Will Self's Blog, page 57

Dream 9

I happen to be there for the death of S – we argued once, and I have never forgotten or forgiven. He had grown monstrously fat while moribund, and now dollops of his corpse protrude from the windows of the squat, quaint old house. The undertakers, the family, ambulance and fire crews all stand around scratching their heads – what is to be done? The house will need to be dismantled to get him out. I feel my own mind to be beautifully organised – all my thoughts and feelings about S are perfect...

Dream 8

Meanwhile there’s a lot going on with Botswana: I have to take a woman back there to claim an inheritance. She is white. Everyone in Botswana is dead or dying of Aids. A social worker meets us at the airport – she will be our guide, and she drives us through narrow streets of Jacobean houses, the ornately carved wooden facades of which are patterned with syringes, condoms and pineapples. We reach the lawyer’s office, but he only wants water – which we don’t have. The heat is oppressive – the...

Umbrella on Man Booker longlist

The 2012 Man Booker prize longlist has just been announced and Umbrella, Will Self’s new novel published by Bloomsbury, is one of the 12 selected. You can order a discounted copy ahead of next month’s publication from Amazon here.

Read an extract from Umbrella here.

Dream 7

I commission a report on me from a group of the researchers who’ve done things for me over the years. They appear to be being thorough: following me in the street, sitting on the edge of the bath when I’m on the toilet – two of them skulk beneath the kitchen table when I’m eating my supper, they pull at the ends of my toes, and I remember the liberties that could be taken when everyone took ecstasy. At the end of a couple of weeks they present their report: it’s anodyne stuff, mostly just cut...

Real meals: Mishkin’s

Happy birthday to the hegemon! I’m sitting with Tony Lacey, my long-time publisher at Penguin – who was responsible for ushering a collection of these columns into electronic print – in Mishkin’s on the east side of . . . Covent Garden. It’s the Fourth of July and it was Tony’s idea that we celebrate my American heritage. Mishkin’s advertises itself as “a kind of Jewish deli with cocktails”, so presumably it isn’t named after the Christlike protagonist of Dostoevsky’sThe Idiot. The plate-glas...

Dream 6

Playing golf on the links beside Harlech where I made a sand boat when I was five. Playing golf with an Indie pop band boy with the head of a mackerel, he/it wears a short denim jacket and clumpy 70s platform shoes – he/it is naked from the waist down; goose-pimpled ball sack, erect leg hairs. My eye follows his stroke into a curving, perfectly azure wave that breaks on the shore – breaks into ice cubes on the shingle beach. He throws down his club and runs towards the water – I chase him, he...

Twitter is just a new home for old bores

The only time I'll tweet is if a songbird flies into my mouth.

I don

Mondeo man, meet Monderman

For whom the bell dings