Based On A Story By A Man Named Lear (That's Gerald Lear, Worst Writer In The World)

Today's tip for the top: If, when you are nose-deep and motorboating in the heaving bosom of the demon drink, you agree to do something in somewhat of a rash manner, don't ever write it in your diary. (I will just pause here to let you wipe the tears of laughter away from your beautiful eyes and refocus on your screen. Yeah, I've got a paper diary. Not for some neo-Luddite chic, just because I am guilty of massive O2 contractual idiocy and am shackled to my poxy not-iPhone for another six months at least) Because if you do, you will forget you've agreed to it, carry on down into the navel of the demon drink and filthily beyond, wake up the next morning, blithely continue about your day, and it could be weeks before you open your diary to the correct page and get slapped in the face by the biro-scratchings of your drunken self. And that can be a painful slappin'. Not to mention the small blush of shame at your bad penmanship.

Here's what I've agreed to do. Not exactly life-changing or horrifying, but still terrifying and exciting in equal measure: take part in National Novel Writing Month, or cutey-cutely, NaNoWriMo, which involves...yes, yes...! Writing a novel in a month. Pleasingly, the site counsels that quantity is a higher virtue than quality, setting an arbitrary target of 50,000 words in 30 days and not bothering with editing, plot structure, character development, or showing it to anyone else ever. Sounds like a good deal. So, in a useful warming up exercise designed to get the blood pumping through the writing cortex - or a slowly-expanding deadly leak of precious, precious writing oil on the hairpin bend of success (and guess which I'm going with, folks...) here's a few novel ideas I have been batting around like a cat on a frictionless surface. (No mu, you see. One for the physicists! *high-five, presumed in a vacuum*)

1. Warrrrrrr and Peace (Up A Lamppost)

A pretty sprawling tale, in all: there's a cast of thousands interacting and chatting and laughing and loving and screaming and dying and generally experiencing life to the very fullest. It's actually quite a dull read, until the dying moments, when it's suddenly revealed that THEY'RE ALL DOMESTIC DOGS!

Pros: good shock value with the ending, may tap into lucrative personalised novel market (starring Rover! Yes, your Rover!)

Cons: title may give it away just a teency skoosh, quite difficult to work in all the plot-relevant ball-licking and constant repetition of "sausages" without causing suspicion

2. The Wayfarers' Guide To The Universe

A normal English bloke suddenly discovers his curiously vehicularly-named best friend is an alien who takes him on a befuddled journey round a universe he can't comprehend whilst nursing an endless thirst for a good latte.

Pros: Could work in some mysterious number shenanigans, just like in Lost! Able to tack on unconvincing romance in the film version

Cons: Is it me, or does that sound...maybe a bit...familiar...?

3. Nnnnnnnyyyaaaaaahhhhhhhh

A Joycean stream of consciousness following a man trying to go about his daily business while really, really, really needing the toilet. Onesies, not twosies. This isn't Stalinist Russia.

Pros: Nice kinetic theme, could knock novel off in two days once on a roll. Heh, "roll". Heh, "stream".

Cons: ..oh.......ohhhhh no. Uh. I just have to go and change now.

4. Just Rested My Eyes

Tale of a very-late-twenties blogger who forgoes all other writing outlets and goes to live a hermit's life up a tree in Bishop Stortford to try and forget the shame of being reduced to cheap wee-wee jokes.

Pros: Would probably be quite easy to write, could be inspiring for other rubbish bloggers

Cons: Laptop stops working when soaked with tears, risk of self-referential meta black hole opening up and consuming whole planet

Hmm. T-minus, as the smart ones say, 7 hours until novel-writing start-me-do. And T-minus 6.5 hours before the real Olympic procrastination kicks in, this being procrastination on, at most, a spirited amateur level. I shall keep you posted, you lucky dickens.

Strangely, I Have No Problem With The Following: Chilling Out, Maxing, Cooling, Shooting B-Balls

Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream...

Hey, you know what, John? I think I will. Mm. Ahh. OK. There I float. Huh, this is actually quite nice. Splishy splash splash. I'll just get onto that turning mind off thing, except...um...those trees, the ones that were gliding past, they now seem to be more *flashing* past... And it's quite hard to relax when the not-so-gentle breeze is forming my hair into a horizontal windsock which is in turn trying to scythe my scalp from my skull in a scandalous scene of scurrilous...scintillating...sc... Jesus, what's that ear-splitting roaring? The roaring of a million gallons of water cascading wildly down into a chaotic, spiky killing foam? Oh, it's a million gallons of water cascading wildly down into a chaotic, spiky killing foam. Oh, great! Thanks so very much, John. Would it have been so hard to write "relax and float downstream, but first ensure you are not on the Niagra"?! Damn you, Lenno-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o...

I think what I am trying to say is this: I'm not very good at relaxing. As I write, I am three-tenths of the way into a holiday, but no classy chilled Sancerre on a sun-baked piazza will be passing through my skint lips. No no no. Home is where the heart is, and home is where my heart is pacing from room to room shaking its little ventricle angrily at the walls. So; to relax. What can be done? Here's a few options I have been digging my hands into my pockets and loping grimly towards.

1. Why don't you go and get pampered?

Good point, pointless questioning writing device! I should probably get my hair done at some point soon, as I am tired of frightening birds, the hapless little fluttery idiots. Ah, but...this is not something I can get down and relax to. Here's the thing: I have both an enormous freakish potato of a head and just absurd amounts of hair. So whenever I do partake of a trip to the salon, there is always a guilty weariness to my trudge. Those poor devils. I can see it as I walk in. The stylist's eyes sweep across my mangy mane, and her smile falters ever so slightly before hardening into something frosted with hostility. She knows the next two hours of her life minutely dividing my hair into tiny segments and painting it with bleach will be repetitive, boring, stupid and difficult. It's amazing how having your hair done by someone who hates every strand of it can make you a little tense around the shoulders.

(Oh, and don't even get me started on the head massage post-washing. The moment the fingers turn from mere functional conditioner dispersement to passionate scalp rubbage, I turn into Mark Corrigan. "Oh God, the massage. Should I close my eyes? Might be rude not to...don't want her to think I'm not appreciating her work. And I look a bit stupid just staring wide-eyed at the ceiling like a hamster who's just spotted a slavering Alsatian. But closing my eyes feels a bit too sexual. God, I hate this touchy stuff. She doesn't actually want to have sex with me, why is she doing what could accurately be classified as foreplay? By the same logic, I may as well start groaning with pleasure and proffering people my erect penis." Luckily, I then remember I don't have a penis.)

2. Um... OK, just go and and get completely plastered or something, I don't know.

Ah, yes. Like that old advert said: "If relaxing's your aim, make boozing your game. CAUTION: side-effects of boozing may include sudden bursts of hysterical honesty, general whinging, massively inappropriate over-sharing, ill-advised attempts to chat up horrendous American musicians with frankly stupid moustaches, the inability to locate Charing Cross despite walking round and round and round and round and round Trafalgar Square, drowsiness when in presence of night buses and the comfy shoulders of silent goths, and a magnetic attraction to Mitcham."

It didn't even mention the hangover shame. Groo. And: not relaxing.

3. Fine, fine! Jesus! Why don't you just bugger off to somewhere windswept and isolated, where you can lose yourself in the russet-tinged beauty of the mountainous landscape, oh, and shove it up your arse while you're at it?

Um... OK.

So, I am now nine-tenths of the way through the holiday, and it's taken me to the wonderful island of Skye, the wonderfulness of which is entirely not captured above, and here, finally, finally... As I turn round in my seat of my hired 2 litre Ford Mondeo after driving from Glasgow to Skye over 200 miles of winding country roads round lochs and through glens and Scottish Scottishness (where at one point I quite pathetically squeaked "Let's conquer Ben Nevis!" cos that is seemingly not over yet) and saw my loved ones, white with fear, frozen in horrified expressions, bleeding profusely from self-inflected nails-digging-into-palm wounds, and I finally feel totally relaxed. So thank you, Skye. Thank you for teaching me relaxation is delivering one-liners to an imaginary Top Gear camera in the dashboard while my family prays for deliverance through unuttered screams.

Nice.

Picture The Scene: Roaring Fire, Overflowing Bookshelves, Scent Of Slight Abuse Of Power

Good evening, class. Please come into my beautifully well-appointed study. Tonight we're going to pick up where we left last time, and consider what it is about writing that can so enrapture one's heart and muddle up one's rational thinking processes. Let's start by considering the words kindly left by M Bete de Jour. No, no, you can't see them sitting all the way over there. Come a little closer. Here, I'll shuffle up my lavishly overstuffed Chesterfield. But not quite enough for anyone's comfort except mine. Just let the tops of your thigh awkwardly rest against me. That's the way. Ahh, yes. That is definitely the way.

Anyway! Over to La Bete:

I think we fall for writers because writing is a short cut to the soul. Words are everything, aren't they? Most of the time. But sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes writers lie. I don't mean the twists and tweaks that I (for example) perpetrate to keep myself hidden (although some people would count those as lies of a most dastardly order, I'm sure), but big emotional lies.... Actually, maybe writers lying isn't the problem - maybe it is just that we read them wrong. I mean, there's no way that Kurt Vonnegut, for example, who I think is one of the warmest and most decent human beings I've ever read - there's no way that he could have been a bad person in real life. I just don't believe that. But then there are other writers, who may be brilliant and outrageous and incendiary and inspiring even - no names mentioned, but maybe your David falls into this category - who in real life are wholly self-centred and utterly incapable of properly relating to other human beings or opening themselves up. Yet because we love their writing, we assume they're wonderful people. Maybe we just blind ourselves with our admiration.

OK. Let's all hold hands and turn to each other and laugh and run and gaily plunge right into the big 'un. Writing is a short cut to the soul. A distinction first, between fiction writing and the kind of stuff I want to refer to more, blogs, columns, confessional, personal stuff. Not that there might be much difference; it must be very easy for a person with a modicum of imagination (that's a standard scientific unit - 1 modicum equals 12,000 Boormans, and no, I will never let this grudge lie) to create a character purporting to be themselves that is every bit as fictional as the most heroic and sympathetic of imaginary folk. Assuming that there is no cynical manipulation, and what goes on the page or screen is them, it IS their soul bared in saucy textuality, is that the real them, or maybe a more polished, confident representation of the best of them, and is that what we fall for?

I mean, I dunno about other bloggers, but this is not what I sound like in real life. There's something about putting yourself and your experiences and sometimes your innermost, most boring thoughts onto a blog, then sharing them with potentially everyone with a working fucking laptop thanks very MUCH Dell with your stupid graphics card that literally can't stand the heat and blows up 2 weeks after warranty...excuse me, I must wipe the angry foam away before it leaks onto my little netbook and I am stranded from the land of the internet forever, clinking sadly like the Saucepan Man as the cloud moves away from the top of the Faraway Tree... Yes, sharing them with potentially anyone, that is paradoxically and simultaneously really cowardly and monumentally overconfident and arrogant. I don't have my real name anywhere near this, although most people who read it know me *waves maniacally till wrist snaps* because I'm petrified that someone I vaguely know will read it and think it's crap. And it will affect what they think of me in real life. That is cowardly. But also, I am not a gregarious sort, and there is no way I would ever go up to someone at a party (or indeed go to a party) and go "Hey! Wanna hear my views on Derren Brown? The G20? Earlsfield Library? Pull up a pew! It'll take hours and hours and hours!" But, and this is arrogant, I'm perfectly happy to do it on the internet. Maybe because I don't have to watch them going glassy-eyed with boredom, then glassy-faced with boredom-related death.

Point? Oh, must I? OK. Point. I agree that writing is a short cut to the soul. I think what comes out onto this blog is as close to me as anyone's ever gonna get, but a me that a lot of people in my real life don't see, a me that is confident, outgoing, shiny, and has absolutely perfect, and I mean heartbreakingly, angels weep, heaven itself is ripped asunder by the unending beauty of it all perfect, tits. And when I read other people's blogs and columns, I assume that's what's coming through too. (Not the tits. OK, mostly the tits.) So if the substance is there, the soul is there to be connected with, and all the crap of normal life that gets in the way, that makes you self-conscious and self-centred, closed and unresponsive, and frankly human, is not, it makes it very easy to think you're falling for someone.

OK, but can that ever be real? Wellllll. Not in my sorry experience. But maybe for someone, somewhere it will be. I hope so. That would be nice. Not me though.

Last thing, and then I promise I will never mention him again, cos, you know, as my sidebar will always state, OBSESS MUCH?! I made a trip into Big London today to the Big Foyles to buy Mr Cattermole's book. I found it, in a rare moment of Dewey Decimal System Hilarity, in the Relationships section surrounded by the lurid pinks and reds of various sexy sex sex SEX guides. I quite wanted to take a picture but a) woman in large army coat slightly flushed and sticky from brisk walk hanging suspiciously round the Kama Sutra? Not sure what impression that would beam out into the world but I'm pretty sure it's exactly the wrong one and b) there was a ridiculously well-adjusted couple giggling over the more salacious books, presumably before going and having a ridiculously well-adjusted shag that no mere written words could ever improve. Sod 'em. I'm sure they sod each other. Urgh. Anyway, I'm about three chapters in, and I highly recommend it, but possibly for not reading on a crowded train where you will laugh and people will peek and their peeking eyes will see extraordinary streams of filth and their noses will crinkle and their feet will shuffle away. Though, actually, more room. Yay! And I am looking forward to seeing if I will, by the end of the book, be utterly enamoured or merely completely infatuated. It's nice to have choices.

Warning: Your Scrolling Finger Will Get Tired And Agitated

Talk about being totally behind the loop. I'm so late to the party with this guy, it's a Wednesday afternoon, the empties are mouldering in the section of landfill marked "Ha! They thought they were recycling!", and my continual efforts to enter the host's bedroom and deposit my coat have resulted in a worryingly large and sudden police presence. Sorry, what guy? This guy. This guy, who has already progressed through unknown blogger to book deal and out the other side. This guy, who I chanced upon a few months back but only fully got into two days ago, after a surprising incident where I was at work, idly reading his heart-wrenching post about his cat dying, and suddenly found myself actually weeping. I don't weep. I occasionally snuffle, maybe a sob or two will work their way out when I'm feeling particularly slighted, but mostly I favour the single dignified tear rolling down the cheek in a satisfyingly picturesque manner. But this made me weep, at work, in front of a bemused colleague more used to seeing me flailing angrily about myself and muttering dark accursed words in the direction of our useless IT department, in between cheerily making cups of tea for everyone in sight.

So, Bete de Jour, or Stan Cattermole, is a blogger who interests me thusly: He writes about his life as, in his own words which we must believe as he's not about to give us pictorial evidence and all power to him, an ugly, ugly man. But through his writing, which is by turns silly high-pitched hoot-producing hilarious, so heartbreaking it actually removes your heart and squeezes it cruelly in front of your face like in Indiana Jones, and frankly at times eye-wateringly HOT, he comes across as entirely perfect. If you don't believe me, I invite your disbelieving eyes to focus themselves on his comments box, which is generally packed full of internet females with their faces set to swoon. Which brings me back to an old chestnut: why is it that we can virtually fall in love just through writing?

I have prior in this area, and in homage to the wonderful confessional style of Mr Cattermole, though not with even a tenth of his skill - please expect the hooting and heartwrenching to be at an absolute minimum, and your expression to be unmoved from this position :-| - here's the story of me and the sports writer.

Let's call him David, and I'll curb my enthusiasm for telling you his real name (oh-ho! Let me just award myself a peanut for that one) and let's say he worked for the Times, which he didn't, writing about football, which he didn't. So David the football writer had a real-time column of sorts, which had a bit of an interactivity angle, where people would email in and get their name published against various witty banterage that David would pass comment upon, which would cause a small frisson of glee. One evening myself and two good friends, one human, one gin-bottle-shaped, were having a rather intense communion, decided to write in and got a few emails published. Two thirds of the party were big fans of David (the other third merely exhibited glassy stoicism) so got quite giddy with the minute amount of fame and recognition. The evening passed into alcoholic coma stage, and I thought no more of it.

Till the next day, when I checked my inbox and there was an email from David.

My heart did a little funky dance as I read the email. It was friendly, passing amused judgement on the slightly drunken state of our emails, but was otherwise unremarkable - apart from it coming from a famous writer who didn't know me from Adam, of course. I didn't really know what to do, so I replied in equally open but non-committal tones, with a slight aftertaste of WTF. Not expecting anything more to come of it, I got on with my week.

Then another email. Which I replied to. Then another one. Not thousands a day, or anything, maybe one a week, but they kept coming and I kept replying. He seemed like a thoroughly nice chap, and a great writer. So on it went.

I should at this point it was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like the dreadful film You've Got Mail. There wasn't any of that self-conscious, slightly wry, "I feel closer to you than anyone I know, so I can share with you my theory on why I'm the only one in the world who understands Godfather III" cruddington. I just, if you can possibly believe such a thing, blurted a load of words onto virtual paper in a misguided attempt to be funny.

But he seemed to like it. He kept emailing. It was fun, it was illicit, I started getting an odd but familiar lurch in my stomach when I opened my email. This was the greatest shot in the arm my self-esteem could ever get - this random writer, who I really admired, wanting to read what I wrote, and getting ever so slightly more flirtatious with every reply. So when, as was inevitable, he hesitantly floated the idea that we should, shock amongst horrors, meet up for real, I was Imbruglia'd. (Torn. Must I do everything for you?) Don't get me wrong, I'm not of the Bete de Jour school of thought that I'm cursed with a face that looks like a bag of elbows, but I'm aware that I'm pretty unremarkable. ..Sorry, can you still see me all right behind that enormous guffing great violin that's just appeared and is trying to bow your eyes out with its sad little song? Ignore it, I'll carry on. Anyway, as I considered David's offer of a quick drink somewhere, the words "I WILL BE A CRASHING DISAPPOINTMENT" kept barging through my head like a couple of bailiffs.

But I acquiesced. And we met up. And I got stonkingly drunk, and he'd just split up with his live-in girlfriend, and the combination of those factors resulted in me clonking him over the head and dragging him back to my hovel by his hair. And then proceeded a quite horrific period of six months or so, where we would periodically meet, pretend we were just mates, innit! s'all fine! until I (it was always, always me) got drunk enough to actually get over my innate Britishness and fear of intimacy and general hang-ups, and we would retire to somewhere usually uncomfortable to do things which I would never properly remember.

But I liked him. I really, really, *really* liked him. So when I had finally had enough of this strange one-sided fuck-buddy arrangement, and sort of tried to say, well, hey, maybe we could try maybe doing a relationship type of thing, well, OK, not even that, but you know, I'm not talking about two hearts beating as one death do us part but maybe YOU could just kiss ME, touch the side of my face, maybe, just once, what did I get? Nuh-uh. No way Jose. And why? Cos I really wasn't the person that I came across as over email.

Needless to say, I only saw him eight or nine times more and that was totally IT. Kidding. I did of course run home and cry my little face off, and have barely seen him since... A couple of lunches, of course never, ever mentioning the whole heartbreak elephant that was stamping in our soup, and once they fizzled out, nothing. So, over email, I'm pretty amazing. Real life? Not so much.

This mental fence did, as you may well imagine, take me quite a few attempts to clear. Many, many brain-horses were shot for glue.

Gosh, what was my point? This is the longest post ever, apologies. Ah, yes, Mr Cattermole. On his blog, and through his book which I am going to buy as soon as I can find it, as everywhere I go says that they have it on their shelves and don't, he is funny, warm, amazing, fantastic, beautiful, inspiring, thesaurus fail, and boffo. Is it a carefully crafted facade, designed to twang the fallopian tubes of the silly wimmins like me, or is he actually perfect? And how can stuff like this come across so heavily in how people write?

Dunno.

Well, that was going to be the meat of the post, not an incredibly long-winded confessional booth whine and then a massive, massive Bete de Jour scrotal massage, but dear readers, it is long past bedtime and it will have to wait till another day. Hold it! ..OK, now you may celebrate. Hootenanny!