Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected..., page 3

Don’t mix up these words...

Don’t mix up these words - can't remember where I found this due to my continual lapses of memory...

Continual and continuous

Continual = frequently recurring; intermittent—e.g.: “And [the police are] removing [the homeless]—by police rides to the edge of town, by continual issuing of citations for camping, by mass towing of vehicles and by routine discarding of people’s belongings.” ( USA Today; Dec. 3, 1997.)

Continuous = occurring without interruption; unceasing—e.g.: “Crow Canyon archaeologists want to study the twelfth- and thirteenth-century village to determine exactly when it was inhabited and whether it was occupied continuously or intermittently.” ( Santa Fe New Mexican; Sept. 8, 1996.)

The two words are frequently confused, usually with continuous horning in where continual belongs—e.g.:
• “Minutes after the arrest, Wayne Forrest, a Deputy Attorney General helping prosecute the case, told the presiding judge, Charles R. DiGisi, that the sheriff’s office had been engaged in a ‘continuous [read continual ] course of misconduct’ in the Spath case.” ( New York Times; Jan. 18, 1992.)

• “Continuous [read Continual ] interruptions are frustrating because it often means [read they often mean ] you have to warm up all over again or don’t get a complete workout.” ( Montgomery Advertiser; Jan. 1, 1996.)

The two-word phrase almost continuous is correctly replaced by the single-word continual —e.g.: “The antidepressant Prozac has been in the news almost continuously [read continually ] since it was introduced in Belgium in 1986.” ( Tampa Tribune; Nov. 24, 1996.)

A related mistake is to use continuous for something that happens at regular (e.g., annual) intervals—e.g.: “The White House tree-lighting ceremony has been held continuously [read annually ] since 1923.” ( Herald-Sun [Durham, NC]; Dec. 6, 1996.).

Let's turn off the internet....it won't hurt

Here I sit shouting into the virtual void. Turn it off. Just for a week? Really, it won't hurt, in fact, it will be good for us. Since www took over everything - the world has become flooded with "stuff" every half made film or badly written poem or drawing or photo or recipe or knitting pattern or sexual fantasy, everyones every thought is bombarding us at all times. STOP.

Imagine a world without www. just for week...

We wish you a merry Christmas....will you make it to New Year? (Extract No. 7)

Here's an early festive treat from Pavement....enjoy

Christmas Day. I wish myself a very merry Christmas and smile – what a stupid fucking concept. I sit on my bed and stare at my twisted feet for an hour or two. Time hangs in the air of my room, each second is palpable – they don’t so much pass as expire –dying one after the other and falling to the floor, littering the threadbare carpet.Thousands upon thousands of these dead little husks of time lie shadowlike on the floor, the bed, everywhere. I amuse myself by imagining that I am killing each second in person, throttling this one and stabbing that one. Can I wait a minute and massacre 60 in one go? I’m bored of this game and wade through the corpses of dead seconds to open a tin of sardines. Christmas day, what a fucking waste of time, the day that the Son of God, who’s not the Son of God wasn’t born.

The only good thing about this day is that the streets are quiet and everything is closed, well, except the Asian shops and the Turkish restaurants and shops over in Stoke Newington. Good thing – because that’s where I am going to get my Christmas day kebab. I reach for my clothes, only to find that I have no clean underwear; I took all my killing garments to the Laundromat but forgot to take any of my daily dirty laundry.

“Shit.”

I pick up a pair that has been in the laundry bag for a week or so; they should have aired out by now. I pull on the rest of my clothes, shoes and coat, and grab another £50 note from the pile. I pick up my phone: there’s a text message from Martha wishing me a merry Christmas. It’s been there since last night, I just hadn’t noticed. I think I can deal with seeing Martha again. I don’t like her but she’s marginally better than nothing. I think this as I tramp along the hall. I open the door and stand stock still in shock.

Snow.

More celebrity meetings...Radiohead and me

Well, it seems that true to form and somewhat depressing that you all read the posts about my celebrity interactions rather than extracts from my novel, but such is the way of the modern world.

When I was making my documentary the www.thelastamericanfreakshow.com I was at a loss for music to use. Now you may or may not know that if you use music in a film that is composed by someone else, or is commercially released, you have to pay a license, this can be very expensive indeed. So, what to do? I had a think and as I was living in Oxford at the time and had a passing acquaintance with various members of the band Radiohead (remember them?) and their crew. I was chatting to someone that knew Jonny the guitarist about the fact that I needed banjo playing on my film and they told me that Jonny had recently bought a banjo but that the band wouldn't let him play it with them (snobs....). Well, I happened to bump into him out and about one evening and I just asked him to watch the film and would he mind recoding some banjo for it if her had time - Oh and I couldn't pay him (I was tottally broke and had made the entire film on a credit card). He was fine about it - took the film and a while later sent me some mp3's with his banjo compositions on them. Thing was, they were terrible, really bad. He liked the film but had very little time I suppose (they went on a world tour shortly after) but I still have the recordings somewhere and as a result I had to learn the banjo and play the music myself ....cheers Jonny that was a result.

you can check out my novel here (on the blog) and here Pavement Thoughts of a serial killer

A swim in the canal......

Here's another short passage from my novel Pavement - currently there's a few copies available on a giveaway. In couple of days a bit more....stuff.


He doesn’t cry out, the impact of the cold water has taken his breath away.

He’s trying to swim and find the edge of the canal; he ends up over at the far side where there is just a sheer wall rising out of the water. He claws at the wall with both hands, trying, in vain, to get a grip on the wet slimy stone.

I watch.

He flails about, sinking under the water because of the weight of his waterlogged clothes and boots. He’s now in the middle of the canal, eyes wide with panic, cheeks puffing in and out, hair plastered across his face, which seems pale blue in the sickly neon glow from the strip in the roof of the tunnel. His hand outstretched, he sinks again and then emerges nearer to me on the concrete lip of the canal side. Still clawing, he manages to get one hand over the edge of the concrete. I grasp it and he grips my hand. Once I’ve lifted it free of the edge, I reverse my pull into a push and shove him back into the water. For good measure, I pick up length of wood, which is floating in the water, and push it into his back, thrusting him under the water. He kicks like a dying frog and I push harder. Some bubbles break the surface and one of his hands flaps as if beckoning me to join him. And then he’s still.

Pavement thoughts of serial killer

How I ended up having sushi with Neil Gaiman

As I realise that everybody has become obsessed with celebrities and the best way to get your attention is to write about them. I am going to do just that. Today I'll tell you about meeting the "rock star" author Neil Gaiman.

I was travelling the roads from Portland Oregon to Austin Texas in a 1988 Bluebird school bus (the old yellow ones) The bus had been converted to run on vegetable oil - which was stolen from the back of diners along the route. I was filming a self professed "freak show" on the road. It was weird. At a stop in the aptly name town of Eureka in Northern California I found a greasy paperback at the back of the bus. American God's by a guy called Neil Gaiman. I looked interesting and I had a lot of time to kill, I had no idea who this Mr Gaiman was, but I really enjoyed the book. It seemed an ideal travel companion for my strange journey.

Cut to a year later and the documentary I made was finished - It was called the"Last American Freak Show" (way before American Horror Story stole the title) and I was in London. In the meantime I had investigated the mysterious author of the book American Gods. Turns out he's a graphic novel superstar. I read a couple more of his books and liked them. One day someone I knew (I forget who) was working on a TV show that Mr Gaiman was on and told me I should tweet him about my film. He might like it they said. I did. Amazingly he replied and I sent him a copy of the film and in due course he watched it and yes he liked it - a lot. This is what he said:

"It's remarkable. The first five minutes were the documentary I thought it would be. And then it becomes something much more real, and sadder and odder - for me it's, strangely, much more about America and what it does to people, and about the relationship between the observer and the observed, and about holding onto love when you don't have anything else, and about pain."

I was impressed and grateful, of course, Mr Gaiman was less busy and less famous back in 2009 when this happened, but we arranged to meet. I had an idea to make a documentary with him and he was into the idea. We had sushi - he paid. Unfortunately the TV channels were not keen on the idea and it never got made (that's not to say it never will).

That's my little story about a celebrity and I am pleased to say he is a very real and genuine person.

Please check out my debut novel here: Pavement thoughts of a serial killer

The Fifth Extract...A dream...

Another brief extract from Pavement... in a day or two I'll tell you about the time I met Neil Gaiman.


I’m standing on a flat deserted seashore.There are large cube-like blocks of black stone that appear to have been frozen in mid-tumble to the water’s edge. They’re heaped up and strewn around like children’s building blocks.The ocean is metallic grey, oily and flat, like the surface of an ice rink. I might have thought it was solid but I know it’s not, small waves lapping at the rocks along the edge show me this.

I am aware of things under the surface of the water, things terrifying and deadly.The shoreline disappears into the distance in either direction, a straight line, as far as I can see. It vanishes into the murky sky, a sky that is dark grey and boiling with clouds that burst with silent sheet lightning. The horizon is a mixture of blood red and a sickly green light filtered through the angry clouds.

There is complete silence, as if all noise has been removed from the universe. I am standing on a narrow pathway set back from the shore and made, I notice, from Portland stone slabs.The surface is new and the slabs perfectly set. This path has never been walked, of that I am sure. It leads off in both directions. I am alone. I turn to look behind me, inland there is nothing to be seen, just a wall of blackness. A dark so tangible you can grasp it in your hand like clay.

I have to go somewhere, so I walk, and as I walk the scenery stays the same. I can see tiny movements in my peripheral vision. In the tangible dark something is moving. I walk for hours and as I walk, the dark recedes to reveal a landscape of huge stone slabs and shards, piled up high into the sky, they look as if they should collapse at any moment. Giant paving slabs piled up to the sky by an autistic ogre.These piles of rocks pay only lip service to gravity. The pavement under my feet is warm and comfortable, a fantastic walking experience. I look at my feet and they are glowing and perfect, no shoes, in fact, I am naked

Pavement

The Fourth Extract..."The Room"

I posted the last extract on Sunday, probably not a good day to post. I suppose all the goodreads members must be in church. Here's another short extract from Pavement. There's a giveaway coming right up...


I have one room in the basement of a four-story Victorian terraced house. The house is divided into bedsits. Mine is about twelve feet by nine feet. It has a small wet-room attached with a toilet and shower inside.There is a two-ring electric stove on top of a cupboard in the corner; a small bed and a chair, table and chest of drawers, a rail in the alcove that serves as a wardrobe.

The room is dark, the basement and hallway are dark, painted white years ago and now dirty grey, drifting into brown along the architrave and across the ceiling. A single bare light bulb hangs from a twisted cord; the illumination it provides is fitful.The floor is carpeted with a stained beige rag of a carpet, threadbare in more places than it retains its weave.The wall has a host of disjointed letterboxes nailed to it. I don’t check mine, there is no point, there’s rarely anything inside.

The hallway is not dirty; it’s just worn out and tired. The stairs are the same; they are in the winter of their years and have seen better days and happier feet. I walk down the twisting staircase to the basement and the short hallway at the end of which is the door to my room, the room next door, and the adjacent door to the yard outside. The yard always feels dark even when the sun is shining.There’s something about this house that hoards the dark and cold, even on the sunniest, brightest, warmest August day. It’s as if the house were invisible and impermeable to any kind of future. It’s the perfect place for me.

Now go back a day and read Extract No.3

That is all....

Extract No.3 "The invisible..."

Here is the third extract from "Pavement" it contains graphic language - do not read if profanity offends, though I do not consider old English profane...also contains disturbing imagery.


I am in my room it is dark as always. I lie on the bed. It is after midday and I have nothing to do with my time. I close my eyes and allow my mind to drift, to take me where it wants to go. I drift through time back, we always drift back, we are prisoners of our past although it doesn’t exist in any real sense. We have no control over the things that have already happened, so why do we continually revisit them? We have no control either, over the things that will happen in the future, we might have some small control of what happens now, in that I can decide to open my eyes and have a bowl of porridge or I can stay lying here thinking.

Even our choices in the present are severely proscribed by what has gone before, by stuff that is no longer real. This line of thought is circular and frustrating. I force my mind off into the past, the only place it can go, as the future is nothing but a dark cloud of uncertainty, punctuated only by death. The past, however, is illuminated with searchlights of distress. I can see Jamilia the Cunt and my child Sam: they pass by, mocking and contemptuous for a moment, and then they are gone to wherever they are now. I start to fall into a day sleep, images jumbled and threatening. The basement where I was kept, locked in as a young teenager and beaten daily by the owners, my owners, with a rod and a belt and thumped repeatedly with a hot saucepan, for what?

I can’t remember.

I start to wakefulness.

“Cunts.”

The past and everyone in it is a cunt. Disoriented, I stagger to the wet room and wretch into the toilet. I vomit. The saucepan is still crashing into the back of my head – perhaps it will never stop. The owners died after I climbed out of the small basement window they forgot to close one night, and set fire to the house with them inside. I remember watching the flames and the fire engines with the fire crews trying to get to them and listening with sweet joy to their screams as they burned, but the saucepan left with me and they are hitting me with it to this day. They are free from whatever suffering caused them to mistreat a fourteen-year-old boy, but they are still torturing me. It’s still going on in my head. Why can’t I turn it off? My head hurts. I turn on the light, go to the wet-room and wash my face.

I look in the mirror I can’t see my reflection.

“Fuck you.”

I wash my face again and look a second time. There I am, indistinct but visible, drawn, I look as if I am a pencil sketch. I flick the light off and head back to the bed. I will not sleep. I must decide who to kill.