come to Xehtar

Dave called me down into the garden to witness a curious thing: blobs of a clear jelly-like substance had formed (or fallen) on two of the plant pots on the decking. I was primed for this; upstairs, I’d been watching Doctor Who. I dared to put a lump of the stuff on my hand so that Dave could photograph it. It didn’t burn a hole in my palm or make any overt attempt to take over the world. No, it was cleverer than that.

It’s at such times, when the mysterious enters your life, that you ask yourself a simple question: how can I make money from this? An obvious answer would be to take the David Icke route: make up a whole mythology. His worldview of bloodsucking reptiles lording it over humanity is clearly based on a misreading of the 80’s science fiction TV series V (he thought it was a documentary). I think we have more substance to work with here. Literally. In fact, I’m starting to remember the curious sensation I felt when I balanced that blob of jelly in the palm of my hand. Memories of a distant planet… The terrible war against the giant prawns… The mushroom god is angry… Yes, yes it’s all becoming clear. The next step is to avoid, at all costs, having the strange jelly laboratory-tested. Scientists are so unimaginative. Before we’ve made any money at all they’ll come up with a ‘rational explanation’ for what we know instinctively is the spawn of Xehtar.

This is the kind of thing that happens when Mat’s away. He was breaking in his newly-straightened teeth on a stag do in Bath. Chad, Dave and I instantly became social lepers, and had to spend Saturday night in the Charles Napier, a pub which is small to start with, and which further discourages punters by providing remarkably few seats. Space is taken up by a pool table, and another table cluttered with books and stuff in carrier bags, like offerings in a church. Dogs ran about without - thankfully - feeling any pressing need to bark. There weren’t many other people in the place but those who were there looked as if they rarely, if ever, left. Although a group of hip young things turned up later to play pool, confirming the feeling of exclusivity which only a pub like someone else’s living room can bring. There were certainly no other vulgar reminders that this was in fact Saturday night. A good thing, too. I needed to work on recovering memories of Xehtar.

spasms of identity

We went to London on Saturday night to celebrate a couple of birthdays. People kept asking me how it was going in the new house. 'Fine', I said. They didn't seem convinced. The trouble is, I can't say much because I've given the Sunday Express exclusive rights to the story. Worse than Guantanamo Bay is how I'm pitching it. All the abuse. Made to clean up after a man who never stops eating. Forced to oil his wok. And the emotional torture. On the train back from London, seemingly out of nowhere, Mat drunkenly told me I didn't exist. 'You're an absence, a void', he snarled, as though momentarily possessed by the spirit of some radical French philosopher. I was cut to the core. I don't go out drinking in order to have my identity obliterated. Well OK, I do. But in my own time.

I just now saw one of those 'extreme makeover' programmes. A woman nods and smiles while various experts explain the terrible tortures they're going to put her through in order to make her look presentable. 'Right, first we're going to cut your tits off. Then burn out your corneas.' Nod. Smile. Mat's going to have his brace removed tomorrow, which is going to usher in a whole new world of successful social (ie: sexual) interaction. Not that he's built it up at all, in his mind. He's going to swagger into the Slug and Lettuce tomorrow night with his new improved body and his teeth set free. The girls will be waiting.

Although on one of his darker days this week I heard him reduced to pinning his hopes on 'stop-motion plasticene women'.

work is dead

On Wednesday I came back from lunch with my shirt covered in brown stains. ‘It’s balsamic vinegar’, I assured everyone, haughtily. ‘And besides, it’s not as if I work with the public.’ Not at the moment anyway: it has been dead as the deadest day in the heart of Midsummer. I’ve been reduced to writing joke stories for the new monthly newsletter (June Is Stick Biscuits In Your Ears Month At Ottakars’!) After announcing a joint visit to the shop by the Pope and Jodie Marsh, I described the new Bernard (Sharpe) Cornwell novel as ‘his first venture into lesbian science fiction’. Then I reported back on the last instore book group meeting, which ‘erupted into a full-scale brawl, with several group members being hospitalized.’ None of this will see the light of day of course. Except here.

The newsletter has been reactivated because our assistant manager went on a marketing course and came back with a terrifying gleam of motivation in her eye. She’s been encouraging us to come up with ‘fun’ ideas that ‘involve the community’. ‘The community’ is the entire reason why I am not a librarian. And as for enthusiasm, I demonstrate mine by getting up in the morning to go to work: there really is none left over.

Sometimes I think I’d be better off working from home. Then I look at Mat. The other day he was obsessing about the thin line between genius and insanity, which to him is actually quite a thick line. He wanted to make his company website ‘insane’ so that equally insane people with lots of money would think he was a genius. The next day, he was wondering about a career shelf-stacking (by night) in Sainsbury’s. He imagined himself doing it on drugs with headphones clamped to his ears playing happy hardcore; he honestly couldn’t see a downside. When I tried to point out that it perhaps wouldn’t be the earthly paradise he envisaged, he just laughed. Madly. Come to think of it, maybe he should have my job: this is exactly the kind of positive mental attitude they need.

horses etc.

In conversation over Sunday lunch the other week I carelessly used the phrase ‘Horses are sexy’. It was instantly taken the wrong way. I meant comparatively sexy; I meant that they have an association with sex. Instead it is now assumed that I spend my days off wandering the countryside, picking up horses and taking them back to my place for a good seeing to. Catherine the Great had much the same problem. If anyone knows anything about Catherine the Great it’s that she fucked horses. Well she didn’t; it was a myth. Similiarly, when I was out on Wednesday, I wasn’t slinking through fields, proffering sugar lumps to interested fillies. I was in London, watching a movie called Lemming. A French movie in which a couple find a lemming trapped in their plumbing, shortly before Charlotte Rampling shoots herself in their spare bedroom. Is that clear?

Even more normally, I saw Mission Impossible 3. They should have called the second one Being Tom Cruise so many of the cast got to wear his face. He’s a bit less smug in this one, which is grittily realistic in comparison but still fairly ridiculous. We sat quite close to the front. I had to fight off the dizzying sensation of being about to fall through the gap between Laurence Fishburne’s front teeth.

For the first time in ages I didn’t vote and look what happens. The BNP come into power. Well, in Barking. Parts of Barking. You can see why: New Labour has systematically stripped all the meaning out of politics. It’s all just language now: hype, spin. The BNP, on the other hand, have a really obvious meaning, which can be grasped by even the smallest child. You don’t even need to read their manifesto (a couple of pages of crayoned doodles). They may not last long, since their preferred method of conducting council meetings involves bottling anyone who disagrees with them (‘How dare you call me a thug!’), but for now, the people of Barking and Dagenham are happy, as the soundbites from the streets attest ('About time! No, I'm not racist. A bit thick, mind...')

venting

‘Oh God! Oh Jesus!’, come the cries from Mat’s bedroom. No, he isn’t in the throes of orgasm (as far as I’m aware). He has bought a PSP. And now rarely looks away from Grand Theft Auto, except when the batteries die. I came back from Sainsbury’s the other day and stood watching him beating up a prostitute he’d just had sex with, in order to get his money back. As it happened, the woman in Sainsbury’s had short-changed me by two pounds, which I’d only realized after leaving the shop. I decided against asking Mat’s advice on how to deal with this.

I was standing at the bar in O’Neill’s and a young guy next to me expressed surprise that I’d been served before him. And yet I’d got to the bar before him - he even acknowledged that. What he presumably meant was that, being far younger and better-looking than me, he should have been a magnet for the barmaids. With his obnoxiously white teeth and showy tan, he was certainly someone’s idea of handsome. His own, definitely.

So matter-of-factly was this insult - if such it was - expressed that it didn’t occur to me to be annoyed about it until halfway through the next day. Only then did my brain start churning out the things I should have said. ‘Perhaps your air of oily smugness is putting them off.’ Or: ‘You need to tone down the contrast on your face. Your teeth are blinding them.’ Or: ‘Fuck off, conceited wanker.’ And so on. Though since his narcissism had clearly attained psychotic levels, this would not, perhaps, have been a good idea. Except in GTA.