I, Monster

A date has been set: from the August bank Holiday onwards, Ottakars’ Brentwood will no longer be Ottakars’ Brentwood. It will be Waterstone’s, and labelled as such. I don’t know how I feel about becoming a corporate monster. In the newsletter, I have been compelled to allay people’s ‘idiotic’ fears about the change. To those who worry that we will now become ‘evil’ and replace staff with killer robots (a surprisingly widespread misconception) I patiently explain that the popular association between Waterstone’s and evil has come about because of staff’s penchant for wearing black, and also due to a misunderstanding of their corporate motto (‘We drain the blood of the living.’) ‘In reality, we will be no more evil than before.’

Lies, all lies! Of course there are no ‘killer robots’. The robots are programmed not to harm humanity.

But there have been… accidents.

I should say no more. Hasn’t the weather been delightful lately? I went to a 70th birthday party the other night. It was dominated by the DJ, who donned a variety of wigs and costumes throughout, and castigated folk from the off for not dancing (‘I can see some of you don’t get out much.’) Hang on, it is a 70th! Maybe you could have been Brian Conley in an ‘ideal’ world but just because you’re stuck here, there’s no need to take it out on us! It was almost like some confrontational piece of performance art at times - the withering remarks, the music turned up as an act of aggression. It was Venetian Snares all over again. I really thought he might trash his equipment and walk out.

But no, just enough people danced to appease him. I danced with my aunt, really awkwardly, to ‘You Make Me Feel So Young’. Since she is 79, the song was peculiarly appropriate from my point of view. Although in spirit she is far younger than me. She actually liked the DJ. She got a leaflet. Which is how I know that he - or his act, rather - is called: ‘Crazy Martin’s Fun Show’. No wonder I didn’t like him. He’s my zany alter ego. In order to heal the split in my psyche I have decided henceforward to change my name to Crazy Martin’s Fun Show. A lot to live up to when you’re introduced to people at dinner parties, but it’s sure to make me a more rounded person.

Or a monster.

house of wax

‘It’s hot!’, says the latest communique from ‘Gerry’, MD of ‘New Waterstone’s’ (as they really are calling it). ‘So focus on the basics.’ What? Eating? Sleeping? Do we even need to go into work? Unfortunately yes. We’ve got air conditioning so can’t complain. ‘It’s so cool in here!’, say the customers. ‘We could stay in here all day!’ ‘Please don’t’, I can’t help thinking.

Last night I went to a barbecue. It started out well. There were burgers, sausages, chicken, all the normal things you get at barbecues. Plus chocolate cake. Then it got dark, and I walked into the kitchen - onto a scene of horror. Paula, our hostess, waxes people for a living, but it isn’t just a job, it’s a party piece. Alex, her partner, was lying in the kitchen with wax stuffed up his nostrils, while everyone was gathered round watching as it was ripped away, along with a sizeable collection of hairs. It was like a Hogarth engraving of primitive surgery. Or a Satanic ritual. The anti-hair feeling was running high among the women present, taking on almost fascistic overtones. There was a definite feeling of: you’re next. I fled into the night with cries of ‘Back, sack and crack!’ echoing behind me like a demonic chant. I need to keep hold of all the hair I’ve got, even it it does sometimes make it look as though a colony of spiders live up my nose.

I suppose there must be people who get off on being waxed. I flick through a copy of Bizarre magazine (picked up for free at the Prince Charles cinema, I didn't buy it) in the hope of illumination: but they’re doing custard this month. A guy has sent a photo of himself in, naked and covered in clingfilm. In the letter he points out his ‘cute arse’ and then worries that this ‘sounds a bit gay’. Hmm, you’ve just sent a picture of your nude clingfilm-wrapped self into a national magazine and you’re worried about ‘sounding a bit gay’. I think if you’re going to worry about some aspect of yourself, there may be more pressing issues.

so farewell then octopus, ozcars, erotikars, whatever your name was...

A little kid was weeping and wailing as his mother tried to drag him into the shop. ‘Don’t like this bookshop!’, he whined. ‘Like the other bookshop!’ Could he have been a plant? Secretly working for W. H. Smith’s? I did wonder when his Mum asked why he preferred WHS and the boy replied: ‘Well Mummy, Ottakars’ don’t have the same range and depth of stock, and their displays are frankly uninspired.’

We need hardly worry, especially as we don’t exist anymore. By September we will have been ‘rebranded’ as Waterstone’s. However, on a recent course, I met up with Mark, an ex-colleague, and we have decided to form a secret society to keep the name of Ottakars’ alive. In our basement hideout we will wear our Ottakars' badges with pride (which is more than I ever did when it was functioning, of course) and bow down to a shrine dedicated to founder James Heneage, who we will bombard with e-mails and personal visits until he is forced to take out a restraining order on us.

At least they will not turn us into HMV now, as a record shop has finally appeared in Brentwood. I was dining with two of the staff from the old one (the notorious Moondance, aka Trumps) on Friday. Liz and Dave were talking about their ‘top fives’. Dave’s featured Mariah Carey and anyone who looks like her, and Liz’s was topped by Jon Finch (from Hitchcock’s Frenzy and Polanski’s Macbeth) because she has ‘a penchant for 70’s men’ (for a minute I thought she said ‘poncho’). They wouldn’t let me leave until I’d come up with a top five too, so on the spur of the moment I did, and here it is:

1.) Benny Hill

2.) Champion the Wonder Horse

3.) Sooty

4.) Hattie Jacques

5.) John Prescott

I wonder if I had the right idea. Actually, I’m a bit ashamed of the last one (I was in a hurry) and would ideally like to replace it with a Marks and Spencer’s Vanilla Bean and Maple Syrup Smoothie. Mind you, the last one I had was disappointingly thin.

Also, I didn’t realise at the time that Dave - that’s housemate Dave - was abused by Sooty as a child, which makes me feel I should have opted for Sweep, always the more intellectual one in that partnership anyway.

The Duke's Experience

On Saturday I missed out on going to see Pirates Of The Caribbean 2, a film described by Mark Kermode (on The Late Review) as ‘symptomatic of the death of Western civilization’. Although, to be fair, you could say that about anything. I went to Duke’s in Chelmsford on Saturday, a club which was notorious in my youth, but which I have never actually been to, until now, at the age of forty.

When it is, to say the very least, unnecessary.

I was drawn in by the promise of Decadence, the bar that’s attached to the club, which I’d heard was a far more laid back place than the club itself. Not so; on this occasion at least, it bore an even closer resemblance to Hell than Duke’s proper did. Weaving my way through the gyrating young people, I subsided onto a sofa, and immediately felt like someone’s great-aunt, cupping a hand over my ear to try and catch people’s comments over the music.

Eventually, I returned to the club. Dave and I stared at the dance floor through a screen that kept going opaque for mysterious reasons. We were like scientists observing an atomic blast from behind a radiation screen. People were dancing to - among other things - an unimaginative Bronski Beat remix masquerading as an entirely new track by an entirely new artist. Tell me why, indeed. When 3:00 came and the place showed no sign of shutting, we realized that we would have to intervene in order to stop Jane and Chad dancing. Luckily, we were able to deprogram them without too much difficulty, and leave. Never, I hope, to return.

The next day, Vicki mentioned that we could have sat on a balcony above the dance floor and ‘looked down on people’. I said we didn’t need a balcony to do that.

vote twinkle

I got up on Saturday and looked out of my bedroom window. There was housemate Dave, collapsed on the lawn, looking like he could well be dead. Emergency reflexes kicked in: I reached for my camera. Of course he wasn’t dead, he was only sleeping off the enormous amount of vodka he’d consumed with Mat the night before (and he’d sensibly thought to put his coat on). Luckily the neighbours didn’t seem to be in. I wasn’t going to have to come up with some ‘innocent’ explanation (‘He’s been on very strong antibiotics.’ - well, he has.) The next thing I hear he’s giving up his job. I assumed that this was something that emerged out of his experiences in the wild, but he denies this.

So now I’ll be the only one in the house with a proper job. Except it isn’t even a proper job - and it’s changing. On Friday we were awaiting an e-mail to tell us that HMV/Waterstone’s are definitely taking over. I joked that when we restarted the computer the screen would go black and a big ‘W’ would materialise in the middle of it, to eerie music. But no word came at all. Now I’ve got a week off, so by the time I return they’ll all be in black, brain implants already fitted.

What to do with my week off? Even my days off are worryingly directionless. I am becoming far too involved in the children’s programmes I turn on first thing in the morning. The other day a cat called Twinkle was upset because her friend, Forrest, wouldn’t dance with her. ‘Of course he won’t dance with you’, said the smug (human) presenter. ‘He’s a bookcase.’ I couldn’t help feeling that Twinkle had a point. A talking bookcase with eyes, who’s friends with a talking cat, is not to be judged like any other bookcase. Maybe the macarena is out of the question, but surely a sedate waltz would not be beyond the pale? When I find myself shouting 'Twinkle's right!' at the screen, that's when I wonder if I'm really making progress.