We skipped the light fandango

I can't write much at the moment as I am rather poorly. So instead I thought I would express myself through the medium of art with yonder self-portrait. You'll be pleased to I am actually slightly more colourful than this, but it isn't so easy to paint with a mouse. Shall write when I can.

There's a fog along the horizon

Cognitive dysfunction really gets me down. It is not the same as fatigue, which is a monster in itself and something most people don’t experience until they have full-blown ’flu’. Fatigue is like a lead weight in the top of your skull. It weighs on every thought and slows your entire body down. It is unrelenting, unlike tiredness which comes and goes and improves with sleep and rest. But its principle effect is straight-forward, as if your brain is running on Low Battery. And if you have it for years and years, your expectations fall and you have a new concept of ‘tired’ which is what everyone else might refer to as ‘exhausted beyond comprehension’.

Cognitive dysfunction is more complicated. For example, today I can’t spell. Word (where I am typing just now) is underlining about every third word I write in read. If I typed this in Blogger without a spell-check, it would probably be illegible because I wouldn’t notice my mistakes. I am usually a pretty good speller and I am usually a very fast typist. I can speed read. But not today. Today the English language is a strange and complicated tool. As you can imagine, this is taking me ages to write.

But there’s not a whole lot else I can do. I had an order arrive from a craft catalogue, but I can’t remember what the heck I was going to do with the stuff that I have bought. This should come back to me, but it is disappointing because I know I was looking forward to getting the stuff. I had been trawling the craft catalogues. Panduro have discontinued Luminous Stiffy. Panduro are a Swedish company, you see. You could spray Luminous Stiffy on stuff to make it luminous and well, stiff. I never bought any but it made me titter. Like the hobby of Teabag Folding, right up to the point where you learn what it actually entails.

Having a brain that doesn't work brings me down much faster than having a body that doesn't work. I am my brain. When it fucks up, I am fucked up. One of my earliest memories, my earliest memory of terror, was when it occurred to me that all the person I was had little to do with my body or any part of me I could see. It occurred to me that there was no good reason why I didn't float out of my body and find myself in someone else's head, someone with a different Mummy and Daddy, someone starving in Ethopia for example. I remember this occurred to me whilst on our way to pick Rosemary up from primary school, so I must have been about three at the time. I began to cry but couldn't explain what was wrong and couldn't stop crying.

I imagine that if I could put this in a different way, everyone would think, "Oh yeah, I remember thinking that" and I wouldn't prove to be the only toddler who ever underwent an existential crisis.

However, clearly, I am still here. I am still myself. Even if I am a somewhat dyslexic version of myself who managed address a parcel to Leiceiceicestershire this morning. There is really little difference whether the dodgy mechanics are in my head or in my body. I really ought not to take this so badly.

Lessons I have learnt about writing novels - The Premise

Last week w1ld child asked if I had any advice about writing novels. I shall therefore attempt to impart some of what I have learnt so far.

The first point is that you have to want to write. If you only like the idea of having written a novel, then you probably ought to put your energies into something else. I have been writing for fun ever since I could string a sentence together on paper and I have been making up stories for even longer. This doesn’t mean I am necessarily any good at it, but it does demonstrate that this is something I find enjoyable and therefore relatively easy to do. Writing a novel is a hell of a lot of work and if you have to squeeze every word out of yourself and onto the page, you’re probably better off doing something you actually like doing.

The second point is that obviously, you have to have an idea, a premise. This doesn’t have to be anything very complicated, profound or especially original. Often people who can and want to write waste their time waiting for some genius idea to float in through the window. However, you can do complicated, profound and original further down the line.

An idea may just be a question - this is the way I always think. Something like “What I found out that the old man across the road was a Nazi war criminal?” For some reason this pops into my head, probably because of the death of Simon Wiesenthal last week.

This leads on to other questions like, how would I find out? How would I react? How would the guy react? And obviously you’ve got all number of ways in which such a situation could be resolved. You confront him and he kills himself. You confront him and he murders you. You blackmail him and buy financial solvency with your silence. There are many other directions this could go of course, but you see my point.

Ideas like this pop up all the time. Recently the wonderful Vaughan who is a much better writer than me wrote a rather lovely blog entry about travelling on the Tube concluding

I want to secretly leave notes for people travelling on the London Underground, tucked inbetween the seat cushions. A way of communicating in this never-sleeping city.

Talk about a gift! What if you found such a message? Anyone with any imagination can see how such a scenario could lead to a poetic if contrived romance, in which as if by fate, a beautiful stranger happens to find the message and find it so enchanting that he or she seeks out the author, believing Vaughan to be their soul-mate. This could end happily or with some great (preferably violent) disillusionment.

Or it could be that Vaughan leaves a series of profound messages so that various characters undergoing crises in their lives pick them up and find the answer to their questions. This would be perhaps even more contrived, so maybe you could pick on just one such character and obviously the message should be fairly cryptic and take a bit of interpretation before the answer became clear.

Or it could be that Vaughan is in some sort of trouble, but under the constant surveillance of some bad guys of some description (government agents, gangsters, aliens or whatever) and his only way of asking for help is to write these notes and slip them down the between the seat cushions on the Tube.

You can probably think of many more, hopefully far more sensible ideas, but you see what I am getting at. All you really need to get started is a hypothetical question that you're interested in answering. Hopefully everything falls into place from there.

The third point is two pronged; write what you know and write what you want. Writing what you know does not mean that you must write about characters just like yourself and your friends doing the job you do and living in the place you do – unless you can make yourself, your friends and your work seem like the most fascinating subject on Earth, this is probably ill-advised. It is more about emotional experiences and aspects of the human condition which you know something about and crucially have something to say about. This may sound a little “deep” for someone writing a thriller, but I think it must apply across the board.

This is the most essential ingredient really. It helps to be able to write about familiar things – it would be very hard for me to write about the adventures of an accountant living in New York because I know nothing about accountancy and I have never been to New York. However, if what I had to say depended on my main character being an accountant in New York, then I would have to make this happen somehow. I could learn something about accountancy through research and I could watch loads of movies and read lots of book set in New York such that I could almost imagine having been there. But I would have to understand the character of my accountant as I understand my closest friend. Otherwise, I would come across as a fake.

Thought for The Day

Sometimes people may point to a flower and say, "How can you look at this thing, which is so perfect, so orderly and yet so beautiful and believe that it is the product of random events and not created by the mind of God?"

But because I understand the science of evolution and see evidence for this science all around and indeed, inside myself, I just cannot believe that an omniscient, ominipotent and benevolent creator God did any more than set the ball rolling - if that.

However, when in my fatigue, I forget to put in a Tesco order, run out of milk and am forced to use powdered milk in my Earl Grey tea for a twenty-four hour period, I am left without a doubt that there is a supernatural force of Evil at work in the world today.

I have just added two new links:

Rolls Eyes is Ouch regular Justin R's new blog.

Clausentum Photography is my sister's new platform for wedding photography in the New Forest area. She is very good. On the off chance that you or someone you know is planning to get married in the New Forest, do check her out. I know this is a rather silly place to advertise such a service but you never know who may be passing through. You can also buy a print of the flower at the top there.

Rage Against The Machine

Thanks ever so much for your support, guys. It's really great to have people who understand my frustrations, who I can talk to without feeling I'm letting the side down and at the same time give objective advice instead of drowning me in tea and sympathy. Much appreciated.

Yesterday was a wipe-out and today is going to be rough because I have a bump on my head. It’s bad enough getting random bruises everywhere, but I woke up yesterday morning and felt a sharp twinge when I turned my head quickly. When I felt my head there was a tender lump an inch or so behind my ear.

I once developed a black-eye in my sleep, but I did have a good idea as to how I attained it. The bump has no logical explanation, Captain. Unfortunately, whilst mildly distracting yesterday, it has wrecked my sleep. The pain has kind of spread into the muscles of my neck and I can’t get comfortable. A new version of not being able to get comfortable.

Never mind, the Benefits Agency kindly phoned up in order to give me an entity to transfer my frustrations onto. I'm not in trouble, it's just I'm not allowed to do anything such as write any more articles I am paid for from now on for the next eighteen months. Why? Well, in summary because it's not conducive to getting me into full-time employment. Severely disabled people (their definition) either can work, in which case they can be eased into full time employment (although one wonders how they qualified as incapacitated in the first place), or they are compelled to do nothing. What’s more, I have to put my intentions (i.e. to do what I have to do) in writing and they’re hassling me for not filling in a form that I didn’t think applied to me.

Now what was that rhetoric about giving opportunities to disabled people? Uh, no. Opportunities for those disabled people who really ought not to have been on incapacity-related benefits in the first place, maybe. Jobcentre Plus isn’t a rehabilitative program. Of course there are arguably a group of disabled people who would be able to work if certain fears are addressed, support given and flexibility applied – but these things ought to have happened much earlier, these folks were never actually incapacitated for work by ill health and impairment, only prevented from working by inadequate provision.

The rules that are effecting me are actually meant for those people who are up to holding down a part-time job but can do no more. After six months, you must either stop or carry on with a view to increasing your hours to full-time (which you have an extension of six months to do). I wrote a single article, which counted as four weeks work, but initiated this six month countdown as if I was doing this constantly.

It’s irritating that this counts for me, because I am penalised for occasional work like this and as I say, it’ll be another eighteen months until I’m allowed to do it again. Add to this, the irony that actually folks on Incapacity Benefit and SDA can earn up to twenty quid a week for an indefinite period. And because I am on Income Support, I was only allowed to keep twenty quid for every week I ‘worked’ anyway. However, even if I had just done six months’ part-time work and got to keep every penny (up to £78 a week), this still wouldn’t make a lot of sense.

Incapacity Benefit and SDA are not means-tested benefits - you qualify even if you're stinking rich and have a healthy income from another source such as a private pension. So what’s wrong with allowing people in these circumstances the opportunity to increase their quality of life and contribute to the economy?

These are people who very often will not work again because their conditions are never going to get better and are very often going to get worse. But debilitating as that is, this doesn’t mean that they are rendered totally useless, nor do they automatically lose the desire to maintain some level of self-sufficiency and participation in society.

I feel my luck could change

I had my… seventh physiotherapy appointment this afternoon, I have only managed to attend two so far and this time it was the physiotherapist who phoned in sick. Fantastic! I fear this whole experiment is doomed; the particular guy I was seeing was only on a six-week secondment to Whitby. Bugger.

And today it hurts a lot. I am going to have to make another one of those trips to the doctor where I try to ask for a higher dose of painkiller without sounding like a wimp. Added to what I hope is only an increased tolerance to the medicine, my lymph-nodes have been up, my throat sore and my temperature all over the place for over week now and it’s getting worse. This is a dangerous time of year for me, much as I love the autumn. Here is a lovely picture taken in the Lake District last autumn by my genius yet ginger brother-in-law Adrian Taylor. I was there and it was that lovely.



I hate the up and down nature of my illness – it is the worst element. It makes it very difficult not to be anxious about my health because if I relapse now it could mean a crappy week or a crappy month or it could be Christmas before I’m back to where I am now. Of course, I can’t do much about it anyway so I really shouldn’t worry, but the uncertainty of the situation is intrinsically stressful. I would have to be in denial not to be just a little bit nervous.

Still I have been reading about Buddhism and disability, in particular the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is a physiological event, a combination of electrical and chemical activity. Pain only becomes suffering, the theory goes, when the mind thinks that it shouldn’t be happening, when the mind resists what is a natural and inevitable part of our experience. I am too tired to discuss why this might be a useful concept, but I think it might.

I owe a great number of letters and e-mails so please bear with me. Thanks to everyone who voted in my poll – wowza - I hope to be modelling the results for you at the end of the week.

Mind-Blowing Decisions

I am stuck. I need a new cardigan. I had one but I gave it to the charity shop accidently on purpose. But I can't decide which one. I like this one and I like this one too and two would be excessive and beyond my means. Purple or blue. Blue or purple. What do you think? I am really struggling with decisions at the moment but it's getting progressively cold. I've already got me legwarmers on.

Both cardigans are from Funky Ware and are of course Fair Trade. I mean, capitalist dogs don't make clothes like this. Following the success of my previous poll (the results of which I am um, yet to act upon), I thought I would leave it to you. This time I will do what you tell me. I think. Probably. I'll also only leave it a few days because as I said, it's getting right parky.

(I'm not just asking you for a filler or because I like running polls - I honestly can't make up my mind and I've been tyring to come to a decision all week).

Which cardigan should I buy?
	The Really Funky Blue One
	The Really Funky Purple One
	Neither You Tree-Hugging Lentil-Munching Patchouli-Scented Hippy!