Sarah Pinborough's Blog, page 20

The empty middle ground of Twitter…

When I came back to Twitter after my rather long break, I swore I'd never blog about it. There you go. I'm clearly a person whose promises can be broken. Or maybe I'm just a person who changes their mind sometimes. Is that the same thing? Am I just making excuses for my own weak promise-making skills? Who knows? Maybe the answer lies somewhere in the middle ground. Truth is only ever a matter of perception after all.

It's been a funny week on Twitter. But then, Twitter can be a funny place if you let it. The weird thing about that other dimension in which so many of us partially exist is how it polarises people . Issues arise and people immediately take one position or the other. Two sides go to war. Never the twain shall meet. That always disappoints me. As a writer I spend my life making other people up. I see their side on many things. It might not be MY side, but it's theirs and I kind of get it. On twitter, there seems little space to see the middle ground on any issue without being flamed and that makes me sad. To me it denies reason, and reminds me that at the end of the day we're the same kind of people who dragged others crying to guillotines while we knitted jumpers and laughed. I exaggerate obviously, but I'm a writer – helping the story along is what I do. I guess what scares me most about Twitter sometimes is how people forget how they react to things when they're not being a 'Tweeter' and just being themselves. The two are often very different  I should imagine.

Let me give you  a couple of examples.

Two big stories seemed to fill my timeline this week. They outraged people one way or another. Me? Not so much. But then I'm not easily outraged. I like to smile. To laugh. Not to fight.

The first?

Well, that was @rickygervais and his constant use of the word 'mong' in the Twitter universe. Fellow tweeters either thought he should be burnt at the stake for offending or that those offended should just grow up and 'get with' our evolving language. You know what? I think there's a pretty solid middle ground. I don't believe for a second that Mr Gervais meant to offend. But at the same time I think he was naive in using that word on such an open forum and not expecting a large percentage of readers to be offended by it. It's a word wallowing in a variety of interpretations depending on individual experience, but it started out as a derogatory term. If you use it, you have to accept that some people will still see it that way. Huge amounts of media time have been spent on this story; should he apologise of not? Is he a villain or a hero? To be honest, who really cares? I should imagine that Ricky Gervais doesn't overly. It's only Twitter, after all. He used the word. I presume he thought it through. Can everyone put the torches down now? Worse things are probably happening in the street around the corner from you. And you know what? If he doesn't think it's offensive, then NOTHING you can say will persuade him otherwise, and the same goes the other way round. That's it. End of.

The second instance I'm more wary of talking about. After all this involves a 'real' person. Not a celebrity. They apparently are fair game. This was the case of @talkstoteens who was pursued by a journalist and had her tweets revealed in an attempt to expose her as some kind of terrible teacher. As an ex-teacher, I followed this story with interest. Let me say now, I don't in any way think the paper was right in doing what they did. Not at all. But do I understand WHY they did what they did? Of course. She actually made it easy for them. I sympathise with her, but at the same time, I have to say, my inner eyebrow raised somewhat because as an Assistant Head she should have had the good sense to lock her account if she was going to tweet about blow jobs etc. I mean, REALLY??? Didn't she think for one second that perhaps she should LOCK her account? Just in case the kids see it? Even I would have done that, and we all know what I'm like. Most teachers I know don't even have facebook accounts, let alone tweet. If they did, their accounts would be locked. End of. If the papers hadn't got her, her school/the parents/the kids would have at some point. I can't help but look at her and think, 'I feel sorry for you, but bloody hell, didn't you THINK?' Have I tweeted this opinion? Hell no. Because of Twitter's extremism it would only have got me flak. Which I don't need.  For once, I kept my opinions to myself.

The story and my personal views aside, what interested me was the Twitter outrage about it. That whole universe is in uproar. And I have to admit, that did make  me smile. Why? Because I wondered how many of those people would have felt the same outrage if they had come by that story from their kids rather than the great God Twitter, in a kind of 'Oh miss X tweeted about giving a blow job, isn't that funny?' kind of way. I bet they'd have reacted differently. Their uproar would have been a completely different kind. Head teachers and phone calls spring to mind.

Am I calling those people hypocrites? No, I'm not. I'm not that harsh. I'm calling them people. Tweeters. And there in lies the strange dichotomy. People react differently when within the Twittersphere than they would in their real lives. It's like when you're walking along a road or driving. When I'm in a car, the pedestrians are all idiots, when I'm driving it, suddenly the reverse is true. Twitter is sort of the same but different. Twitter is like a juggernaut. It sweeps up opinions and demands you join. It powers along that internet highway and people leap on, determined to be going the 'right way' in any given situation.

I guess what I'm saying is that Twitter, the mob mentality of it, makes you choose a side or just shut the fuck up. I've been shot down on there before for trying to be reasoned, and I've learned to keep my middle-ground views to myself. Sometimes I feel strongly enough about something to make a stand – the Quaddafi beatings and death images for an example – but I'll make my stand outside the Twitterverse. Where I can actually DO something.

You see, that's the thing with crowds. They make me feel like I can't breathe.

I'd rather stand alone. Here in the middle ground. Where it's calmer.

Over the past couple of weeks I have taken stands over certain issues. The BFS awards scandal was one. Did I take to Twitter on it? No. Not beyond re-tweeting articles (covering both sides). Why? I don't like a mob. Mobs always turn ugly and I want no part of them. Anyone who saw the footage of Gaddafi (yes, I'm going for every spelling of that name in this blog) after his capture will know what I mean. Even when a mob is right, it leaves me feeling unsettled. All mobs are ugly. I want no part of Twitter OUTRAGE (caps intended.)

I'm fond of you Twitter, but sometimes, when you're working as one, I can't help but think you've checked your brain in at the door. Come over here to the middle ground. We might not always agree but the sofas are comfy and we could chat about stuff for hours.

And more than that, there's room to be yourself. You can't ask for more than that.

SP x

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Fantasycon Banquet intro (by me) and fabulous guest of honour speeches…

Contains Swearing! Obviously!

It's all just a blur to me…

The Blur. You know – that tiny space  that's all the difference between the wooden back of a musty wardrobe and the cold crisp air of Narnia. I don't know why I call it the Blur really. There's nothing blurry about it at all. In the Blur the lines all have sharp edges. The colours are bright. The blur is sometimes the most real of all the strange spaces we inhabit.

I live in the Blur – that almost dimension between fact and fiction. I think all writers live there somewhere, and maybe we live there most, (when I walk round London now and I see an old cab shelter, I'm with Ted and young Fin and the Knights and the secret Cabbies that watch London and all the rest of the Somewhere and Nowhere I've spent 3 books making real, I'm not there, on that pavement looking at a forgotten green wooden box) but it isn't just our place. It would be easy to get all pretentious and try and stick a writers' national flag on it, but it's not ours. I knew the Blur long before I wrote a book.

Readers know the Blur. You're in the Blur when you go to a real place but the things and people you remember most from it and care about are ones you read in a book. A few years ago I visited an author friend of mine in Boston and he said, 'You know where we're going today?' I didn't know. 'Ogunquit, Maine. I thought you'd want to see it.' Man, I was so excited. This may mean nothing to you, but if you've ever read The Stand (several times in my case) then your stomach would have fizzed like mine did. I smiled the whole goddamned way. When we got there, and Chris Golden and I walked the beaches and looked at the houses, I was seeing where Frannie Goldsmith found out she was pregnant,  and when I looked at the rooftops I could almost see the sign she and greasy Harold Lauder painted before they started their journey towards their individual destinies. That shit was more real to me than the people selling painted boats in the cute tourist shops or the cold wind coming in from the ocean. My Ogunquit, Maine T-shirt is all about having visited Stephen King's Blur for an afternoon – a real place and a fictional one, layered over each other.

Me and a 15 year old student took a trip to the Blur (prompted by the same book) one afternoon back when I was still teaching and there was the first bird flu outbreak. 'Captain Trips,' one boy said, ominously. I looked up, eyes wide. 'Captain Trips?' He nodded. I smiled. The other kids looked at us like we were mad, but I was there in the Blur for a moment and so was he. Captain Trips was coming..and bringing with it the walkin' dude…The truth of the panic around bird flu was wrapped into the memory of the panic about Captain Trips in a work of fiction. Fact and fiction and the slipstream between them where in that moment, he and I sat.

Dreamers know the Blur. Proper dreamers. Vivid dreamers. I could cry for people who say they don't remember their dreams. It must be awful. Life must be so dull, in colours as well as actions. How much life are they missing? I love my dreams. Even the terrifying ones that would wake me up at night when I was a kid and I'd creep into the older girls' dorms at boarding school and wake someone up and make them talk to me until it was light so that I wouldn't fall back to sleep again. Dreaming is a world in itself. It encapsulates the Blur. What is real and what isn't? If you remember something vividly from a dream years after, then surely that's maybe more real than something you actually did but that everyone, including you has forgotten?

About two years ago I had a dream where a famous writer was a kind of Doctor Who character and I was his assistant. He took me out to the very edge of our universe and we stood in space, on a boundary between two places. Ahead, there was a wormhole and through it I could see worlds of such brightness and colours and brilliance that they took my breath away. I ached to go forward. I looked at the Doctor/FamousWriter. 'We can go there,' he said, 'but if we do, you can never go back.' I turned around and looked behind me. Far in the distance I could see the Earth and the Moon and I felt such a wave of sadness. I looked forward. I looked back. I woke up before I made my choice. I don't think that dream will ever leave me. But I can't remember what I did last week….See? The Blur is real. It is to me.

Anyway, I've rambled on enough. If you know what I'm talking about, then you got it in the first sentence, and if you don't, then I've probably just bored you. I have to go anyway, I've got some hours to spend in The Blur making shit up with people I've made up but who are very real to me and make them do stuff in places that are real but that I've turned into fiction. My stomach is fizzing.

You know that Doctor in my dream? I think he was wrong. You can go to a place of brilliance and brightness and colours, and you can still come home. It's all in your own head, after all.

I love the Blur. It's where magic is real and everything is possible.

Hope to see you there. x

The Shadow of the Soul German Trailer.

I have no idea what it says…but I love the music they've given me

My haunted house.

'Does not your house dream?' Kahlil Gibran

Houses are strange. We buy them. We think we own them. They make us feel safe and secure and sturdy and forever.

We're wrong of course. Houses aren't ours. Not really. My house was built in 1898. It will be standing, no doubt, long after I'm dead. It's that kind of house. It was built to last.

When I walk down to write in the nearest decent coffee shop to my house, I often pass the home I grew up in. I put it in a book once, 'The Reckoning', which was  a story about the souls of buildings. I guess it's an idea that has always fascinated me. When I go past that house (that my parents sold about fifteen years ago), I wonder at all the lost memories inside it. I remember being so afraid of the attic that I would run under the hatch to get to my sister's bedroom. I remember the awful green carpet up the stairs. I remember when the girl who lived next door got drunk at 15 and set her bedroom on fire with a cigarette and jumped from her  window in an attempt to save herself. Fifteen seemed so grown up to me then. She died on the lawn before the ambulance got there, her small dog howling beside her. Apparently, all the skin from her back was burned away. That haunted me when I was a child. I wonder if anyone who lives there now is even aware of that story. Of course they're not. They've imprinted the house with their own memories. Mine no longer exist there.

I've lived in my current house for eight years. It's the longest I've ever lived anywhere. Last year I put my house on the market and am still trying to sell it (damn that recession). At the time, it was a practical decision – I spend a lot of time in London and it would make sense to live there. I still loved my house though. I found I'd formed an attachment to it. It was my comfort blanket. It was MINE.

It's not of course. Recently, I've felt a shift. My house wants to regenerate. People don't own houses. Houses own people and their memories. They hold lives for a while. They know secrets. But the lives pass and the people move on, and the houses wipe themselves clean and start again.

In the eight years I've lived in my house, lots of people have shared it with me. At first, there was the ex-boyfriend and his three children. Then, after we parted company, there were a few (cough) other men. Then my ex-father in law came to stay while he battled cancer. I remember him pointing out what a nice vibe my house had, (and it really does – My house is kind ) as he looked around each room and nook and cranny. After that there were 'the boys', two friends that rented rooms, and then when they moved out and bought their own place, my friend Liz and her cat Savannah moved in for a year. After they moved out, it was just me and Mr Fing, my old feline companion of forever, who moved on to the great cat playground in the sky a week or so ago.

Since Mr Fing died, things in the house have changed. I can feel a coolness in the bricks and mortar. To be fair, I haven't always been the best house resident. I don't do 'stuff'. I don't buy nick nacks. I like clear lines and spaces. When I've read a book it goes in the charity shop (yep, even the dedicated ones). Talking to @polarkoala at a party yesterday she commented that this was probably because I haven't yet put down roots, and she may well be right, (and as I approach 40 I wonder if I ever will), but that aside,  if I was my house, I wouldn't be overly pleased with me as a current inhabitant. And yet still, my house has cared for me. It's protected me. I've felt safe inside it.

But like I said, since Mr Fing left, I've felt something shift. I think my house is restless. I think it wants new blood. It wants the vigour of change. The walls and doors and shapes of it are suddenly slightly unfamiliar to me. I feel as if my house is shuffling from foot to foot. It's not unkind, but if it could, it would edge me towards the door. Maybe this isn't such a bad thing. I know I need change. I just didn't realise that my house might too.

We often wonder if our houses are haunted. Recently I've decided that my house probably is.

The weird thing is, I think that the ghost is me.

SP x

My cat. By me.

You know, sometimes I hear people talking about their partners/boyfriends/wives/etc and they say, 'You know, I say I love him/her, but if you asked me why I wouldn't be able to list the reasons… I just do, I guess.' Those people need to look at their partners/boyfriends/wives etc and maybe rethink if either of them are doing the love thing right.

I had a cat. He rocked. He died today. We had a lot of years together, and I can tell you exactly why I loved him.

My cat was called Mr Fing. He was a girl. When I got him he was called simply Fing, an abbreviation of 'the Effing Cat' which is what his old owners called him. This gives you a sense of his nature. He was funny. He was mental. He was French. When I got him he was about seven. When he died he was about twenty. Here are the reasons I loved my cat.

1) My cat knew he was at home with me. Whenever I moved – which has been a lot – I never worried about that 'if you let them out they won't come back' rule. Mr Fing would get out of the cat box, look around, look at me and then shrug as if to say, 'meh, she's here. It's okay. This is new home.'

2) When I first got my cat, I was married. Clearly my cat's old owners had not had a lot of sex. Whenever my husband and I were getting it on, Mr Fing would come to check I was okay. It would make me giggle to open my eyes and find the cat sticking its face in mine, all concerned. My husband – and several men after – were less amused. I learned to be less noisy. My cat learned to stick its head under a pillow and wait till it was all over.

3) My cat liked to be where we were. He used to sit on the gatepost of our farmhouse in Devon and watch the world. We had a convertible car. There were several occasions when half-way down the lane we would look in the back seat and see Mr Fing sitting there all cool as a cucumber having jumped in as we drove out.

4) My cat used to come jogging with me. I kid you not.

5) My cat liked to share Doner Kebabs with me. Especially with chilli sauce and garlic mayonnaise.

6) My cat always came to greet me when I got home.

7) My cat used to wait outside the loo for me.

I loved watching my cat having a mad half-hour ghost chasing around the house.

9) Even in the last few days, when he was weak and sick and in pain, my cat would purr around me and face rub me. My cat had my back.

10) My cat was a kind cat. When my friend Nick came to stay when he was dying, my cat would always try to jump on his lap and chest for a cuddle. Nick would always push him away because of his cancer and it being painful. In the last week, when Nick was in bed and on a morphine drip, Mr Fing crept into his bedroom. He jumped softly onto the end of the bed. He slowly padded his way up, testing his way so as not to stand on Nick, and eventually reached his hand which was above the covers, and then carefully slid his head under it and lay down. I think my cat knew. Cats do. The right cats, anyway.

My cat was a happy cat. He liked to sit out in the sun with me. I hope the sun is shining on him now. And I hope he forgives me for doing what I hope was best.

Me and my cat – we were buddies. You can't ask for more than that.

SP x

 

Some of us are looking at the stars…

A moment.

North Africa. The sun falls fast. Minutes and it's over, but the heat, the ghost of the sun, last long into the night. I remember the warmth in the tiles under my feet. The smell and grit of sand between my toes. Dust drifts in on the desert winds. My dad's arms and face, tanned to black. Golfer's tan gained by playing cricket on a ragged pitch in 40plus temperatures.  Mad Englishmen. He sits outside with the radio on, beer at his side. Whiles away the evenings.

The balcony is a terrace that runs around the house. Below, the generator hums and insects clack and hum in the dark grass. The dog sleeps while the nightwatchman sips strong sweet tea on the makeshift bed . No need for canvas over his head. The night is never cold.

Crickets chirrup. Hard-winged bugs crack against the bulbs. I come outside. My dad leans back in his chair, feet up on the wall as the radio barks messages in spurts of noise from planes somewhere far overhead. No music. I touch the blue metal rail above the low wall. It doesn't burn any more but still has a long way to go to cool. I'm eight years old. Maybe nine.  My dad forty-four or forty-five.

I'm unhappy. Two weeks holiday evaporated to two days. Plane ride. School. Cold. England. They're waiting. I don't want to go back. In two days time, I will in fact try and get off the plane and be cajoled/forced/bullied back on by the pilot that I meet coming the other way on the steps. There will be a standoff for ten minutes. I will lose. Plane ride. School. Cold. England. But that's the future. Two days away.

I'm wearing T-shirt and shorts. I crawl into my dad's lap. He smells of beer and pipe tobacco and warmth and a trace of Old Spice or something similar. Most of all, he smells of safe. He talks to me about the radio. The airplanes. He explains how it works. I listen. I sip his beer. It has a bitter taste but I don't care. I look up. The night is clear and the stars are bright. They hang low in the sky in Africa. Stars are always diamonds. To me. Cliche over-used but I don't care. This time when I look they are like holes in the sheet of the night giving a glimpse to a brilliance beyond. Something forever out of reach. Something behind space.

Me and my dad, we don't talk about school. We don't talk about the 'unhappy.' Instead, we talk about the stars. The light. He tells me – and its the first time I've heard this and all the times I hear it after that I'm glad this was the first time – how what I'm looking at isn't really there. He tells me, between sips of his beer, about the speed of light. About how what I'm looking at is time travel. Science fiction come to life. He tells me that if my eyes were strong enough then maybe I could see all the people on those planets living out their daily lives long after they were dead.

I stare at the sky for a long, long time, after that. I imagine the people and the creatures that I'm looking at even though I can't see them. I wonder if any of the stars are really there at all. I talk in flurries, my childish imagination making up stories of places far away. My dad sips his beer and lights his pipe. I look at the stars with more respect. I like the story of light travel. It makes the stars magical. Fragile.

The years have evaporated, but on clear warm nights when I look at the stars, I still feel that dry air that has never known anything but heat. I hear the crickets chirping. I smell the 'safe.'

I wonder if, one day, somewhere out there, someone so many millions of miles away will look through their telescope and see that moment long after my dad and me and this planet are just dust. The thought makes me smile.

Happy Friday,

SJP x

Times they are a changing….

There seems to have been a sudden surge of school reunions in my world of late. Well, I say a surge. Three to be precise, but that's three more than there have been in any of the other years since the education system and I happily parted company. It dawned on me that perhaps this was due to the impending arrival of 40. The biggie. The really-properly-grown-up-no-kidding-yourself-anymore age.

Forty. It's supposed to mean something, isn't it? Like 30 was. Turns out, where some people lock themselves away and sob at that birthday, I actually liked turning thirty. A whole new exciting decade lay ahead and I was determined to make the most of it. Seeing 40 looming I feel the same way. A new decade means time for a shake up. In my 30s I started writing, I went through a whole career in teaching, and then became a full-time writer. I'm expecting MORE from myself in my 40s. A decade of confidence maybe. A return to the 'fuck it, let's just give it a go' attitude of my 20s.

Last week I went to a reunion lunch at the House of Lords (hell yes, my school was THAT posh) and caught up with a couple of friends I hadn't seen in over twenty years. It was fun. We giggled. I drank wine. We giggled some more and reminisced and shared what we knew of other peoples life journeys since we'd snogged/shagged/smoked with them in the various nooks and crannies of The Edinburgh Academy.  The years folded in on themselves. We were the same, but different.

A month ago I went to a reunion at my first boarding school and again caught up with people from half a lifetime ago and looked through their photo albums to times gone by. Again it was fun, but I found I didn't feel that overwhelming sense of nostalgia that a lot of people had. I didn't come away with any major desire to keep in touch or see the old place again. I didn't even go through the routine of kidding myself that I would. That place and those people were the past. A different country. Done.

The excitement is in the future.  The one thing that these trips into the past have made me realise is that I'm pretty happy with my life. I'm excited about the future. Sure, I'd like to lose a couple of pounds and get my house sold, but in the main, things are really good. I'm free from ties and work is taking me in different directions some of which keep me awake with 'what if…' style excitement. I get the feeling that change is just around the corner. And I'm a girl that loves change. I like that it scares me slightly. Sometimes a little fear is good.

When I was younger, I thought that ageing would really bother me. I thought I'd be reaching for the Botox or fillers and envying the next generation. I'm surprised and relieved that hasn't turned out to be the case. Maybe that's because I've done a lot in my time, had my adventures and am embarking on new ones. Getting older brings a confidence that youth, for all its bravery, just doesn't have. And I'm thinking that 40 is going to be just fabulous. I'm using 39 to make sure that's the case. Working hard, exercising, trying not to be 'afraid' of things any more. After all, life is short, and if you don't learn to make the most of by the time you hit 40, you probably never will.

I read somewhere that the truly young are those that look forward and never back. I'm keeping that in mind. There's nothing wrong with a quick sentimental reflection on times gone by, but if you spend more time living in those than you do planning for the future then buy yourself some slippers and be done with it.

We live in a world where we, especially women, are supposed to want to be twenty forever. Really?? My bottom may have been three inches higher then, but that was about all being twenty had going for it. Twenty was crap. Forty, however, forty is going to be just fine. I'm hoping that by then I'll be living somewhere new and writing more stuff and dating fabulous men. I'm tired of people stressing about their upcoming birthdays. We need to start celebrating our ages, not panicking about them. We're alive. The world is full of fun and wine and laughter. Enjoy it.

Remember, all those of you that worry about turning 30/40/50. The only alternative to getting older is being dead.

Here Endeth the Lesson/Rant/Hour of work avoidance/mildlyhungoverwaffle. (oh, and in book news The Traitor's Gate (Silverwood) is out on Thursday, and The Shadow of the Soul will be reviewed in the Saturday Times this week.) x

SJP x

The lovely people at SouthsideBroadcasting try and get sense out of me…

http://southsidebroadcasting.podbean.com/category/science-fictionfilmcult/

Why I can't abide the Dude…

(Disclaimer: This is not a deep meaningful blog. If you're looking for that, move right along, and come back another day x)

Before I start, let me qualify that I appreciate that The Big Lebowski is a LOT of people's favourite film. I see it quoted it all the time. People giggle at shared jokes, and laugh at memories of various scenes. There are enough of these people for me to know that it's probably a good film. A pretty good one. The quality of the film is not the point of this blog. So all you Lebowski lovers – take a deep breath and relax. This is not about  your film. This is about me and the Dude and that is all.

I really wanted to like The Big Lebowski. I REALLY did. I wanted to be part of that jokey gang. I tried watching it. Twice. Both times I dozed off in the middle. This disappointed me. The second time I had tried very hard to stay awake but to no avail. I tried to care about the Dude and the unfortunate series of events that had taken over his life. I didn't. It was worse than that – I was really irritated by him.

This surprised me. Mainly, because I totally heart Jeff Bridges. To be fair, there is nothing that man couldn't do to me if he asked nicely. Or not so nicely as it goes. But not as the Dude. Definitely not the Dude. The dude totally made me grit my teeth.  It took me a little while to figure it out, but after quite a bit of mulling I got there.

The dude is everything that confuses me about some people and leaves me cold. I guess in many ways he's the antithesis of everything I am. Here's my reasoning….

I can imagine nothing worse that the one exciting series of events in my life coming about because someone mistook me for someone else. I never want to be mistaken for someone else. If there's two people like me, I want to be the one that people know about.

Things happen to the Dude. He doesn't MAKE anything happen. So much passivity. Everyone else in that film is running around plotting and scheming but even when he's in the midst of it, the dude just gets carried along by which ever group is using him at the time. Sure, we all have stuff in our lives that we can't control, but in the main I can't understand people that just let life roll over them. I like to make things happen. I like people who make things happen. I like the buzz that comes with the achievement of your goals. The satisfaction of trying to be the best you can be in what you choose. I don't understand why people would want to just dream their lives away. Get stoned when you're young. Get serious when you hit 25.

I don't want the rug. I want the whole fucking house.

Even when exciting things start happening in the Dude's world, he doesn't wake up and think – wow – there is some stuff to explore out there and change his ways. He's happy to go back to getting stoned and going bowling. It's like none of it touches him.

I know that in many ways I could use being a little more like the dude. A little more chilling and a little less striving might not hurt me. I might even be happier. But I'm never going to think the Dude is cool…He's way too off the mark for me. When I see the dude I just want to say, 'Oh get off your fat arse and DO something!'

Just like I say to myself in the mirror every morning!

SP xx