Alasdair Watson

Did it get this late? It’s almost ten at night, and I’m in the office. I got stuck into 9A and a few other jobs, and I look up and it’s ten. I was hoping to go home and get some writing done tonight, but I don’t think that’ll be happening, somehow. I’ll finish up here, then I’m off home for a glass of whiskey and a bit of quality time with a book.

Sad reflection on my life though: I can be in the office until ten pm without noticing, and the most exciting thing I have to go home to is whiskey and a book?

On the other hand, at least the whiskey and the book won’t be pissed off that I lost three hours in the middle of some code.

Written in response to the question: “Tell me about the teachers that changed you life” for a forum I’m on:

Mr Scales, my Sixth form English teacher. Absurdly intelligent, and mad as a loon. I could tell ridiculous stories about this man at some length. The one about him performing his music live on a Saturday morning kids TV show, and being cut away from rather hastily for being to violent, for example.

But with specific regard to his impact on me:

I used to represent my school at debating and public speaking, which Mr Scales was also responsible for. I was pretty good at it. Achieved some of the highest scores in the history of the school.

There was a tradition at my school that if you represented the school in public speaking, you would save the headmaster some work and do your speech at the following assembly. Not only was I the first student ever not to do this, I was denied the honour twice.

In my lower sixth year, Mr Scales came to me and said that there was a local competition being put on at which he would like me to speak. It was quite a posh do (there would be dinner, and everything), and I was a contrary sod, so I chose to do a speech on “Why Christianity is Crap”.

He didn’t bat an eye. Said that would be fine.

So I get to the venue, dressed in my formalwear. It’s full of little old ladies. There’s a painting of the last supper on one wall, a crucifix on the other. The audience is composed of hatched-faced little old ladies in tweed and pearls, and their frightened-looking husbands. Suddenly, I know I’m not going to win. Mr Scales has known this for a while, and said nothing.

The following year, he comes back to me, grinning, and asks if I want to enter the same competition again. The food was good, so I agreed, but added that I had no idea what to do for a speech.

He suggested “Why Satanism is great.” And because we both knew I had no chance of winning, he made some other suggestions, basically along the lines of “ignore the rules, forget about speaking to time or the other requirements, just have a laugh”.

My high school english teacher encouraged me to pace about the stage at a formal event, dressed in black leather, chainsmoking like a maniac, ranting and gesticulating, quoting liberally from Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible, and basically keep a room full of little old ladies rooted to their seats with horror and disapproval for twenty minutes.

I learned valuable lessons from that.

Ninth Art is one year old today. (Well, actually, we turned one year old on the 1st of May, but we’ve just entered our 53rd straight week of publishing.) We’ve had new material every Monday and Friday without fail for a year. Most of the credit for this belongs with Andrew, who co-ordinates everything, and who works like a mad bastard to make sure we have all the content we need. He and Antony are the ones that actually have to do stuff without fail every week – I just have to make sure that their mad whims can be catered to. But we’ve made it. A full year publishing twice weekly, without a break.

World largely unchanged. May lapse back into coma, simply because I have nothing better to do. It’s Friday night. I am not yet sufficiently alive to want to go out and party, but I’d quite like to do something. But there’s fuck all on at the cinema, and I can’t think of anything interesting to do, or indeed, anyone l know likely to be at a lose end. And I can’t very well resort to ringing people up with a demand to be entertained, can I?

Can I?

Between the whiskey, the cold and the exhaustion, I’m about ready to die. I’ve just been dumping out the last of the ideas that occured to me while recording the latest spate of Triple A articles for Ninth Art, and I’m so glad I have the next few days off work.

Coma happens now.

The sky’s fading from blue to pink, here. I’m drinking some seriously evil coffee (the condensed dregs of what was left in the office pot – lots of caffeine, but tastes stale as fuck), listen to Nick Cave scream out “Loverman” at absurd volume and working late on 9A – writing the first stage of the long-overdue overhaul of our image upload process, while also doing my semi-regular check for sites that link to us, jsut to gauge how we’re doing. Favourite comment beside the link so far is from here: “Ninth Art is to be trusted”. If we go for a T-shirt at any point, that should be the slogan.

I’m in the office. I have been here since before eleven on Saturday morning.

But at least the e-mail to blog feature works. Slowly, and late, but it works.

Utilikilts. God help me, I’m actually tempted to buy one. I fear my mind may be going.

This is really beginning to irritate me. I’ve got the rough re-plot of 2 BEAT SIDEWAYS done. I know the character arcs, I’m happy with the pacing and all the remains to do is write the pitch. I just can’t seem to get it to hang right. There’s no punch to the opening, and I can’t hit the right notes – I think I’m going to have to cut a key element out. It’s too big to make it just one part of a larger story, and trying to play it down just doesn’t sit right. But if I lose it, the first couple of issues fall over and die. Shit.

Tonight I shall hit my brain with coffee and whiskey, and see where it gets me.

So, the damn thing doesn’t want to work. I’ll fix it later in the day, but for now, thanks to Fiona who pointed out that it wasn’t working right. So, instead of buying me gifts, you lot can send her your finest meats and cheeses (or if it’s easier, just buy something from her wish list) instead.