This Is This

I tend to avoid talking to family life on here because we’ve all got our own lives to enjoy and bear, and I don’t care a snap for mine being of any enforced consequence.

But today my daughter, 5, came up to me with a piece of paper she folded in half. She delivered it with a sense of bashful achievement.

It said:

You are the best person in my life

I fought back against a sudden riptide of tears.

“I love you, Daughter,” I said to the eyes above her sweet smile, “OK? Don’t forget that.”

“But what if I do forget it?” she asked.

“I won’t ever let you.”

Tomorrow: The play’s the, … (snap. snap.) - thing…

I don’t know quite how my head works, but for some reason I just spent an hour trying to make the longest list made up of words where you start with one letter and add one letter at a time.

I had a seven

I
pi
pie
pike
spike
spiker
spikers

I got a six with

a
at
ate
late
plate
plates

But then I got an eight

a
as
bas
base
baste
baster
blaster
blasters

Bas, as in bas-relief, like in maps, but it means “stop” in Hindi, from the Persian, but it’s in the OED. A fluke, I’ll give you that, but if anyone can get undisputed nine, then you’re better than me (which is a dubious mantle anyway, but it’s yours).

Tomorrow: Don’t call me, daughter

Read only what you enjoy and what you have to. Life’s too short for anything else - reading what you should is like trying to be everyone’s best friend. It may be a good thing, but it’s not right .

Remember two things: however hard our times may be, however testing our trials, they are, like everything, forever passing and that those of us who have known love will know it always.

See sunsets so beautiful that it wouldn’t be right to talk about them.

Take comfort in those you cherish and admire the wonder - it’s proof that the science of emotion will not be known.

Experience the power and simplicity of laughter and let’s have cause to ask ourselves, every fucking day if necessary: What shall we do with the rest of our lives?

Tomorrow: On to the next one

Here’s a little segment called “What I’m Reading” where I like to discuss -well, you get the idea. It’s a little self-centred, but then you’re reading this so you might be interested. If not, there are plenty of other sites on the internet you can read. I’m told. I’m always interested to know what my favourite bands’ favourite bands are, so maybe it’s a bit like that, although at some considerable stretch.

I like McSweeney’s, which is a quarterly compendium of both ramshackle and misfit writing, edited by Dave Eggers, who himself wrote “A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius”, which brings us to Book 1.

Book 1: The Better Of McSweeney’s - Volume One - Issues 1-10

This is an anthology of the first ten issues of McSweeney’s, as mentioned above. The first line of the first short story, “The Ceiling”, starts beautifully: “There was a sky that day, sun-rich and open and blue.”

There was a sky? Fuck me.

The story was by Kevin Brockmeier, who deserved inquiries. So…

Book 2: The Brief History Of The Dead - Kevin Brockmeier

Stark, inventive writing about a city inhabited by the gone but not forgotten. I’ve barely started it, but it looks good. Plus, he’s associated with McSweeney’s, which as I said, is edited by Dave Eggers, so…

Book 3: You Shall Know Our Velocity! - Dave Eggers

I’m looking forward to reading this so much that I’m setting myself the task of reading all other books on this list before I start this one.

Book 4: Never Have Your Dog Stuffed - Alan Alda

There’s an irony in this. I wanted this when it came out, but it was only available in hardback in the UK. I asked my dad for the paperback last year when he was in New York, but I only got twenty pages into it. Not to worry, thunk I, I’ll take my one on holiday. But I didn’t read a page because I bought the books listed above. And the paperback is now available in the UK.

I’m a terribly slow reader and I should invest as much time in books as I do in watching TV, and to be honest I read maybe two books a year.

I mean, I read, but it’s mostly fleeting stuff: stories, anecdotes, myths, stuff I want to learn about. I’ll look up tales and accounts, poems, lyrics, read about people and the things they have done, blogs, radio programmes, podcasts, scour encycopedias, but books? Like the thirty pages a day thing? From the same story? Picking up where I left off? Rarely.

My aim for this year is to spend more time reading.

Have a good weekend - I’ll be posting on Saturday and Sunday like normal, but I don’t presume to tell you what to do.

So if you’re away then enjoy yourself - and I’ll meet you back here, OK?

Tomorrow: You maybe better had

My name is Cliff and I have a stationery fetish.

I have spoken about this to my friends (spiral)note(pad)ably Wendy, who is part of my support network.

I say support, she’s fucking useless actually, because I talk about the benefits of sharpening pencils with a knife to give a harder edge and I can see her glazing over and getting ideas, because she’s the same as me.

I write this on a day when I was scoring legal pads in an undisclosed Staples in New York for Meg, who expressed an interest here.

It wasn’t the full-sized legal pads she craved - it was the smaller ones; the almost A5 ones - junior legal. Barely legal. Anyway, I got them.

There’s a great line in You’ve Got Mail (what?!) where Tom Hanks emails Meg Ryan, fantasising about buying her a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils.

I bought a box of pencils there, too. You can’t buy #2 pencils with eraser tips in the UK (despite the comedy potential of asking for a “Number two and rubbers”), so I bought a whole box of forty eight. Honestly my little face as I took them up to the till…

Number Two pencils rock. They are soft. They wear down before they look all gnarled and haggard. They are impermanent. They wrote this, before it went up online, where these words remain. There’s an amount of “going, going… here” about it.

So it’s with no shame that I admit my stationery fetish and that I stand up to be counted, and (with any luck) indexed, laminated and filed.

I am proud to be, even in this technological and logical age, among a growing number of office supply enthusiasts, who are not only marching on, but bringing reinforcements.

Related posts that deal with sharpening pencils with knives*:
Paperblog Writer
Five Stupid Things On My Desk

*and other signs that I’ve been blogging too long

Tomorrow: What am I reading?

One of the many pranks I wanted to pull in New York was to point to a tall building by the East River and say in passing, “That place? They’ve got folks from all over in there. It’s like the United Nations or something.”

The joke would of course be that I would be talking about the actual United Nations building.

Never happened.

The other came to mind because I was staying on 57th Street opposite Carnegie Hall, and the joke to which the punchline is when asked for directions to where* is: “Practice.”

Sadly, no one asked.

Had they, though, had they genuinely inquired: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” I would have answered: “Yeah, it’s right there. Across the street. That’s it.”

And then I would have adopted a pained expression, muttered a “fuck” and shouted at them desperately as they crossed the road - “PRACTICE!!!”

But like I said, it never happened.

But, oh man, if it had? What a blog post that would have made. And you’d read it and we’d all have a laugh about it and I’d poke the fire, shake my head and say “Swear to god,” and ask who could use another beer.

But I’m not really that guy.

*Love you me, love I’s grammar

That’s it now. No more posts about my holidays.

Tomorrow: My pen is

I was in a souvenir shop where they had those touristy New York licence plates with people’s names on. I looked for those of my kids but they only had Daughter’s so I didn’t get any.

When I was a kid, people would always find their names, because in southeast Pennsylvania in the late 1970’s, most boys were called Nick, Mikey, Chad, Paul, Kevin, Joe or Chris. You had a couple of Marshals, a smattering of Ralphs, a Lenny, a Lester - even a Joachim - but mostly, boys had one of a half dozen names. Girls were mostly Heather, Rebecca, Rachel, Jen, Janine, Alice, Steph and Kimberly.

Now you’re got Casper, Yolanda, Shaniqua, Molisha, Moleesha, Kai, Pixar, Geraldo, Raoul - everything.

Yes, I know it’s a testament to our multicultural society, but when I was growing up, everyone had pretty similar names - and that went for black kids, white kids, hispanics, asians, everyone.

Now the licence plate tourist snaggers have no chance. Especially when parents are naming their children things like Madison, Brooklyn or Chelsea. Parents of these kids don’t actually need to look for personalised goodies on racks of names, because they can just steal real traffic signs.

That’s why I’m calling my next kids Tribeca and Upper West Side.

Tomorrow: Pranks which never happened

Last night’s concert was great, by the way.

You’ll know, if you’ve read here some, that I’m kind of a James Taylor fan.

I walked right into the VIP lounge at half-time, too, despite being either V or I. This was great because instead of fag burns and tins of Carling, it was all leather sofas and red wine. But it was in Hammersmith so it cancels out.

The show was understated with JT and a piano player and that’s it, so it was good to hear the songs in their most simple form. If I’ve heard a better performance of Carolina In My Mind, I’d happily stand corrected.

The crowd was warm and reverential, which suited the nature of the show. When the few people (guilty) sang quietly along to Sweet Baby James, the ssss sss whissspersss to “deep greens and blues are the colours I choose” reminded me of the church throng mumblings about tresspasses.

I can say that, having already been to heaven.

With apologies to http://www.overheardinnewyork.com

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, wandering among works of genius when two girls in their early twenties drift into earshot.

Girl 1: Would Nick like this?
Girl 2: What, walking here? In this place?
Girl 1: I’m asking.
Girl 2: No way. Nick just wouldn’t get this.
Girl 1: How do you mean?
Girl 2: Nick wouldn’t get this. For Nick, if it doesn’t, like, have boobies in every ninety seconds, he just switches off.
Girl 1: Right.

Tomorrow: Licence To ill

Also - going to see James Taylor tonight. How pleased am I? Picture your favourite thing, double it, cover it in dark chocolate served up by the love of your life on a snowy weekend and you’d be getting close to how I feel.

Two more posts about New York and then that’s it, I promise - back to posts about life here on Mud Island very soon.

The longest November
that ever I remember
hit me like a storm front on the shore.

The days that I wasted
were sweeter than they tasted
and steady rolled December evermore.

The time I was tempted
could have been pre-empted
bittersweet the memory as it passed.

The years as they mounted,
seven, last I counted,
each one now seems shorter than the last.

Tomorrow: Overheard In New York

“Not you.”

The cab driver shoots me a look as I lean in after I say a polite “Excuse me?” to find out if he’s talking to me.

He continues to talk into his mobile phone headset as my ear adjusts to his West African French.

Senegal, maybe - or Cote d’Ivoire, I thought, wrapped in the particular kind of smugness tailored by the private glow of unshared and useless information.

Tomorrow: The longest November

I went to a church service in New York while I was away. I don’t have much against church, but I never used to go. When I got married, I thought that the next time Wife and I went into a church together, at least one of us would be dead.

But it was actually good. We were there for a concert given by some friends of Wife on tour from the UK. It was a part of the regular Catholic service and it was beautiful.

The boys’ voices drifted in, clumb up the stone just like thousands before for hundreds of years and faded away, bathing us in a molasses silence.

We had got all dressed up (dressed up for me involves casual pressed shirt, cotton trousers and herringbone jacket - think a young David Niven) and a few people came up to say hello because we are English and they thought we had come special.

If you’ve got something against church, you’re either paying them too much attention or you work in real estate. Church doesn’t really harm anyone, it doesn’t have that much sway over our daily lives and it brings more people hope than the harm it brings to those who hold a grudge over some bygone foible.

Have a great weekend. I’m not saying there won’t be more posts tomorrow and Sunday, but in case I don’t hear from you.

Tomorrow: Are you talking to me?

We were getting a lift to the airport with father-in-law who was talking to me about his racist friends, whom he had been delighted to inform were decended from the earliest homo sapiens in Africa.*

“Yeah, I know,” I said brightly, “Lucy.”

“Yeah?” he said.

“Lucy. That early human. They found her. You know. Ethiopia? First people, maybe. LUCY.”

It was my way of saying (tappytappygoogle) this.

So regular readers here will know it comes as no fucking surprise to discover that two days later I’m heading towards the dinosaur exhibits in the American Museum of Natural History and I turn a corner and there she is - Lucy, all four feet of her with an expression on her artist impression face that says: “This is going in your blog, isn’t it?”

*heh heh - I said “sapiens”

Tomorrow: I go to church

Jet lag’s wierd.

We got to our hotel room, straight from the airport, and my first instinct is to go exploring.

There’s a menu in our room for a sushi place and I see it’s right around the corner, so while family gets unpacked I set out to find the place, which is only on the next block.

I had been awake for about twenty hours, eleven of which were spent travelling, but a few precarious street crossings found me in the doorway of a sushi place, my judgement was impaired by tiredness and a vast selection of handrolls.

I think it was a fancy place. I think I was underdressed. I think I was standing in the middle of all the tables. A man who I think was the manager asked if he could help me.

I asked if they did takeout. He gave me a cold smile and a menu, which I stared at in turn, blankly, while facts and evidence lingered unresolved like a sustained chord in the air of someone else’s six o’clock.

I thought of how to say politely: “Will this take long?” I wondered which food to order and how to ask for it. Should I grab a waiter? Should I ask the guy who gave me the menu? Should I order from the cashier? Was I still standing in the middle of the restaurant?

I smiled and waved the menu at the manager, pointing at the door to imply that I was going to take the menu and, you know, just - go.

I walked around the corner and got some bagels with cream cheese and a couple of Snapples to wash down my lies.

Iced tea and doughy foodstuffs - the last refuge of the weary traveller.

Tomorrow: Fucking Lucy

“Oh bugger,” says wife after we clear security at Heathrow Terminal 4.

“Oh bugger” is generally not what you want to hear from your nearest, if not dearest (and for all intents and purposes, Road Manager) at the point of no return as you start your holiday.

I shoot her a look of curious yet humble admonishment.

“I forgot to bring a watch,” she explains.

“Oh bugger,” I think.

Wife without watch bad. Wife without watch mean husband tell time to wife over and over. This make husband cranky.

My obvious thought is how little money I can spend on a cheap watch for her which will last two weeks so I won’t have to keep telling her the time. Which leads me to thinking that while I may not be the world’s most thoughtful husband, I am extremely punctual.

Tomorrow: Jet lag

New York? Well, you know…

No, it was fucking excellent. I’ll write a bit about it over the next few days, but suffice to say it was the shit.

But by god, it was cold. I had New Yorkers apologising to me. And it snowed most days! In April! Yeah I know! New Yorkers - apologising!

Seriously though, it got bitter - colder than Christmas day, they said.

It was otherwise amazing. Apart from the news, where they (and I swear) said things like:

Police searched the area with thermal imaging equipment and canine dogs.

and

The company prides itself on recruiting women and other minority groups.

But I love the States, and any form of anti-Americanism is racism, pure and simple, and that can’t be good. They gave us Mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Aaron Copeland and James Taylor and painters like the Wyeths, Frasier, peanut butter, corn and the best sport fans in the world.

Yes, they believe that their troops in Iraq are fighting for their country (they aren’t - they do a fine job I would be unable to do since I am a lesser man than the least of any of them - they are barely containing a civil war, but they are not fighting for my freedom or theirs), so let’s cut them some slack.

It’s good to be back really. I mean back writing here. I missed it, the discipline and the general wiseassery. I was in a stationery store in New York, trying out pencils on the sample pad that was filled with the usual sentences:

This is my pen.
Hello everyone.
The weather today is partly blah blah blah…

What did I write?

QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER SLOWER BROWN FOX
Lazy dog unavailable for comment

See? Without this site, I’m just a jerk.

How about those guest bloggers, though, yeah? Am I right?

A serious big thank you to everyone who wrote here while I was away. I know that posting for another blog feels a bit like using someone else’s toothbrush, but the writing was great and I hope you enjoyed them as much as me.

It’s cool to find a diverse group of artists, but it’s a downright privilege to host all of them in a way that works.

Tomorrow: A bad start at the airport

Regular service resumes tomorrow when I start publishing again, after a two week heinous hibiscus hiaitus break.

This Is This, the net’s only cradle-to-grave bespoke web solution, returns Monday.

John Leeming is described by Bonnie as my US blogging twin, and I have to say, there is a resemblance. He writes (and boy, does he) at http://www.upsaid.com/leemer/

I’m In Texas, Y’all 

(But that doesn’t mean I cannot blend the best of British slang and UK
places with an American story.)

So give me my Stetson (not to be confused with a sten) and a plate to eat on (not to be confused with Eton) and I will head over to by buddy Tim’s (not to be confused with Thames) house for an old-fashioned cookout.  But, before I attend the beano, I should take some Beano so as not to make too much noise while playing my Barry White.  After all, Barry is fun to hum to, but not fun if he hums because then he becomes a honk.

Besides, someone else might need to make a call on the big white telephone before that flange gives out after Richard makes an appearance.

Oh, and did anyone bring the balm?  I’ll need something to put my meat on, but not to put on my meat.  I noticed a bike over there with a badly packed kebab, so that might make do if someone here wants to fiddle.  And, if that is the case, then that bike will have a basket on it.  And he’ll be rooting for her.

After that, the basket may have a fag, who may in turn have a beard or a filter.  Depends on the continent.

Got that?  Bob’s yer uncle.  (But he is also my brother.)

So y’all come back when the weather is balmy…  because we are always that way.

And thanks for Posh Nosh, Monty Python, the Wonderstuff, the Wedding Present, and the fake accent that the singer from Green Day sports.

Ya’ hear?

By Fleches Bleues at http://flechesbleues.wordpress.com/

It was the summer of 1991, or thereabouts. I was 11 going on 12 (ish).

I was staying with my dad for the weekend. Or the holidays. Or something. I was out and about and pootling around the local shops. Not quite so much fun on my own as with dad, as he was much less likely to buy me things or let me put out my hand and keep the change when the cashier proffered it (that was a great trick) (one which I continued to employ for many years) (in fact, I think my dad is still a little bit surprised every time I’m out with him and don’t do it, even now). But still. Maybe he’d given me some actual pocket money to spend on my own that day. Or I was just out for a walk. I can’t remember.

It is beginning to sound as though my dad was terribly irresponsible, letting such a young innocent thing as moi wander around unaccompanied. I’m sure that’s not actually true. Is 11 (ish) too young for that sort of thing? I don’t recall feeling terrified or abandoned or plagued by strangers with alluring bags of sweets. I’m fairly sure we’d been shopping together earlier, but that he had gone home before me and I had wanted to stay and do a bit more window-shopping, or something. Anyway, I survived to tell the tale and am (relatively) normal and well-balanced, so let’s stop worrying and move on.

What I do remember is that I was crossing the road outside Kwik Save, towards a lay-by near a small parade of shops including a greengrocers (I’m not really sure why that’s relevant) (and no, I cannot for the life of me think what I might have been doing on my own in Kwik Save. Maybe dad had asked me to get something. Or maybe I had been to the library, which was behind Kwik Save. Yes, that sounds much better. Anyway…).

As I approached the other side of the road, I saw something fluttering about near the kerb. When I got closer, I saw that it was money. Real, folding money! Just lying abandoned in the road, about to get run over/trodden on/blown into the gutter. So I did what any sensible person would do - I picked it up. All forty pounds of it.

Forty whole English pounds. FORTY! I remember this because a) this was the most money I had probably ever seen/been allowed to touch, and b) because there were just two notes, folded together, of differing dimensions and designs. This was because the Bank of England had just issued new £20 notes, but the old ones were still in circulation as well. In my hands that day I held one of each, folded nicely but misshapenly together.

Of course, then I had a dilemma. This money was not mine. Someone had obviously dropped it. But as there was no wallet on the ground, no ID, there was no way to find out who. I have a funny feeling I may have even asked the person crossing the road in front of me if it was theirs. But that is in no way verifiable and may be my imagination running away with me. I wouldn’t put it past me though.

What I do know is that, after consultation with my dad on the matter (running home and saying “Look, dad! What shall I do?” etc.), we decided that the best course of action was to go back into town and take it to the police station.

Oh yes. The first sign that I may very well be too honest for my own good came at a young age.

(The second - much more ridiculous - sign that I may very well be too honest for my own good came about a decade later, when I went to customer services in Sainsbury’s to ask them to check whether I had paid for the thing that I hadn’t heard beep through the till, even though the cashier had tried it about three times. I hadn’t. So I then paid for it. They thought I was crazy. So do I, now, but then I thought that I really wouldn’t have been able to eat it knowing I’d inadvertently become a shoplifter.)

Anyway, I digress (again).

So, we trundled off to the police station and filled in a lot of forms (where and when I had found the money, who I was and where I lived). I have a sneaking suspicion that the policeman thought we were a little bit barmy for handing in this “lost property”, but he hid it well. I was being an honest upstanding citizen, after all.

Four weeks later, after nobody had come forward to claim their two mismatching twenty-pound notes, I went back to the police station and they were legally and rightfully mine. All mine. I was very excited. Forty pounds is a lot of money when you are 11 (ish). It’s still rather a lot of money now, come to think of it.

So, I guess the moral of the story is… maybe honesty is the right policy after all.

(but not in Sainsbury’s, that was stupid)

By Pete at http://pete.nu/blog/
 
In my new house (well, I’ve been there for six months, but it still feels quite new) we don’t have a toilet roll holder. The shape of the bathroom doesn’t really lend itself to a conventional wall-mounted toilet roll holder, so until we come up with some jolly brilliant idea, the toilet roll just stands on the top shelf of a trolley next to the throne.
 
Many many years ago, when I was a kid, I used to go camping with my mum. She’d always tell me to only take a handful of toilet paper to the toilet block, and one day I discovered exactly why. Though I have mentioned before that I was an obedient child, it appears that I occasionally weakened, for on one occasion I took the entire roll, and dropped it into the toilet bowl. Naturally it instantly absorbed all the water, and was ruined.
 
This weekend, the inevitable happened. I had just finished micturating into the bowl (stood up, naturally, for I am a man, and a manly man at that). I tore two sheets off of the end of the roll to dry off the end of my magic wand, but fumbled (possibly due to the glass of wine at lunchtime). I caught the roll by the loose end, and watched as it gracefully sailed towards the  yellow ocean.
 
“Oh bother, ” I said, as the roll (which, fortunately, was into the last quarter of its life anyway) landed with a small splash and started soaking up water at a ferocious rate. Not wanting to risk blocking the pipes, I saw no choice but to manually fish my wee-soaked toilet roll out of a pool of my own wee, and tear it up into small bite-sized chunks that would flush easily.
 
This is just one example of how glamourous my life is. I could offer more.

Sooz at http://www.vilest.wordpress.com - “Saying it how it is - according to me. My blog - my perogative… mad, odd, strange, funny…. who cares? It’s mine!”

We’ve been village-dwellers since the year errr dot…. 
 
Villages are lovely - all green and beautiful, fresh green fields in most directions and an intimacy known only to those born ‘n bred in the village.
I’m one of those people.  I was born at Number 13.  Whilst my father played football and whilst my mother bit the midwife’s trumpet - denting it badly whilst I emerged to the world in a bedroom devoid of technology.
 
The first words I probably heard were ‘ohm she’s got black hair!  She’s not got GINGER!  She’s got… oh…. Oh dear…   oh.  She’s got ginger hair!’
 
I was born to disappoint from the first moment wasn’t I?  I blame the trumpet.  It probably gave my mother instant lead poisoning and that transferred itself down my mother’s fractured placenta and was shared unwillingly with me as I heard those ‘oh no!’   exclamations… *sigh* 
It might also be why my auntie (who was the one announcing the non-black-hair moment!) was my very favourite auntie forever… 
Nothing to do with the single square of Galaxy chocolate she’d give us every time we saw her… oh no! 
 
So… being a village dweller - we didn’t get out much. 
 
No really!  We didn’t!  We had a very infrequent bus service and we never owned any more than one vehicle per family  and that took the male of the household to work to bring in the pennies.  The female didn’t drive on account of staying home with the children, we stayed put.   It was scary to ride a bike (no, not a penny farthing!)  any further than the village perimeter on account of the hills and the ‘if you do that then THIS BAD THING will happen’ tales from your nearest and dearest.   Of course we believed them!  We had nothing beyond our four errr village corners to go to to think otherwise…  
 
Fast forward a tad and you’ll see the relevance of this background… 
 
Going to the Big City was an ordeal!  We wanted to go - oh yes!  But when we went and we got lost (as you do!) and eventually made it back to the bus station before the last bus had departed, you had had enough of the ‘outside world’ to last you the next six months and so I dare say, like the Hill-Billies of old - we were content in our own community.   Except for the inbreeding bit.  Allegedly. 
 
Until, of course, we became adults and began to drive our own cars.  And travel.  On buses and things.  Aeroplanes even! 
 
It was on one of these big grown-up traveling  trips that I came to realise that I wasn’t ever destined to be a traveller…
 
Journey:   from My Village to Sion, Switzerland. 
Occasion:   My best mate’s wedding celebration.
Route:   Whichever is cheapest.  We’ve no need to hurry!  (big mistake!) 
 
Thus followed a  long and uncomfortable trip from the UK to Paris and from Paris to Sion, whilst being overtaken in the sky by most of the other wedding guests who were flying in comfort.   After their lie-in and breakfast in bed probably! 
 
My ‘bad moments’ were as follows:

1.     Traveling with two very staid smart trench coated  girlies who never saw or felt danger nor did they appear to be like the rest of the (bumming) world!   They’d stand frigidly upright whilst the rest of us (me!) sat on road sides in our scratty jackets and they stood out like sore thumbs!  Had they held banners which said ‘We’re Easy Prey, Shaft Us!’ - they’d have been less noticeable!  

2.     In performing bullet point number 1, I witnessed a) one of them getting stuck in a luggage machine (the ones which let your luggage through and then close with a loud honking noise.) This closed DURING her suitcase transportation whilst she was still attached.   Me?  I was going Very Fast Indeed trying to drag my luggage through the dark and scary metro at midnight whilst we attempted to catch the next train from the other station arghhh!    b) her sister being pickpocketed as she entered the metro as the  security bar came down between ticket holders and her hands were busy and we were ALL going through the barriers at separate points.   c) witnessing  them both being groped by a drunk French tramp who was saying in French ‘come with meeeee… there’s life in my hotel! ‘ (yes I knew that much French!) whilst  I was trying not to look as alien as they did whilst standing in very smart trench coats (yes I know I mentioned that before but ffs!!!)    in the middle of a Paris train station at midnight…  They’d not noticed him approaching and he’d had a warm handful or err four by the time they sussed it…     I was slouched on the ground, blending in with da Street (!)   I stood up and looked around me for a policeman (as you do!)   - ‘I sayyyy!  Fetch me a policeman, what hoh chaps!’  Le Tramp spied the look on my face and backed away saying ‘Non!   Non!’  lolol!  Exit Le Tramp, leaving moi wondering how scary I must be looking! 

3.     Traveling with inconsiderate stinky people throughout:  one man with pungent B.O who kept retrieving his belongings from overhead constantly whilst we all tried to sleep in a cramped carriage.   I swear we needed breathing apparatus by the time he’d finished arm-flapping!

4.     Going out to the cold-as-ice airy train corridor to breathe and to survive the cramped sleeping conditions in the sweaty carriage only to witness Fainting Man.  He stood for a short while whilst displaying various shades of puce and then slid slowly down the window frame to the floor several times.   The final time with his specs landing on his chest.  As he looked up at me in a dazed and confused fashion, I managed to suggest that he ’stay down there’ - the extent of my generosity and first aid being astonishing, as you can see!  

5.     Returning home in a carriage of MORE stinky people who insisted on taking their shoes and socks off (!!!!) and then placing them opposite each other - right next to me on the seat for the whole vile foot-odorous journey!  

6.     Surviving this long haul by eating baguettes, Jarlesberg cheese and chocolate whilst listening to a walkman (yep that’s old!) of the Eagles Greatest Hits! 

7.     Returning from a fabulous time in Sion with fabulous people and fabulous celebrations - in totally prolonged discomfort (yet again) and knowing that the other guests were overtaking us in luxury in the sky above us *sigh*   I think the word ‘DIE’ was mentioned a few times! 
 
I’ve never been so tired nor pissed off with every step I took ever before!  Nor happier to be home – under my village stone! 
 
Travel the world?  Pah! 

You can keep it!  I’m fine here thanks.  I’ll watch it on the telly!  I’ll take a private jet or something.   With soft seats, fully stocked bar and a masseur! 
Carbon Footprint?  Oh but only Jimmy Choos* dahlink! 
 
Incidentally, I still hear the Eagles with a warm fondness!  I think they calmed me enough to survive that trip!  That, or Jarlesberg overload…  
 
*actually having heels would be a journey too far - I’d be nauseous at that height!  I can’t be doing with discomfort you see!….
 
Princess, pea….  You get it! 
We’re spoilt by village life, I swear!

Sam Burnett is a a hilarious Student Union president. He says he tries to maintain a low profile, but his reputation precedes him. Sam writes for A little bit of wisdom in every box…, billed as “My fight with verbal dysentery - watch the shame.”
 
This definitely isn’t This, so what is it? It does depend entirely on what This is, though, because I suppose this being here makes it inherently This. There are certain philosophical hurdles to be overcome when inviting people to write on your blog - you wouldn’t let a tramp babysit the kids and then sleep in your bed, because that would be yucky. For the time being at least we’ll just have to suspend our disbelief, because This definitely is something else.
 
It’s daunting being asked to wax blogical on such a revered site, a diary cherished by the online Buddhist community (did you ever hear the one about the monk in the sandwich shop? ‘Make me one with everything…’ Sorry.), and amongst company as distinguished as…well, I’ve heard of at least a couple of them. Blogging royalty. The sort of people who would consider suicide if they went 13 days without a single comment on their laboriously-typed posts, people whose visitor stats look like footballers’ salaries, people who aren’t me. These people are successful, they have interesting lives to talk about. I do picture series of me making brownies on a Saturday night when every other student in town is lying face down in the gutter vomiting on a kebab. I’ve got three-quarters of the senior management team at Bangor University reading my blog on a daily basis to see if I mention them, but that doesn’t count; you wouldn’t accept a compliment from someone whose testicles were nestled in your clenched fist.
 
This is a very political business - networking is replaced with blogrolling, fawning sycophancy replaced with the lazy link [ie - read this , it’s hilarious], well-connected parents and an Etonian education replaced with friends at the Guardian and a hard-luck story involving disability, poverty, sex or all three.
 
I’m just not cut out for it, to be honest - sorry, Cliff, I really don’t think I can fill in for you.

By Bonnie Gillespie (author, casting director–Hollywood) http://www.spynotebook.org/bonnie/

I love my husband. Yes, yes I do. (I’m still amazed, daily, that I even got married, as that’s SO not my thing. But whatever. I dig this boy and he’s stuck around longer than anyone else I’ve shacked with–and believe me, I do my best to scare the boys off within a year [and I usually succeed].)

Keith has a couple of disorders that I must share, as maybe someone out there can commiserate and advise.

Keith will always: vacuum the floors (Yay!) and then take the vacuum cleaner back to the closet in which it lives. And park it. Right outside the closet. Seriously. Like two feet and a tiny thickness of DOOR away from its HOME. And there it will sit. As evidence that hunter man has killed the dust? Not sure. I really don’t get this. It’s so dang close to “put away.” What IS that?!?

and

Expiration dates: Keith doesn’t believe in them on things like eggs or milk. See, I’m super-hyper-obnoxious about expiration dates (except on drugs, because I figure if the Rx is yummy-fun today, it’s got extra special magical qualities after its expiration date), so I want to throw out foodstuffs within hours of their “best before” dates (and typically on the early side of those dates). Keith, on the other hand, will just eat and deal with “it,” digestively. (Lucky me.) But tonight, as Keith swam in the tub and readied his face for shaving, he asked me to bring him his razor and I offered up some shaving cream… mine. “No. Yours is old!” he said. Huh? What?!? My super cool girlie shave gel is awesome and what the hell does it matter if it’s old? Define OLD as chemicals go.

“No. I need mine. It’s newer.”

Say it’s more butch. Say it’s better for hearty boy beard stuff (as opposed to my girlie creamy gel stuff made for fair-haired girls’ occasional needs).

But say it’s NEWER and that’s what makes it okay to use?

WHAT?!?

My good friend Iain writes at http://www.five8.co.uk/blog/ which he describes as much ado about nothing much

When Uncle Cliff said “I’d be happy to have you about HMS This” I thought a few things, and as everyone else had bagsied all the good post ideas I though that sharing what goes on inside ‘yan HQ might make do for a short post aboard the jolly ship This Is This.

So when Cliff said “I’d be happy to have you about HMS This” I thought:
1 - aye aye Cap’n
2 - does he mean “aboard”?
3 - I wonder if there’s analogy between This Is This and a ship…
4 - nope
6 - what is it with lists?
7 - bugger, what happened to 5?
8 - man, I really ought to be doing some work
9 - really, no one is going to be interested in what *I* have to say, maybe I won’t write a post
10 - but it would be nice to be part of the gang

And isn’t that what blogging is all about? It’s about being cool. About being accepted. About getting those parts of you that you know are funny or original - or even not original but that you’re sure *someone* will identify with - out there to that widest of audiences to help fill your God-shaped hole.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t say it in a disparaging way. How else do we make connections, make friends, other than by having the fear that gives us the guts to be ourselves and put it out there?

So my message to the crew today is: “Batton down the hatches! Splice the crow’s nest! Hoist the main mast!” or any other incorrectly half-remembered nautical terms I can dredge up. Whatever you do, me hearties, go out there and be yourselves.

BEEEEEP

Hi, this is Cliff. I’m not here right now so I can’t post to this blog. The posts on this site until 16 April were written by my steamed counterparts in blogland who have kindly donated their services for the worthy cause of me doing nothing and some free links to their own fine sites.

Thanks and I’ll be back in a week.

BEEEEEP

I’m going to see James Taylor tonight.

How pleased am I? Picture your favourite thing, double it, cover it in dark chocolate served up by the love of your life on a snowy weekend and you’d be getting close to how I feel.

Two more posts about New York and then that’s it, I promise, then it’s back to real life.

The author of Two Blue Fish is not very clever at hiding behind pseudonyms. Somehow he is an arts writer and theatre reviewer, fiction writer, humour columnist, faux chef at an iconic and rather pointy Australian landmark, and although he is good at being wigged out to psytrance music, he also knows his way around a kick arse wine list. Basically, he lacks focus.

Went to the hairdressers recently and there were two assistants on hair-washing duty. One was really cute and the other was kind of homely. I used all my Jedi mind powers to influence the guy at the desk to assign me to the really cute one but I got the other one. No biggie. Just a hair wash, not nuptials. The girl’s wan smile indicated that she knew and understood that I was probably slightly disappointed at not being handed over to the other girl, and that she was used to that kind of thing because that was her lot in life; there was always someone in the room who was better looking than her. I smiled back at her and tried to let her know that I actually preferred her anyway because in my books, homely girls are A-okay. I settled into the chair. She started washing my hair, and all was good.

Soon she was massaging my head and it was taking all the stress of the week away. She was really working some magic. It was like she personally knew every muscle in my scalp. Her fingers traced soothing circular motions over the top of my head and down the back, deep into my temples, my jaw muscles, down my neck. Covered in goose bumps, I felt like Homer Simpson before a doughnut shop when suddenly (cue the opening theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey) I realised with horror that Little Miss Homely Fingers was making a tee-pee in my pants. With her hands! Via my head! The diabolical minx!

Don’t panic. Think of Not-Sexy Stuff. Old ladies’ feet. Dirty ash trays. Dog pooh on the footpath with a skid mark through it where someone has stepped in it. I tried to get a look to see how obvious it was but my head was held back. Fucking hell she was good – and she wasn’t easing up. She asked if every thing was all right. Yeah, I squeaked casually, everything’s just peachy.

As I left the salon I thanked the girls and was told I was welcome. And there it was in her dirty filthy sweet smile. Homely my arse.

I’m due for a cut again soon. Going back to the same place. Going to request the same girl (cue the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) just so that I can show her she was lucky once. Caught me unaware. But I’m made of better stuff than that. One gauntlet thrown down. Bring. It. On.

———-
I thought long and hard about whether I should include this post. Unfortunately, “long and hard” looks like a cheap knob gag now in the context of this post, but it’s ONLY because it’s so well written that I included it, and not just because it deals with the trials of a man stifling a stiffy in a public place. -CJ

By Mr. Angry, from the paramilitary wing of the Mister Men  at I Am Livid, where Net rage is all the rage.

When Cliff originally asked for contributions from guest bloggers during his holiday, there was a minor frenzy for one or two of the preferred topics he suggested.

“Bagsy The Ways In Which You Can Use A Brown Paper Bag!” screamed one email.

Or something like that.

It reminded me of my days in the schoolyard (as a child, being in a schoolyard at my age is frowned upon), where ‘bagsying’ was rife.  Fortunately, I grew out of this in my teens and by the time I had reached University I had developed an entirely more mature way of dealing with disputes.

It was called the ‘Bags-Not’.

The bags-not was a non-refutable method of ensuring you did not have to do anything .  It began in a shared house, where a ringing phone would instantly result in a series of screamed, “BAGS-NOT!”’s from various corners of the house.  The last person to Bags-Not was honour bound to answer the phone. Of course, like any system of Government, there were disputes.  But they were settled like mature adults, in a best of three Paper-Scissors-Stone confrontation.  Of course, the phone would normally have stopped ringing by then, but there was a more important principle at hand than any potential familial emergency.

During my years as a student, the ‘Bags-Not’ evolved into a core part of our culture.  The use of it became a proactive tool to make others do something for you.  Quite regularly someone would say, “I’d love a cup of tea bags-not!”, and the last person saying bags-not would be forced to make tea for all present.

Over the years I have used the bags-not technique to get people to do the following:

Clean the bathroom
Make me dinner
Iron my shirt
Get me a beer
Return a library book
Fetch a take away

If you were particularly good at it, you could live like a king.  Unfortunately, Bags-Not’ing has failed to take off in my office.  This is despite many a meeting where the question, “So how are we going to trim £50k off the capex budget?” has been met with an enthusiastic “Bags not!” from me.  You would think they would at least give it a go.

I miss the old days.

Katy Newton does her thing, and a fine thing it is, over at http://everythingiselectric.blogspot.com - she is meticulous blogger par excellence, and I say this partly because she has double spaces after each finely-crafted sentence. Count them, seriously. In a word of failing standards, that’s got to count for something.

It’s a big compliment to be asked to guest here, because This Is This is, as they say, the dog’s. 

And some people might have just thanked Cliff for the compliment and quietly chosen one of the topics that he floated to post about, and in fact some people did.  Not me, though.  Why?  Because I am insanely competitive.  To the extent that not one of my close friends or relatives will play Monopoly with me.  And we don’t talk about the Perudo incident.  

(Peruvian Liar Dice.  Don’t bother.  It’s fucking incomprehensible.  No sane person would play it and only stupid pointless people who are stupid and pointless win it.  Now let’s just leave it, okay?  Okay.)

So my first reaction was to attempt to bagsy one of the post topics that Cliff floated, so that I and only I could post about it.  Well, my very first instinct was to bagsy all of the topics so that I could choose amongst them at my leisure, but I suspected that that might be pushing it a bit – but anyway, imagine my surprise when Cliff tactfully informed me that the law of bagsy does not apply to This Is This at all. 

That can’t be right, but I didn’t push it because, well, it’s Cliff.  But bagsying applies to everyone and everything.  Anyone or anything can be bagsied regardless of whether they consent.  They might not even know you, or know that you have bagsied them, but that doesn’t matter because the law of bagsy applies to everything and binds everyone, and the only way to defeat a bagsy is to trump it with a counter-bagsy.  

Which can be fun.  If you win.

For example, my friend J knows that I have a bit of a crush on Dr Perry Cox from Scrubs.  If we were in the mood for a bit of bagsy jousting, the conversation might go like this:

J:          I bagsy Perry Cox from Scrubs.

Me:      Damn you!  Fine.  I acknowledge your bagsy.  I counter-bagsy David Tennant.

J:          Curses!  I acknowledge your counter-bagsy.  I counter-counter-bagsy with well-known actor Richard E Grant –

Me:      Pah!  You can have him!

J:          - at the time that he starred in “alternative” classic Withnail&I!

Me:      No!

J:          And I shall keep him AND Dr Perry Cox – unless you de-bagsy David Tennant, in which case you may choose one of them to keep, but only one, and only because we are friends.

Me:      They shall BOTH be mine!  Because I uber-bagsy every single man in the world who might conceivably be considered attractive by any given woman at any given time from the dawn of time itself!

J:          Blast you, Newton!  I acknowledge your counter-bagsy and concede that it supercedes all previous man-related bagsies.  You are the master of the bagsy.  I beg you on bended knee to release David Tennant.  You the man.  Et cetera.

So now we come to the real point of this post, which is this:  by virtue of the law of bagsy, every single conceivably attractive man both current and past in the entire world is bagsied.  They are all mine.  You are all on notice.  So if you want one, you can’t have one unless I have formally debagsied him.  And if you’re already using one without asking me, I hope you’ve thought of a good counter-bagsy.  Because you’ll need it.

Rivierawriter writes in the riviera and here http://rivierawriter.blogspot.com/ He also has the unique and bittersweet priviledge of being my dad, which had nothing to do with him getting this gig.

This feels like Stevie Wonder pinch hitting for Pete Rose, especially having looked down the list of suggested topics and found that all the inspirational ones had been bagseyed. So I picked this one – since ‘or something else’ is unbagseyable.

I seem to have done lots of things only once in my life, either because I didn’t mean to do them in the first place, (like taking the Sec-Gen. of the UN out of church when he had an attack of food poisoning, or having my luggage carried across Cincinnati by a Knight), or because the event was such a disaster that I swore never to try it again. This story is firmly in the latter category and tells of the only time I ever approached a dating bureau.

When a marriage is over – I mean really over – not just in renegotiation, if the kids are still kids, you’re too concerned about fatherhood to think of your own desires. But eventually – and usually long before you’ve realised it – they reach their own level of independence. You find a good laundry, hire a cleaner, put in more time at work, and try not to think of loneliness.

Middle-aged male divorcees can’t go to discos or singles groups without looking – or feeling – pathetic. (All right, better make that ‘Third-aged’.) It’s like a lumberjack with a hearing aid or airline pilot with a guide dog: it’s a public statement that you’re not quite up to the job. ‘I’m a failure, wanna try me?’

So you start to read Dateline ads. Then you fill in the form listing your characteristics - religious or other fixations which, if not shared, (like, say, post-1940s jazz or hatred of Tony Blair) would totally preclude any possibility of partnership.  It sounds a much more logical mate-finding system than the process you used first time around: being young and not yet wise, guys follow their parental genes and look for their mothers, and women pick someone they think they can live with while moulding him into something more appropriate to their needs. Surely, you think, electronics must provide a less haphazard, more scientific result? So you pay your £85 and wait.

You receive three names and phone numbers of women within a reasonable radius of your home. (Being a subjective word, ‘reasonable’ is construed in the same way that Estate Agents interpret price or location guidelines.) This is the moment when you realise (a) that you have to do something, and (b) that you are never going to call any of those numbers. Electronics is no help in this situation: you hide the list in case you have a cataclysmic change of character - and so the kids won’t see it.

But you do get calls, from others who have also paid £85. You’re polite. You arrange to pick her up – in Hampstead – not bad.

I had booked a table at a French bistro in St. John’s Wood and put on my best shirt. She was charming, mature, cultured; liked Shakespeare but not jazz, but hell, nobody’s perfect. The restaurant was good - not too fussy: red check tablecloths and candles stuck on wax-encrusted wine bottles. The food was French provincial and excellent. I am leaning forward because she speaks softly and I’m trying to conceal my partial deafness, when she looks into my eyes and says, with the faintest trace of an Eastern European accent, ‘Your shirt is on fire’.

I’ve kept that shirt, or what was left of it, as an icon. It is a metaphor for the hopes of conjugal happiness – and the 85 quid - that went up in smoke that night. I found it in the end, but not in a digital computer. That £85 lesson taught me that logic has no part in partner choice. The most reliable process is strictly analogue, and has been around for many thousands of years. Charles Darwin recognised it nearly 150 years ago. 

He called it Natural Selection.

Wendy at http://wenders.vox.com

When Cliff asked me to write a post for This Is This while he’s on holiday, my first reaction was to feel extremely flattered. I love this blog. I wouldn’t have my own if it weren’t for this one.
 
My flatteredness was clearly obvious. I’m not ashamed to admit there was actual squealing. His response was a quizzical, “really?”. Now, as I’m starting to try and put a post together, I understand his scepticism. It suddenly feels like a HUGE responsibility. Thanks for nothing, fucker.
 
I mean who else does this? Well, other bloggers, yes. But what if artists did it? Or musicians?
 
For example, imagine Leonardo da Vinci had popped off for a couple of weeks while he was painting The Last Supper. Eager for his work to continue in his absence, what if he’d called on his old mucker Picasso (I know, I know) to hold the brush? Imagine the questions we’d be asking about said masterpiece now. Instead of debating whether the figure on Christ’s right is John or Mary Magdalene, we might be saying…
 
“Why’s that bird’s nose on sideways?”
“What are you talking about, dumbass? It’s a bloke”
 
Or, right, Alanis Morissette. She seems like a girl with a lot on her mind. Although I’m sure a lot of it ends up on paper, I’ll be she needs a break from writing some of the time. Who’d stand in for her? How about Arctic Monkeys? Same initials, so there’s a connection already. How might Unsent have turned out?
 
Dear Terence, I love you muchly.
You’ve been nothing but open hearted,
And emotionally available and supportive,
And nurturing, and consummately there for me.
And what a scummy man
Just give him half a chance
I bet he’ll rob yer if he can
Can see it in his eyes,
Yeah, that he’s got a driving ban
Amongst some other offences
 
Hmm. Not so much.
 
So, Cliff. Happy to keep your seat warm for a day, but come back soon, yeah?

No, seriously. I’m gone.

This Isn’t This - starts tomorrow, kicking off with Wendy.

Wenders - don’t feed them.