lofty in the telly programme Eastenders.
It’s a soap opera about cockneys set in the East End of London. Lofty was a character in it, although Lofty wasn’t the character’s real name. A bit like the fact that Bill Baily’s real name is ‘Mark’ and the Queen’s real name is ‘Elizabeth’.
As many of you know, Tom is now a writer and he ghost wrote David Beckham’s biography. He sat in a sheet for weeks at the word processor.
Well Tom was right. It’s extremely hard. I’m sitting in my knickers trying to toss off my Front Bomb.
Front Bomb is the name of my memoirs of the Iraq war with Iraq which I covered earlier this year for the media. It’s going to have some brilliant pictures in it that I took there of bombs and guns and dying.
Unfortunately some of the photographs were lost when I threw the camera away. It was disposable. I forgot to get it developed though.
I would force a sample on you, but I’m a bit shy. Later.
Writing this book is so difficult it strains the mental energy. Alan Bennett only writes for 2 hours every day. It’s taken me 10 minutes to write this web log.
See what I mean?
Jonathan’s Mental Quiz: In Eastenders the character of Lofty had a real name. What was it? Answer tomorrow.
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