Youth

We have a niece coming to stay, I think she's about fifteen, but I'm not sure. It throws us in to all sorts of slightly enjoyable quandries since we are not used to others about the place. Like for instance, what do they like to eat? Will they say everything is 'awesome' all the time? What will they think of all the stuff on our walls- especially the girl in the wheelbarrow holding a gun against the clown who's fucking her while wheeling her around? Can she watch Tv for long stretches of the evening? Can we? Will I fall over again dancing to 'Street Fighting Man? Do we have Coca Cola or should we encourage a slug of wine? It is a world of imponderables.

Scott says stock up on shaped chicken nuggets and ketamine and she'll be fine.

Paul Shepheard

Paul is a superb writer on architecture, the best of his generation I think. Three lovely books: 'What is Architecture?', 'The Cultivated Wilderness', and 'Artificial Love' prove it, they are an inspiration. So we went along to see him talk last night at the 'Longplayer' festival in docklands, which means a festival you can't find even with sat-nav in your taxi because the road system seems designed to throw you all over the place other than where you want to go via flyover and in circles around HSBC headquarters. Anyway, there we were on some wharf or another, with planes screaming overhead periodically.

He doesn't disappoint. When you eventually get there, there is certainly poetry. My problem is, am I in the mood for poetry? I first met Paul on a flight to Munster and we agreed a trickiness in flying over Germany, especially if you imagined your plane a Lancaster, but that's about it, he was very funny, and I buggered up a launch of his by talking about my own work rather than his by mistake, but I follow from a distance and via my students response to his texts.

Clearly something has happened to me, while I can seep into that silky world I started to get irritated. So I chirped up. Julie likes me to chirp up, she usually nudges me to do so as if thwacking a horse with a whip. The sort of thing I chirp up with these days is; 'Neoliberalist bullshit!'

Or words to the effect. I say:

'You can't ignore the 700,000 kids who died at Stalingrad on the the Russian side alone, people who died in ideological struggle - and say that no matter what happens to us hornbills will still roost dangerously on some island of Scotland!'..... 'We are not birds!!' I exclaim... 'If we are not here, the world no longer exists to us!'

It was the return of that Ian Sinclair moment. I am clearly troubled.

Hookers in Las Vegas

Woke up thinking about a couple of hookers in Las Vegas. It's good to have known a couple of hookers in Las Vegas, it made me smile. It's not as if I do it all the time, this was my first recollection in ten years. Was it Standal who said his finest memory in life was his first visit to a brothel? I can understand that. It was a poignant memory, not sordid in anyway at all, in fact the opposite really, touching. I remember Morgan getting drunk and saying The Shawshank Redemption was the best film ever made and you knew she meant it in every way. She looked like Stevie Nicks. We were sitting at a bar in Caesars, fending off a redneck. She wrote to me later. That's what I mean by touching not sordid. We actually exchanged addresses.

Writing on the Wall

Julie's gone out with an old friend returning from New York, which means, for me, a good dose of Keef's shepherds pie and Little Feat's 'Rock and Roll Doctor' just excellent, also 'Spanish Moon' off 'Feats Don't Fail Me Now' then a touch of Joe Satriani in his blue dream, then it will probably mature (!) to Rush and the crowd pleasing 'Spirit of the Radio', maybe ACDC live with 'Thunderstruck' later. I wish sometimes I could be more imaginative.

But, when I was in the White Horse yesterday staring at the MTV screen, I realized I have no clue about contemporary music at all. McLuhan was right about all this stuff, I can't get it because I don't get the technology that goes into it, let alone the sounds generated, which I can only categorize via genre, just as I can only say famous girls of the fifties; huge breasts, famous girls of the sixties; no breasts, famous girls today; bottoms. But no matter, I sit around watching Battlefield Detectives and think about the Romans.

Girl from New York apparently making headway with 3D photos which I don't understand either.

The excellent Dan sent me a message today from Beijing saying he's second in command of a project for a city for 42 million people in China. He's just got his degree. They might take him to Macao for fun with the authorities because he's from Hull. As a good Marxist he should absorb all information.

Writings on the wall ladies and gentlemen.

McLuhan

Spent the morning ramping up 'cause and effect' 'We're not in the C16th' I said, 'it's not a case of divine wind' unfortunately mixing my metaphors. I was thinking about papyrus. Marshall McLuhan says that the Romans could build straight roads because they imported papyrus from Egypt and could hence make durable lightweight maps. Presumably you need maps to build straight roads. On straight roads you run chariots and march legions. Without straight roads (the Dark Ages- caused by Egyptian ban on papyrus exports!) you need cavalry, and for cavalry in heavy armour you need stirrups. Now to bring empires down to stirrups or lack of them is a bit questionable. However, sure thing the ancient Greeks didn't have papyrus he says, and didn't build roads in straight lines either. However they certainly did have chariots, so how do you square that? I thought Greece was just too hilly.

However I do believe in the more complex enquiry in to cause and effect. As I enjoyed refreshment in the White Horse, the ever reliable Lily said she 'wanted to go to California, join a commune and worship carrots'. I wondered if this didn't rather discriminate against other inhabitants of the vegetable patch, onions for instance, or broad beans, but she was having none of it.

'Tendrils' she said.

Quiet Coach

They should re-name the 'quiet coach' the 'confrontation coach'. We have yet to have ridden the railways in the sure knowledge of quietitude. Instead, we find ourselves in arguments, admittedly sometimes silent arguments with each other, but sometimes boiling over into stark confrontation with the young family playing snap, or the lady re-scheduling her precious fucking film shoot on her mobile phone. Why on earth, if you're a mum with three young shouting kids eager to go on holiday, did you book the quiet coach in the first place? I'm sure next time we will be hailed as heroes by the silent majority of 'quiet coach' dwellers as the quite coach militia. We should wear tee shirts. Or maybe, when it comes to the next booking, I'll just say 'Well do you fancy a little confrontation next Sunday darling?' Or would you prefer some peace and quiet in the noisy section?

We were only going to Peterborough, but I can assure you a weekend with mum and dad is exhausting work. Hence we snapped at the snap. Endless questions such as 'Do you have a whisk then?' are the sort of thing you get from elderly mums and dads, and then there's the endless 'Would you like some coffee?' when after about a million exclamations, they must know you don't touch the stuff. Or, when you retreat to the Garden Centre, 'Did you have a nice coffee?' 'No we went to the pub'. Still, it is their world, and we join in as best we can.

Soho today

Trying to write my history book in the mornings, I got to the Romans today, completing ancient Greece yesterday, and found myself juggling Asterix with Gibbon, Carry on Cleo and Up Pompeii! Ventured out to the West End as oft I used to do in search of less rarified air. The hairdressers next to the Coach and Horses has historically been most convenient, and I thought; 'A haircut always cheers you up' and 'a chance to cut loose like a dog off the leash' etc etc. After a couple of stops on the way (a dog has his lamp posts) I found myself back in the Coach anxious to see how new owners Fullers were doing, only to find the old manager Alistair still in charge and the place still bereft of carpets or anything or anybody hospitable. I don't know how he did it, manage to ruin a whole institution in such a short time. Anyway Mark was there still becoming an astrophysicist wearing a straw cowboy hat.

I braced myself for a visit next door, only to be comforted by the sight of Laila from Lithuania. If you are going to sit supine in anybodies chair (dentists/hairdressers/psychiatrists etc) I definitely prefer to be sure of the operators powers, and the lovely Laila not only looked as if she could pull a tractor (a look I've always liked) but had the most fantastic tits.

Suitably reclined, I watched her work away to create the most esteemed of victorian beards. Thankfully one part of Soho still works, but the rest, I guess I'm past it now, twenty years in the Coach was enough, let it go, to be honest I couldn't wait to get home.