Author Archives: Alasdair

Vagaries of Memory

Two weird things happened to me last night. One, I watched The Avengers. Yes, the movie. The really bad one. I don’t know why I did it. Two, I not only remembered what I dreamt, but it was deeply bizarre. It wasn’t actually a dream. It was a replay of a morning in my life, from January 1997, while I was living in Edinburgh. Like, a complete one, as far as I recall. I woke up and felt totally disoriented, like the last 4 and half years of my life hadn’t happened. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be in The Living Room in Edinburgh, spending money I couldn’t afford on cheering my girlfriend up. (And wondering where my hair had gone…)

I haven’t thought about that morning in years, and suddenly, it’s all there, like it’s happening right now and I’m waking up discovering that there are cresent marks on my palms from where I had my fists clenched in my sleep and and was digging the nails in, like I did that morning. I’d put it down to doing that in my sleep, and the sensation triggering the memory, except that the clenched fists happened quite late on in the morning, and I recall dreaming a lot of what lead up to them beforehand…

Tarts

New month, new Tart. You know the drill. Although I am rather left wondering: who stole June? I mean, I know it only has thirty days, but it feels like about three since I was linking to it last time. And then being told that I shouldn’t recommend my friend’s work. Bollocks to that. Check out their interview with Antony. And buy Frightening Curves. Use the information there to pre-order it, or you may have trouble finding it.

Other things you ought to be reading in Tart: Dear Kady Mae. Funny and vicious as hell. Read This Or Die – About Age of Bronze: A Thousand Ships, this month. Fuck it, read the whoel thing.

Mortality

So I went out early on Saturday morning for coffee with an old friend in who happened to be in town for the day. Turned out that that was literally all we had time for. One coffee. Fifteen minutes to briefly catch up with an old friend, and off we we went, our seperate ways.

But I found out why they were in town. To see a heart specialist. They had to rush off to get to their hospital appointment, hence the rather hurried coffee.

So I wound up sitting there in Borders on Charing Cross Road, reflecting on this. That’s (possibly) four people I know with serious heart problems (excluding my Dad). Not one of them is over thirty. Two of them are younger than me. One of them needs a transplant. Heart and Lung, in fact. I haven’t spoken to her in over a year, something that leaves me feeling deeply, deeply shitty. The other two have been treated, and should be more or less fine.

The friend I was with Saturday morning, it’s too early to say. It might turn out to be nothing, or it could be something serious, but it’s sobering to realise that your friends may have serious health problems. It also leaves me wondering: why is it that it’s always the nicest people that these things happen to?

Brick Tumours

“Cancer of the city. The rot has set in, make no mistake. We dispatch men with hammers and tools of violence throughout the metropolis, to cut out the diseased buildings, to make the place healthy again. To tear down the old, dying structures and sow the ground with salt. We will build a new century out of the ruins of the old, even if we must first create the ruins ourselves. This is the price of progress.”

Recovery

Finally. Back up and running. Now all I have to do is wait for several days worth of e-mail to come crashing back in one go. Assuming that the various servers that owe me mail haven’t given up on sending it entirely, that is. If you’ve sent me mail recently, and I haven’t got back to you in the next day or so, than for god’s sake re-send it. Even if it’s just trivial crap – I want to be sure that everything really is working properly again…

On Listening

What is it about self-loathing that makes it so easy and appealing? I ask this having just watched one of my best friends dump out one of the most unpleasant pieces of self loathing I’ve seen in a very long time on a message board we both frequent.

I mean, I’m not exactly without my own neuroses, but generally it takes a prolonged hammering at my mental state before I become sufficiently off kilter as to really give in to them (like, for example, several months of self-inflicted stress… :) ). Most of the time, I’m well balanced enough to know that I’m probably not as [stupid/malformed/unpleasant/insert other self-pitying adjective in here] as I think I am on a bad day. In my experience, it’d be a great thing if everyone woke up to someone telling them that they’re better than they thing they are. Mind you, most people refuse to listen when they’re told that. We get shy, get embarrassed and in that state kind of forget that we’ve been complimented, or assume that the person saying nice things is either insincere (and wants something) or is in some way mad or defective. Basically, find an excuse to ignore the fact that they’ve been told something that doesn’t fit in with their view of themselves. God alone knows why. Frankly, I don’t get enough compliments to feel I can ignore the ones I do get…

Yet when someone deals our ego a blow, we listen. Much, much too hard.

Example: a little over eighteen months ago, I asked someone I knew out. She laughed in my face. I mean literally. The sensible reaction, and the view that I now hold is that she was, at best, a tactless and thoughtless cow, and frankly, I’m very glad it never went anywhere. Her view of me is no more accurate that my own most negative imaginings. Basically: fuck her, and the horse she rode in on.

The reaction I had then, on the other hand, was not so sensible, and involved an awful lot of misery and bitterness. Took me fucking ages to believe that I might actually be worth dating again (and of course, someone who doesn’t believe they’re worth dating doesn’t exactly do themselves any favours when it comes to letting people to persuade them otherwise).

I am, unsurprisingly, doing better these days, and lately, better than I have in a long time, having finally come to the realisation that self-deprecation is nor more attractive (or accurate) on me than it is on other people, and thus made an effort to stop doing it, both in terms of what I say out loud, and what I think inside my head. But given that it’s the same friend who made me realise this that is vomiting out self-loathing in public, I wonder why it is that they can see that my neurotic whinging is just that, and get really fed up of it (not that I blame them, mind you), and yet their own is apparently justified and accurate.

The moral of the story: No-one can convince you that you’re great but you. But y’know, other people might help, if you listen to them.

Literature

So, I’ve been wondering lately: why is it that so many of the things people present to me as “rules” I hear and go : “You what?”

Case in point: Sunday, Andrew claims that it’s a rule that paperback books are what people should bring to read in the park, because they’re more relaxing, more reminiscent of holidays. That this is what everyone does. Apparently, the fact that I think that this is horseshit is just me being difficult and willfully different again, and not in fact based on the fact that my Dad, my uncles, and indeed, everyone I’ve ever been on holiday with doesn’t seem to have paid any attention to whether or not something’s a paperback, but rather, to whether or not they want to read it. Christ, I know people that take big technical manuals with them on holiday, because they want to read them. A book’s a fucking book. Same words inside both the hardback and paperback editions. The only criteria I have for a “holiday” book is that it be thick and heavy enough to bend space around it. And even then, I take two, because I know I’ll finish them within days. This trip (assuming it arrives in time), I’m planning on taking Ackroyd’s “London: A Biography”, because I figure that’ll last me a while, and Thompson’s “The Great Shark Hunt”, because I like to have a little light re-reading available, and if I’m going to be poking about the states, I figure I ought to be reading one of the finest writers they’ve ever produced. I might even take “Infinite Jest” with me, and try and use the time to get it dealt with. Depends on whether or not London arrives, I guess.

I’ll probably slap a book of some sort on the Visor as well, as a back-up.

Escape

Days like today make me want Out. I’m a city kid, but today, I want nothing more than to drive down country lanes with summer music playing very loud, stop to buy cold drinks and picnic food in a village in the middle of nowhere, and watch the sun set from the top of a hill with a summer breeze in my hair. I need to get away from humans, and just relax away from anything that means anything. Just forget all those little, trivial things, and remind myself of what’s really important.

The best I can do is go and eat ice-cream down by the Thames in Putney. Whatever it was I did in my former life, I’m sorry.

Visuals 2

I’m just testing how well this looks with images slapped into it, before I make my mind up on a re-design. The photo is the alleyway opposite my office, heading toward the bus station. I’m sure you’re all fscainated to know that. I wouldn’t mention it, only I need some text to fill up the space, so I’m just churning out inane crap.

I probably ought to have done the sensible thing and used the Latin that newspapers use for sample copy.