Greg Corcoran: Attempted

Texas Re-Attempted: Delays and Connections

2011-12-18T23:32:00.002Z

I don't know what it is about Americans - what makes their mentality so different from my own countrymen - what has always been alluring to me. I think it's that they're tough, and not in an arrogant or crude way. When they speak it's like they're here to get the job done. Service staff in England are the eternally bored, stressed and ever-awkward, and they conduct their business with me in a conscious and mutual agreement that we would both rather be somewhere else.

But Americans... when they advise me and when they serve me they do so to get shit done, and always with a stoic competence in their eyes. I feel like I can count on these people - that they would be strong with me if I needed them to be. Perhaps these are "my people". They don't walk on eggshells and they give as much as they get.

They're like Laura.

And they all take that extra step. A stranger stands beside me as I observe an exhibit of Martin Luther King at the Atlanta airport. "Dayum, that dude was short!" he remarks as he nods at a display case containing Doctor King's clothes. We have a whole conversation about it. Then a voice comes on the tannoy. "Hey, if you missed your flight you gotta think positive. Look for other booked flights that have seats available. Don't give up now." There it is again - think positive and get shit done.

After 4 hours sitting in Atlanta Airport, staring at old Americans with their shirts tucked in, I'm on the connecting flight. It's small and cramped and the stewardess has to sit by the emergency exit, next to a horny old guy (not me) who acts like he's brought all the other passengers along to impress her. I eavesdrop on his clumsy flirtations and hope the stewardess's look of stoic disgust is something I will never see on Laura's face.

There's another black passenger in the seat next to me, but he's dressed in a white suit and wears a fedora. We are ice cold, like a cop duo, ready to defend this plane from randy geriatrics and flawed Hollywood scripts. We scowl at the other Americans who seem incapable of taking orders. As the plane takes off the other passengers get out of their seats, fiddle with laptops, open overhead bins and tuck their shirts in as the cabin crew scream at them - a cargo of arrant autistics.

And I find a Suduko. Fuck yeah!

Then we're down.

I'm here. In Houston.

I move slowly through Security and follow the signs to Baggage Reclaim. My heart is thumping, my limbs shaking - but I savour every moment. For these are the throbbing crescendos of a vital life. Coming down the escalator, I see her - the hair and figure distinctive. She cuts a rift through the room, the way only a woman can. I think of jewels in glass vessels, preserved under shifting waters.

Laura's facing away from me. Maybe I can pounce on her, or sneak up and breathe on her neck. I like doing that to unsuspecting women. It's why I'm such a player. But alas... Laura has put her back to the sea of luggage trolleys. I would have to clamber over them in order to get the drop on her, and such behaviour would probably get me shot by the security guards. Already she has thwarted me.

Then she turns.

The awkwardness expires in under 20 seconds. We say hello, softly, then hug, ask a few superficial questions, take a few steps towards the exit. Then I grab her and, with an apology, swoop in for the kiss.

It is, and ever will be, her sharpness that strikes me - how utterly she stands apart from the colours, textures and expectations that surround her. She is not like other women and yet, it were as if something new is manifest in her, or something old of which she is the last. A separate gender, for those who ride a wave apart. She leads me to the car, walking on her tiptoes as she has always done, and soon we are riding through the Houston night.

Texas Re-Attempted: Flying with Apes and Penguins

2011-12-18T22:53:00.003Z

I've given myself 4 hours, and caught the airport at its least secure. I hope the Americans on the other end will provide a better paranoia service. All I get is the manic depressive son of Michael Stipe, who asks if I have anything which can be construed as a weapon. I glance at my crotch and shake my head. Then another guy who wants to beat REM to the wrist-slit grunts something about metal belts. I say I preferred their first album and hold up my little bag of liquids. I'm through Security in 5 minutes and eating breakfast in a cafe that has knives shaped like scalpels.

"We're at an airport!" yells a child in the corner as he tugs his father's sleeve. I want to share his excitement. Maybe I could scream the same line at the table of Muslims next to me...

No. They might think it's a trap.

With 3 and a half hours to kill I return to the rabbit warren seating area and finish my John Connolly novel. Damn, it's a dark book - the first and darkest of the series. I wonder if he was angrier back then - sicker as he faced the prospect of an unpublished life, not knowing if his debut would sell. He has found more light and more comedy in his later books, but this first one... fuck! I finish the haunting epilogue as the plane begins take-off, hoping that I have likewise flushed my darkness and am now anew.

Take-off is awesome. Awe-fucking-some! There's still so much green in England - a country like wet moss catching gold in sunlight. As we lift higher I see squares of brown amidst the patchwork green, like a jigsaw uncompleted. I can't help but see reflections. The towns are brown and white like exposed bone - all things growing.

Bollox! There's no Sudoku! How the fuck am I gonna survive this flight? Bollox! My headphones don't work!

Then I think up a funny joke, which I'll use later in the blog. At the time I was laughing in my seat and alarming the black lady next to me who was reading a Christian self-help book (Oxymoron? Yes? No?)

Ooh, they're showing Rise of the Planet of the Apes! I order a new set of headphones and settle in for some delicious Simian distraction. Hopefully the lady beside me won't be offended by the talking monkeys and flip her shit all over the plane.

Well, that was a bag of wank. I know it's a film about apes but they could've used more than one napkin when they were writing character concepts. Another film with a bleak antagonist and a pointless love interest. It's a good thing I'm seeing Laura shortly, so I can dispell the Hollywood myth that all women are cookie-cutter accessories to subplot. I mean, seriously, her character notes must've been "smile at ape, fall in love, ask hero a few times if he's sure about what he's doing." For fuck's sake they could've got a...... monkey..... to do... that....

Hmm....

The next film comes on: Jim Carrey being inconvenienced by penguins. What. The. Fuck?

Aaagh! The last line got me! Why does that always happen with these family movies? They're a stream of tired cliches and then, right at the end, one line comes out of nowhere and makes me burst into tears.

"Kids, I have to go away on a long journey. I may be gone some time. So... I'm gonna need you to come with me."

Damn you, Jim.

Shit, man, I'm flying over the Atlantic Ocean to meet a girl! This is crazy! I wonder if anyone else on the plane is possessed of such ridiculous notions. Looking down at the sea, it hits me: this great expanse that took former men weeks to cross, that claimed the lives of countless sailors and explorers, that has yielded more stories and less secrets than outer space itself - I'm crossing it in mere hours. It's like I'm rushing through the halls of my ancestors.

Truly, it is as overwhelming and impossible to honour the landscape I pass over as to explain my decision to reach out for Laura. Such things were not meant to be contained by one pen... by one mind.

Perhaps I do not speak for there is too much to say.

The third film is a Woody Allen drama. Uugh! I take out my headphones and get on with my own pretentious and casual meanderings. Fuck you, Woody.

The fourth film stars Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. It's about an American and a Brit who become embrolied in an adventure of intrigue and seduction. Such wild and implausible ideas these film-makers have.

Although the final reveal renders the entire film non-sensical.

I hope Laura's not related to me.

Ooh, and now we're flying over Louisiana, the place where the John Connolly book was set. I'm coming closer and closer to the extraordinary world of the mythic journey. I wonder what Threshold Guardian I will have to face...

... found him! The customs guy - not a scary customs official, but a "duuuude" customs official. "Alriiiiight!" he says as he takes my passport. He asks me what I'm doing here and I blurt out the entire story. "Nooo waaaaaay!" he exclaims. He seems genuinely shocked, and I wonder if my Messiah complex will be stamped as inadmissible. But luckily, he takes pity on me, and welcomes me to America.

Texas Re-Attempted: Travelbodge

2011-12-18T22:47:00.002Z

It doesn't feel real yet. All is stress and obligatory nightmare between the rival streams of headlights - red and white cells - as I am pulled by machines through darkness. My car almost runs out of petrol. The Travelodge has been knocked down. I am rebooked to another motel after 4 circuits of the Gatwick monstrosity. The girl at reception asks if I want to complain. I say no, of course, like a good Englishman, and she nods along and says "life's too short".

I order a burger at the motel restaurant and sit with my back to 87 other guests who are transfixed by the football match. They stare, tut, yell and despair in unison. They should be watching my life. They should be the audience to this crazy and lonely adventure I have embarked upon. But like ships in the night...

Texas Re-Attempted: Threshold

2011-11-12T00:43:00.002Z

All is prepared. Tomorrow I set out on my journey - the long drive to London through the ashes of the crash that claimed 7 lives. Dark shapes have been circling. A co-worker died a few weeks back. Tripped on the stairs and broke her neck. She was the one who trained me on my first day. Then David got cancer. Then the wing mirror got smashed from my car and another co-worker turned all of a sudden to attack me with that brunt of psychological dexterity I have seen in the bullies and alphas of my life. All around me images of cruelty and death have swerved into my path. A dark cloud gathers around England, and I hope my plane will pierce it and rise aloft into the Texan sun.

The long list has been ticked away. All that is left are the words I have stored at work. These are the things that ravage me, and I have saved them in a word document - my secret chamber between calls and conversations. To copy-paste:

They all try to make out that the other is stressed. That is their objective in all they converse.

Jenna has another road rage story and makes barest eye contact between the islands of her monologue. Brent yells across the room "Where's um..." He tries to think of a name - any name. He tries to fill the air with useless words. Asking who's in, as if it matters.

Jenna and Sophia - they say everything in a baby voice. It is all they know now. And behind them Brent repeats the same joke to Sophia, over and over, the same impression of Sophia, over and over... never different. It is now a ritual - a rite they share.

Brent, Louis and Matt fall back into that natural habit of saying non-sensical things to me - even though they had stopped recently when I was more verbal. Something about me has slipped - they see again the breach - the hole that they must fill, for terror I will not fit into their framework. They sing each other's names for no reason - simply trying to get a response - reduced to nonsense-speak by their terror of silence.

Am I any different?

Emily - the painful silences while you think of something worthy for her attention, and feeling idiotic when you make small talk - like youre boring her. I have done the same.

Definite problem. Definite hypocrisy. Neither extreme is acceptable, but how to find balance? How, when everything reduces me to hostile silence. What do I really want? Perhaps an edited life, where everything speaks concisely and powerfully. Perhaps I like my job because it's a language of facts and not the unspoken rules of co-existence that drive the others and reduce them to retards.

And Matt. Poor, sad, competitive, pathetic Matt. The slow and deliberate way he pretends not to hear people and makes them repeat everything and requires everything to be stated directly to him. His is a language of annoying and forcing people to repeat themselves, like a surgeon laying victims out on a slab - defence through attack.

I am angered by my inability to explain these mannerisms to others in the ironic way they are enacted, and my own inability to deal with them by expelling them through sound.

They make casual attempts to distract each other, and it never seems to get old. Like my harassment of Diana, perhaps? How is it that I can speak perfectly well to people on the phone but cannot contend in the small talk between-call snippets, except sometimes with Brent (Why is that? Because I am just as disillusioned as him?). Then again, all I do is agree with him or give monosyllabic exchange.

And yet, if I gave voice to it, I would have to point out every little thing that annoyed me, and it would take forever. How do other people look past this - and is that the right term? Or are they simply focussed so inwardly that they make themselves immune to others? Are they more isolated than I am? More insular than the silent writer who tries and tries again to empathise with strangers?

The sexual way they go after her. Nothing else for Sophia but innuendo and ironic rape. And Kerry... she copies Jenna... because she sees her as the alpha female, always spilling her every mood and anecdote and expecting adoration.

All is boredom, wasted energy - what would become of them if they used every drop? Would they ever reach a state of silence? Is that me? Is that why I get so tired?

There is nothing between me and them, or us and customers - only mechnanized emptiness or unregulated nonsense. Oh, for a common structure, organic and emotive - a story to follow.

I'm turning into a serial killer...

But I do feel slightly better for writing this. I wonder if this is how they feel - little junkies getting their minature fixes while I go cold turkey.

Now all is expelled. I have made my peace with friends and family, work and paperwork. All that remains is Laura.

I saw a sign today. A disused rugby field fenced off from the public. The sign read "Private Property". And there was a sign next to it reading "No Dogs Allowed". Surely they only needed the latter sign. Or were they afraid that members of the public would shove their dogs over the fence and bid them enjoy their freedom? Or, even worse, were they afraid that dogs would take the initiative and desert their forbidden masters, frolicking in the rugby fields of misanthropy?

Maybe I'm back...

Texas Re-Attempted: Perforection

2011-09-08T22:10:00.003+01:00

I sit in a hospital waiting room, where old women yell the intimate details of their private lives. Some would find it erotic, but as always I stray from the herd. I am here for my hearing test, and as a burly woman shouts "Mr Core-core-an" across the room, I pass the first challenge with flying colours.

They take me to a soundproofed room where a woman asks me three times if she can add my mobile number to my file. It makes me suspicious. Am I doomed now to receive spam calls from the hospital? "Amputate your foot, Sir? STD loyalty card?" I laugh nervously and tell her it's fine. Then she plonks some headphones on me and tells me to press a button whenever I hear something. I consider informing them of my overactive imagination, just to validate the results, but they are already ignoring me.

My hearing checks out fine and the consultant gives me a look of disgust for wasting her time with my ubermensch audio prowess. So as punishment she gets a med student to look in my ears with a giant needle-like device. "Let me know if it hurts," he remarks as he penetrates me. I assure him that I have a healthy aversion to getting my brain pierced. Luckily he doesn't drill too deep, and I am still able to contemplate the finer points of Locke's philosophy as I leave the chamber.

Then they take me to a very nice man with a moustache who is having an argument with a nurse about how to pronounce my surname. He gets it spot on, and I consider giving the old bastard a kiss... but the moustache scares me. He penetrates me like the med student, but he is a gentle and attendant lover. "You have a perforated eardrum," he says, and books me in for a scan. He offers surgery but warns me I could lose my hearing altogether. "Your surgeons aren't too hot then?" I ask. It's probably hard to tell them when it hurts if you're under general anaesthetic.

I leave the hospital with a certain sense of satisfaction (which has nothing to do with the double penetration). Finally I know why my ears pop and why I enter my own little world at the call centre and why I can't hear people in clubs and why my voice sounds perfectly respectable only within the confines of my clicky little head. Doctor Moustache-face says it must be a childhood infection. I wonder if my artistic leanings started at the same time, as the real world of sound and background chatter distorted. One little perforation - an imperfection, a hole, a flaw in the machinery.

If I rack my brains I think the clicking started on my first flight to the States. Perforation can happen on flights, according to Wikipedia.

Cue the usual rationale.

Maybe the United States has always been there to shape the milestones of my life. I fly to Pennsylvania and the trip makes me an artist. I fly to Arizona and see in my uncle the success I crave. I fly to Florida and feel at my physical peak as I swim in the Gulf. I fly to Washington and feel a connection to history like no other.

And now... I fly again to Texas... on the chance of something amazing.

Maybe the perforation's reached my brain.

Texas Re-Attempted: An Unreal Day

2011-07-31T22:53:00.001+01:00

This night I am struck by the unreality of our world.

I lie here, wondering about Laura, trying to imagine what she is doing right now, what she is thinking and what things today will make her smile, or sink or rage. And it strikes me that I will never be able to predict it - not 100%. My imaginings are a fantasy, an unreal narrative of her life that will never come to be.

I wonder how atheists can demand to see God, when they live in a world of so many unseen, non-existent, non-tangible things?

When I was young music was tangible - records and CDs. You had to hold it, to manipulate the matter, solid to solid. Now we download these i-tunes, less than vapour, and stream our films from murky corners of the net. Movies that never happened, stories told by conglomerates. Even books have gone electronic, shooting intangibly and invisibly through the cyber haze.

I sit at my desk at work, phoning strangers to discuss their debts, clicking buttons that move their red numbers to blue numbers, that calculate their interest rates and mortgage figures. My job is to get back the money that they borrowed - the money that was never theirs, which they used to buy homes which they do not own. And even that very money did not exist. The moment it was put in the bank it was spent by the bank managers, who survive only by the promise that they will give that money back should the customer ask for it.

And yet, if everyone in the country went to the bank on the same day and withdrew their savings, the banks would collapse. Because the money just doesn't exist anymore. All that exists is a promise.

And promises are my sole investment. I have bought a plane ticket for a flight that has not happened, booked a room that is not mine and a car that is not paid for, for a trip that will be nothing like I imagined. And till that day I will write my novel - a story that will never happen, and play on Iwaku with avatars that don't exist in the pursuit of story perspectives that are not shared.

We talk in similies and unreal things. "It was like this... and he was like 'Hi,' and I was like 'woah!' and we were like "Awesome!". Blankly lying to each other with facsimilies of events. Nothing happens accurately anymore - just reported equivalents. Our personalities expand into the internet and our facets sparkle on Facebook and Twitter while our real selves dwindle, as relationships break apart because they are not as we fantasized or because we see someone else and imagine them to be better.

And politicians join the fray, erasing the origins of our wealth, the origins of our food. They rub away the third world countries, hide us from the oil wars and the slave labour. We eat our food that comes from nowhere and drive our cars that have no consequence. We read the newspaper stories of potential terrorists and potential paedophiles and look for Youtube clips of cats with humanity they do not have. We play our video games that yield nothing, talking stats and Warcraft gold. Just the sad ones though - the cool kids go to the clubs in search of sex that is not happening or a night they will not recall in the morning. We strive for the forgettable and the null, the space between matter, the narcotic veil and the artistic hypothescape.

For my own part, on these nights, I go to the gym, trapped in there with the other neurotics, who tone their bodies for the chance that they will be desired, that someone will notice them and fall in lust. We pump the iron and pound the treadmills, aspiring for a body image that is not real for a prize that will not be as we imagined. The men with their fantasies of pornographic scenes that will not happen. The women with their thoughts on children who do not exist.

The others my age are planning now, saving their ethereal money for immaterial futures, planning the events that have yet to transpire while checking their Facebook phantoms and quibbling over bonuses that equate with nothing. We create no materials, we produce no matter. We are shifters of unseen things, waving our hands in the air and calling it progress. Like the mad witch-doctors who were too enlightened to bash rocks with the other cavemen.

And all the while I am intimidated by the people around me - by the people who I imagine to be braver and sharper and calmer and cooler than myself. I am hounded by ghosts, by projected creations, and seek salvation in my characters... in the imagined avatars of Iwaku.... and in Laura... that girl who I think is thinking unreal thoughts of me. I watch the third person dopplegangers of myself - the Greg my parents envision, the Greg my colleagues work with, the Asmodeus who grates and jars with the Iwaku Community. And I am enslaved to those personas, using them to streamline my own, material, tangible, actions, of which there are fleeting few.

It is perhaps the most sensible conclusion that the world - the real world - ended a long time ago. And we are now just ascending, moving into the spirit realm where everything is cyberspace and numbers, where everything is promise and projection. A world where we are told that things exist and that Cause X will yield Effect Y.

Perhaps we are with God now, requiring not to see, but only to trust. Were we to hold in our hands the things that make us... it would be a nightmare. For we cannot bear to simply surround ourselves with matter. Our minds cannot process such a world.

So instead the twitching of my fingers sends another post into Unreality, for the delight of an audience who is not as I imagined.

Enjoy, my darling phantoms. And send me back your promises. ;)

Texas Re-Attempted: Life for Brent

2011-07-13T20:31:00.002+01:00

The prophecy is complete. When I first came to Cornwall my aunt had a simple solution to my solitude. "Don't worry, Greg," she said between tango steps in the kitchen, "Everyone will find out you have a car and then you'll be that friend who drives people around!"

At the time I thought this desperate - the hysterical promise of a woman with no way out from my self-entrapment. But now, five years on, I have the pleasure of driving the dark mirror of my soul to work this morning.

His name is Brent - our names sound the same when they're yelled across a call centre - and like most "friends" I have received in my life Brent has stumbled on the comedic holy grail of realising he can call me Gregory and tell me that I'm 'quiet' every hour.

I don't get that. Usually quiet people aren't told they're quiet. You only tell someone they're quiet when it's out of the ordinary. But since I am perpetually quiet it must be that ordinarily they feel a different kind of noise from me - the offshoot energy of my psychic exuberance - and cannot marry it with my laconic presentation.

"Don't trust anyone, Greg," he advises me in his wrist-slitting Nothern drawl. "You can't trust anyone in that call centre. You tell them anything and they'll go and tell everyone. You're the only one I trust not to gossip."

I nod and continue taking mental notes for my blog.

He's 41, lives above a cafe, and has just bought a kitten. He prides himself on starting arguments where arguments are needed and cultivating germophobia and paranoia in equal measure. When we get out of the car he walks ahead of me, as quickly as his little legs can carry him, so that no one will think we are friends. His company is half-confession and half-interrogation, a barter trade of leverage and apology. I spend my shifts at the desk beside him, listening to him ramble between calls and spout random comments in a variety of accents - anything to ward off my silence. Perhaps he will soon seek a confrontation with me, so I might become a marker on the navigation of his rutted existence.

Given my condition - my interpretation of the world in archetypes - I am never sure if I freely allow others to dominate me or if I have no choice in the matter. I certainly don't feel put out. I listen to their thrusts and parries and all the strange squeaks that I elicit in those terrified of silence. And all the while I remember that I am better than them.

Perhaps the ultimate superiority complex: one in which I feign ironic docility. At the end of the day I suppose it's better to wear my ignorance and conceit on the inside.

Today I shadowed a pair of girls (they consented - it was a work thing) and they reminded me of how anomalous I am when I engage people proactively. The usual "deer in the headlights" look set in, whereby a pause and a blank stare followed each of my comments. Luckily I talked about clubbing once, so they refrained from reaching for their rape alarms. It reminded me that, at least in the world of call centres, I am best as a limited robot and sounding board. Anything more brings apocalyptic confusion.

I like to think I make sense. Perhaps it's a form of Alzheimers - to think I am perfectly understandable while all others hear stilted gibberish. It seems like every other human being was taken aside at school (probably when I was crying in the toilets over that silly dead brother business) and taught the codes by which to hide behind small talk and vacuous comments. I really should claim Asperger's and get some benefits - there has to be some payoff besides articulate and moving blogs that make me sound like a perfectly well-adjusted misanthrope.

So perhaps I have nothing to fear. I will never become like Brent, convinced that only cats will love me, starving myself before each weighing at the slimming club, and finding my sole pleasure in 'slasher films, Greg, where they get chased and they think they've escaped but then they get caught and killed'.

I'd like to be someone that people can't blog about - whose multifaceted enigma defies archetype.

I am a claustrophobic undertaker. I force all others into my boxes but fear them for myself.

Perhaps they too hide their beauties, and yet an ugly part of me fears they do not.

I never want to be like Brent.

Texas Re-Attempted: The Six Hundred Penny Man

2011-07-08T20:05:00.002+01:00

I don't trust my housemates. Istvan says he's a student, but I never see any study books. Krystina says she works in a lab, but she's always in the kitchen when I'm trying to cook. She also says the lab is inside a mine, but I wasn't aware that Hungarian women had penetrated the mining industry yet.

Something does not add up.

What does add up, however, is the £60 I have left to live on this month. I bought my flight tickets to Texas today and promptly got a call from the Barclays Fraud Squad. They asked if I had really just emptied two of my savings accounts. I explained the situation to them. They elevated me to High Risk.

Today was the day of physical correction. I woke up bloodstained and with a rock taped to my back. No, I haven't gone back to Catholicism. What happened was that I caught myself snoring a few nights ago. It's true. I tried to play innocent and explain myself but I was furious and refused to listen. I told myself I was becoming more like my father everyday and promptly stormed off. So now, in an effort to learn how to sleep on my side, I have taken the Internet's advice of taping a tennis ball to my back. Only I can't afford a tennis ball, so I used a rock.

If you seek the symbolism, it will come.

And in the spirit of taking the Internet's advice, I also looked into the dangerous mine-strewn land that is male personal grooming. The websites I visited meandered between calling me a fag for even considering body hair removal and endorsing the halycon wonders of a shaven scrotum. The middle ground, according to the chatrooms, is that it very much depends on the woman.

I settled with trimming my nipples.

Next up was my posture. I've found (don't ask me how) that clenching my buttocks keeps me more upright. So as I walked into town today, slinking like a cat and scratching my nipples, it was with the assurance that I was bettering myself.

First stop was the doctor's surgery, which I had decided to register at after 15 years of tempting fate. The receptionist was a scary woman who wasn't gonna stand for all that personal privacy bollox. She barked questions at me and told me to stop rubbing my nipples and clenching while I spoke to her. Finally I got round to asking about my hearing (my ears have always clicked) and she booked me a telephone appointment with a doctor. The wonders of modern technology. Perhaps the stethoscope will be delivered via webcam.

Then it was on to the gym, where another scary woman barked questions at me whilst complaining about her manager. He had left her alone on reception so in return she was refusing to answer the telephone. I sweet-talked her with tales of my old reception days, and she gave me a corporate discount.

Then I descended into the heart of town, each iron-buttocked step drawing me deeper into the Falmouth melee. God I hate the general public. I used to have valid political and philosophical reasons for doing so, but now it's just one thing... WALKING. Why the fuck can't the general public walk down a street properly? It's either slow fuckers who seem oblivious to the fact that you're trying to get past; or blind fuckers sorting out their shopping and then seeming oh-so-surprised when they almost collide with you; or it's dickheads walking directly out of a shop without even the slightest conception that there may be people in the street.

Twats. If they can't successfully navigate a pavement they should be put in the road along with the cars and all the other things that can't walk.

Dodging them with my slinky nipple shimmy, I dive into the pharmacists and begin the search for men's hair dye. I've gone a little grey on the sideburns, and I'm not sure if I should disguise the fact. Again, the Internet concludes that it very much depends on the woman.

Such power they have over us. They've replaced the Church in making men feel like everything they do is wrong. Fuck you, Dan Brown.

After half an hour rubbing my nipples in the women's shampoo aisle and getting frowned at, I realised my mistake. It seems that products for men are not stocked in the HAIR aisle or the SHAMPOO aisle or the HAIR PRODUCTS aisle. Instead there is a tiny display in the corner where the sign reads, simply, "MENS".

We are now a substrata. A minor category nestling cancer-like in retail's abode.

I looked for Strawberry Blond. They only had light brown. It will have to do.

I return to a quiet house, hoping to see my housemates cutting coke or trafficking sex slaves. But alas, no sense is made of their puzzling solvency. There's £60 left in my bank account and my body is sore.

And all that waits for me is a rock... clinging to my shirt with the promise of a restless night...

Texas Re-Attempted: Cock'O'Sore

2011-07-03T16:51:00.002+01:00

Hmm... two and a half years since my last post. My follower must be bulk-buying ronseal and hair dye.

Yep. Biblical joke. Suck it.

"So why the sudden return?" you proclaim. Has he got published? Has he got laid? NO! He's gonna whine about the same shit all over again.

That's right folks: I'm going back to Texas!

But before I explain why, I'll recap the last 30 months...

When last you heard from me, I had lost my job over child abuse allegations and moved in with 3 bisexuals who I had separate histories with. Since then I have sought to improve my moral health by losing a second job after sleeping with my boss and moving in with a stoner who injects himself with hormones released in the brain at the point of death. I also indulged in an angry sadomasochistic relationship with the lovechild of Mr Spock and Satan.

An eventful few years. But things are better now. You find me sitting in bed, the tenant of two tidy Hungarian scientists, with a sore throat that has proved immune to paracetamol, glycerin, salt-water, fruit-smoothy, bacon carbonara, Lockets, Halls Soothers and Halls Originals. This industrial grade super-disease was contracted at the call centre where I work - a company that refuses to believe in human frailty to the point where they would rather risk the mass infection of 200 people than give a cunt a break. Perhaps these brazen cultists will offer me some alchemical elixir on Monday morning when they find me croaking at the customers like Batman in a kebab shop.

Not only are they intent on transcending human mortality, but my employers also follow the proud tradition of fucking up my name. My desk plate reads "COROCAN" and my username reads "COCORONG". I should be happy that the latter one at least sounds Irish, but authenticity is no comfort when your penis is in question.

However, the money at the call centre is good, as it should be for propogating human misery. And it has allowed me to save up for my return to the place of spiritual purgatory known as Texas.

Now, as regular readers of my blog will know if they existed, I have a habit of crowbarring the events of my life into a framework of narrative resonance. I look for meanings and exaggerate coincidences. For example, I currently live at the intersection of Pendarves Road (Pendarves House was the first care home I worked in), Tehidy Road (Tehidy House was where I worked with my boss who I slept with) and Tresillian Road (Tresillian is the abode of Lucispock the Destroyer). Now, some might say that the chances of living near places named "Tehidy", "Pendarves" and "Tresillian" are quite high in Cornwall. But those people are arse-badgers.

With this in mind, let me introduce you to the reason I am going back to Texas:

Her name is Laura. She has short hair and athletic physique, like the heroin of my novel. She is quirky and full of hidden feist, like the heroin of my novel. She caught my attention unexpectedly and defied the majority of my assumptions about her, like the heroin of my novel.

You see the pattern.

Add to this cake the cherries of her living in Texas, being a fan of Brian Froud, appreciating the awesomeness of Children of Men and studying as a creative writing major, and you have the recipe for Greg Cock'O'Sore becoming a deluded fuckhead.

She also works in a chocolate shop. I'll get back to you on that one...

We met online last December, went on our first MSN in January, had unprotected Skype in March and last week I asked her if I could spend all my disposable income on driving a freight-train of self-loathing and neurosis into her city. And after only a minor wobble in which she compared me to a sexual deviant, Laura consented.

Not content with this, I've also inserted a road trip in which we will crash the wedding of some other people who I've met online and probably won't like me.

So right now, the name of the game is preparation. Today I saw a financial advisor at the bank, who after talking to me said she was going to re-evaluate her life. I naturally told her colleagues to hide the razorblades, but it turns out she was genuinely impressed with my gungho attitude. I advised her that there are jobs in Korea and she gave me a credit card. A mutual fuck-over if ever there was one.

Afterwards I went to the opticians to engage in the erotic tradition of the eyesight checkup. Being in a dark room with someone staring into my eyes and giving me orders was just the pick-me-up I needed. Unfortunately, this optician did not want to work in Korea, did not want to give me a credit card, and definitely did not give a fuck about my meta-narrative. I had a one-night stand with an optician once (before Spockistopheles). They are all strange and soulless creatures, devoid of mortal dreams. She told me my eyes were "all lovely at the back" and not to see her again for two years.

I guess it was erotic enough.

So now, like a lazy paedophile, I'm back home sucking on anything I can find and counting the hours between paracetamol doses as I write my blog.

Texas is set for November 13th, four years and seven days since my original voyage.

From sprite-starved scribe to chocolate-coated cockosaur... the metamorphosis continues.

New House Attempted: A Thick Sock Day

2009-02-16T23:31:00.003Z

"Jesus fuck... do you want me to tell you how emo you sounded in that blog?"

Such was another comment from my American friends.

So, to lighten the mood I thought I'd have another whinge about my love life. Yeah, I know it's sad and predictable, but I'm a dark coat-wearing grumpy reclusive thriller-writer, so cliches are my thing.

So, today was a Thick Sock day. I have two types of socks in my drawer, and they're good indicators of my mood.

And before you get the wrong idea, I do NOT use these socks to stuff my pants. I don't need to indulge in over-compensation, because my penis is massive and I want everyone on the internet to be assured of that.

Anwyay, I have thin socks for days when I'm probably gonna stay in bed. They're lightweight and don't overheat under the duvet. Thin socks are for depressed days.

Thick socks, however, are for days when I'm expecting to be outside in the cold, wearing shoes and other healthy things like that. Today I got up and put on some thick socks, ready for my highlight of the week - my visit to the Job Centre.

"Mr Cock-Ring?" asked the advisor as we sat at the desk.

"No. Corcoran. Think of the Corrs, or Corke. Or just pronounce each Cor separately. Cor-Cor-An."

"Cor-Cor-An," repeated the advisor, clearly struggling with the concept. "So, any luck?"

"Yes, I have an interview for a job as a sterilizer."

"A sterilizer?"

"Yes - at the hospital. A Sterile Technician."

"Ooh, that's good."

"Yeah, it'll be great at parties, won't it? 'What do you do?' 'Oh, I'm a sterile man!'

"Well, at least the Technician part sounds impressive. So, what would you be sterlizing?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe surgical instruments - maybe people. Regardless of which, my next novel should be an interesting one."

"Okay, Mr Cock-Ring, if you'd just like to sign here..."

The reason I'm mentioning the careers advisor is simple: she's the only woman who's shown any interest in me for the last three months. And by 'interest' I mean she didn't instantly frown at me on sight and actually made the effort to crack a smile at one of my jokes. That's tantamount to a handjob in my books, the dirty slut.

Anyway, this morning of Cock-Ringery followed a night out with my Aunty and cousin, Matt, a more refined and uninhibited version of myself who smokes cigars and oozes bisexual grace. He spent most of the night staring at the girls in the cafe, whilst my Aunty's conversation could be summarised as follows:

"Buddhism... Buddhism... You're such a handsome boy... Buddhism...Ghosts... Why don't you have a girlfriend yet?... Buddhism... Yoga... Look at all the pretty girls here... Buddhism... Tango... You really should talk to some of these girls!"

The girls in question were the typical spread of Falmouth students - the kinda girls who study at the sacred feet of One Tree Hill and Beverly Hills, long hair and retro-sub-hippie-non-comformity-conventional clothing dancing around their starved-thin bodies.

Music was blaring from the cafe's speakers, so as usual I failed to convey even a single word of coherent speech. I was busy trying to keep pace with my cousin's drinking (It's never cool to be half a pint behind the next man), as well as trying to think up topics to steer my Aunty away from the 'You're-such-a-handsome-boy-what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you' campaign.

The closest contact I had with the females was at the end of the night when I had to crawl around under the tables looking for my car keys.

They were the same as ever. Truly it's a skill I have - to make every girl's face look exactly the same: a blank, vacant stare of total bemusement. Why is it in that in the movies, two people connect and start having knowing word-duels, but in real life the world is painted with 'What-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about' expressions?

It's very inconsistent - I wish Hollywood would catch up with what's really happening in the world.

My cousin and Aunty didn't have those faces, but only because they were in their own little worlds, like most people in the cafe. No one was exploring anything but their own agendas, projecting onto each other.

Don't get me wrong - I do the same thing. But when I project onto women I imagine them as wild and spirited sexual creatures, full of adventure and excitement. I think this projection is a damn sight more flattering than the crap husband/silly-old-man/father-material/pervert images that women project onto me.

Relationships are terrible things at the end of the day - at least in my experience. All that shit with women pretending they know who you are. Fuck that.

I think that's why I like insecure women - cos at least they shut the fuck up and give me a chance to speak. It's hard enough trying to translate the inner soul to the outer presentation without people monologuing in your face.

Anyway, after finding my keys, I left the cafe and walked back to my car, alone as always.

Earlier that day I had finished the final draft of my novel, and it was this, more than my thick socks, that brought me comfort.

Countless other men had succeeded in shooting white fluid out of their cocks on Valentine's Day. But I... I had completed a great work, one that will outlive the best orgasm and the greater number of human relationships.

I took solace in that today and fell asleep in my thick socks, waking up with hot feet and the terror-sweat of novel-induced nightmares.

I dreamt I was Henry V in the modern day, fighting as an immortal in Saudi Arabia.

This ghost in my house is an arsehole. Maybe if I avenge his death he'll start sending me some erotic dreams instead and I'd stop looking like a psychopath when I go out.

Time to solve some crime!

New House Attempted: It's only snow, you ponce!

2009-02-03T20:21:00.002Z

When I woke up this morning the cats were confused. Or at least more confused than normal.

"It's like Narnia!" squealed my housemate.

Then I realised it: Cornwall was covered in snow - a rare thing for Cornwall. I threw on my army boots, which were even more confused than the cats, and headed out for a walk.

I used to think that Heaven was white, soft, like a land deep with snow. I suppose it's a fitting comparison. Cornwall was in freeze-frame this morning.

I looked across the fields between my house and Helston, where they say the devil flew with St Michael in pursuit. The borders of the lands were erased, and as I made my way I didn't know if I was walking on road or verge, grass or tarmac. That was the sense that held - the sense of walking where you wouldn't usually walk; doing what you wouldn't usually do. People were sledding on one of the hillsides, and a couple of girls were rolling a snowman's body. They were all trespassing, patches of errant people amid the whiteness.

Perhaps like heaven. The snow had made everywhere uncharted, virgin, and as I followed the footsteps I wondered what joys and energies had made those strides, what things had happened inside their heads.

It is enough not to know people, but to know that they have laughed as you've laughed, wondered as you've wondered. The same will hold in heaven.

The snow was the event that we all reflected from - perhaps like death for those in the afterlife. That's what communities are - that's what they should be - like those of Wartime or the days of invention, where single things brought us all together.

This morning a simple change in the geography had brought such. The voices I heard were distant, but all happy, all excited.

I know now that utopia may come; for how simple it was to bring that happiness: just a change, a covering of coloured powder, and then new energies arise, new happiness.

Did they feel it too - the sense of a land reclaimed? The borders were erased and with them had gone all sense of ownership. Is that why we are happy, because we give ourselves to the occupation of something else - that we embrace this check upon our miserable and aimless freedom?

History would warn us of this. But what if that thing we yielded to was unmistakeably beautiful, as beautiful as snowfall. Would it be different then?

And then something wonderful happened. I walked in the tyre-tracks on the road and the ground made a sound like empty crisp packets. And I thought, how wonderful that my readers would not understand this simile. They would picture it wrong, or think the simile weak or refrain from it altogether. How wonderful - something that cannot be described.

To think that there are things unknowable, unrelatable. How much more beauty there is in the world than what we relay to one another.

Is that why God keeps such a distance? Like virgin snow, couched in the unknown with the greater part of a universe we cannot share in words.

And yet, for all this, I would love nothing more than to share it with someone - to try at least, though I know it will be inadequate; though I know I would not say to her all I felt and we would not reach the emotional heights we dream of, or if we did we would not remember.

Yet still I would try, for hope that I would leave but one mystery in her heart, like virgin snow, like God unknowable; that she might count me among the greater beauty that lies beyond a shallow seeming.

Truly, as a thousand masters have told me, there is nothing better than to have a friend, a child, a loved one, whatever their capacity.

I need to know that people feel this - that they know and un-know the world as much as me and do not perch above their graves and let great things like waves crash apart around them.

I hope they felt this day as much as I did.

New House: Attempted

2009-01-22T21:55:00.002Z

"Asmo...you know if you started an online blog with your wit and humor...it could become an immensely popular site"

Such was the paradoxical comment from one of my American friends.

I told him that I had indeed started an online blog, but it had yet to prove immensely popular, especially to myself seeing as I had left it for 9 months and had to find the URL by looking under my bed.

Things are never worthwhile if you have to look under a bed for them. Nothing good has ever come of such behaviour.

So, let's see. I've got an MA now. I would have got a distinction, but the college saw fit to employ a man with pathological hatred of the children's, young adult, fantasy, sci-fi, romance, drama, magical realism and thriller genres.

He described my work as a "Soulless necromancer's cat's-cradle of unlikely events." I retorted that he was being unprofessional and promptly got threatened with legal action over defamation of character.

So I must add my college course to the long history of needlessly idealistic rebellions that saw me kicked out of a hotel, the army, my BA course and my care job.

I have since finished that particular cat's cradle of unlikely events and have now embarked upon another - namely moving into a new house with an ex-girlfriend, her daughter who I dated briefly and a delusional psychotic who wants to marry me.

If anyone asks, I jump right to the part where all 3 of them are bisexual.

The girlfriend front remains a dead ringer for the Western front - vast, monotonous, littered with the bodies of young idiots and a rather silly affair altogether. My penis seems to be getting better at recovering after each masturbation, and now that there's a TV in the house it's being put to regular exercise.

The penis and the TV.

I wish they would put more ugly people on television.

The house is a Grade 2 Medieval Wheelwrights - four floors, church timbers, mediterranean garden, gym, 3 bathrooms, minstrel's gallery and one very pissed off ghost.

Said ghost is in the habit of plaguing me with nightmares - perhaps he's got sick of people masturbating in his house. I've been strangled by a tentacle monster, eaten by a clam, mauled by zombies, savaged by a demon child, kidnapped by a publishing agent, drowned, smothered, shot by my old drill sergeant and confronted with the theory that I've been unconscious since last year and have imagined everything since.

In order to avert the perhaps-inevitable moment where I fuck up the house by embarking on a crusade of exorcism, I have diverted my rebellious energies to a different forum.

The Iwaku forum to be precise, a little writing community that I administrated and wholly excluded from my comedic creations. I decided to step down after inflicting a momentous catalogue of structural changes that the little yankies and Japanophiles objected to. Plus I got sold out by an egotistical WOW-player.

Note to self - never mess with WOW-players.

So, with that sacrifice to the altar of periodic fuck-ups, I'm settling in to the new house nicely.

My housemate (the delusional psychotic one) isn't talking to me because I said her cat was fat and asked her to take her hairs out of the shower.

Should I apologize for that...? Well, the nightmares have tailed off lately, so maybe the ghost agrees with me about the cat.

Oh, and the other day I found out that every event, choice and detail of my 26-year life has been definitively linked to a grand premeditated scheme of cosmic significance.

But that can wait...

Comedy Attempted: I want to be a producer...

2008-04-27T22:01:00.002+01:00

So... erm... yeah, I'm a Comedy Producer now...

My friend Chris has asked me to produce a show with him. His last two co-producers bailed out, and he hates women and people who argue with him, so that leaves me...

I'm not sure what to expect - never done anything like this before, except that one play where I abused a bunch of kids by making them play poetry-spouting renegade angels (but we do not speak of that). Chris has the potential to be a very irritating person. He talks in theory and anecdotes, usually whilst smoking and wearing gay shirts. He's doing this show in order to distract himself from his novel, which is more depressing than premature ejaculation to James Blunt.

I'm gonna have to be extra funny. I wrote a sketch today about a man in a toilet. Things are looking up.

Truth Attempted: Gross Misconduct

2008-04-18T10:28:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was my birthday. Today I wrote an article for the Daily Mail. Here it is:

Children’s Care Home is in tatters

They’ve dismissed the staff member who swore at a 17 year old. They’ve kept the staff member who lied to the kids, faked illness and sabotaged the rest of his team.

Greg Corcoran has looked after children with learning disabilities for 5 years. But now he’s been dismissed from his unit for swearing at a 17 year old. Meanwhile, Dan Cooke, who has worked in care for less than a year, is returning to work after abusing the children and faking chest pains to get time off.

‘The Care Home is in tatters!’ says Harri Burch, Greg’s best friend and co-worker, ‘They’ve got rid of a man who genuinely cared about the kids, and they’ve let back in a liar and an abuser who is a threat to all vulnerable people.’

The children at Langley House in Cornwall have Asperger Syndrome and are cared for by the Devon and Cornwall Autistic Community Trust. These children can be very unstable and inflict frequent verbal and physical abuse on their staff. Greg has worked hard with these kids, enduring ridicule and injury and preparing them for the time when they leave care on their 18^th birthdays.

Yet all of his efforts were ruined when the selfish Dan Cooke joined the team. This man has done everything possible to turn the kids against the rest of the staff. Dan told the kids that they could only trust him, and he told them personal secrets about the other staff members. He took the kids out, buying them food and drink and encouraging them to shout at members of the public and misbehave.

Of course, Dan got away with this. He seemed to cover his tracks well and nothing could ever be proved by co-workers or upper management. When the rest of the staff began to criticize him he stopped turning up for work. He said he had chest pains. One of his co-workers saw him in the pub the next day.

‘He was smiling and chatting away to his friends,’ says Nicola Clifton, key worker at the unit with Greg, ‘I asked him if he was alright and he pretended not to know what I was talking about.’

The Unit struggled to cover Dan’s shifts and undo the damage he had done to the children. Greg worked especially hard with the oldest child in the unit, a 17 year old who is set to leave care in June of this year.

But while Dan got away with his abuse, Greg wasn’t so lucky. When the 17 year old threatened to attack him whilst out shopping, Greg refused to back down. He squared up to the abusive teenager and warned him of the consequences of assault. He told him “you’ll throw your whole f*cking life away if you do this!” The 17 year old backed down, and Greg apologised to the other people in the shop. But when the incident got reported Greg was suspended indefinitely, and then dismissed 3 weeks later.

The kid he swore at is leaving care in 3 months and is going out to live and fend for himself on his own. But until then, he is still classed as a child by the authorities, so swearing at him is considered gross misconduct. Greg was fired for moving outside the “agreed framework” for that child.

‘The reason I moved outside the framework,’ says Greg, ‘is because [the child] is about to leave the framework! In three months he will enter the real world, and he still thinks he can threaten people in public and get away with it. If I had to break protocol to show him some real-life consequences, then losing my job was worth it. I love that kid and I want him to learn. If I had the chance I’d do it again.’

The 17 year old’s behaviour has improved a lot since that day. He is learning independent skills and planning forward to the day he leaves care. But all that could be ruined now that his keyworker, Greg, has been dismissed for gross misconduct and the poisonous Dan Cooke returns to continue his abuse.

‘He’s leaving care in 3 months, and they’re bringing back a man who lies to him, turns him against others, encourages his aggression and contradicts the rest of the staff,’ says Greg. ‘They’ve taken away the one who cares, and brought back the man who consistently abused him.’

Langley House has been put under special measures for the duration of the investigation. Greg’s co-workers are in uproar and the children are confused. One man’s attempt to teach a teenager about real life has led to disciplinary action that has crippled a once thriving care home.

Truth Attempted: The day I wasn't published

2008-04-16T00:36:00.000+01:00

In the deepest cavern of the Crown Hotel, a young girl waits. A succubus in the shadows, lingering with a tray of sweetest delights. Cornflakes, butter, a rack of white toast and the juice of an unknown fruit. She waits... day and night... waiting for us.

At last we find the dining room and settle down for breakfast. The girl appears with the tray and sets it down. We have no choice but to eat. European stereotypes sit around us, like ghosts of the past. This morning, we dine in Purgatory.

Half an hour later, fuelled by the default breakfast of the Crown Hotel, we set out for Earl's Court. I am buoyant, my heart filled with dreams of being 'discovered'. I have two appointments booked with Random House and Harper Collins, giants of the industry. They will notice me, they will love me - they will spread my word unto the masses.

The London Book Fair fills the two giant conference centres of Earl's Court. I wander between the stalls, a bazaar-like array of wonders and hidden treasures... endless possibilites, all that I could want. These are my people, they brush shoulders with me, they talk and do business.

One of them even gave me a free notebook. Rock on!

After two seminars I am pumped. My first appointment with Random House draws near. I go to their stand and proudly announce my name.

"Who?" says the bewildered girl.

"Greg Corcoran."

She looks at her notes, "No, sorry, you're not down here."

"It's with Jane Kirby."

"Oh, you better check with her."

I run up the escalator and find Jane Kirby, talking to other important people.

"Who?" barks Jane.

"Greg Corcoran"

"Never heard of you."

"I booked an appointment with you... through the website."

"Sorry, but that means nothing to me."

I get the same story from Harper Collins. The website was a facade... the appointment booking system has been ignored...

I have been ignored.

I feel the weight of every book in the fair fall upon me. The horrible truth dawns: this is not a fair for students.... this is a fair for business and buyers. No one will talk to me... no one will acknoweldge me...

I end the day snivelling in the corner and looking up at Blake Morrison as he gives a talk, dispensing words of wisdom with a gentle smile. The man I will never be... the grace I will never know...

I begin scribbling a song in my free notebook. At least I'll get something out of these bastards.

Then my phone beeps. I have pissed off another girl - she is London too and she wants to talk. I tell her I'm with Maria... she stops talking to me.

I'm a bad man. I'm a failed man.

Maria takes me to an Italian restaurant to cheer me up. Our waiter has an argument with the chef and the head waiter, Polish obscenities spewing back and forth. Me and Maria sneak out whilst they are confronting each other in the kitchen. Maybe the waiter had been to the Book Fair today as well.

Finally, we return to the hotel of doom with comfort-Starbucks and consolation-brownies. I turn on the TV and watch a young James Woods kick the shit out of sexy vampires.

But it's not enough. I feel like a ginger kid, held upside down, my head smashed against a cabinet.

"I hate you." I mutter at the industry as I drift into sleep.

Truth Attempted: Indecisive Greg and the Hotel of Doom

2008-04-14T23:23:00.002+01:00

After waking up and battering the ginger kids during a passionate session on the Wii, Maria and I set off for the bright lights of London.... after she puts on her hat, scarf, sunglasses, coat, gloves, wrap, shawl, jumper and waterproofs.

We leave the car in a lovely suburb of Croydon and then descend into the dark and festering pits of hell... or so we thought. For an hour later we find ourselves standing in a very posh part of London, surrounded by old and lavish homes with railed gardens and orchards. Women with poodles walk past us, sneering through their sunglasses, whilst businessmen in coats glance at us and dial two 9s on their mobile phones.

I am half-expecting Hugh Grant to throw boiling coffee over me then invite me back to his place for socially-controversial sodomy.

But all is well - we have simply gone the wrong way. We backtrack and find ourselves moving into the decaying underbelly of the Earl's Court area. The poodles become rats, the white men become Asian, the businessmen have two 9s tattooed to their heads, denoting their killcount.

At last we are stood in the Crown Hotel, seeking entrance to the hallowed crypts of leisure's antiquity. The generic receptionist stares at us with hollow eyes and hands over the key, jabbering about the legends of Breakfast.

I forge ahead, the carpets throwing up white powder around my every footstep. The floorboards creak, the wallpaper peels aggressively to left and right. There are booby-traps on every corner. I grip Maria's hand as she trembles beneath her padded layers. Wrenching her from the dying elevator we stumble through the twisting hallways, ethnic minorities jabbering from the alcoves like harbingers of doom.

Finally, room 214. I jam the key into the lock and utter the sacred verse of optimism.

"I'm sure it won't be that bad. I'm sure it won't be that bad."

Curses! We are undone! They have lured us into a trap - a chamber where the walls close in upon us!

No, I am mistaken. It's just a very small room. We set our cases down between the walls and gaze upon the face of decay.

"It'll do." mumbles Maria.

I open my laptop and start hacking into their network.

Truth Attempted: The London Book Fair

2008-04-13T22:54:00.001+01:00

The London Book Fair, 2008 - a chance to meet the experts of the Writing Industry. A chance to get published, for all your dreams to come true!

I have been suspended for 3 weeks now.

I arrive at Maria's house in Newquay at 11 o'clock. I am carrying my letter from work: a full disciplinary hearing has been set up for the day I return.

I'm a bad man. I abused a kid in care - I swore at a 17 year old with Tourettes. Gross misconduct, violation of protocols, undue emotion. I should have withdrawn - left the kid in the supermarket after he'd threatened to smash my face in. But I didn't: I stood up to him: I called his bluff - I told him to hit me. The bluff worked - the kid backed down. But I got reported.

I'm a bad man. A carer with no boundaries. A loose canon with a heart of fire.

I steal Maria's toast as she gets me insured on her car. I then wait patiently in the hallway as she layers herself like a packhorse ready for the journey. Jumper, scarf, hat, jewellery, another scarf, a wrap, gloves, sunglasses, waterbottle, coat...

"We're going to Southampton first." she mumbles through the folds of her clothes, "It's my sister in law's birthday."

Kids...lots of kids... ginger kids. I remember the last time, when I became a surrogate climbing frame and punchbag. We'll be staying the night as well. I picture the questions: Are you and Auntie Maria getting married? Why did you steal our Auntie? Why aren't you working anymore? Why does Auntie Maria have bruises?

I'm a bad man.

We set off on the road. I talk about my suspension, my reasons for what I did. I remember when I left the army, when I walked out of the Marriott, when I wrote an irrelevant dissertation for my BA. For all my love of structures and frameworks, I have a history of rebellion.

"It's okay," I remark cheerfully to Maria, "We could be published by the end of this weekend. We won't have to worry about jobs ever again."

Maria looks at me through the thin slit between her scarf, hat and coat... the same look I got from the Head of Children's Services... one of total incomprehension and digust.

I'm a bad man.

At 9pm that evening, I am sitting in a nicely furnished lounge. A young girl is screaming at me.

"I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!"

She was the casualty. I was set upon by seven children, four of them ginger, so I had to break through the blockade and throw the little clingy bastards onto a sofa. The girl in question was at the bottom of the pile. She is hurt and she is angry...

"I HATE YOUUUUUU!"

I'm a bad man.

I smile at Maria and try to continue conversation as a vengefulness of Hamlet-esque proportions brews on the other side of the room.

Later on, Beth, the daughter of Maria's sister-in-law, saunters in, her hyper-intelligent eyes fixing me.

I've always liked Beth. She's a smart one.

"I hate you." she says calmly.

"Oh... right...."

"But that could change."

"...okay..."

"You have to make me like you."

I fidget in my seat.

"You have to pick me up and hold me upside down."

"Right..."

I pick her up and hold her upside down.

"Now you have to walk over to the sofa and put me there. But you have to walk smoothly - no bouncy movements."

I follow her instructions precisely, and promptly slam her head against the cabinet near the sofa. She falls out of my grip and crashes into the fireplace.

"... sorry." I say.

She stands up and looks at me, "Carry on." she says quietly.

I pick her up and toss her onto the sofa.

"Okay, I like you now."

I'm a good man.

Truth Attempted: Rogue Carer

2008-04-07T22:41:00.003+01:00

"You're outta line, Corcoran!" shouts the Head of Children's Services, jabbing his podgy finger at me. I sit on the other side of the desk, smoking a cigar with roguish ease.

"I get results, Chief, and you know it."

"Bullshit!" yells Chief Collins, "That kid is under our protection. He's a child in care for God's sake! You can't swear at him!"

"That kid..." I retort, getting out of my chair and leaning towards the burly chief, "...threatened to attack me in a public supermarket. I did what I had to do. You've been stuck behind that desk too long, Chief - you don't know what it's like out there, on the street."

"I got social services on me! I got his mother on me! I got CSCI and the Directors breathing down my neck! They want someone's ass, and it's gonna be yours, Corcoran - ya hear me?!"

"Go ahead!" I shout, tossing my badge on the desk, "But know this, Chief: that kid leaves Care in 3 months and he still thinks he can threaten people in public and get away with it. So you're right - I didn't back down, I didn't follow procedure. I squared up to him, and I told him to back the fuck down. That's what happens out there in the real world. If losing my job is the price I pay to teach that kid some real-life consequences, then that's the price I pay. I'd rather act like a human being than some goddam machine!"

I flick my cigar away and storm out of the office. The Chief yells out after me, "You're suspended Corcoran! You go near a care home, I'll bust you! You try to sneak in and care for those kids illegally, I'll bust you! You wipe anyone's ass in my precinct without permission, I'll bust you!"

"You can't stop me caring, Chief!" I yell back, flicking him the finger and then striding to the carpark.

Girlfriend Attempted: No longer lonely

2008-02-24T19:21:00.002Z

I have of late been remiss. Long weeks since I last wrote here. I thought to draw you to an end, but it was not to be. This series will continue.

Tonight, my story is no longer lonely. It joins the others and with them is characterised by that distinct element - that thing beyond sadness or tragedy that strings together my past chapters. The idea that there is something to be learned, in preparation for something to come.

And so she... now... a foundation. A scaffold. It feels so hard to think of her as that.

Between my last post and this I thought I had found someone. And I thought the heavy complications of who she was to be a test for me, or a flaw to make this happy ending human. I thought this new chapter to be a different one, lonely, nothing like the others that ended so poorly.

But no. And now I sit here and pack my feelings up behind these words. Like I have always done, knowing that the heat will pass. Knowing that all the heartache will be twisted into this.... this art that I use.... these words.... this godforesaken talent, mask, whatever the fuck it is.

I am taught by my tutors that novels should have emotion; that we should be shown (and never told) the character's passions in flame, his actions desperate, his screams and worthy acts. But life pales. I have this weekend endured such heights, but not even my face has moved too much.

Two nights of extreme impulse, answered by a slight burn in the chest, a frown. Nothing more. And now I sit behind a fucking laptop, between the solitaire game and the DVD that will drown my thoughts for the night, and I type out this pathetic line of drivel, as if it should mean something. As if it will show all the emotions that I could never daub the storybook pages with.

This is it. This is my ordeal, my moment of high emotion and crisis. My defining character revelation. On Saturday, when I thought that I could have her, I argued with my friends at work, threatening to quit unless they gave me the time off, for a party where I would see her. A child throwing his toys from the pram.

On Saturday night, at the party, I learned that I was loved by another. Truly loved, eternally loved, loved so much that she could not fucking stand to see me with another. And I dispelled this woman with a few words and pleasantries, barely breaking a sweat. Every word came easy, no challenge, no doubt - turning her away as easily as I have been discarded by others.

And now, tonight, I have decided to step away from the one that I wanted, and with her I have agreed that we could never be, that we were not right together. I ate whilst typing, my appetite perfect, a tune in my head, writing college assignments on the side.

No fires, no screams, no heroes or bold speeches.

And tonight, three people are lonely in their beds. One wants me, I want another, the other searches, and all three of us fear to hurt each other.

It was never meant to be this difficult. I was never meant to be so dead, here amongst such cause, such provocation. This love and this despair that should lift me to a poet's rage, but instead I sit and place a DVD in my laptop and pour my wine. Just like all the others who have loved and lost in these weeks.

Drowning ourselves.

My Lord, your characters lack depth. I suggest you find a new editor.

What am I to learn from this? How may I lay this, as ground to build upon?

Why does it hurt so much and show so little?

I think of a beach, two weeks ago, a girl in my arms. A kiss. And I smile and think myself blessed. Why should I do such a thing, be so thankful for that one moment of a relationship now shattered?

I think of a room, long ago, a blank red wall, a child screaming.

I never thought that I would have anything like this. I never thought that I would hurt this way, so alive, so powerful. After all the things that terrified me, this... this is exquisite.

God, I would do anything for these people. Anything.

Girlfriend Attempted: Fuel-leak

2008-01-21T20:25:00.000Z

0830: Bath time
0900: Get dressed
0905: Breakfast
0910: Wash dishes
0915: Clean teeth
0916: Toilet
0917: Watch cars through window for 10 minutes
0927: TV and Video till Daddy arrives
1030: Daddy
2030: Bath time
2100: Supper
2105: Wash dishes
2110: Clean teeth
2111: Toilet
2113: TV and Video till 2145
2145: Lights out.

I sit at the table, watching our "least able" kid write up his activities for tomorrow. He has already made me feel like shit by refusing all help with his self-care. I even offered to wipe his arse for him, but he refused. He doesn't need me anymore. He even reminded me to get him a towel. Cheeky bastard.

As I sit there and watch him plan his next day, I ponder asking him for dating advice. Surely he has a step-by-step list. It would certainly help. But it's too late. He goes into the toilet, clicking his stop watch and then dropping his trousers. Conversation time is over.

That night, I attempt to outdo the cocky git and write my own list.

0900: Get up
0905: Ring garage about my car
0930: Pick up car and drive to Somerset
1200: Stop for lunch
1400: Arrive in Taunton for Speed Workshop
1600: Drive back home and write Chapter 7 of novel on the way
2000: Go to gym on way back.
2200: Bed and self-restraint.

The next day I stagger downstairs at 0927. The garage reports that my car has a fuel leak. The tank is rusted through. They will call me back with an estimate of price.

I call the Speed Workshop and explain my predicament. They rebook my appointment.

"I can do any day except a Tuesday."
"Okay, our next available slot is February 12th."
"Is that a Tuesday?"
"Yes."
"So many how many points will I lose on my licence?"
"We'll phone you back. Please send a check for £30"
"Why?"
"To pay for the workshop."
"But I'm not coming to the workshop."
"We still need the £30"
"I've already paid you £90"
"And we need another £30"

I put down the phone. It rings.

"£215 for a new fuel tank, Sir." says the Garage.

I put the phone down. It's 0945.

Bollox! I forgot to post my college assignment. BOLLOX, I left the tutor's email address at work. I text Maria.

"Hi, I'm going to the beach!" she replies.
"Answer my question!" I shout. I then realise I didn't send the message I was shouting about.
"What's Martin's email???"
"I'm not on that course."

I put the phone down. It's 1030.

The phone rings.

"Hello."
"Oh sorry, wrong number."
"No it's not. Hi, Vanessa."
"Sorry?"
"How are you?"
"Wait, is that Norman?"
"No, it's Greg."
"I'm sorry, I don't know you."
"Yes you do, Vanessa. I'm your daughter's housemate."
"I'm not Vanessa."
"Oh... you sound like her..."
"Is that 374455?"
"Yes."
"What are you doing in Norman's house?"
"This is my house! Wait... no, I'm 374445."
"Oh, okay. Sorry dear."
"That's fine."

I put the phone down. I make lunch.

I surf the internet as I let my lunch go down.

It goes down a long way.

It's 1500. I write some novel openings and then decide to have a shower. In the shower I come up with a new song. The cats approve. I surf the internet to find the song that I've ripped off, and am pleased to find that it sounds nothing like my song. Excellent.

It's 1700. I have early dinner, so that I can go to the gym. The plan is to do some upper body workout. Pecs = sex. I'll have a girlfriend in no time.

I let my dinner go down. I write a short post for the website about an angel torturing a demon because the demon stole his wife, who's now a sword, which he's using to torture the demon. I then have an argument with a 14 year old who wants to have a World War Two soldier with electricity for blood.

Its 2000. My housemate gets home and patronizes me, while the cats kick the shit out of each other. After a quick coffee and a bitch about the kids, she goes to bed.

It's 2100. I decide the write a blog.

Only half an hour before the gym closes...

Right, 45 press-ups and 90 sit-ups before bed.

What woman could resist me?

Girlfriend Attempted: A strange day

2008-01-16T18:51:00.000Z

I have gone to college to work on my Features assignment (that's "magazines" to you milk-drinkers out there). And I have achieved diddly-squat.

But there is hope. Magazines have an incredible and ingenious secondary function (much like midgets). They can be used to stare at people.

I lower my copy of "Blindspot" - a truly attrocious journal - and gaze at the blond on the other side of the library. She does not notice me. I grin and raise the journal once again.

I have just been to the gym, and I haven't masturbated in 5 days. I am feeling primed for action. The girl on the other table is sitting very still, because sharing her table is a strange man making funny sounds. I think he has tourettes. He is rummaging through a newspaper and quietly swearing. I sit on the edge of the seat, ready to defend the girl should this man prove violent.

"Bastards!" he mutters, sifting through the small pile of magazines he has collected. The girl keeps her head down. I hope she isn't ugly...

I often wonder if I'm a good-looking man. I know I'm pretty decent head-on and from the left. It's just my right side that lets me down. And my neck. And my nose. But fortunately it was raining on the way here, so I have spikey hair. I am also wearing glasses, which are a gamble in any given situation. I think I have a chance here...

"Cunts!" hisses the man, getting up and putting on his coat. He storms out, leaving the girl on her own next to his pile of magazines.

Now is my moment to strike...

I close my magazine and get up. I then walk over to her side of the journal area, replacing my copy of "Blindspot" under the "W" section. I then look around for another magazine, finding nothing, and turn to her table.

"Are these all yours?" I ask, nodding at the pile that angry-tourettes-boy left behind.

"Heh heh, no." she answers, her voice like wet toilet paper hiking in the Scottish Highlands.

"I was gonna say, that's pretty hardcore." I remark, crouching down to sift through the pile.

"Heh heh heh!"

She goes back to reading her book, and I pretend to consider each of the magazines on her table. Finally I take one and look up at her.

"Oh hi there, how you doing?" says the girl's friend, brushing past me and sitting down next to her.

Curses! Foiled again!

They begin chuntering at each other. I take a copy of the nearest journal - a weekly bird-enthusiast's magazine, and retreat to my table.

"WANKER!!!" screams a voice from the corridor.

I put my coat on. I am late for dinner and belittlement back home. As I cross the field on my shortcut to the house, two girls are climbing over the fence by the road. I wait politely and sexily for them to get over. But one of them is having trouble...

Should I help her? No... they'll think I'm a pervert...

Eventually, the two girls make it to the other side and squeak their thanks to me. I grunt in reply, somewhere between "Sure" and "Help me, I need sex!". My scrotum slams into the fence as I vault over it.

A few minutes later, on my approach into Mabe, I see another girl. She is sitting on the wet grass next to a field entrance. Maybe she's a rape victim? No, that's too much to hope for.

I get home and sit down for dinner. Sweet and Sour... somehow symbolic... My housemate finishes hers in a few mouthfuls and then spends the rest of the meal staring at my plate.

I then get an email from my friend Tom praising my work. That little hairy gnome of a man is responsible for my first erection of the day, God bless him.

Christmas Attempted: The Day

2008-01-09T17:12:00.000Z

December 25th. Christmas Day.

In 13 days time there will be an anniversary. And no one but me shall celebrate it.

15 years since my brother was killed.

15 years since I became this.

Merry Christmas, Alex. My promise remains.

Christmas Attempted: Driving Home for Christmas

2008-01-09T17:10:00.000Z

December 24th

I am bombing down the M5 at 100mph with a cheeseburger in one hand. My friends, this is what we fought Hitler for.

We have just dropped one of the kids home for Christmas, leaving him to grin at his mother with his newly pierced lip and nose accessories. Me and my manager leg it to the car as the sounds of screaming and broken glass ring out behind us. He's not our problem anymore.

We are near Birmingham and it's 4 o'clock. My manager orders me to get home for 8 o'clock, so that he can see his lover. It seems my job this Christmas is to convey other people to their private joys. So be it.

I drive aggressively, picturing Slade, Wizard and Shakin Stevens trying to escape me as I run them down and grind their bones to a bloody pulp. My manager grabs the volume dial every time the Pogues come on, and we both squeal out hearts out. It passes the time.

The plan was to stay at a bed and breakfast in Birmingham and drive home tomorrow, but clearly my manager would rather spend the night in the waxed and manicured arms of his lover than drinking Jack Daniels with a depressed writer with a tragic-hero complex.

And so I race through the Christmas Eve night, blinking to keep my contact lenses moist and in place. We would have left Birmingham a lot earlier, but the kid attacked us when we tried to put tinsel on rear windscreen wiper, so we had to waste an hour writing an incident report.

We squeeze the season for joy as we squeeze the kids for triumph. Both tasks are thankless.

It is 8.30 when we pull up in Truro. My manager invites me to the pub to meet his lover. I agree, and spend the next hour in awe. His lover is a cliche of a man, everything that you see in the movies and American sitcoms. He sneers after every sentence; he discusses the dress sense
of celebrities; he hates kids; and he drinks a giant red cocktail afloat with a small patch of the Amazon rainforest.

Life imitating art? Would such power be mine? I down my drink and smash it over the head of a passing mermaid.

It's 10.30 when I get home. One and a half hours till the day of muses. My housemate has left to go home to her family. The house is dark and empty.

I sit down on the sofa and stare at the wall.

Christmas Attempted. I could have got back to my family. I could have gone with my housemate to hers. I could have accepted one of the invites I had and spent this night in someone's company.

But I chose not to. Self-inflicted, I sit by the empty Christmas tree as carols resound in the neon night.

One day I will share these things with the girl I love. But for now I give my thoughts to Jesus. May he bless every moment that I have witnessed, and shelter every person I have held. You saved this world, in all its glory and its wretchedness. You saved every moment of pain that I have felt, and I thank you for that.

Merry Christmas one and all. I am thinking of you always.

Christmas Attempted: The Second Party

2008-01-09T16:23:00.000Z

December 23rd

Today I had to explain to a kid that his mother couldn't pick him up for the family party, because she was "ill".

Not such a good day.

We gave him the leftover party food from yesterday and tried to get him to notice his presents. He stayed in his room, playing on his five-year old keyboard.

"Mummy will come tomorrow." I say.

But she won't.

Christmas Attempted: The party

2008-01-09T16:12:00.000Z

December 22nd

Today I wiped a boy's arse, denied food to a fat-kid and got called a cunt.

The unit's Christmas Party went well.

Christmas Attempted: Toilet Seat Victory

2007-12-26T18:34:00.000Z

December 21st

'We need a toilet seat!!' screams my housemate, waving arse-fractured plastic debris in my face.

'Right, I'll get one when I do my Christmas shopping.' I reply. But she is already gone, followed by her smoke trail of whinging cats. I put on my coat and leap through the doorway, a mean shopping mother-fucker, ready for action.

First stop, B&Q, a hamster's-sneeze away from my house. I buy a wooden toilet seat (they're the way forward), and spot some half-price wrapping paper. The cashier gives me a funny look as I plonk the toilet seat and the wrapping paper down by the till. I feel like I'm in the hairdresser's again.

After this, I roll into Falmouth, determined to buy presents for my trinity of remaining comrades. I walk past a plethora of open barber shops, watched by the eyes of homophobic razor-wielders, and then dart into the local businesses. Jewellery? No - they have too much already. Perfume? No - they have too much already. Clothes? No - I don't know their sizes. Chocolate? Lame. Wine? Lamer. Kitchen utensils? Insulting. Ornaments? Aha!

I run between the ornament shops, trying to find something that's not too gay. Maybe the barbers can help me, but they're all on their sprite break. Also, I look for something that won't give me a hernia if I try to carry it back to the car, which I have left with Virgil at the top of the Falmouth valley.

Perhaps it is a pyschological disease, or maybe a symptom of an insecure identity. A gift must say something about the person and about yourself. How to present myself? I don't know. I need something unordinary, something that looks like it wasn't shopped for. People can tell if you've been Christmas shopping - they can smell the stench of expedience. I need to look like I brought this bitch on January the third, the sating of my loved ones an ever-present agenda of my conscience.

I reach for a mug decorated with gothic skulls, but then my nerve breaks and I flee from the shop.

My friend Maria is coming around at 6 to wave fauna at me and burn stuff (she's one of those goddess-worshipping nutcases). I spend the next two hours glancing at my watch and convincing myself it's too late. My inability to buy presents sparks soliloquys of self-loathing. I call it the story of my life; the crux of my dementia; the fundamental tragedy of my cosmic transience.

I'm also wearing a white jumper that makes me look like an idiot. I can't shop under these conditions.

With my head hung low, I climb back up the hill to my car. Virgil gives me the keys and shakes his head.

But wait! All is not lost! Truro is an even bigger place, and has more shops! CHAAARGE!!!!

Two hours later, a small figure in a shit-looking white jumper squeezes out of the Truro shopping crowd, like a pea in vomit. I have spent no money - only patience and faith in humanity. I am deposited back in the carpark, glaring genocidally at my fellow man as I return to my car.

And so, clutching my toilet seat and my roll of wrapping paper, I come home, like Pyrrhus with the head of Priam. Maria comes in later to find me screwing over the toilet and moaning about my lack of presents.

We go back into Falmouth for food. Maria has done all her shopping - I have done none. I know exactly what I want from the Chinese menu - she does not. So now I get decisive...

We get back to the house, and then Maria leaves again to get the rest of her meal which the Chinese people forgot to cook. As I wait I swat at the cats with the roll of wrapping paper, and then open a fortune cookie.

"You will have a great adventure"

Lippy fuckers.

I bat the cookie away with the roll of wrapping paper and then take the food out of the oven when Maria returns.

No one notices me take out the melted polystyrene cup with the sweet and sour sauce in. I decant it into a mug and then throw the melted pot away. My crime goes unnoticed. Mwha ha ha ha!

My housemate chomps her way through a bag of prawn crackers (compliments of the Chinese for fucking up our order). She then leads the cat-herd to bed, leaving me in Maria's clutches. She has plans to celebrate the solstice with some strange ritual. I have plans to escape through the bathroom window.

Two hours later, we are sat in the glow of candlelight, staring at a Kung Fu falchion and a statue of a woman with a big arse. Maria gives me a salt-shaker and then tells me a story. I keep an eye on her in case she makes a move for the sword...

But fortunately there is no human sacrifice. I live to deny altruism another day and seek as ever for a union with the mundane.

Christmas Attempted: Premature Solstice

2007-12-26T18:12:00.000Z

December 20th

Today, I changed this sentence: "A tunnel of elm and marble stretched before him, touching the sickly yellow of the veiled sunlight."

To this one: "A tunnel of elm and marble stretched before him, touching sickly yellow in the veiled sunlight."

A good day.

Christmas Attempted: The Great Shopping Saga

2007-12-20T13:56:00.000Z

December 19th.

Okay, so Christmas has been postponed for my family, but there are still a few remaining pockets of resistance.

I will need to buy presents for my housemate, aunty and grandmother.

I spend the morning harrassing my friend Jo, who is more indecisive than a narcoleptic muffin whose father has been murdered by his uncle.

I propose a shopping trip, and we spar via text message. She's American, so I have to wait half an hour each time as my humour spans the metaphorical Atlantic between us. Eventually she agrees to allow to me to drive to her place later and continue coercing her. I've always had a way with women...

I am feeling efficient today. I clean my room briefly (there's wooden floorboards, so that means there's no dirt), and then head into town for a haircut.

I then spend the next two hours searching for a homophobic hairdresser. It's the only way to be safe. I see lots of nervous staff reaching for their phones as I stare at their shop windows, trying to work out if they do men. It seems that there are twenty places for females in town, but nothing for men. Do they assume that we malt or something? I look around for the red and white stripey thing that denotes a strong and no-nonsense barber, but there are none. Eventually, I am forced to shuffle uncertainly into a place called "Hair Biz".

"Do you swing both ways?" I ask, poking my head through the door. The receptionist frowns at me and then shows me to a seat. I am watched by twelve other women, the curlers making their glares all the more severe.

"Would you like some complimentary coffee?" asks the receptionist. I panic and shake my head. I then sit there, looking for the stack of magazines, but there are none. I'm sitting on a leather sofa. What the hell is this? I feel very uncomfortable. A griffon is watching me from the parking lot.

Eventually, a blonde with black circles around her eyes invites me to a chair. It has a ledge in front of it, to put your feet up on. Aaagh! I sit in the chair and she puts some strange leather thing on my shoulders - a bit like those mats from the footwells of cars. Perhaps it is a feminist slur. I feel persecuted.

"So, what do you want?"

I release a small whimper. This is another reason I like homophobic barbers: you can just grunt 'haircut' at them and they work it out for themselves. You're left with something impersonal and to the point - you can't complain. But here I am out of my depth. I babble something about keeping it the same and hope that she doesn't throw me out.

After being reduced to a quivering mess, she reaches for the electric-cutty thing and starts shaving the back of my head. There is a god awful sound, like a moose with epilepsy. The electric-cutty thing has become clogged with my hair.

The fourteen women in the salon turn and look at me. Clearly, these feminine tools were not designed for man-hair. I giggle nervously and shift beneath my car mat.

"So, you all ready for Christmas?" asks the black-eyed blonde.
"Actually, I've cancelled it this year."
"Oh? Why?"
"It's too much hassle to get my family down here and stuff."

The fourteen women in the salon turn and look at me. The blonde sprays something in my eye. I am left staring at a large jar with the word Barbicide written on it. It certainly is a tempting thought....

Finally, I am done. I pay fourteen pounds for the privilege and then take one of their cards. The blonde writes her name on it. I back out of the salon warily, almost tripping over the griffon.

After a rather tasty bowl of spaghetti back home, I head out to pick up Jo. I wait in her lounge as she prepares a hot water bottle for the dog. We attempt conversation (me and Jo, not me and the dog), but I have to repeat everything I say. Maybe I should text her instead - at least I could play Solitaire while I wait for a reply...

After the obligatory bitching about people who aren't in the room, me and Jo head out and drive to Truro. There we meet up with Gina and Maria, and bitch about other people who aren't in the room. I decide to be non-comformist and bitch about the people who are in the room. It doesn't go down well.

After cappucino and carrot cake, we begin the shopping trip.

I had a vision in my head.... of four artists sauntering about, being ironic about stuff and discussing abstract things as we refute materialism in the shopping aisles. I am sadly mistaken. Jo and Gina lead us on a mad scramble, elbowing aside the peasantry as we screech in our hunger for commodities. I try my best to make sarcastic comments, but they are lost in the smoke from Gina's heels. My hopes plummet, my blood pressure soars. We are in Jo's world now - a screaming melee of desire and hedonistic savagery. I hear drums in the distance as people are trampled and small kids swatted aside. Items are snatched from shelves like meat from a carcass, and she spews a warcry of lists and necessities. I scurry to keep up with her, dodging the battered corpses that she leaves in her wake, like a fanboy of Michael Myers, only her cap to distinguish her amongst the walls of flesh.

Finally, I regain consciousness in the middle of Marks and Spencers. I am alone. I take out my cellphone and call my friends. Such is the fate of many in Marks and Spencers. We are like shipwrecked survivors, each calling to our separated loved ones. Some of us are reunited, some are left stranded amongst the clothes rails.

It is Maria who finds me. She has likewise been abandoned. We spend our time staring at a basket that has been left on the floor. Maria kicks it. I make an Al-Quaeda joke. Gina appears behind us and snarls something about health and safety. She puts the basket in the bedroom section with a pair of socks added to it. I take out the pretzels and hide them on a shelf. We achieve a sense of strange fulfillment. Jo scoops us up and drags us to the next shop.

Once more I regain consciousness and order a pint of Carlsberg from the bar. We sit down in a Moroccan-themed lounge and have a post-shopping chinwag. Jo and Gina are surrounded by plastic bags, their voices muffled in the plethora. Me and Maria shiver on the other side of the table.

"So," says Jo, "You wanna meet up tomorrow for some more shopping."
"Possibly." I say, grinning.
"Oh, you've had a haircut!"
"Yeah."

Christmas Attempted: Family down

2007-12-20T01:00:00.000Z

Fuck.

I gotta stop playing Solitaire.

Another day rushes by. I set some unicorn-traps in the garden and then return to my new novel. It's about a serial killer - basically a demon, but without the wings and the european accent. I spend hours editing the description of the first victim's body, trying to find an alternative to "brain" in the thesaurus. "Brain" is far too funny a word. "Mind" is too abstract; "Cerebrum" too technical. Someone needs to invent a new word - someone clever.

So, after wracking my flurglebleister for inspiration I finally give up and get out of my chair. I then left hook a gnome before standing there in silence... pondering the trough into which I have fallen.

Okay, this is it. Bisto time. I pick up the phone.

First call - work. I speak to my boss and he informs me that I still have my job. He's lied his arse of for me and covered up my abuse of the system. God bless homosexuals - they have their uses. He then tells me what shifts I'm working over Christmas. Not good.

Second call -parents. I speak to my mother and explain my work situation. She proposes that we cancel Christmas and postpone it till Easter. I agree. Woot.

Third call - my auntie. I explain my family situation. She invites me to Christmas at her place. I accept and offer to bring cheesecake. Job done.

With those three phonecalls I am exorcised, weights lifted from my flurglebleister and inspiration reinjected. I leap back towards my laptop with ideas spewing from my lips and corroding nearby goblins.

Then the phone rings.

My friends Gina and Maria have invited me to the cinema. My inspiration evaporates. It seems I am part of a trio of sad artists with writer's block this night. We must convene to pool our self-contempt.

And so I spend the rest of the evening chuckling like a psychopath in the cinema. And as the credits roll I turn my phone back on and find a missed call from my friend Jo, who is also suffering from writer's block. In our self-contempt we neglected her. I arrange a meeting of the blocked quartet for tomorrow. And so my army grows. I picture all three of them, lusting after me and writing inferior fiction.

A good day.

Christmas Attempted: Speeding

2007-12-17T20:35:00.001Z

December 17th. I was supposed to attend a speeding workshop three days ago. Fuck! Hopefully, the police will let me off for good use of irony.

I screw up the letter, which was strategically placed next to my bed to remind me, and deliver a papercut to the jugular of a hobbit. I then head downstairs and plug in my laptop, followed by a trail of Baggins-blood.

After deleting lots of e.mails asking me for help, I continue on the theme of reinvention. I write something about bubble-wrap and Jude Law, feeling strangely unfulfilled. Still no call from my parents - they are supposed to be deciding whether they want to come to my place for Christmas. I stare at the phone, frustrated by the lack of information.

I have the day all planned. Shower, shave, haircut, research trip for my new novel. I have a shower and hack at my face with a rusty razorblade. I have a Gilette Mach 3, you know - the ones from that advert with all the planes flying about and half-naked women with tactile OCD. Whoosh! Mehow!! Thwoom!! Aaah, face! If only my life was like a Gilette advert... flying jets and getting fondled. Sigh...

Anyway, the Mach 3 Razor is nothing like the disposables I used to have. With this one, you achieve more by throwing it away before you use it.

With my face gushing blood and jet-fuel, I stagger to the kitchen and open up the cupboards, kicking a harpy as it falls out. And here my day is brought to a standstill, my plans frustrated as I cook the ULTIMATE cheese sauce. It was fucking awesome - just the right balance of salt, onion, cheese and sprite. I gobble it up like a Falmouth tutor sensing confidence. And then I sit back for the next two hours, letting my meal go down and playing Solitaire on my laptop.

At six o'clock my housemate sweeps in like a whirlwind, spewing sarcastic comments and maternal snubs.

"Have you moved at all today?" she asks. My monosyllabic response is drowned as she slams on a Fratellis CD and patronizes the cats. The lamps and the Christmas Tree lights are switched on either side of me, and she starts dancing around my laptop. I ponder a dropkick, but then realise she has no religious significance. Another excuse for violence lost.

The hours pass. My housemate moans at me for having the audacity to move stuff as part of my lifecycle. She scurries around, returning everything to its original position, before the inconvenient intrusion of human existence.

"Night night!" she shouts, running up the stairs. My monosyllabic farewell is lost beneath the screeching of her retinue of cats.

And so, here I am, 9pm on the second day. The Solitaire window is gone. I am now playing Minesweeper. But don't worry folks: I have another window open with my new novel on it. It looks very pretty. I have cut and pasted some lyrics from an Alanis Morissette song into it.

Why the hell aren't my parents calling?

I pick up the poker from the fireplace and glance behind the sofa, looking for a Squirrel-Ninja to impale.

Christmas Attempted: Wrapping Paper

2007-12-16T14:25:00.000Z

December 16th...

Okay, so I fucked that up. I was meant to start this on the 15th, so that I had ten days in which to try and make stuff funny. Jesus had the same problem. Oh well, I suppose nine will do. It took Lucifer nine days to fall.

Okay, I have to stop myself there. My wise and benevolent tutors at Falmouth College have informed me that I should no longer be writing about angels, demons and other religious entities. Apparently, the last fifteen years of my life writing mythological epics have been largely wasted, and it's this bollox right here that will sell.

So, reinvention is the order of the day. I kick the Angel Gabriel in the balls as I wake, and then have a shower with mint-flavoured shower gel - awesome. Smelling like a fox's glacier mint(I didn't mispell that), I saunter into work half an hour late and start refusing to help people.

"You're taking me Christmas shopping!" screams one of the kids.
"Nope." I reply.
"Yes you fucking are!"
"Language! That's a five minute wait!"
"Fuck you!"
"Ten minutes."
"What's your problem?"
"You."
"I'll knock your block off!"
"Go on then."
"Fuck this shit!"
"Merry Christmas."

We drive into Truro, blazing ACDC (anything else is just emo). We then set off across town, the boy walking ahead about fifty metres and turning round to insult me and obssess about his appearance. I have rolled up a ten pound note and am pretending to smoke it.

"What the fuck are you doing that for?"
"Because from a distance, people will think I'm cool."
"You're embarassing me! Stop it!"
"Is anyone looking at me?"
"They might do!"
"And what are they gonna think?"
"That you're a prick!"
"Yeah, for about five seconds, and then they'll forget about it. Nobody remembers a prick on the streets, so stop worrying about how you look."
"I'll fucking tear that ten pound note up!"
"Go for it. I'll still look cool."
"You're a cunt!"
"I just don't give a shit what people think of me. And neither should you."
"Well I do."
"Then you're the cunt my friend."

I love my job.

After the shopping trip he takes out a roll of wrapping paper and heads for the dining room table. I hide in the toilet, sniggering at the sounds of a young man with tourettes trying to wrap a wooden cat.

Whilst in the toilet I am attacked by a semi-aquatic goblin, but I deck the fucker with the sanitary bin.

An hour later, the presents are wrapped and the dining room walls are dripping with phlegm. I cook myself lunch as my co-workers bring in the shopping. I then return to the office to hide from the service users and get hugged by one of the said co-workers. I feel my contact lens enter my brain - hopefully my mental power will focus to a fine and agonising pinnacle.

Half-blind and whole-snuggled, I am taken to one side by my manager and informed that I am being investigated for gross misconduct. A pixie chortles from the filing cabinet. My manager smiles and then hands me the clipboard for the vehicle checks. I traipse out into the cold.

Gross misconduct? They were only cinema tickets for God's sake! Did I really harm anyone by pretending to be autistic and getting a discount? Well, okay, I had to attack my co-worker to make it look authentic, but she didn't mind. I shouldn't be disciplined for my sense of humour.

So, as I sit in the car, asking the computer if there's anything wrong, I start thinking. Maybe it's time I should do my Christmas shopping, before my family charge me with gross misconduct too. After all those wonderful presents I brought them in America, they'll be expecting something good.

The car's computer tells me it needs windscreen washer. I tick the box regardless. Never trust a faulty car.

I put the vehicle in reverse and run down a lurking warlock. Take that, bitch!

Okay, so the big question. Do I go home for Christmas and face the family? Do I invite them up here? Or do I collect a small arsenal of sanitary bins and barricade myself in a toilet somewhere for the rest of the season. What would Jesus do?

I come back into the house, drop-kicking a badger-mage on the way in.

Texas Attempted: Baggage reclaim

2007-11-28T10:46:00.000Z

By 2 o'clock the next morning I am hugging my family, the goodbyes inadequate as they will always be. I turn and walk towards Security, knowing as ever that this could be the last time I see them. But you run on faith - you reckon it is not your time to go, not their time to leave you. I did in the same in the army, and every girl I've ever kissed. You just do it - you force yourself; you force what should be and deny the graver interventions. And if it goes right you don't remember it; you call it "life".

On the taxi to the airport I come up with a new song. It's a combination of Blood Brothers by Iron Maiden and The Doberman by Kasabian. I switched rapidly between humming the two songs, and eventually a new song came out. Stand back people - genius at work!

I've got the chorus line: "When the light comes, it burns away all of my senses, my blood and my heart on the page, yeah, it pardons my gravest offences, I cry like an angel of rage". That's all I've got so far - bear with me.

Clearly the people at the airport have heard about this upcoming British icon, for I am transferred to the Express Flight to Newark. I bristle with pride as I stoop into the 6ft corridor and squeeze down the 1ft aisle to my shiny blue seat. Then the Captain comes onto me (as in, his voice broadcasts through the speaker) and tells me the flight will take 41 minutes. I could have sworn it took 3 hours on the way over. What kind of plane is this? Clearly by the height of the aisle it is run by magical Hobbits who will use their tricksy powers to getz us to the airport.

The stewardesses dance a hearty jig as we take off, dodging the wailing Ringwraiths who are hunting for Sprite.

Oh wait, I'm not flying back to Texas - that's why it's not taking so long. What a wanker! Hand me a margarita, Frodo!

Thanks to my earlier flight I now have 5 hours to wait at Newark Airport. Thus the Hobbits have granted me more time to worry about souvenirs. I trawl around the duty-free, looking for inspiration (and not the perfume). I was going to buy something for my college-mates who took notes for me while I was away, but they haven't replied to my emails, so they can burn in hell like dogs.

However, I am unable to weasel out of getting something for my girlfriend. When I asked her what she wanted me to bring her, she answered "Just bring yourself". Clearly this is an intricate fem-code that I have yet to decipher. I am set for a fall.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I wasn't looking for souvenirs during my holiday - I just couldn't find anything. Walmart has a pretty limited stock, everything in Texas is too big to transport, and everything in Washington is too expensive.

And everything at the airport is too tacky. I admit defeat and buy a burger (for myself, not my girlfriend). Unfortunately it's not one of those 5 hour burgers, so I've got some time to kill. I write a college assignment about an alcoholic rabbit and work on my song lyrics. Here's what I've got so far - it's very Iron Maiden. It's about a writer who screws over his friends and his family for the sake of his work. Only the heavenly muses know where I get this stuff from...

I am the voice who will always be true to you,
I am the voice who will never stop loving you,
Sing me a song and I'll bear you through all of this pain,
And my fires will raise you again.

Here in the room where your pen has run dry
And the words are like ashes however you lie,
Here in your veins I will be build me a cradle
And I'll be your friend till the day that you die.

When the light comes, it burns away all of my senses,
My blood and my heart on the page, yeah,
It pardons my greatest offences,
I cry like an angel of rage.

When the light comes, it burns away all of my senses,
My family and lover betrayed, yeah,
It breaks through my hardest defences,
I stand like a God unafraid!

...yeah, anyway: I finally board the plane home, where I sit next to a mother-fucker-class fat mother-fucker who snores and has convulsions (Ladies, try to control yourselves, and keep reading). And in the aisle a squeaky blond kid walks up and down between his divided parents, asking for a smack.

I know now that I am England-bound, for everything slowly starts to get a bit shit. The guy in front of me reclines his seat - even Caligula might have shown some consideration - and I am forced to eat my dinner Pisa-style. And did I mention that I fucking hate airline food! Fucking bits of plastic of everywhere and a mouldy-ass lasagne that's only slightly more appetising than my testicles. Why must pleasure always be sacrificed for efficiency?

The film is not one I want to watch: "Harry Potter passes out a few more times and whinges about shit". I'm sure that kid's got a brain tumour or something. I ignore it and dodge my co-passenger's twitching limbs, like an epilepsy trainer. And when, after three hours the film ends and Harry Potter passes out again, they turn off the lights in the plane. I guess they want us to go to sleep now. Like drones we acquiesce. I drift in and out of conscious irritation, my legs curled like a yoga master.

The lights come back on at 8am. I guess they want us to wake up now. Those who are not quick enough to stir are hit in the face by a lukewarm croissant. As I eat it, the fat man smiles me and then addresses me in his Michael York voice.

'I wasn't snoring was I?'
'Only when you weren't screaming stuff about the Nazi party.'

The passengers around me bristle and twitch, like they have been collectively violated by moles, a Mexican wave of half-amusement and disgust.

Ah yes, I am on fire. But I know that over the coming days my resolutions will crumble, as they do after every holiday. These bold pronouncements I make on foreign soils: to be more chatty, more confident, more energised. How long will America leave a sheen upon me? Not long I think. The cold air of Bristol beckons with all the scent of frustration and discontent.

England, my wretched England, lovable and honeycomb. Like my parents, I would not have you so bounded by perfection. Rouse in me my desperate dreams, O England, and give me strength to hate you once again.

Texas: attempted. Washington: touched. England: ever.

Texas Attempted: Dead before home

2007-11-28T10:30:00.000Z

Arlington Cemetery. No tears this time. Perhaps it is too much, to see the row upon countless row of headstones, like snowflakes on the ground. Were I to spy upon the host of angels would it be as this: too many stories to tell, too much beauty to be contained in so small a form? Too much.

And that same phrase occurs again as our guide points through the window, 'Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at the price of freedom.'

The white haze streaks my vision, a wash of trauma.

It grows worse. We pass the nineteen ghosts of the Korean Memorial, stone soldiers creeping through the night beside the words: "Freedom is not Free". And then the Vietnam Memorial, cut into the hillside with a slope that takes us down past an ever-expanding wall of names. So many, name after name, becoming a blur of letters. Everything reduced to words, the harness of remembrance. And as a writer I must hold these words and carry them forth. These cuts and marks that make us more than beasts.

At the bottom, where the wall is highest, there is a veteran, a gunnery sergeant. He ran ahead into enemy lines, deep in the jungle, and ordered the artillery to fire upon his position, to ensure the enemy were hit. He tells me he loves me and would die for me. It is strange to be told such a thing. Frightening.

And then, on the 22nd block of names, I find what I was not looking for: "David J. Corcoran"

These pieces of me - soldiers and artists. What ends we are driven to; and where might this spirit take me? With a last nod to the statue of Lincoln we head home through the electric cityscape.

I feel my Washington episode was thin on anecdotes. I guess there comes a time when the pain stops being funny. But don't worry, Readers, I'm flying home tomorrow - I'm sure something will go wrong. Hope for a plane crash - it would be a great finale. Like Washington choking.

Texas Attempted: Washington choking

2007-11-26T11:49:00.000Z

Another 6 o'clock start the next day. I am woken by my brother, who has made coffee. He hands me the orange liquid, like water spat in by a Columbian. I savour the flavour of good intent and try not to cringe.

We follow my mother to the elevator. She is like a mime artist on marijuana, desperate not to wake the other hotel guests. She communicates in gestures and hisses, and like Medusa she routs us from the hotel and towards the bus stop.

The tour starts at 8. No Bob today - we have his smoother-toned brother, who was raped by Barry White. His dulcet tones seduce us as we travel to Mount Vernon, the place where George Washington went to do memorable stuff. We see the place where Washington banked, the place where Washington went to his doctor, the tavern where Washington drank, the place where Washington met his generals, the street where Washington walked, the church where Washington worshipped, the wall where Washington went to whip the wascaly wicked witch of the west while wolfing down waffles at Walmart.

The town is like a model village owned by a homosexual kid. White walls and brightly coloured shutters, town houses painted pink and blue, cobbled streets. Lovely.

After driving through we head along the Potomac River (Barry says "Potombah" - it probably sounds sexier). We are watched by mother-fucker-class bald eagles, who could easily snatch a small child... or my mother. We form a phalanx around her and hope the eagles have coca-cola bottles sewn to their wings.

Barry goes off to buy tickets as we stop at the the main-man's birthplace. I find that likening people to celebrities is a great way to deflate racism. We need more Muslims to make films. Good films - not that Bollywood shit. Get some bad mother-fucker in a turban fighting Predators and wielding a lightsaber. Boom - world peace!

I high-five Jefferson and then get off the bus.

At the home of George Washington, father of the free, kids get shouted at, doors get locked, officers search us for food and drink and chewing gum. No smoking, no parking, no loading, no misanthropic Nietzschean optimism, no fireworks, no liquids over 100ml, no standing for shit, no Big Jake, no defining moment, no Corcoran discount.

No. Fucking. Sprite.

We enter the Orientation Building, where we are divided according to our sexual preferences. (Nah, just kidding - but it's something to think about). And being ignorant Brits who haven't cared too much about what these fuzzy colonials have gotten up to, we decide to watch the introduction film in the centre's auditorium. It is a Hollywood-style dramatisation of George Washington's rise to power, which I will now summarise through the medium of Star Trek.

Washington: We shall cross the "Potombah" River and take the Klingons by surprise.

Scottish Dude: We canneh do it cap'n! The men ah diseased and we've run ou' o' haggis!

Washington: We shall dine on victory tonight, my friend.

Doctor Dude: God damn it, George! I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker! We've lost every battle we've fought so far! It's madness, George!

Washington: There will be no defeat. This is our country. Look at my profound face - look at it, I say!

Well-spoken Dude: Your plan is illogical, Captain. The Klingons are a superior soldier. Their weapons and training greatly surpass our own.

Washington: But you were there, Mr Spock! You were there when we served alongside the Klingons in the Romulan Wars. You saw how disorganised they were - how we had to lead them after their own officers were killed. The Klingons are not invincible.

Martha: I love you, George! Take me - take me now!

Washington: Not now, Martha, I'm busy. Prepare the Away Team. Energize!

[Der der der der der dun dun dun! Der der der der der dun dun dun! Brrrlllling! Brrrrlllling! Der der der der der dun dun dun!]

But joking aside, George Washington rocked my world. He built a country and then handed power back to the people, resigning his commission and going home once everything was in place. A soldier and statesman. If he were alive today, I'd buy that man a Sprite.

We get to his mother-fucker-class mansion, and we see the room where he died. 36 hours, choking to death from an agonising throat inflammation. A terrible end for a great man. In 200 years will some egotistical little prick be making fun of my painful demise and spoofing my life with pop culture references? I hope so, should that egotistical little prick be touched as I was and moved to place me amongst the greatest of men, as I place George Washington. So what if his mansion was run by slaves? What hero does not have sufferers in the chambers of his works?

We exit through the gallery that charts his life, from a humble soldier wrought with innocence and failure, to the titan who refrained from kingship. One hell of a life, and it all began when he was 26. There's hope for me yet.

We run the eagle-gauntlet again, and mother lives to worry another day. Barry takes us back into Washington, past the Marine Corps Monument, and then deposits us in Arlington Cemetery.

Texas Attempted: Stone and paper

2007-11-23T17:20:00.000Z

The next day we set out on foot, and we track down the gem - the cherry on the cake. After a one hour walk we find the Corcoran Gallery, which shares our family name. My father bristles with glee, anticipating the jokes, the wit, the humour he can unleash. I sigh, but inside I prepare the very same jokes. I despise and imitate my father in all things. When I get to the counter I flash my passport at the attendant and ask her for a "Corcoran Discount". She is the Ice Woman... unreachable, aloof.

I look at the large plaque by the entrance that reads "Corcoran - dedicated to art". And at the foot of the gallery stairs, an angel stoops to kiss a mortal woman. William Wilson Corcoran, founder of the museum, was clearly from my side of the family. I read about him and his search to find rare exhibits, his creation of the Corcoran College, his vast foundation that spans the States. Stone and paper - good on you, Bill.

Unfortunately, beyond the angel statue and the odd portrait of Al Pacino, there is nothing of remarkable interest in the Corcoran Gallery. I crouch next to a table of animal scultpures that blares alarms at me whenever I get too close. The artist must have a side-line in toilets. But for the most part I follow my brother around as he moves from painting to painting, frowning. He is trying to understand it, this thing called art. He knows it's important - his mother has told him so. He tries. Like me and chit-chat.

On the way back from the Gallery we stop at a Starbucks.

'Four Starbucks please.' says my Dad, placing his money on the counter. By now I have lost the will to complain. I mouth the word "Cappuccino" to the perplexed waitress. I imagine her gossiping with her friends behind the curtain, about the handsome young man in the corner who's genetically fucked.

The day has been punctuated by my mother slapping me whenever I express myself. It seems she has mistaken my misanthropic Nietszchean optimism for irritability. Such is the definition of my life: whenever I raise my voice people assume I have a psychological problem.

Back at the hotel, we have dinner in the mother-fucker class banquet hall, where we are served by a a Puerterican, an Asian and a black man, all three of them infinitely more content, intelligent and verbally dexterous than us. As we wait for our food my parents spy me writing in my little black book.

'Are you writing disparaging comments about us?' asks my mother.

'Yes,' I reply, looking back at her. It is a moment of affirmation, and we let the seconds pass, our eyes locked in cold war.

'Why?' she barks.

'Because it's funny,' I answer, a fire of liberty burning inside me. I feel like Thomas Jefferson, haunted by profundity.

'I don't want to be a part of some anecdote.'

'Yes you do. You'll be famous.'

Tick, tock, tick, tock. My nerve breaks. I laugh and look down at the table.

Damn.

After dessert I go to reception and bitch about my laptop. My wireless isn't working - it's like not being able to get an erection. I grip the top of the desk, peering over at the Mexican lady, my eyes like a spayed puppy. She hands me the viagra - a wireless signal booster whatchamacallit. I scuttle away and plug the whatchamacallit into the thingamebob. Huzzah! My penis is huge!

Texas Attempted: Washington touched

2007-11-19T16:44:00.001Z

Washington is freezing. Fucking freezing. Ow. It’s cold. Ow, ow! Fuck, it’s freezing. It’s fucking freezing!

I arrive at 1. I reach the hotel at 2. I’m in bed by 3. I’m woken up at 6. Rock on.

We get picked up for our tour, cold, tired and hungry. Our guide is called Bob, and he’s a combination of Morgan Freeman and Samuel L. Jackson – in short, the ultimate black man. He blathers at us with Evangelical glee as we cling to the bus heaters. First stop: Capitol Building.

‘Don’t worry about the paintings,’ says Bob L. Freeson, ‘If you spent thirty seconds on each exhibit in Washington, you’d be here for twelve years.’

The dome of the Capitol Building is cast-iron and weighs nine million tonnes. That is the single factoid that we are given to ruminate on as we stand in a long line for the tour tickets. And did I mention that Washington is fucking freezing?

People hug each other for body-warmth as they stand, twitching from the pain of their bladder infections (liquids are prohibited and there are no restrooms for 5 miles). I think about resorting to the Empire Strikes Back approach to hypothermia, but my lightsaber has already been confiscated. Motorcycle officers circle the queues, hunting for Sprite.

After being stripped, molested and beaten by the security guards, we move into the main chamber of Capitol Building, where the history of the American people has been painted by various artists who invariably died mid-brushstroke. There is a crack on the floor where one of the poor bastards fell from the scaffolding whilst chiseling a Spaniard. Above us, on the underside of the dome, George Washington sits in heaven surrounded by angels and frolicking maidens. I guess forging a country has its perks.

We then enter an oddly-shaped chamber where you can hear people better the further away from them you are. Very strange…

I am the walking dead. I need a cookie, a Starbucks – anything. The wonders of the most powerful nation swirl around me, and I struggle to take it in. We exit through the crypts (where George Washington wasn’t buried), and rejoin Bob. He takes us through Chinatown and past the place where Lincoln was shot. We then run into a veterans parade – Asian men with yellow flags. It’s Veteran’s Day apparently, and the roads around the White House are closed off. Bloody veterans – they always spoil things!

We disembark and leg it to the White House, where I squint through the fence, imagining how to execute a left-flanking echelon attack (another relic of my army days). Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a jellybean thing; I just like to imagine this stuff. The White House doesn’t look that secure. Just give me a platoon of Scotsmen and some well-oiled SA80’s – we’ll be fine.

We have lunch in the Ronald Reagan memorial building, where we have to remove our coats for the metal detectors in order to get to the food court. They ask us for ID and the love child of Oprah Winfrey and Wesley Snipes points out that my MOD card has expired. But she lets me off… this time. That was close – I almost got pistol-whipped for a Philly Cheesesteak.

With my blood sugars finally in the green we return to the bus and visit the Air and Space Museum. Planes and stuff… yeah… We then ride to the WW2 Memorial, almost killing a small group of flag-waving veterans on the way.

And now I have to slip again – I’m sorry. As I walk between the pillars of the memorial, where wreaths and statues mourn the dead, I feel that ache again, the trembling in the nose and jaw. I am being moved by something again, something underneath the haze of things. I read the inscriptions from Midway, Dunkirk, Iwo Jima, and I feel the spirit of their sacrifice. A lie perhaps, but a good lie.

At the west side of the pillared circle, framed by the Lincoln Memorial, I read the words on a large stone slab.

“Here we mark the price of freedom”

Behind it there is a wall of stars, rows and rows of stars. Each one is a hundred servicemen.

Why are the tears coming? Why am I the only fucker in this memorial crying, when everyone else jokes and takes pictures? Is this about me? Is this some metaphor – a man marking the price of his freedom and mourning the dead parts of himself? I don’t fucking know. It’s the sacrifice and the honouring – it makes me so fucking sad to see this. Will everything that I do be reduced to stone, like that war, those people?

No, I am a writer: I shall have only paper.

I hide my reddened eyes from my family and the other travellers. This is it – Washington - the summit of myriad principles. A city of remembrance. But it’s not enough; it’s just not enough. That’s why I’m crying.

Texas: attempted. Washington: touched.

Texas Attempted: The Oscar-winning stuff

2007-11-16T17:24:00.000Z

We spend the night at my uncle's - a night beset with feline revelations. I find a cat under my bed, and then another in the closet. They meow at me as I release them and then leave the room like affronted prostitutes.

I have a dream that I am with another woman, a nice blond. I wonder what that symbolises. I am digitally exploring her when I am awoken by my mother at 6.15. The rest of the family is catching the early flight to Washington, so she has come to rouse my brother and harass him as he goes through his Autistic bathroom routines. I grunt goodbye to them and roll over, but it is too late - my blond affair has absconded from the fantasy realm. The bitch.

It's late morning and the cats are after my waffles. I swat at them with my breakfast spoon while my uncle tells me about the fire at Atlanta Airport (where my family are catching a connecting flight). We laugh at their misfortune while Peach the cat steals my maple syrup.

My own flight is at 8pm, so my uncle and aunt take me for lunch. Sushi. My first time. My uncle leads me around the restaurant buffet, placing strange bits of fish on my plate, all freshly massaged by the finest samurai. I then fumble with the chopsticks as I cram large chunks of marine life into my gob, along with wasabi death-mustard and strips of ginger. It's a whole new experience.

'So, did you enjoy your holiday?' asks my aunt, watching me through the steam of her green tea.
'Yeah, it was alright. I just wanted something a bit more authentic. I don't feel like I've seen the real Texas.'
'Get in the car.' says my uncle, paying the bill.

My salvation looms. We drive to Fort Worth, dodging the Harley Davidsons as we enter the traditional cowboy town. We park next to an Indian with a horse who talks like George Bush (the Indian, not the horse). From there we enter Billy Bob's, "the largest honkytonk in the world". A honkytonk is basically a mother-fucker-class bar, complete with bull-riding ring, cowboy shop, arcade and line dancing floor. A drinks bar is situated every twenty feet or so along each wall.

I glance around, just in case a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger should come in and ask me to take off my clothes. I then get distracted by the pretty lights. Instead of a glitter-ball they have a saddle, covered in reflectors and hanging over the line-dancing floor. Genius.

Outside the honkytonk are the pens where they run the nationwide cattle auctions. I peer through the fence at the Texan Longhorns, cows as big as Minis. I'd like to see Michael Caine try and push one of these fuckers off a cliff. Their horns are 6ft long, which is convenient, given their name.

There's also some bison, but they can go fuck themselves.

After marvelling at the Longhorns we walk down the main street, where everything is cowboyesque. We pass the place where Chuck Norris filmed that thing he was in, where he played the Texas Ranger. I make an "Ooh" sound, but then my uncle leads me towards the old brothel, which is now a boot shop. I'm sure there's a connection there somewhere. The brothel/boot shop sells everything that a cowboy needs, with the exception of scented candles and mudpacks. I poke a pair of $8000 boots made from stingrays and then play with a whip.

Over by the counter is a hat maker. He's been making hats for 32 years. He made his first when he was 7 and went into business when he was 19. I watch him shape his next cowboy hat on the steamer.

'So, where you from?' he asks.
'Boston, the re...'
'Oh, from England huh? You grew up with Blue Peter?'
'Er...yeah, sure.'

He points to the wall by the counter. There, above the rows of hats and belts, I spy the Blue Peter badge.

'Them folks came over a few years back and filmed me making hats.'

Chuck Norris, big cows and Blue Peter: is there anything this town doesn't have?

On the way out I am confronted by a Longhorn. I freeze. But it's alright, it's just Big Jake, being led around by the Indian whose horse doesn't speak like George Bush. Big Jake has a saddle on and looks very depressed.

'You wanna ride Big Jake?' asks my aunt.
'No,' I reply, lying like a full bowl of jelly beans.

We return to my uncle's house where I pack the last of my things, fishing cats out of my suitcase and measuring my toiletries. And with that done I go outside and sit with my aunt by the pool.

And now we reach the serious moment. The Oscar-winning scene.

She feels it, like she always has: my sadness, deep, fundamental.

'Are you happy?' she asks.
'No,' I reply instantly. It's the only thing I'm ever certain of.
'What defines your life?'

This takes me longer. A lot longer. I sit there for heavy minutes, staring at the ground.

'I don't know.'

'My defining moment was when I decided I wasn't gonna be like my parents. You're a spectator, Greg - you watch things, you never participate. You have to put all the bad things that have happened in your life behind you. Don't stand for that shit.'
'I just don't know where I fit in.'
'Is that a bad thing?'

And so, as we drive to the airport, I touch upon the problem. It wasn't an authentic Texas moment I was looking for; it was a person, a man who is not alone. A man who doesn't hide himself behind idiotic travel anecdotes.

As the plane takes off from Dallas I feel the ache in my nose and jaw, the one that comes before tears. What defines my life? Loneliness. I groom my pain and bear it with me, to make a better writer of myself. I watch in order to lament. And were I to ever reach out to someone it would destroy me. Mine is a tragic book written beautifully. I cannot burn it.

Washington... please... give me something. Destroy me. I beg you.

I have to stop now. The stewardesses are behind the curtains, gossiping about the young man in Seat 25B who's broken into tears.

Texas: attempted.

Texas Attempted: The last trials

2007-11-16T17:20:00.000Z

Our last day in the hotel. I start it feeling sad - sad to leave this place. I always get nostalgic when I leave hotel rooms; yes, you heard me, nostalgic. It's amazing how quickly you feel at home in a place; how you learn the nooks and crannies and imagine the stories that each object has to tell.

I gaze at the ceiling fan above my bed - a well-fed and slightly less buff Martin Sheen - and I wonder at all the people who have turned on that fan. Old men staving off their next heart attack; little bastard kids playing with the switches; young lovers opting for a post-fornication cooldown.

I then remember that I am lying here gazing at the ceiling fan precisely because I am trying to get rid of my morning glory. I wouldn't want to get out of bed and slap my brother in the face with my todger - he's not receptive to those kind of things. And so I stop myself thinking about all the rampant sex undertaken beneath this fan and then hobble to the shower. And there, Texas deals me a savage blow.

Whilst standing in the power-shower, my hand slips on the temperature control and I am doused in scalding water. My instincts kick in, as they did for the first cavemen who braved the Texan power-showers. I stagger back into the corner of the cubicle, besieged by the flesh-burning streams. I try to reach my hand back to the taps, but I am forced away once more. I push against the glass on my left, hoping there is another way out; but there is not. I am trapped by the boiling spray.

It is a Saw moment. Do I pay for the crimes of my life and accept a slow death in the power-shower? Or do I learn courage, put my sinful osmotic-wanking behind me, and lunge through the fiery gauntlet?

Later on, my family drags my charred body down to the restaurant, where we have breakfast. The restaurant's by the Tower lounge, but there's no sign of Don. He must be out exfoliating the chickens. We spend breakfast antagonising the waitress by not letting her help us. She stands nervously to one side, shifting from foot to foot as we get up to pour our own juice and toast our own bagels. Her every altruistic manoeuvre is frustrated by English humility and sarcastic refusals.

But there is hope. I take a mouthful of my coffee and suddenly she is by my side, brandishing a coffee jug like a set of prayer-beads.

'Would you like some more?' she asks, her voice trembling like a hopeful child. I allow her to add another inch to my beverage and consider spilling my scrambled eggs, just to be generous. I'd imagine them gossiping behind the curtains, about the handsome young man on Table 12 with poor motor coordination.

The waitress also refills my Dad's coffee and walks off, leaving behind confusion of Shakespearean proportion as my Dad returns to the table.

'I thought I drunk that,' he says.
'You did,' I reply.
'Have I got yours, Ross?' he asks, staring over at my brother, who continues buttering his toast like Norman Bates.
'No, that's yours,' I sigh.
'I could of swore I drunk it.'
'She refilled it.'
'She's what?'
'She refilled it!'
'Why are you snapping at us again?'

We return to the hotel room and pack the last of our stuff. I read the instructions on the jelly beans and make my final offensive. Strawberry flavour! Fuck you, jelly beans, I win!

We load our stuff into the car and then find that the sat-nav has passed away during the night. I suspect foul play, but my father protests ignorance as usual. We therefore resort, like Barbarians, to reading road signs, and soon we are reunited with my uncle. He takes us for cinnamon coffee and clothes shopping, just for a change.

My mouse-like mother leads us into a Jones New York Woman's store, where we are confronted by the love-child of Oprah Winfrey and Biggy Smalls.

'This is the plus-size store!' she declares, glaring at my diminutive mother.
'So will any of this stuff fit me?' I ask, smiling from the lingerie section. But she is the icewoman... cold... unconquerable.

After finding the standard store and having a nice chat with the Asian women, we return to the car. The sat-nav is back from the grave and speaking in Korean.

'She sounds nicer.' remarks my father.

Some veterans in the car park are getting edgy, so I change it back to English.

The plan was good in theory: a large breakfast and then hold out till dinner. But the coffee has made me ravenous, and it's only 3.15. Not good. I am hungry, hot, sexually frustrated and vexed by a wonky sat-nav. The next three hours will be long ones.

I find something to distract me: a news report about the ongoing American writer's strike. Episode 7 of 24 has had to be postponed. It looks like Jack Bauer has finally met his match. I tremble at the prospect of my future power. Denis Hopper's got nothing on me.

Finally, we stop at my uncle's for drinks, where I am handed a mother-fucker-class scotch. We then proceed to pick up my Aunt, who is the president of Haggar (the shop, not the country). And on the way out I read a sign on a schoolbus saying "Children may be exciting". I stare transfixed, but then realise the scotch is making me see imaginary "C"s. It's actually a very conscientious safety sign and not a sociological statement. I always make that mistake.

After collecting my Aunt we go to a gourmet Mexican restaurant. Surely an oxymoron, but I am proved wrong. We are pelted with nachos and a given a variety of dips, whilst a Mexican woman behind us sets fire to some cheese. My mother orders three margaritas, as I eat lobster in a cocktail glass. This is a strange place...

The main courses are all covered in a brown chocolate-like goup. It's called Mole Sauce.

'What's in it?' I ask the waitress.
'Mole,' she responds. I stare at her arse and frown.

Mole Sauce is disgusting. I guess those little Mexican critters didn't get a massage before their sombrero-covered holes were dynamited.

I drive back to my uncle's place in his Jaguar. We move through a ghost-town, wide open boulevards where nothing moves but the slow-rustling trees and the manic sprinklers.

'Where are all the chavs?' I ask, looking for the hordes of leering teenagers that populate the street corners of the world.

'The cops don't stand for that kinda shit,' replies my uncle.

How perfect. How simplistic. If only we could try that in England - not standing for shit. We would be accused of ideology, for sure. They would label us fascists and intransigents. But how much we could do away with: the sense that we are disturbing shopkeepers; the sense that we should not complain; the sense of having a place, a station with unspoken rules. How much I could achieve, if only I didn't stand for shit.

Texas Attempted: The Authentic Texas experience

2007-11-08T01:07:00.001Z

The sign in the restaurant looms over me, captivating my full attention. It is mahogany, the words etched in brilliant gold.

"Ignore this sign"

I stand transfixed, lost in a philosophical spiral that would have given Socrates the shits. But in time I move on, and return to the booth where the rest of my family waits. They arrived late last night, and this is our first meal out together.

'Theash Margaritas are rheally nicesh!' says my mother. I nod, and look at the arse of a passing waitress. A woman carrying food - is there any sight more pleasing? According to Adam: no.

After placing our order, we are handed small devices, like Gameboys. The waitress smiles and points to a screen next to us. I look at her arse for guidance, but nothing is forthcoming, and so I lift my eyes to the screen.

"We are awaiting more players. Your game of Texas Holdem will begin shortly..."

I look down at my device and see that I have been dealt an Ace and a 10.

We feast like kings; we dine like pigs. King-pigs, scoffing tacos, burgers and chilli-fries. A waitress takes my dad's half-empty cola; he frowns. The waitress returns with a full cola; he looks at my mother nervously. I watch her arse as she leaves (the waitress's that is), and then place another bet on my poker hand.

I lose $500 to someone called Peeweegirl, and my shame is paraded on the widescreens all around the restaurant. The locals chuckle and look around for the dumb Brit, but I have already dodged behind my mother's margarita glass.

Everyone in this restaurant seems to be beautiful. Parents shepherd small lines of perfectly formed kids to their seats, and supermodels take orders from the bastard-spawn of Brad Pitt. My goblinoid family peers on from the booth and continues feasting.

'Guacamole?' says the passing waitress. I lift my gaze from her breasts and go to respond.

'No - English.' answers my brother.
'We're from Boston.' clarifies my mother.
'The real one.' adds my father.

'Yes please.' I say, sparing the waitress from her suffering.

Having paid the bill with a single note, we move on to Sherman, where the only tanks are the Soccer-Mum wagons that roam the freeways. My father argues with the female sat-nav, disputing her every decision. I keep up a constant narration of death-averting instructions.

"That's one-way, Dad."
"The light's red, Dad."
"Car, Dad."
"The light's red, Dad."

I am the saviour unrewarded, the angel unacknowledged.

We spend the morning in a museum getting shouted at.

'Please don't touch, Sir.' says the old lady. I recoil my hand from the newspaper article entitled "Negroid cremated in courthouse" and smile apologetically. We are given a tour of the Red River museum, the guide continually interrupted by my parents, who used to have most of the exhibits in their home when they were young. The tour guide explains that America is a very young country, and then shouts at me as I reach for the skin of a rattlesnake.

Next up, it's the antique shops, where my parents go to exhibit their jokes.

'Where you folks from?' asks the attendant. I sigh in the corner as I play with a stuffed polar bear.

'We're from Boston.' says my mother.
'The real one.' adds my father.

They laugh. I tug at the bottle of coca-cola sewn to the polar bear's paw.

My brother and I are the walking dead. We shuffle up and down the aisles of the antique malls, stalking our parents as they drift from item to item. But in time we find our respective distractions. My brother notices a sign saying "Complimentary coffee" and stands there, paralyzed like a true Englishman.

And as for me, I find a stack of old Playboys amongst the cutlery sets. One of the magazines proudly introduces a lovely blond by the name of Pamela Anderson. Man, that girl could do with a boob job. I sit in the corner and nurse my sexual frustration (see PWR1 Essay), while my brother tentatively reaches for the coffee...

Finally an Art Gallery. Every picture has a bowl of complimentary mints next to it. Very strange... I ask for the print of a rather stunning painting entitled The Muse.

'I'm sorry, we're all out of that one.' says the attendant, sipping a glass of sprite. I leave dejectedly.

We return to the car, where my father resumes his argument with the sat-nav device. I play with the buttons on the console, trying to change the navigation voice to something non-American and non-female. Alas, I am unsuccessful, and we spend the rest of the afternoon with my father defying the presumptuous machine.

"That's a red light, Dad."
"Drive on the right, Dad."

At last we return to the hotel, and I retrieve the shower gel bottles that I nabbed from the maid's trolley on my way out. My brother lumbers into our room and turns on the TV, flicking through the channels, whilst my mother puts some teabags in the coffee maker.

I go to the bathroom and admire my new set of toiletries, including the hair gel designed for African-Americans. I didn't realise that it was Afro-gel at the time, and no one stopped me. I run a handful of it through my hair and then go up to the bar in the tower that overlooks Lake Texoma.

The tower is under siege from mother-fucker-class wasps, fat from chicken wraps and sprite, and I bat at them with my laptop as I run the gauntlet to the Wi-Fi spot.

'So where you from?' asks the bartender, a burly man who massages cows at the weekend (don't ask).

'Boston.' I joke, adjusting my afro, 'The real one.'

In my over-inflated scrotum, I hear the sighs of a million sperm, lamenting my future children.

Things are looking up. I used the hot-tub last night and my sexual frustration has abated somewhat. Don't worry - I didn't do anything disgusting; it just relaxed me. Masturbation by osmosis I suppose; there were a lot of suds. But maybe that's just the American bubble bath.

I crawl out of bed and eat a complimentary jelly bean. Peanut flavour - fuck! I wretch and then go down to the business centre for a sneaky internet session, where I am intercepted by the complimentary Texan weirdo. It's the bartender from last night, who massages cows at the weekend. I stare at him as he talks to me, looking for a sign on his shirt that reads "Ignore this man". There is none, but nevertheless in the bathroom down the hallway I hear Socrates scream as he grips the toilet-rail again.

'You Brits have got it all wrong,' says the bartender, who's called Don. First Officer Chamberlain? Surely not. 'You think us Texans are all about jumping on the back of a horse screaming "Yeehah!" and then galloping round the ranch like a crazy person.'

In the toilet, Socrates curses as the laser-sensor misinterprets his squirming and prematurely flushes.

'But you see, all that does is stress the cattle out, and makes for some real tough steak. If you want the good meat you gotta make the cattle feel at ease. A rub here, a brushdown there, and you'll get that steak real juicy.'

I stare transfixed. Maybe the Welsh had the right idea all along. The next time my bacon's not up to scratch I'll have to vault the fence and give a pig a Swedish massage. It wouldn't be my first time, if you know what I mean.

Clearly Bartender Don is trying to dispel the Texan stereotype. I ponder telling him about my osmotic-jaccuzi-wank and how it made me a little less English, but Don has already gone off to the bathroom to show Socrates how a real man drops his load.

I return to the hotel room and eat a jelly bean. Liquorice flavour - fuck! I then fish the teabags out of the coffee-maker and wonder what today has in store. More antagonism from machines? More waitress-arses floating in the void? Cow masseurs yelling at me not to touch things? Maybe I could squeeze in another session in the hot-tub...

I make a tactical withdrawal from the jelly bean bowl and put some more afro-gel in my hair.

At last the family has an action meeting. My brother eats his toast and porridge, staring at the TV screen as he stirs his tea counter-clockwise, while my Dad puts on a jumper and mutters something about grasshoppers. With the Autistic half of the family catered for, me and my mother discuss our plans as we straighten the picture frames around the hotel room.

'What's the plan?'
'It's completely up to you luv.'
'Can we go to the casino?'
'No.'
'How about the Frontier Village and the Cowboy Shop?'
'Okay.'

The conclave is victorious. I make a fresh offensive on the jelly bean bowl. Vegemite flavour - fuck!

Later on, I turn off the sat-nav to avoid further defiance from my father, and instead give verbal direction.

"Turn left here Dad."
"Freeway exit on the right Dad."
"It's a red light Dad."

We enter the Frontier Village and my father slams on the brakes, pointing at something up ahead, 'Look at that! Is that a coyote?'

I remove my face from the dashboard, 'No Dad, it's a basset.'

The puppy trots across the road in front of the car, followed by the owner, who gives us a funny look. I wish my mother had a margarita glass to hide behind.

The Frontier Village is closed, so we decide to walk around the lake nearby. We park by a sign that reads "No Fireworks". I consider taking it home and giving it to my girlfriend, but I doubt she'd see the funny side of it.

I walk around the lake, my brother directly behind me with his head lowered. It's like a scene from Rain Man. And behind that my dad zigzags the path, muttering about the trees. Bloody Autistics! I'd recommend the gas chamber, but they'd only talk us out of it.

I forge ahead, seeking an authentic Texas experience. I want to smell leather, whip a horse, watch a cow having shiatsu. But Texas has yet to yield the Bisto moment. As I go off into the woods for a piss, I hope that a rattlesnake will take a shine to my todger. That would be authentic. But given the prevalence of my erections lately I'd probably split the poor thing apart the moment it chowed down.

Or maybe I will encounter a bear. If it had a coca-cola bottle sewn to its paw I could play Androcles, otherwise I'd have to climb a tree. I picture my family getting run down by the bear whilst I dangle from the branches of a fig tree, but then I push the thought to one side. It's not a very pleasant thing to think about. I've seen that film with Anthony Hopkins and the bear, where they have to join forces to destroy a marauding Alec Baldwin. Not pleasant at all.

After circumambulating the lake and wondering what mad fucker decided to strategically place pumpkins along the path, we return the car. Then we go to the Cowboy Shop where I buy a lovely coat that makes me look yummy.

Next we begin the search for food. We walk through a gargantuan shopping mall where people shout "Hi! How y'all doing?" from all sides. It's like being stalked by sycophantic ninjas. We ask them for food, but they have none, their smiles like effervescent sprite.

The nice lady on the sat-nav directs us to the nearest Denny's, much to my father's consternation. There we dine like king-pigs fresh from the massage parlour. I order nachos and a Philly cheesesteak, and my mother dials a 9 and a 1 on her cellphone as I tuck in.

Thankfully there are no levitating waitress-arses here, just a really tall guy and a really short guy. We get the tall guy, who wears a leather jacket over his uniform. Clearly they are keeping the midget in reserve.

'You look like a milkshake kinda guy.' he says to me as I stuff down the last of my cheesesteak. I wonder what he is insinuating. He gives me something big and lumpy to suck on. Damn, that's good milkshake. Some lucky cow must've got a facial and a footrub this morning.

The midget watches us as we stagger back to the car. I continue to yearn for my authentic Texas experience, and I look back towards the midget, wondering if he and the tall guy would take me out on the town tonight. But then my mother pulls me into the car and takes me to Walmart.

Walmart sells everything. I ask them for a ceramic Bulgarian cheese grater made by asthmatic pygmies. They ask me what colour I want it in. But joking aside, this place is cheap. I drag an industrial-sized tub of vaseline to the checkout and smile at the attendant with my cracked lips. I wonder what kind of industry uses vaseli.. wait, don't answer that.

On the way out I am stopped and searched by the People Greeter, her ninja suit replaced by a woolly sweater. She rifles through my bag but finds no sprite, and so lets me through unmolested. Above the Walmart entrance is a sign reading "Tire and Lube". I consider taking it home to give to my girlfriend, but....

We return to the hotel and put some teabags in the coffee maker. There is a herd of Christians outside, awaiting a conference and arguing over who will pray for each other the most. I hope their prayers will be answered - surely God knows that a good massage produces the tenderest meat.

As I wait for my coffee I glare at the jelly bean bowl. Like Saladin. My mother refolds all my clothes - it's her prerogative - and complains about the way I packed my cashmere coat.

'This is proper cashmere!' she protests.
'Yeah.' I reply. If anyone knows how I should have answered this question, please let me know.

Texas Attempted: The quest for lemonade

2007-11-05T02:39:00.000Z

The airport has mauled me. No gels or liquids over 100ml – what the fuck is that all about? I hand the Asian-looking lady my shaving gel, sun lotion, deodorant, hair gel, contact lens solution and the small range of toiletries I stole from the hotel last night.

‘I guess I’ll have to stink for the rest of the journey.’ I joke. She winces with polite amusement and throws my possessions in the bin.

The people at the airport are out to get me. The man at the first desk asks me for secondary ID. I produce my MOD card, my student card and my Care Worker ID. He looks at me, pondering my triple façade, and asks me a complimentary three questions. “What is your business in the US?” Three times.

By the metal detectors my camouflage backpack (a relic of my army days) is seized by a woman in glasses made for glaring. She sees my bottle of Sprite and asks where I bought it. I answer… nervously… and then sigh as the bottle thuds into the waste bin.

Finally I am through the gate, and my poor little backpack is seized again. A bald overweight man scruffles through it, like Pooh after honey, and then inspects my shoes. Finally he opens my leather folder and sniffs at my handouts from Falmouth College.

‘I’m a writer.’ I mutter, as if confessing to my old headmaster.

Good news: I have a row of seats of myself; and no screaming kids. Hurrah! As usual I stare through the window as we take off, and imagine Shakespeare is sitting in the window seat. I always do that on planes – I don’t know why. Shakespeare looks tiredly at the passing fields of Bristol and puckers his lips. I know he’s thinking of something, the old dog.

I love airline food; maybe because it’s all nicely packaged. You can eat and then close all the rubbish up in the main course dish, clipping on the plastic lid so that the stewardess silently thanks you as she picks up your tidy tray. There is something very satisfying about pleasing waitresses. I imagine them all stood behind the curtains, gossiping about the handsome young man in Seat 14B who ate all his dinner.

Shakespeare looks across at me and rolls his eyes, before adjusting his headphones and returning to the episode of Fraiser he is watching.

Or maybe I like airline food because everyone eats the same thing. The needs of the beast sated by a rational administration; our little plane stabilising its passengers and fully equipped to get them in one piece across a vast distance. I am reminded of my army days. Sometimes efficiency is better than sex.

After watching Rise of the Silver Surfer and contemplating whether Johnny “The Human Torch” really achieved a sense of moral closure, I stretch out across the three seats. It is a “Hah! Sucker!” moment. And no, I’m not lying on Shakespeare; he’s gone to the toilet to marvel at the industrial array of buttons and instruction plaques and to wonder at the smell of cinnamon that you get when you flush.

The turbulence used to scare me, but as I lie here with the plane rumbling around me I feel strangely free. Like cruising in an open-topped womb, if you know what I mean.

Carry me away from all this. Give me an adventure. Please. I pray that the woman behind me is an international assassin; or that an easily-defeatable terrorist is about to leap into the aisle. Maybe someone has garrotted Shakespeare in the toilet.

Oh God, I was not made for this world. And I don’t need to sit in a plane to feel unnatural.

I am not a nervous flyer. I am an imaginative flyer. As the plane comes into land I look through the window and gauge the height at which we could survive if the engines died. I know that in reality a plane could explode after a drop of a few feet, but nevertheless there is a certain height at which I feel more confident – confident of being able to perform some action that would increase my chance of survival.

Still gonna die; still gonna die; still gonna die; fighting chance; get ready to vault the fat guy; clunk! We’ve landed. Someone applauds as the plane touches down on the runway. I consider joining in with this lunatic, just to be ironic. But I am distracted by the water that starts dripping from the ceiling above me. Is that supposed to happen? It could be a serious technical fault; but being English I say nothing and condemn the next flight to possible disintegration.

At Immigration, a man clearly versed in the Aristotlean Form barks at me, ‘Left finger! Right finger!’ I mash the fingerprint scanner and hope that my foxtrot is up to scratch, should it be requested.

I have a connecting flight, so after a cursory glance at the depleted New York skyline, I go to the American Airlines desk. The love-child of Oprah Winfrey and Mr T. looks at me, as if she pities the fool, and asks, ‘What do you want?’ Only Americans can make that question sound friendly. They’re like the opposite of Germans.

I refrain from continuing the German theme as I move through security, carrying my shoes and my meagre possessions in a plastic tray. Instead, I am reminded of the scene in Fortress where they first arrive at the prison. I keep my eyes up, lest I should bump into the sweating naked body of Christopher Lambert. At the metal detector my poor little bag is grabbed again and another bottle of Sprite bites the dust. Not a good day for Lemonade.

Later, I sit by the departure gate, surrounded by an escalating debris of chicken and lettuce. I have bought a wrap, but the nearby Americans are looking at me. Clearly I am not eating it correctly. I go to the bathroom to clean up, and then make the fatal mistake of having a shit on a state-of-the-art laser-armed toilet that misinterprets my every move.

I return from the bathroom with a thrice-soaked arse and then buy a muffin. I know how to eat those.

Finally we are called through the gate. I am followed by an American woman who speaks on her phone like a parrot. ‘No. No, I did not say that. No I did not say that. I did not say that. Are you coming home? No, I did not say that. Are you coming home? Are you coming home?’ Perhaps she is related to the toilet. If I wave my arse at her she might flush prematurely.

At last I am on the second plane. I shuffle down the first class aisle, where men sit and talk to the backs of each other’s seats. They don’t even have phones anymore, just devices attached to their ears. I imagine Hell might be like this; rows of sinners on pews, reciting futile conversations to themselves.

No three seats this time. I wedge myself in next to an 80 year old who texts like Mozart, his thumb moving across the keypad faster than his heartbeat. I then watch people have arguments over their luggage in the cramped aisles. Smaller airlines are where people come to teeter on the brink of violence. I ignore the tension and hunt for another Sudoku puzzle in the in-flight magazine. I find one, half-finished. Maybe it was an international assassin. Well whoever she was she fucked up my Sudoku. I spend the next half hour destroying her serifs and replacing them with my chunky man-numerals.

We then get an announcement on the speakers saying that the captain hasn’t turned up yet. Everyone laughs and beside me Mozart says ‘What the hell?’ I respond with something English and witty, which no one around me understands. My mind is clearly tying to eat a chicken wrap instead of a muffin. A laser-toilet of retribution flashes in Mozart’s eyes and I fall silent, looking out of the window for a drunk pilot. Behind me, a child starts screaming.

An hour passes and the pilot still hasn’t arrived. I wonder if Mozart used to fly during the war – maybe I could tell him to crack on with it and get me to Dallas. Meanwhile the first officer tries to appease us by reading the rather pleasant Texas weather forecast as we seethe. Chamberlain with a barometer…

Another half-hour passes. The Americans start calling their relatives to inform them of the situation, their voices ringing with quiet delight. They sound like they are talking to a documentary film crew, heroic in their consumer stoicism. And when the captain finally arrives there is applause, not from a sole lunatic this time but from a mass of the righteous affronted. Some make attempts to be sarcastic, but they just don’t do it right. I snuggle smugly into my “diabolical” level Sudoku, a prize muffin amongst crumbling chicken wraps.

We take off past a stunning sunset, vivid and massive. Typical bloody Americans! The roar of the engines makes the safety briefing inaudible, which in turn makes it harder for us to be seen ignoring it. And as we lift, the city below is a tidy set of orange and white squares. It’s like flying over a circuit board. The first officer announces that the plane is getting colder and that he will “throw some more logs onto the fire”. I hope there are no other autistic people on the flight; a panic would surely ensure.

The heat kicks in, and I fidget in my black coat. My continuing endeavour to look like Hamlet bites me in the ass again, and if Shakespeare were still with me I’m sure he’d be sniggering right now. I try not to sweat as the captain broadcasts the names of “Don”, “Jerry” and all his other staff. I wonder who came up with the idea of introducing the flight crew on plane journeys. The man responsible for such triviality must surely possess the secrets of the universe. A genius we cannot comprehend. I long to meet him… one day.

The stewardess comes by offering drinks. I ask for a Sprite in honour of my fallen comrades. She has none. My quest for lemonade continues…

Heading west across America, I see towns here and there; patches of light arranged like ink-blots. I mostly interpret them as Hieronymus Bosch creatures, which is a good sign. I always know I’m on top form when I’m graced with visions of the Apocalypse. The woman in front of me reclines her seat, crushing my knees with Gestapo grace.

Oh bugger, I fell asleep. Now I feel like crap. The captain is waffling something about landing, apologising and thanking us at the same time. He prostates himself to our mercy and promises good weather. Clearly First Officer Chamberlain has been schooling the captain during flight.

I look out of the window as we descend towards the Dallas circuit board. Still gonna die. Still gonna die. Prepare to twat Mozart with my folder. Almost there. Should I sing the Dallas theme tune yet? Jesus, everything’s really spaced out in Texas; it’s like a rich kid’s handwriting down there. Ca-thunk! We’re down.

No applause – we did that when we took off. Mozart asks me when I last came to the US. I tell him 1998, dropping the “T”s in order to sound more American. I hear the scream of a thousand dying muffins, but Mozart smiles. I guess I am a writer after all.

I reclaim my baggage and then go in search of Sprite. But instead I find my Uncle and Auntie. They stow my luggage and then take me to a nearby restaurant, where I order a mother-fucker-ounce filet steak. And at last a cool glass of Sprite on the rocks is placed before me. I drink it like a free man: no suspicion of being terrorist; no feeling like a prick; no harassment by ethnic minorities; no laser-wielding toilets and no risk of agonising death.

Just a man, his mother-fucker steak, and a glass of Sprite. As I fall asleep that night in the cavernous lounge of my Uncle’s Irving mansion, licked and violated by his four house-cats, I feel that an interesting two weeks is about to come my way.

Texas Attemtped: Packing

2007-10-31T23:53:00.000Z

So it's 12 o'clock and I still haven't packed for America. Still getting over Nan's funeral. College tomorrow, car tax to renew, dollars to get. Missing shit loads of work in the next two weeks. Aaaagh!!

Went to the Bloc magazine meeting today and felt completely out of the loop, even though I'm supposed to be the Head Editor. Thank God Rob is a tolerant man - I am forever sustained by the irrational altruism of others. God bless 'em.

Did the others know that I was out of the loop? Is that why they all spoke to Rob and didn't bother me with questions? Or was it something else - something that my insecurity dreads to mention? The feeling of being totally out of place. The people don't look at me the same... I'm sure of it. They think I'm slightly strange, slightly unreadable. They tiptoe around me, as if I am somehow pitiful.

They're right of course - but is it that fucking obvious?!! What I wouldn't give for someone to insult me now and again, or tell me I was shit. Talk to me like a normal person.

No, that's bollox - I would hate it if someone insulted me. My ego is too precious.

Maybe it's the way I look. I sometimes think I don't look ordinary. It's my neck. I hate my neck, and the right side of my face. I would hate to think they judge me by my neck - it is such a poor reference point.

I wonder how they have pigeon-holed me? I probably shouldn't ask, since I wouldn't like the answer. After all, I have pigeon-holed them all as inferior extras in my epic play. It's what I do with all people. Who knows what dingy backstage cesspits I occupy in the psyches of my fellow students? After all, they are surely just as egotistical as me. Fucking writers!

Oh well, nothing I can do about it. They're assholes, just like me. Maybe America will clear my head - I hear it has that effect on people.

I'll have to pack... maybe tonight or tomorrow before I leave. Right now I'm gonna drink some wine and talk to my girlfriend. At least she makes me feel normal.... ish.

12:06 and all's well.

Texas Attemtped: A storyteller lost

2007-10-10T16:23:00.000+01:00

I just got the phonecall. My grandmother died at noon. She sat at the table, gave a small cough, and then passed away.

It was my Dad who told me. It's always him who breaks the news. When my rabbits died, when Uncle Maurice crashed in the racing car, when my brother Alex "went to live with Jesus". The way he breaks it - so business-like, emotionless, like the 'any other business' at the end of a conference. Somehow heartless, but utterly effective... at least for me. It does not do for us to show too much emotion, being as we are.... whatever we are. Men perhaps... soldiers... whatever the fuck it is that stops us talking. Me? Yeah, perhaps just me...

And so, Ethel Elizabeth Davis is gone. 93 years old. Perhaps she was one of the last people alive called "Ethel" - a name so old. It's so hard to speak about her with any sense of glory. People called Ethel don't have great epitaphs. They do not live in the songs of a warrior-poet. No thunder nor quaking lungs, no upturned fists. Ethel died in the nursing home of St Johns. "Our Ethel". Gone.

The others will speak of her, and say their lines, long-rehearsed and made novel with the slight liberations that they are moved to by their public hearts. And I will sit here, the strange one of the family, and what I could never speak I will put into a blog.

I write my thoughts in a realm she never understood; she goes into realm I cannot comprehend.

I did not know my grandmother. She was just one of the countless that I appeased with shallow smiles and supplications - someone who I waited for to depart, just like anyone else who ever spoke to me in my teenage years. She knew me as a quiet boy, who seemed so happy and said the right things and never caused her any pause for self-reflection. I was a false projection in her life... a lie... an image of a grandson.

The truest moments where when I said nothing. When I would sit (in the early days, when she still had her faculties) and listen to her stories. She had the amazing ability to always tell me something new. Born in 1914, her life was broken through with chapters and scenes, and every time I sat with her she would show a different one.

Sure, I had to nod and grunt and say "yeah" to her every relay, but it was a small price to pay. It spared me from talking to her. I am more myself when I listen in the shade of others.

Such a strong woman she was. But never the strength that I would acknowledge in my proud rationales. She was the hub of a family, the grand matron by the oven who cared for those around her, cooking, cleaning, escorting and controlling. She looked after the young and the sick, caring without thought, working without agenda. Her whole life dedicated to others.

It started during the war, when she worked as a post mistress. And then when she adopted my auntie, the child of an unfaithful wife, abandoned at a hospital. And at a time it reached its apex, when she cared for her husband, Bill, who was wheelchair bound, and for me and my brothers, who she helped each day to school. She believed it was her place - the place of all women - and it gave her a pleasure that few could really understand.

But when Bill passed away it all began to slip. For a while she held onto her ethic, devoting herself to the grandchildren and to the upkeep of her home. But soon it crumbled. Soon the realisation crept beneath her skin: that she was no longer able to care for others. Now it was her turn to be helpless.

She never embraced this. And as her dependence grew she became something more than what she had been - something more complete and humanly imperfect. She began to acknowledge the other side of her that she had held at bay for over eighty years. The bitterness, the selfishness, the affirmation and the spite. Her deepest story had yet to be told - the story of all her frustrations and thwarted dreams, her dissatisfactions and disillusions. And in her haste to tell this story before the Reaper quelled it, it was leant wings by rage.

And so this once gentle giant became nasty. Her cruelty was felt most strongly by my mother, always the closest daughter to her - the one who emphasized her dependence on others. And to my mother Ethel said the things that she had never said before - the hateful things, the dark things. All the clutter of a soul in peril. The Ethel that we had known was gone.

My auntie began to search for her birth-mother, tracking down her half-sisters and uncovering the story of why she was abandoned at the hospital. Perhaps she was trying to come to terms with the Mother-Figure in her life - to reach a state of understanding with her inception. My own mother did likewise: she came to terms with her maternal entity in the face of Ethel's spite.
I told my mother that she now had a part to play - that she was the receptacle of everything that was left unspoken in Ethel. I hope it comforted her. I can only hope that I have such a vessel as my mother when my end is near - a victim-confessor; a masochistic angel.

When Ethel had the stroke, the cruelty faded. What came in its place was a mish-mash, fragments of her personality floating on a dark ink. At times the old grandmother would return, and she would remember who I was and ask about my new life in Cornwall and whether I fancied the nurses at the old people's home. At times the wrath would re-surface, and she would tell my mother that she found her in the gutter.

But for the most part, she was somewhere that we could not imagine. A nightmare world of delusions, where ships sailed past the windows of the home, where people carved up meat, and where water ran through giant holes in the floor. I remember shuddering when I heard her speak of these delusions. It made me wonder at the fragility and complexity of the mind, at how the reality we know is but the smallest convergence atop a labyrinth of memories and nightmares. It made me feel at times the conscious effort with which I upheld my own sanity and absented from my private worlds.

My Aunty Denise would have an answer to this end. She would say as she said of Maurice, my uncle who crashed behind the wheel of a speeding race car and dwindled in a coma that brought him unto death. She would say that my grandmother had a lesson to learn, and that she was brought into a state of utter dependence in order to learn that lesson. For one who had lived so strongly as a helper and provider, the Karmic end was assured, and her helplessness was the final state through which she would find enlightenment.

Perhaps this was so. I like to think that she was granted a space in which to vent her bitterness, to rail at the Reaper and affirm the things that she had always suppressed. To tell that final story which could not be framed by kind words.

Perhaps she should have written a blog. She may have been nicer to my mother at the end.

Or perhaps she should have read mine, and understood more than I let on in my projected convenience. Perhaps she would have realised that I loved her and that I thought about her and cherished her stories. And perhaps she would have forseen the man that I am set to be. A man who is more than that monosyllabic teenager that used to grunt at her. A man who would bring a wife and great-grandchildren to meet her and show that the family she had sustained through all her ethics had flourished.

Ethel was there when my brother died. She was the first one who hugged me, because my father could not, being as we are...

I stayed at her house while I waited for word of Alex from the hospital. She looked after me so well. She gave to me the cheerful hope that was dashed when the news of Alex's death finally arrived. She was with me in my darkest hour. And like Alex, I have not known a life without Ethel. She had always been there, as Alex had.

But like when Alex died, I cannot cry. It would break me utterly to do so.

But she will be there when the breakdowns come... every three months or so when I lose all control and lapse into fits of helpless tears and violence. She will be there amongst the weight that overloads me.

So many stories lost. I cannot bear it. As I cannot bear to read that which I will not remember, or write that which will not be published. Oh God... how can we lose so much? O for a muse to scream our stories at the heavens...

I weep more for my frail poetry. Enough of it.

Ethel, I will be there at your funeral. And I will remember you. Like Alex and like Maurice you were snatched from this world before your story was fully told. But I will tell it, I swear to you. I take the weight of my family upon me, I inflict the agony upon myself. I bear the burden because no one else will. And though you would have wanted me to live my life freely, I cannot while this injustice stands.

To Ethel Elizabeth Davis, 1914 - 2007. You shall be avenged.

Texas Attemtped: Preface

2007-10-09T15:47:00.000+01:00

Where has gone my crimson muse
Who in my darkest dreams had stirred,
To countervail each sorrow's ruse
With interludes of light and word?

The summer sun with laden gold
Has scorched the candles where they slept.
And I, a boy who has grown old,
Am nothing but the tears I wept.

Where are the soldiers, where the kings,
Who test their mettle in the field?
They sicken as the drunkard sings,
And to the clubs and bars they yield.

So come to me again my muse
And lift me from these shallow tides;
Direct me onwards as you choose,
Unto the place where glory hides.