Graham Spaid's Blog, page 4
December 18, 2013
Truth v. Suction
The truth can do what it likes, but fiction must follow rules.
In real life, even if we tried, we couldn’t stop bizarre things happening. In fact, most people don’t want to stop bizarre things happening. We love it when strange stories make the news. What an odd old world we live in! But fiction is not real life. A lot of the fiction we read has not got much to do with real life at all. It is reassuring and conventional. That’s what fiction should be like, apparently.
An amateur reviewer has found tireless: too bizarre. Of all things, a fan of sci-fi, where you might expect bizarre events to be the norm; a genre full of incidents and characters too strange for us to come across in real life, at least for a century or two. The War of the Worlds is an old favourite. Remember the alien squid? They’re not going to pop up on our radar anytime soon, but they did help establish a few rules. The book is classic science-fiction. The alien squid are normal now. For the reviewer, tireless: is not just too bizarre. It also imitates ‘decent literary satire.’ This raises an obvious question: what is decent literary satire? Presumably in an effort to answer the same question, he started reading Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, a satire on Victorian society written in 1872, two minutes before he posted the review, according to the book club website.
This literary satire has been around a while. It must be decent literary satire. Its alien squid have now become the norm. Next day he gave Erewhon a three-star rating. A pity Butler wasn’t around to watch.
Of course, our friend may be right; tireless:may be awful, but however perceptive a reviewer’s comments are, they still tell us more about the squid inside his own head than about the book in question.
In real life, even if we tried, we couldn’t stop bizarre things happening. In fact, most people don’t want to stop bizarre things happening. We love it when strange stories make the news. What an odd old world we live in! But fiction is not real life. A lot of the fiction we read has not got much to do with real life at all. It is reassuring and conventional. That’s what fiction should be like, apparently.
An amateur reviewer has found tireless: too bizarre. Of all things, a fan of sci-fi, where you might expect bizarre events to be the norm; a genre full of incidents and characters too strange for us to come across in real life, at least for a century or two. The War of the Worlds is an old favourite. Remember the alien squid? They’re not going to pop up on our radar anytime soon, but they did help establish a few rules. The book is classic science-fiction. The alien squid are normal now. For the reviewer, tireless: is not just too bizarre. It also imitates ‘decent literary satire.’ This raises an obvious question: what is decent literary satire? Presumably in an effort to answer the same question, he started reading Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, a satire on Victorian society written in 1872, two minutes before he posted the review, according to the book club website.
This literary satire has been around a while. It must be decent literary satire. Its alien squid have now become the norm. Next day he gave Erewhon a three-star rating. A pity Butler wasn’t around to watch.
Of course, our friend may be right; tireless:may be awful, but however perceptive a reviewer’s comments are, they still tell us more about the squid inside his own head than about the book in question.
December 8, 2013
The Art of Persuasion
It was time to choose a pen name, something to put after Graham. I had to scrap my first idea, Eye, as Google was suspicious. When I tried to register for an email account, their website challenged me to prove that Graham Eye was a real person. That was a kind of board game with robots which I could never hope to win. In fact, I used to know a boy called Michael Eye. I remember him very well, a quiet classmate in fourth grade. I wonder how he’s managing in the digital age. It’s not as though I chose Graham Arse, is it? I was disappointed. Eye was good. It’s a motif in the book I wrote. Arse is, too, of course.
In the end, I just stuck with the original, Spaid. It’s hard to find the right name. I don’t know what’s more difficult, though: getting people to believe you, or machines. Children normally get what they want. At school, we had French lessons at the top of a tower. The master was an anxious Frenchman who has my sympathy now, although we tore him lovingly apart at the time. One trick worked especially well. When monsieur was looking somewhere else, a boy climbed over the window sill and down the drain pipe, then lay spread-eagled on the tar below. It was a long way down. His friends shouted and peered over the sill, calling on sir to come and look. He did, then ran in horror down the spiral staircase. I can still hear his stiff shoes tapping down the stone steps like a frantic, old typewriter. The boy on the ground climbed back up the pipe. We didn’t see the master’s face when he got downstairs, but we saw it when he came back up. The young victim was at his desk again, and for once everybody had their head down, working.
Here’s another difficult one – how to get people to give you money. Buy your book, for example. Or just hand over a coin. In India, naked sadhus hang around bus stations, standing in front of well-off travellers with young children. You pay them to go away. One grey-beard I saw had tied a red string around his penis the way a girl binds up her pony tail. The unexcited organ was at least six inches long. It’s what we tell our pupils at school. I mean, use the talents God has given. Elsewhere, children who have never been to school do the same sort of thing. Outside Rome’s Termini station, gypsy girls surround foreign tourists and lift their billowing frocks above their heads. You see little skeletons underneath a layer of skin. Does embarrassment make people generous? Some things must be true in every culture. It could work on my reviewers.
In the end, I just stuck with the original, Spaid. It’s hard to find the right name. I don’t know what’s more difficult, though: getting people to believe you, or machines. Children normally get what they want. At school, we had French lessons at the top of a tower. The master was an anxious Frenchman who has my sympathy now, although we tore him lovingly apart at the time. One trick worked especially well. When monsieur was looking somewhere else, a boy climbed over the window sill and down the drain pipe, then lay spread-eagled on the tar below. It was a long way down. His friends shouted and peered over the sill, calling on sir to come and look. He did, then ran in horror down the spiral staircase. I can still hear his stiff shoes tapping down the stone steps like a frantic, old typewriter. The boy on the ground climbed back up the pipe. We didn’t see the master’s face when he got downstairs, but we saw it when he came back up. The young victim was at his desk again, and for once everybody had their head down, working.
Here’s another difficult one – how to get people to give you money. Buy your book, for example. Or just hand over a coin. In India, naked sadhus hang around bus stations, standing in front of well-off travellers with young children. You pay them to go away. One grey-beard I saw had tied a red string around his penis the way a girl binds up her pony tail. The unexcited organ was at least six inches long. It’s what we tell our pupils at school. I mean, use the talents God has given. Elsewhere, children who have never been to school do the same sort of thing. Outside Rome’s Termini station, gypsy girls surround foreign tourists and lift their billowing frocks above their heads. You see little skeletons underneath a layer of skin. Does embarrassment make people generous? Some things must be true in every culture. It could work on my reviewers.
The Art of Persuasion, or My anus horribilis
It was time to choose a pen name, something to put after Graham. I had to scrap my first idea, Eye, as Google was suspicious. When I tried to register for an email account, their website challenged me to prove that Graham Eye was a real person. That was a kind of board game with robots which I could never hope to win. In fact, I used to know a boy called Michael Eye. I remember him very well, a quiet classmate in fourth grade. I wonder how he’s managing in the digital age. It’s not as though I chose Graham Arse, is it? I was disappointed. Eye was good. It’s a motif in the book I wrote. Arse is, too, of course.
In the end, I just stuck with the original, Spaid. It’s hard to find the right name. I don’t know what’s more difficult, though: getting people to believe you, or machines. Children normally get what they want. At school, we had French lessons at the top of a tower. The master was an anxious Frenchman who has my sympathy now, although we tore him lovingly apart at the time. One trick worked especially well. When monsieur was looking somewhere else, a boy climbed over the window sill and down the drain pipe, then lay spread-eagled on the tar below. It was a long way down. His friends shouted and peered over the sill, calling on sir to come and look. He did, then ran in horror down the spiral staircase. I can still hear his stiff shoes tapping down the stone steps like a frantic, old typewriter. The boy on the ground climbed back up the pipe. We didn’t see the master’s face when he got downstairs, but we saw it when he came back up. The young victim was at his desk again, and for once everybody had their head down, working.
Here’s another difficult one – how to get people to give you money. Buy your book, for example. Or just hand over a coin. In India, naked sadhus hang around bus stations, standing in front of well-off travellers with young children. You pay them to go away. One grey-beard I saw had tied a red string around his penis the way a girl binds up her pony tail. The unexcited organ was at least six inches long. It’s what we tell our pupils at school. I mean, use the talents God has given. Elsewhere, children who have never been to school do the same sort of thing. Outside Rome’s Termini station, gypsy girls surround foreign tourists and lift their billowing frocks above their heads. You see little skeletons underneath a layer of skin. Does embarrassment make people generous? Some things must be true in every culture. It could work on my reviewers.
In the end, I just stuck with the original, Spaid. It’s hard to find the right name. I don’t know what’s more difficult, though: getting people to believe you, or machines. Children normally get what they want. At school, we had French lessons at the top of a tower. The master was an anxious Frenchman who has my sympathy now, although we tore him lovingly apart at the time. One trick worked especially well. When monsieur was looking somewhere else, a boy climbed over the window sill and down the drain pipe, then lay spread-eagled on the tar below. It was a long way down. His friends shouted and peered over the sill, calling on sir to come and look. He did, then ran in horror down the spiral staircase. I can still hear his stiff shoes tapping down the stone steps like a frantic, old typewriter. The boy on the ground climbed back up the pipe. We didn’t see the master’s face when he got downstairs, but we saw it when he came back up. The young victim was at his desk again, and for once everybody had their head down, working.
Here’s another difficult one – how to get people to give you money. Buy your book, for example. Or just hand over a coin. In India, naked sadhus hang around bus stations, standing in front of well-off travellers with young children. You pay them to go away. One grey-beard I saw had tied a red string around his penis the way a girl binds up her pony tail. The unexcited organ was at least six inches long. It’s what we tell our pupils at school. I mean, use the talents God has given. Elsewhere, children who have never been to school do the same sort of thing. Outside Rome’s Termini station, gypsy girls surround foreign tourists and lift their billowing frocks above their heads. You see little skeletons underneath a layer of skin. Does embarrassment make people generous? Some things must be true in every culture. It could work on my reviewers.
November 26, 2013
More strange things, or Penis Riot’s Biggest Hits
It’ll be on the web. Most of my ‘jokes’ are, well before I post them. After seeing the recent headline Artist nails himself to Red Square, another hack like me must have read about the artist’s arrest, thought up Criminal nails himself and posted it before I did. Pyotr Pavlensky nailed himself through the scrotum. It’s not just another cock and ball story. One part of Red Square has earned its name. We saw the photos. Almost. In one shot, kind police have put a blanket over the naked Pyotr. In another, some thoughtful editor has cut off, so to speak, the offending organs. Genitals with nails in them might get us all into a mess. The borders of good taste need to be defended. PP, an artist, said his "fixation" was a metaphor for apathy in Russia. Now that’s a metaphor. His balls just sat there and let it happen. He should have got a medal. Instead, they carried him off to jail. A fine name for an edgy boy band: Penis Riot. Say hello to Pussy while you’re there. Here’s the literal truth. One of you will point it out anyway. To say the criminal ‘nailed’ himself, that is, arrested himself, doesn’t make sense. To begin with, in this case no crime was committed before he literally nailed himself. Ergo, no criminal, ergo, no arrest. The artist only became a criminal once he had nailed himself in the cobblers. Cobblesthat should read. Who copy-edited this? The police don’t normally arrest people before a crime has been committed, not this sort of crime. He wasn’t plotting an attack on the Kremlin, not with a hammer. And you can’t arrest yourself, can you? Civic-minded criminals just hand themselves in – which brings me to my next pun. The hammer and no sickle affair isn’t the only embarrassment of late for those whose job it is to protect our borders. The press have taken up another artist and his physical integrity, Karipbek Kuyukov and more dangly things. He was born without arms. He was also denied a visa to enter the UK.
Handy publicity for the government, especially now that they’ve approved the building of a nuclear power station. In the old Soviet Union, the Kuyukovs lived next to the main nuclear testing ground. Karipbek was due to attend an anti-nuclear conference in Scotland. After twenty years of campaigning, he must be an old hand at such events.
The excuse from the British Consulate in Istanbul, where he handed in his visa application: his “biometrics were of poor quality.” Fingerprints blurred again? Someone there needs glasses, because he made it clear on the form that he hasn’t got hands. Just as well our failed visa applicant was not caught sneaking in through Dover, hanging on, somehow, beneath a lorry. The bobbies wouldn’t have known where to slap the cuffs. ’E looks ’armless to me. (It must be on the net. Let me know.)
Kuyukov holds the brush between his toes. He also employs his mouth. He is very skilled. Most people use a hand if they are able. But to judge from their work, a number of fully-equipped artists put their paintbrush somewhere else altogether. I shouldn’t comment, though. I don’t know enough about art.
Handy publicity for the government, especially now that they’ve approved the building of a nuclear power station. In the old Soviet Union, the Kuyukovs lived next to the main nuclear testing ground. Karipbek was due to attend an anti-nuclear conference in Scotland. After twenty years of campaigning, he must be an old hand at such events.
The excuse from the British Consulate in Istanbul, where he handed in his visa application: his “biometrics were of poor quality.” Fingerprints blurred again? Someone there needs glasses, because he made it clear on the form that he hasn’t got hands. Just as well our failed visa applicant was not caught sneaking in through Dover, hanging on, somehow, beneath a lorry. The bobbies wouldn’t have known where to slap the cuffs. ’E looks ’armless to me. (It must be on the net. Let me know.)
Kuyukov holds the brush between his toes. He also employs his mouth. He is very skilled. Most people use a hand if they are able. But to judge from their work, a number of fully-equipped artists put their paintbrush somewhere else altogether. I shouldn’t comment, though. I don’t know enough about art.
November 17, 2013
What we think is strange
Foreigners do funny things, or don’t do everything that we do.
The North Koreans have their silent football matches. Spectators are not just silent, though. They’re motionless, as if their photograph is being taken. Perhaps it is. In the UK, crowds are monitored every week at every football ground. Looking for hooligans. But the BBC thought we’d find silent football strange, so they gave us a report about it on their website at the end of July, the heart of the football season in Panmunjom.
I’m trying to guess the atmosphere inside a North Korean stadium. Something like an art gallery or museum over here. One lustreless nanny state will resemble another. We just venerate our icons in different ways. Men in shorts, I mean. I’m not suggesting that visitors to art galleries in Pyongyang throw toilet rolls at the paintings or scream abuse at officials. That would be fun to watch, of course.
Englishmen do funny things, too. When we listen to the news, we entertain ourselves by holding other people up to ridicule. Some people make this pretty easy for us. Like the fellow in the Midlands who picked up a prostitute once too often. Not the same one, mind. Caught by police withdrawing £20 from a cash machine, he said that the colourful lady in the back of his car was showing him where to buy tomatoes. He had to say something. He was embarrassed. But he just made it worse. Woman on back seat. £20 for tomatoes. It didn’t add up. £20 for a woman doesn’t add up either. When we see the news, we want some colour. The cash/car/coquette report included a generic photograph of boxed tomatoes. This is strange. We all know what these plump, red-faced little things look like. Most of us have had the pleasure. If we needed an illustration for this tale, why not show a tubful of prostitutes? There was more, juicy tattle a few days ago. The police were at the centre of this new mess, too. Revellers dressed as comic-book heroes nailed a fugitive. Happy tweets emerged from local police stations about the incident, which had ended up in a supermarket.
"Thank you to Batman, Robin, Robin's Dad, a Smurf, and the Hoff for helping us on Friday night. Sorry about the toilet roll aisle."
"Robin assaulted, police called, collective assisted our foot chase, minor upset to shelving during arrest. You couldn't script it!"
Is a new craze sweeping the precincts? It’s not all film noir, obviously. Robin was the victim, not Batman, or one of the others, not even the Smurf. That’s not strange, really. He does get a bad press. It’s always 'Batman and Robin,' never 'Robin and Batman.' The lad is a pinch precious. A pedestrian probably thought he was asking for it.
It was all very entertaining. A few punches, a pursuit, men in tights. The cops may giggle at the irony, but if no one had dressed up in the first place, there would probably have been no crime.
The North Koreans have their silent football matches. Spectators are not just silent, though. They’re motionless, as if their photograph is being taken. Perhaps it is. In the UK, crowds are monitored every week at every football ground. Looking for hooligans. But the BBC thought we’d find silent football strange, so they gave us a report about it on their website at the end of July, the heart of the football season in Panmunjom.
I’m trying to guess the atmosphere inside a North Korean stadium. Something like an art gallery or museum over here. One lustreless nanny state will resemble another. We just venerate our icons in different ways. Men in shorts, I mean. I’m not suggesting that visitors to art galleries in Pyongyang throw toilet rolls at the paintings or scream abuse at officials. That would be fun to watch, of course.
Englishmen do funny things, too. When we listen to the news, we entertain ourselves by holding other people up to ridicule. Some people make this pretty easy for us. Like the fellow in the Midlands who picked up a prostitute once too often. Not the same one, mind. Caught by police withdrawing £20 from a cash machine, he said that the colourful lady in the back of his car was showing him where to buy tomatoes. He had to say something. He was embarrassed. But he just made it worse. Woman on back seat. £20 for tomatoes. It didn’t add up. £20 for a woman doesn’t add up either. When we see the news, we want some colour. The cash/car/coquette report included a generic photograph of boxed tomatoes. This is strange. We all know what these plump, red-faced little things look like. Most of us have had the pleasure. If we needed an illustration for this tale, why not show a tubful of prostitutes? There was more, juicy tattle a few days ago. The police were at the centre of this new mess, too. Revellers dressed as comic-book heroes nailed a fugitive. Happy tweets emerged from local police stations about the incident, which had ended up in a supermarket.
"Thank you to Batman, Robin, Robin's Dad, a Smurf, and the Hoff for helping us on Friday night. Sorry about the toilet roll aisle."
"Robin assaulted, police called, collective assisted our foot chase, minor upset to shelving during arrest. You couldn't script it!"
Is a new craze sweeping the precincts? It’s not all film noir, obviously. Robin was the victim, not Batman, or one of the others, not even the Smurf. That’s not strange, really. He does get a bad press. It’s always 'Batman and Robin,' never 'Robin and Batman.' The lad is a pinch precious. A pedestrian probably thought he was asking for it.
It was all very entertaining. A few punches, a pursuit, men in tights. The cops may giggle at the irony, but if no one had dressed up in the first place, there would probably have been no crime.
November 11, 2013
For our tutorial next week, bring along tireless:, or Style and Tone in Graham Spaid
I have a science degree in Zoology. I am also taking a degree in English Literature. I am 53 years old. At three o'clock last night I finished my dissertation on the godawful Duchess of Malfi.
I'm sorry Graham but I didn't like your book and as to why I will relate here. I found the book confusing and at times garbled. This was due to the poor use of quotation marks; they were either missing or placed at the beginning of speech and then not added to the end of the speech or vice versa. Also the sentence structure, syntax and grammar was poor.When relating a story by Jim you place this all to often in first person rather than second person.Other notes I made are as follows,
- When you wrote of the fellow falling off the bus you wrote, "like a sheep crook or something had hooked his collar from behind and just jerked him off. (Aside: No Pun intended...)." For there to be a pun there has to be context somewhere in the previous sentence/s, there is none. "jerked him off" is certainly a double entrende but not a pun. Also the "or something" is superfluous.- You write, "Jim made a gesture like d'Artagnan sweeping of his hat before the King of France." Firstly, how could Jim make this gesture when the bus was 'packed' according to what you wrote earlier in the chapter? Secondly, the gesture would be meaningless in India. Thirdly, the simile is too verbose.
- "A tiny wing of panic lifted up inside me, then was still. (My metaphor). There is no metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common. - "pulled down an old shed which, like Tintern Abbey, was a pleasant ruin." Another poor simile. How could one compare a 12thC abbey to a garden shed. They are both ruins but that is as far as any comparison can go.- You wrote, "I pulled a genuine shiny guffaw out of the box but stopped like finding out a gift is faulty and has been recalled." Another poor simile that doesn't make sense.- "Every child in the class put up their hand without exception, including those at the table where I had just been sitting." The last part of this sentence is unnecessary. The words "without exception" means all inclusive. So, mentioning that other pupils are included in the action of raising their arms is unnecessary.- "When I look at Olga, something moves inside me like a continent." So that movement inside you is imperceptible. Continents move so slowly to be imperceptible.- "I won't get much sleep now", he predicted, rather optimistically." This should be pessimistically as the sentence relates to a negative.- "the python, which was robustly, and, I hoped idly waving his ends around. 'Robustly' and 'idly' are contradictions in terms. Also, how did you know the sex of the animal?
There are many, many more but I feel my points have been made. Sorry, to write so pessimistically but I always believe in being honest. I won't write a review on my blog, or Amazon or Goodreads.
I'm sorry Graham but I didn't like your book and as to why I will relate here. I found the book confusing and at times garbled. This was due to the poor use of quotation marks; they were either missing or placed at the beginning of speech and then not added to the end of the speech or vice versa. Also the sentence structure, syntax and grammar was poor.When relating a story by Jim you place this all to often in first person rather than second person.Other notes I made are as follows,
- When you wrote of the fellow falling off the bus you wrote, "like a sheep crook or something had hooked his collar from behind and just jerked him off. (Aside: No Pun intended...)." For there to be a pun there has to be context somewhere in the previous sentence/s, there is none. "jerked him off" is certainly a double entrende but not a pun. Also the "or something" is superfluous.- You write, "Jim made a gesture like d'Artagnan sweeping of his hat before the King of France." Firstly, how could Jim make this gesture when the bus was 'packed' according to what you wrote earlier in the chapter? Secondly, the gesture would be meaningless in India. Thirdly, the simile is too verbose.
- "A tiny wing of panic lifted up inside me, then was still. (My metaphor). There is no metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common. - "pulled down an old shed which, like Tintern Abbey, was a pleasant ruin." Another poor simile. How could one compare a 12thC abbey to a garden shed. They are both ruins but that is as far as any comparison can go.- You wrote, "I pulled a genuine shiny guffaw out of the box but stopped like finding out a gift is faulty and has been recalled." Another poor simile that doesn't make sense.- "Every child in the class put up their hand without exception, including those at the table where I had just been sitting." The last part of this sentence is unnecessary. The words "without exception" means all inclusive. So, mentioning that other pupils are included in the action of raising their arms is unnecessary.- "When I look at Olga, something moves inside me like a continent." So that movement inside you is imperceptible. Continents move so slowly to be imperceptible.- "I won't get much sleep now", he predicted, rather optimistically." This should be pessimistically as the sentence relates to a negative.- "the python, which was robustly, and, I hoped idly waving his ends around. 'Robustly' and 'idly' are contradictions in terms. Also, how did you know the sex of the animal?
There are many, many more but I feel my points have been made. Sorry, to write so pessimistically but I always believe in being honest. I won't write a review on my blog, or Amazon or Goodreads.
October 25, 2013
Don’t let me bore you
At present there is just one man I allow near my teeth. I won’t give his name. He’s from South Africa. A dentist of Boer extraction. A likeable man. Very patient-savvy. He is also a skilled hyperbolist. “You need a crown there.” And, “You’ll need a crown there sooner or later,” adding, like auto-correct, “Sooner than later.”
A visit to him usually involves pretence. In order to protect my jaw, I have a gleaming row of white lies at the ready. Like I now live abroad and am just here on holiday, a very short holiday, not long enough, unfortunately, for him to prepare, fit and provide after-care for a new crown.
He has his own tray of professional tricks. When I refuse the crown, he plays Marc Antony to my Caesar. Then he offered it to him again, then he put it by again. His repertoire includes an old favourite. Before any complex treatment, he will talk down the chances of success. A lot of dentists do that. They’re a pessimistic crew.
I’ve had a lot of dentists. There was Dr Fang. Don’t laugh. Long, white-haired Dr Fang. I mean his hair was long. He had no real length to speak of. I saw him in his Taipei shop, I mean surgery. Next to the butcher's. (Difficult paragraph, eh?) It was just before Christmas. When I think about that one visit, as I do quite often, I picture him sitting with his metal instruments, a row of nasty, sharp-nosed, little things, like toddlers queuing up for Santa.
In Adelaide there was Dr Suave. I’ve altered the surname slightly. He made alterations to me. I went to him several times in the 1980s. He was the first of my tooth men to propose a crown. But I was leaving the country two days later – really – so he had to settle for a giant, leaden filling. How easily a life-long deception is born from one, convenient truth! This filling, which he said could drop out at any moment, lasted thirty years, longer, in fact, than he did.
And Dr Somebody of Upminster, whose name I don’t remember. (They’re all out of order, too.) I sliced through a front tooth years ago, a corn chip bitten badly, and have been patching it up ever since. Now there was an ugly gap again, not a good time to put off a crown. Dr Thingy did one for me, half-price. I don’t know why. Perhaps he thought I was poor. Perhaps I was. I didn’t ask him for a discount. You don’t haggle with a dentist over his fee. I just found the meagre total on the bill.
‘Twas not a crown neither, ‘twas one of these coronets. It fell out a few weeks later. It abdicated. Now you can laugh.
Bloodstew winced from time to time while I was in his chair, doing the budget crown, as if he suffered from some inner pain. I was fine. I don’t know if he saw the irony. He retired from his dental practice immediately after finishing my treatment. Again, I don’t know why. It was probably just a coincidence. Although there are several question marks over this man, I do know that I could make him angry. I seem to annoy certain people without even trying. Sometimes just by sitting in a chair. The crown was a bit high. During the follow-up appointment, I told him he had missed it. The good Doctor winced and gave the old excuse. I think the winces were like drawing pins, to press something down inside. His nurse looked aghast. I hope he wasn’t too hard on her afterwards.
A visit to him usually involves pretence. In order to protect my jaw, I have a gleaming row of white lies at the ready. Like I now live abroad and am just here on holiday, a very short holiday, not long enough, unfortunately, for him to prepare, fit and provide after-care for a new crown.
He has his own tray of professional tricks. When I refuse the crown, he plays Marc Antony to my Caesar. Then he offered it to him again, then he put it by again. His repertoire includes an old favourite. Before any complex treatment, he will talk down the chances of success. A lot of dentists do that. They’re a pessimistic crew.
I’ve had a lot of dentists. There was Dr Fang. Don’t laugh. Long, white-haired Dr Fang. I mean his hair was long. He had no real length to speak of. I saw him in his Taipei shop, I mean surgery. Next to the butcher's. (Difficult paragraph, eh?) It was just before Christmas. When I think about that one visit, as I do quite often, I picture him sitting with his metal instruments, a row of nasty, sharp-nosed, little things, like toddlers queuing up for Santa.
In Adelaide there was Dr Suave. I’ve altered the surname slightly. He made alterations to me. I went to him several times in the 1980s. He was the first of my tooth men to propose a crown. But I was leaving the country two days later – really – so he had to settle for a giant, leaden filling. How easily a life-long deception is born from one, convenient truth! This filling, which he said could drop out at any moment, lasted thirty years, longer, in fact, than he did.
And Dr Somebody of Upminster, whose name I don’t remember. (They’re all out of order, too.) I sliced through a front tooth years ago, a corn chip bitten badly, and have been patching it up ever since. Now there was an ugly gap again, not a good time to put off a crown. Dr Thingy did one for me, half-price. I don’t know why. Perhaps he thought I was poor. Perhaps I was. I didn’t ask him for a discount. You don’t haggle with a dentist over his fee. I just found the meagre total on the bill.
‘Twas not a crown neither, ‘twas one of these coronets. It fell out a few weeks later. It abdicated. Now you can laugh.
Bloodstew winced from time to time while I was in his chair, doing the budget crown, as if he suffered from some inner pain. I was fine. I don’t know if he saw the irony. He retired from his dental practice immediately after finishing my treatment. Again, I don’t know why. It was probably just a coincidence. Although there are several question marks over this man, I do know that I could make him angry. I seem to annoy certain people without even trying. Sometimes just by sitting in a chair. The crown was a bit high. During the follow-up appointment, I told him he had missed it. The good Doctor winced and gave the old excuse. I think the winces were like drawing pins, to press something down inside. His nurse looked aghast. I hope he wasn’t too hard on her afterwards.
October 13, 2013
When Scotland’s independent
There’s a play by Shakespeare, his shortest tragedy, a brief yarn for those who lack patience, all about quick promotion. He had to make a living like everyone else. We have to hold down a job. Nowadays, to help employees bond, a paintballing session might be arranged. The boss won’t normally hand out tickets to a play, not this one, anyway.
In the theatre business, nobody ever refers to it by name. It’s the Scottish Play. You must know this already. There’s a curse. The witches, I suppose. You’re dead if you type the word Macbeth.
Are you still there?
Superstition, like nothing else, makes us careful. You don’t want to spoil your own chances. A wily ship’s cook won’t take a sieve on board. But superstition can kill you, too. You step off the footpath to avoid a ladder, and get hit by a bus.
However careful we are, the forest eventually catches up with us. Michael Moore has just been sacked from his post as Scottish Secretary, I mean the Scottish Job. Alistair Carmichael has got the poison haggis.
What will happen when the Scots are free Glasgow will be officially foreignThe land border will make invasion simplerSome unemployed foreign builders will be able to go home on footFried Mars bars will become a European delicacyCarol Ann Duffy will lose her job as Poet Laureate Simon Armitage will replace her, so the poetry will stay the sameAndy Murray will still be the closest thing the English have to a tennis championIs that all, then?
In the theatre business, nobody ever refers to it by name. It’s the Scottish Play. You must know this already. There’s a curse. The witches, I suppose. You’re dead if you type the word Macbeth.
Are you still there?
Superstition, like nothing else, makes us careful. You don’t want to spoil your own chances. A wily ship’s cook won’t take a sieve on board. But superstition can kill you, too. You step off the footpath to avoid a ladder, and get hit by a bus.
However careful we are, the forest eventually catches up with us. Michael Moore has just been sacked from his post as Scottish Secretary, I mean the Scottish Job. Alistair Carmichael has got the poison haggis.
What will happen when the Scots are free Glasgow will be officially foreignThe land border will make invasion simplerSome unemployed foreign builders will be able to go home on footFried Mars bars will become a European delicacyCarol Ann Duffy will lose her job as Poet Laureate Simon Armitage will replace her, so the poetry will stay the sameAndy Murray will still be the closest thing the English have to a tennis championIs that all, then?
October 5, 2013
Lucky nappies
I was working in a primary school when England lost a World Cup football match. The children were miserable. A teacher told them that they shouldn’t feel sad for themselves, but happy for all the children in Brazil. They stared at her. Maybe it was just me, but they didn’t seem to feel much better. I suppose it’s not easy to imagine people on the other side of the world, or the other side of your own city, if you’ve hardly travelled three miles from home. As to understanding how others feel, can you do it with the person next to you?
The teacher meant well. It was an ad hoc lesson in empathy. It might have worked if she’d empathised with the children in front of her. Teachers tend to come up with this line: the most important thing is not to win, but to participate. Children don’t take this seriously. All around them they see the emphasis which is placed on winning. They know it’s the most important thing. They can feel it.
The best way to deal with failure is to try to avoid it in the first place. At school or university, if you’re not very clever or don’t want to waste time studying, there are still things you can do. We heard this year that one in three students wears lucky exam underwear. Think about that for a moment. Lucky exam underwear. One in three. Surely, of all the articles of clothing worn by a human being, underwear is the most unlucky, at least from the clothing’s point of view. Even socks, even my own socks, can’t feel so bad.
For most of us, exam day is the worst day of the year. We need to prepare for our biggest test. Exam tips have always been popular, and we got them again this year – take a spare pen, for example. Although this advice came from a pen manufacturer, it was still good. We were told about the “stomach-churning angst” of exam day, and heard how over half of all candidates change their diet just before exams, gorging themselves on oily fish and fruit. It’s not surprising, then, about the stomach. Do take an extra pen, but nervous students might also need a change of lucky underwear.
Of course, stress begins long before the first exam. Nursery teachers in the UK are complaining that more and more children have to be toilet trained when they start school. That’s right, four-year-olds. While most parents are relieved to get the little beasties off their hands, so to speak, mothers still proudly pack their children off to school. They still say things like: “Not too tight, is it, darling?” Once they meant Jonny’s belt or Jenny’s shoe. Now they’re pinning on a nappy.
The teacher meant well. It was an ad hoc lesson in empathy. It might have worked if she’d empathised with the children in front of her. Teachers tend to come up with this line: the most important thing is not to win, but to participate. Children don’t take this seriously. All around them they see the emphasis which is placed on winning. They know it’s the most important thing. They can feel it.
The best way to deal with failure is to try to avoid it in the first place. At school or university, if you’re not very clever or don’t want to waste time studying, there are still things you can do. We heard this year that one in three students wears lucky exam underwear. Think about that for a moment. Lucky exam underwear. One in three. Surely, of all the articles of clothing worn by a human being, underwear is the most unlucky, at least from the clothing’s point of view. Even socks, even my own socks, can’t feel so bad.
For most of us, exam day is the worst day of the year. We need to prepare for our biggest test. Exam tips have always been popular, and we got them again this year – take a spare pen, for example. Although this advice came from a pen manufacturer, it was still good. We were told about the “stomach-churning angst” of exam day, and heard how over half of all candidates change their diet just before exams, gorging themselves on oily fish and fruit. It’s not surprising, then, about the stomach. Do take an extra pen, but nervous students might also need a change of lucky underwear.
Of course, stress begins long before the first exam. Nursery teachers in the UK are complaining that more and more children have to be toilet trained when they start school. That’s right, four-year-olds. While most parents are relieved to get the little beasties off their hands, so to speak, mothers still proudly pack their children off to school. They still say things like: “Not too tight, is it, darling?” Once they meant Jonny’s belt or Jenny’s shoe. Now they’re pinning on a nappy.
September 27, 2013
Concerning the poet who was short-listed for a prize, then exposed as a plagiarist, but might have escaped humiliation if he had discussed it with his mother before she developed Alzheimer’s
You probably skipped this news story. It’s about poetry. CJ Allen once copied from another poet and has had to withdraw from the shortlist for this year’s Forward Prize. In case we’ve forgotten what paperbacks look like, the BBC report includes a photograph taken inside a bookshop. A woman in a coat is facing some full shelves. No men around. I can’t read the titles, but they won’t be poetry. Poetry sections aren’t so crammed, and we prefer to browse celebrity bio or detective fiction. If she’s put something under her coat, or in that bulging bag of hers, I hope she remembers to pay for it. We all know it’s wrong to steal.
Matthew Welton was the poet-victim, and he himself discovered that Allen had pilfered his work. Poets, of course, feature in the pocket-size volume of individuals who read poetry. But Welton is not just a poet. He is a literary Poirot. Hearing Allen read his poems at a public event, Monsieur Welton recognised his own words and bought a couple of his rival’s editions to check for evidence of plagiarism. It was plentiful.
When Allen viewed his royalty report and saw these sales appear, he must have felt the same thrill of pleasure that every author feels. Prizes can raise a writer’s profile and increase sales. Allen’s profile has certainly been raised. We may as well believe him when he says his Forward specimen is original. The title must be his for a start: Explaining the Plot of ‘Blade Runner’ to my Mother who has Alzheimer’s. You couldn’t copy something like that inadvertently and you would never do it on purpose.
Poets are themselves entitled, even expected, to make mistakes, short of stealing other people’s work. Note the missing comma in the Blade Runner title, before who, a slip which reveals that Allen has at least two mothers, one of whom has Alzheimer’s and one of whom has not, and probably hundreds more, matrons who replicate in perfect shape, but then decline, sniff once a year, or promptly pass away.
The poem is not bad. Two or three lines need cutting where he explains too much, but the conversational style, the teasing, yet compassionate tone, and the coping-with-a-sick-parent theme are all in vogue at the moment. Long titles are also fashionable. I’m thinking of that recent novel, ‘The 100-year-old man who climbed out the window and disappeared.’ CJ Allen, the man whose age I don’t know because he’s not in Wikipedia, who pulled out of the prize and disappeared, must have thought he’d done everything right: ‘I didn’t copy this time, I thought up a long-winded title and I got some comments from Mum (the Alzheimer’s one).'
But he was shot down all the same. He might just as well have called it: Explaining the plot of ‘Blade Runner’ to my mother who has Alzheimer’s, which she hasn’t always had, not when I was cribbing from Welton and she pretended not to notice, just waited for me to crucify myself.
Once upon a time we were convinced that short titles and long texts were more likely to sell. But poets are a perverse lot. Item: Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798, and Resolving to Leave Dorothy at Home in Future. These days we have CJ Allen, whose near-prize experience takes up fewer than twenty lines and boasts a healthy title that can stand on its own eighteen feet like an opening verse.
CJ’s poem has received several ‘likes’ on the apoemaday website. At first I thought this was a laxative remedy. It may well be, judging from some of the poetry on display. Glance through the comments which readers have left and you’ll find further reference to physical exertion, coitus, for example, and the placement of reproductive organs in the mouth, usually a male organ, and one mouth in particular. I wonder what other people are saying, the ones who don’t like the poem.
Matthew Welton was the poet-victim, and he himself discovered that Allen had pilfered his work. Poets, of course, feature in the pocket-size volume of individuals who read poetry. But Welton is not just a poet. He is a literary Poirot. Hearing Allen read his poems at a public event, Monsieur Welton recognised his own words and bought a couple of his rival’s editions to check for evidence of plagiarism. It was plentiful.
When Allen viewed his royalty report and saw these sales appear, he must have felt the same thrill of pleasure that every author feels. Prizes can raise a writer’s profile and increase sales. Allen’s profile has certainly been raised. We may as well believe him when he says his Forward specimen is original. The title must be his for a start: Explaining the Plot of ‘Blade Runner’ to my Mother who has Alzheimer’s. You couldn’t copy something like that inadvertently and you would never do it on purpose.
Poets are themselves entitled, even expected, to make mistakes, short of stealing other people’s work. Note the missing comma in the Blade Runner title, before who, a slip which reveals that Allen has at least two mothers, one of whom has Alzheimer’s and one of whom has not, and probably hundreds more, matrons who replicate in perfect shape, but then decline, sniff once a year, or promptly pass away.
The poem is not bad. Two or three lines need cutting where he explains too much, but the conversational style, the teasing, yet compassionate tone, and the coping-with-a-sick-parent theme are all in vogue at the moment. Long titles are also fashionable. I’m thinking of that recent novel, ‘The 100-year-old man who climbed out the window and disappeared.’ CJ Allen, the man whose age I don’t know because he’s not in Wikipedia, who pulled out of the prize and disappeared, must have thought he’d done everything right: ‘I didn’t copy this time, I thought up a long-winded title and I got some comments from Mum (the Alzheimer’s one).'
But he was shot down all the same. He might just as well have called it: Explaining the plot of ‘Blade Runner’ to my mother who has Alzheimer’s, which she hasn’t always had, not when I was cribbing from Welton and she pretended not to notice, just waited for me to crucify myself.
Once upon a time we were convinced that short titles and long texts were more likely to sell. But poets are a perverse lot. Item: Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798, and Resolving to Leave Dorothy at Home in Future. These days we have CJ Allen, whose near-prize experience takes up fewer than twenty lines and boasts a healthy title that can stand on its own eighteen feet like an opening verse.
CJ’s poem has received several ‘likes’ on the apoemaday website. At first I thought this was a laxative remedy. It may well be, judging from some of the poetry on display. Glance through the comments which readers have left and you’ll find further reference to physical exertion, coitus, for example, and the placement of reproductive organs in the mouth, usually a male organ, and one mouth in particular. I wonder what other people are saying, the ones who don’t like the poem.
